Book of David (eBook)

Chapter One In the beginning -- well, maybe it wasn't exactly the beginning. It could have been closer to the middle, or, depending on what happens in the Mideast, nearer the end than anyone would care to think about, which is how de Nile got its name. But it was sometime after that pleasant Sunday during the Big Bang years when the Eternal One, blessed be He and His name which you are not allowed to utter aloud or even spell out completely, had taken the formless, black, cold earth and exhaled holy carbon dioxide into its lungs (technically not CPR, because earth wasn't yet alive), declaring that there would be light -- but not just any light, it should be a particular light, not too bright yet good for reading. And God called this light 'day,' though of course it is not called day in every language. In Szechuan, for example, the word for day is not pronounceable by nonnative speakers, but since only heathen unbelievers (will they be sorry) live in China, God chose to call the light by its verbal symbol in English, which until recently was the main language of the formerly God-fearing United States. (See: Day of Reckoning.) Then did God declare that there should be a firmament in the midst of the waters, as if He had a choice unless He wanted His peoples to be fishes (but let's not skip ahead). Forsooth, you should know that He did indeed consider such a state for a while before deciding against it on the grounds that He needed a drier place to live. Thus, on the second morning He gatherest up the waters together in one place, so He could keep an eye on things when He eventually commanded man to evolve and crawl out of the primordial ooze onto dry land, for that to happen, of course, He had to actually have dry land. Capisce? He called the dry land Earth, this time with a capital E, in order to confuse writers and students and Green Party functionaries with the difference between Earth and earth -- as in He and Him and His inscrutable sense of humor. Lo (and behold), on the Earth, God discovered that He had a Green Thumb. You want to talk creativity? Stuff grew everywhere, some of it poisonous, but no matter. He pronounced it good, because He does not have self-esteem issues, even though His own backstory is a little vague (How did I get all this power?). Now cameth the third morning. He was groggy, for He had stayed up all night fretting and thinking about what to do next -- waiting, if you must know, for inspiration. Oh then did His voice thunder onto the landscape, which was already overgrown and in need of pruning: 'Let there be lights in the firmament of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them be for signs and for seasons and for days and years, and let them be lights in the firmament of the heavens to give light upon the earth.' All of which is to say merely that He created the sun and moon and stars (He was not, at first, a God of few words). And that was pretty good, too, or at least He thought so until He realized how all that good light was going to waste -- and trees were falling in the forests without Immanuel Kant hearing them. Thus, on the fourth day He filled the air with bugs and birds, and the oceans with some good Northern whitefish but also a lot of traife, and He commanded them to multiply, and they listened and they obeyed, especially the bugs, so that now it's so bad some days in Miami, you could be forgiven for spraying a few of God's creatures that have been just a little too fruitful. Understand ye that, at the time He animated all of His creatures, God wasn't really into considering the consequences of His actions or focus-grouping them, for He was too involved...