The Last Testament: A Memoir (12 page)

¹⁰
No; it was divine retribution for the Japanese people’s habit of selling girls’ panties in vending machines.

¹¹
Yea, there is no question that the woes have grown sloppy of late; the unfortunate by-product of the loosening of my heavenly reins.

¹²
Take the three cases above: the spiraling out of control of AIDS was the unforeseen result of insufficient testing by the lead research angel at the time.

¹³
He has since been removed from his post and sent to hell, with no pay.

¹⁴
Hurricane Katrina was supposed to be a localized Category 1; but one of our older underseraphs did not receive the memo, and lost track of the time while operating our Howl ’n’ Blo Hurricane Generator 9000® machine.

¹⁵
He has since voluntarily retired and gone to hell, with half-pay.

¹⁶
As for Japan, that investigation is ongoing, but I must shoulder part of the blame for choosing to get involved in that part of the world to begin with; I should know better; for, the Mideast aside, Asia is historically not a good continent for me.

¹⁷
As I have said many times, I am not perfect, and neither is my staff; but we are constantly striving to improve our service, and we certainly apologize for any inconvenience to the wrongly killed.

¹⁸
And on that subject, there is one misfortune about which I would like to express my particular regret: the Irish potato famine.

¹⁹
I apologize to thee, Ireland; I love thy nation, and thy people; thou wert a steady source of religious fanaticism before the great scarcity, and remained so afterward; yea, thou even kickedst it up a notch.

²⁰
So I am sorry for the potato famine, and for its awful collateral damage; for I was not mad at the Irish.

²¹
I was mad at the potatoes.

²²
Why?

²³
They
know why.

CHAPTER 4

¹
B
ut as for the latest and greatest catastrophe of them all, mankind, that is entirely
your
achievement.

²
For thousands of years humanity hath endured my droughts and pestilences, and weathered all manner of ill treatment from the ground and sea and sky;

³
But whatever might be said about earth’s food and service, everyone agreed it had a nice atmosphere.

⁴
Yet increasingly that is no longer the case; and I am not the one raising the sea levels; I am not the one destroying the ozone; I am not the one with the CO2-dependency issues.

⁵
Why, simply by purchasing this book, which was once part of a tree, each of you has contributed to global warming.

⁶
(And if thou art reading this on a Kindle, know that they are fabricated at coal-burning plants from crushed elephant tusks.)

⁷
Human beings are remarkable creatures in many ways; but species self-preservation is not thy strong suit.

⁸
Ants are far superior in this regard; if they ruled the world, and discovered that pollution and overpopulation were endangering the planet, nine-tenths of them would simply lie down on the ground and let the other one-tenth spray them with formic acid until they liquefied.

⁹
Problem solved.

¹⁰
But mankind has no such sense of esprit de corps; you will not commit mass suicide (unless it is in my name), and neither will you change your way of life;

¹¹
Instead you will inevitably make one of your grand Promethean gestures, like sending solar deflectors into orbit, or fertilizing the oceans with iron, or trying to nudge the planet another half-million miles from the sun with a moon-sized jet-pack.

¹²
Good luck with that.

¹³
As for me, I am gradually easing my way back into the disaster business; but my staff remains ever vigilant, scouring the globe 24/7 for new iniquities—or as they prefer to call them, “opportuniquities.”

¹⁴
In fact, my research angels recently told me about an entirely new form of catastrophe they plan on premiering the next time thou hast it coming.

¹⁵
I will not give it away, but I will say this: it will forever change the way thou thinkest about being buried alive.

CORRECTIONS

(“On Errata”)

CHAPTER 1

¹
E
arlier I described several discrepancies between the Biblical account of the Flood, and what actually transpired.

²
Before resuming my memoirs with the story of Exodus, my ombudsangel has asked me to include a few more scriptural corrections and errata in the interest of transparency.

³
In Genesis 10, the sons of Japheth were wrongly identified as Gomer, Magog, Madai, Javan, Tubal, Meshek, and Tira.

⁴
In fact, their names were Gomar, Mageg, Makai, Javen, Tubil, Meshik, and Tora.

⁵
We regret the error.

⁶
Similarly, in Genesis 25, Abraham’s grandchildren by his son Midian were given as Ephah, Epher, Hanoch, Abidah, and Eldaach.

⁷
In fact, Midian had no children; the names listed were a false transcription of sounds he made while battling emphysema.

⁸
We regret the error.

⁹
The entirety of Leviticus 13 is dedicated to the priestly diagnosis of leprosy through the examination of the color of ingrown hairs protruding from rashes, scabs, and boils.

¹⁰
It is absolutely disgusting.

¹¹
We regret the chapter.

¹²
Looking much further ahead: in the New Testament, Jesus’s final words on the cross in Syro-Chaldaic, “
Eli, eli, lama sabachthani
?” were incorrectly translated in Matthew 27 as, “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?”

¹³
In fact, a closer translation would be, “Ow, ow, why can’t I find a comfortable position up here?”

¹⁴
We regret the error; he regrets the line.

¹⁵
In the Koran, the number of Pillars of Islam, the central injunctions all Muslims must obey, is misstated as five.

¹⁶
In fact, there should be six.

¹⁷
The one omitted was the final one, “Git-R-Done!”

¹⁸
We regret the error.

¹⁹
On the subject of the Koran, pervasive misinterpretation of many passages in that book may have misled some people into wrongly committing horrible acts of violence in my name.

²⁰
We regret the terror.

CHAPTER 2

¹
I
have also been asked to address several larger-scale errors that go beyond the realm of scripture.

²
For instance, as currently situated, the Amazon River flows through northern South America.

³
In reality, it was supposed to flow through the Sahara Desert.

⁴
We apologize to any northern Africans who may have been offended or died of thirst.

⁵
Nuclear physicists have incorrectly publicized the Higgs boson—a subatomic component they are desperately seeking to confirm the existence of—as “the God particle.”

⁶
In fact, its inevitable discovery will not bring mankind a whit closer to grasping the physical underpinnings of reality.

⁷
They will regret the error.

⁸
Due to a clerical mistake, the ozone layer, which should have been thick enough to absorb 99.8 percent of the sun’s ultraviolet light, is only thick enough to absorb 98.9 percent of it.

⁹
We regret the error.

¹⁰
A similar oversight caused the War of 1821 to take place in 1812.

¹¹
We do
not
regret that error; it actually worked out better.

¹²
A period in world history known as “The Age of Colonization” may have given some the false impression that those people from Africa, Asia, and the Americas who embraced the gospel were also keen on having their countries raped.

¹³
In actuality, the vast majority of those converted did not want their countries raped.

¹⁴
We are sorry if their willingness to heed missionaries’ words at face value may have given the wrong impression.

¹⁵
An unanticipated surge in Italian nationalism prompted the rise to power, in the early 20th century, of Benito Mussolini.

¹⁶
In fact, Mr. Mussolini should have been immediately denounced as a traitor and executed, and his dreadful fascist movement never unleashed upon the world.

¹⁷
Our bad.

¹⁸
The Mayan prophecy that the world will end on December 21, 2012, is based on widespread confusion vis-à-vis Mayan culture, the Mesoamerican Long Count calendar, and the
Popol Vuh.

¹⁹
We are not saying it is wrong; we are saying it is based on widespread confusion.

²⁰
And finally, Bill Buckner should not have let the ball go through his legs on October 25, 1986.

²¹
We regret the error; but not as much as he does.

²²
And on the subject of setting the record straight...