Considering that my knowledge of the Bible consists of what I gleaned from the pamphlets in the third stall of the Greyhound station men’s room, and my knowledge of politics comes from the pamphlets I found in the next stall over, this probably isn’t going to turn out too well. But since I don’t have anything better right now, here it goes.
Anger flashed in the long-haired, bearded, berobed and bedazzling man’s eyes. “My temple should be a house of God,” he proclaimed, voice cracking as he strained to hit the high notes. “But you have made it a den of …”
“Hold it,” interrupted a cold, reptilian man with the slack, lifeless face and corpse-like demeanor of a pathological panty-sniffer. “But today High Priest Caiaphus ‘The Dick’ Cheney is set to speak here, and in accordance with our policy of tolerance and free speech we have limited free speech to the designated tolerance zone, which is fifty cubits hence.” Before Pontius Ashcroft could have guards remove the intruder, a fat, squat man waddled into the room to join the conversation. The skin drooping from his chubby jowels coupled with his balding scalp and don’t-you-just-want-to-kick-him-in-the-eye demeanor gave him away instantly: it was the high priest himself.
The stranger had trouble understanding the official’s arrogant and condescending jibber-jabber, and called his disciple Peter (whose English was pretty decent, since he had spent a summer living in Boston with his sister) to translate from Bullshit (the dialect of the officials) into Aramaic. This worked for several minutes before Peter was accused of subversion and taken to an undisclosed location to be interrogated and/or beaten. Since his English was sub par, the stranger continued on in a mixture of Spanish and English in order to make himself understood.
“Si, si, pero le gente deserve to be told la verdad, es necesito tener access to muchos viewpoints and all the informacion available para to reach their own conclusiones.”
“Yeah, yeah, sure, that’s great,” replied the high priest in his snide, impotent-since-his-mid-20s voice, “but in case you haven’t noticed, we’re at war, and the last thing we need in a time of war is the people thinking rationally when it’s easier for us to just tell them what to believe.” Pontius Ashcroft looked up from the infant he was noisily devouring long enough to nod his assent.
“Guerro? Donde? In Babylon? But you crushed them in pocos dias, slapped together some shady public-works projects to justificar the whole thing, and took as much of their fertile, fertile topsoil as possible for yourself and the otros hombres de negocios that you worship,” he said, before thoughtfully adding “biblioteca.”
“Not that war, the War on Secularism that’s happening all around us. Ever since secularists destroyed the Tower of Babel in 911 B.C. we’ve been fighting a protracted war in defense of liberty and freedom. More specifically, we have to defend the people from liberty and freedom so it doesn’t get in the way of freedom for our military and business interests. They deserve freedom too, and anyone who disagrees with this reasoning is obviously a traitor and heretic who deserves to be tried before a secret military tribunal.” He paused before adding with a laugh, “Naw, I’m just yanking ya, we feed them to the lions and take their property.”
“Pero, surely yo te dio it would be mas facil for a camel to pass through el tipo de a pin than for a rico man para entrar la kingdom of …” He trailed off as he saw the high priest snicker in that snide, kitten-killing manner of his, before explaining how giving money to the rich would fix everything from the economy to ending secularism. “And besides, he added, the rich aren’t all that bad, they gave us the funds to have this statue made,” he said, practically choking on his haughty obnoxiousness, as he motioned to a large statue being wheeled through the temple door.
The stranger beheld a golden idol of a cowboy whose vacant, stupid stare belied a sinister cunning, penchant for hypocrisy and capacity for evil, as well as a startling ineptitude and hatred for all that is good and pure. “Es el diablo,” thought the stranger, as his eyes were assaulted by the image of the man who had impoverished the country and pissed off half the world, yet who was still, inexplicably, the idol of choice for all the greedy, stupid, misinformed xenophobes of the land.
Despondent and dejected upon seeing that his teachings had only fallen upon deaf ears after trying for so hard and so long, the mysterious stranger decided it was time to reveal his true self. Gathering his disciples around him the man seemed to undergo a strange transformation. As his duophisite nature became manifest the startled onlookers realized that this was no ordinary man-as he changed from man to machine, it was obvious to the hushed crowd that they stood in the presence of non-other than Optimus Prime, leader of the courageous Autobots, foe to evil doers and douche-bags alike. High priest Cheney and Pontius Ashcroft tried a similar transformation, but were only capable of turning the contents of their stomach into poo as they crapped their pants moments before being crushed under Optimus Prime’s giant robot sandle.
“Bueno,” he said as he ascended off the ground to fly to his headquarters at The Halls of Justice.
Scott Matthews is a junior in the College and associate editor of The Georgetown Voice. He won’t be laughing when his covered wagons crash.
