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Yay!I just got paid! Yay!My first paycheck. I'm so proud of me. I may be punished by god for how proud of me I am. A bolt of lightning from above. Spontaneous human combustion. My pants may mysteriously drop in public. God likes pulling down people's pants. He thinks it's funny. God has a fairly childish sense of humor sometimes. He also likes tying shoelaces together. Luckily, I'm not wearing shoes at the moment. Unluckily, being god, and therefore omniscient and omnipotent, he may just wait until I put my shoes on, and _then_ tie my shoelaces together. He is mighty indeed. Yes, radio fans, it's time once more for that hit game show, Question Your Faith! With our host, your pal and mine, Friedrich Neitzche! (We tried to get Hegel, but he had a sitcom to do.) Without further ado, heeeeeeeeere's Freddie! Good evening, folks. Before we go on, I have the sad duty to inform you that... well, there's just no easy way to say this. God is dead. God died early this morning in a small hospital just outside Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the ripe old age of 5760. A full investigation is underway, but the story as we know it is that following the discovery of a malignant tumor in his brain early last year, God sank into a deep depression. When conventional methodology proved ineffective in treatment, He started going from doctor to doctor, searching for a miracle cure. When one of them made a badly timed joke about "not being God", He flew into a rage and destroyed the town of Shermont, Illinois. He then started abusing large quantities of drugs, becoming more and more depressed all the time, and eventually got checked into a rehab clinic by some of His friends who were worried that He might be suicidal. He was released recently, everyone believing Him to be rehabilitated, then promptly disappeared, only to turn up just yesterday unconscious in front of the hospital with ritual scars over His body and with a great deal of blood loss. Police speculate that He may have attempted to turn to ritual magics to cure His tumor, and "just fell in with the wrong crowd". God died at 1:32am without having regained consciousness. He is survived by a widow and two children, Jesus, age 2000, and Michelle, age 6. There will be a brief ceremony for friends and relatives at Bethesda State Cemetary in Bethesda, Maryland, next Sunday at noon. So let's just play this round of our show... for God. Anyway, on with the show! Let's introduce our contestants. First up, our returning champion! He's been a standup philosopher, an insane psychiatrist, and a small, green Master of the Schwartz, let's say hello to... Mel Brooks! "Heya, folks!" Mel, it's good to have you back on the show. Last time your analogy between parts of the body and the stages of rationality - sheer genius! "Thanks, Fred." You won well over $10,000 that time, didn't you? "Yes Fred, $12,460, to be exact." Well, that's just great. Next up, a guy we picked up off the street just before the show and know nothing about! Say hello to... (what's your name again? *whisper whisper* Oh, yeah.) Charles Peterson! "Um, that's Chase Peterson." NO ONE CORRECTS ME! OFF! OFF THE PROGRAM! GET OUT! I'LL KILL YOUR FAMILY FOR THIS INSULT! Ahem. Well. Our third, um, second contestant is a plumber's assistant from Montel, Indiana, who writes second-rate poetry on the side. He tries to be gothic, he's Drake Saunders! "I am that merry wanderer... of the night." Yeah. Whatever. Our last contestant... (where can we get a replacement on short notice? let's grab the writer. he's expendable.) is a computer programmer from San Jose, California, currently living in Austin Texas. Let's give a big hand for... Alloni Kramer! "Huh?" Hi, Alloni, it's great to have you on the show. "What am I doing here?" That's what we're going to find out. That's exactly the kinds of questions we ask, on... QUESTION! YOUR! FAITH! "But I was just writing..." No one turns down an appearance on Question Your Faith. No one. "Oh... kay." Very good. Your cat will live. "I don't have a... um, never mind." And he learns quickly, too! He should do well on our show! For our first round, all correctly answered questions will be worth $100. Our first question is an oldie but goody. What is the sound... of one hand clapping? *bzzt* "Whoosh?" Absolutely correct! That's $100 to Mel. "Hey! Zen philosophers have been wrestling with that problem for ages!" And we answered it in the first few minutes of this show. Are we good, or what? "But-" On to the next question. If a tree falls in the woods, and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? *bzzt* "Um... yes?" We're sorry, the correct answer is no. If a tree falls in the forest, and no one is around to hear it, it doesn't make any sound. Bad luck there Alloni, and time for our second round, where the questions are harder, and worth $200 apiece. Are you ready? *bzzt* No, no, that wasn't the question. Our question is: What is the nature of time? Anybody? Anybody? The nature of time? The nature of time is an infinite series of universes, each very slightly different from the next, and what to us seems to be travelling through time is simply moving from one universe to the next. Thus, time travel is achievable, but wouldn't actually allow us to change anything, simply travel to different universes. Sorry none of you got that one. For our last question of this round, for $200, what is the nature of God. *bzzt* "God is dead." Incorrect. God is an infinite cosmic force, omnipotent and omniscient, and, as such, cannot die. On to our final round! For our last question, worth $12,360, we'll allow each of our contestants to write their answers individually. Our final question: what is life? <Jeopardy music plays. Dum dum dum dum dum dum dum, dum dum dum dum Dum! etc.> Bing! Times up, folks. Let's see how they answered. Mel? "Life is one long, involved joke." That is correct, but it wasn't the answer we were looking for. Sorry, nice having you on the show. Drake? "Life is nothing more than misery and pain. Oh! The angst! Oh! The inhumanity! I suffer so in the darkness of my soul!" Have him killed, Dean. Alloni? "Life doesn't exist." What? But what about *click* PS: This has been a message headcrafted "just for you" by KramerIndustrials, Inc. What this means, I dunno. (Headcrafted? It's not true. It can't be true. His "humor" all comes out of drug-induced frenzies of sleeplessness and spite. Or possibly eskimos. Maybe eskimos hunt whales outside the place he's living, and he watches the patterns of their movements for inspiration. Or just possibly, there is nothing to see here. Please disperse. There is nothing to see here. Please disperse.)
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