| Does God Really Know What's Going On Down Here? |
This has been a weird day. I've been going through some head trips lately concerning the world I'm leaving to my son. I
mean, I never actually wanted a kid. He was sort of the end result of pot, Quaaludes, Mandrax, and the back seat of a
Dodge Caravan one night. But I'm glad he came, cause he's a pretty cool kid. We're pretty tight, though I don't see him as
much as I'd like. Anyway, when my head starts getting a bit too full, I go to a place called Mount Boney in the Santa
Monica Mountains. Now Mt. Boney usually gets very little notice as it is only the 4th highest peak. What makes it special,
is it's a magic holy place. It was considered sacred by the Chumash Indians, and there are some burial sites there. So this
place definitely has a vibe. It's a 3 mile hike to the top, which early morning on a week day is guaranteed to be empty. So
I climb up to the peak, a little nervous cause it was gonna be hot today. The kind of weather that gets the rattlers stirred
up.
Now I'm sitting there centering out and getting my Ommmmm thing going. First, let me say I don't believe in religion.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. My belief is it's all a scam to get the collection plate filled. I do believe in
intelligent design though and have never thought this just came about by luck, chance whatever. So I'm thinking about the
creator, and in my mind I'm sort of wondering how come the world is so fucked up. You know what I mean? I'm so
engrossed in my own train of thought I never even seen this dude climb up.
He's 30ish, long brown hair in a pony tail, a big handlebar mustache, and skinny as a rail, with a big western buckle on his
Levis, and a tore up old pair of cowboy boots.
"Howdy do bro, what's up?" he said. He had a bit of a cowboy twang in his voice, but it sounded kind of forced.
"Hey, howdy right back at you partner. Nice day for a climb eh?" I could have gotten a bit irritated at the intrusion, but
that's not my style. He was actually pretty typical of the canyon folks I've known around here through the years, and as a
rule they are nice folks.
"Oh I didn't climb. My names Billy. I sort of dropped in, you might say, to have a talk."
"What do you mean you didn't climb? Have the rich shits that are moving in, and ruining the place with their uber homes,
installed an elevator?" All of a sudden I was starting to think this guy was a wee bit too high, and maybe he thought he
flew in.
"No actually I was having my morning cup of pure Kona coffee and I heard you calling. Since things were slow around the
pad I thought it would be fun to drop down here and have a little break from all of the tedium."
OK, Kona coffee is what, about $40 a pound for the unblended primo shit. And this guy looks broke on the verge of
homeless with holes in his boots and he's drinking Kona? All of a sudden it struck me what he had said. "Whoa! Whoa, slow
down bro. Take a deep breath and mellow out. What the fuck do you mean you heard me calling?"
"Ya I heard you saying, how come you let this place get so fucked up god?" He walked over and sat down on the rock next
to me. I was getting this goose bump thing going on, and even though I was ready for the next line, I was still in denial.
"I'm God, but you can call me Billy. Man it's getting hot early today. Would you mind if I kicked up a bit of a breeze?"
He didn't bother to wait for my answer, he just turned toward the ocean and made this come here gesture with his hand,
and I swear, this cool ocean breeze comes out of nowhere! "So Payton, is Payton OK or should I call you angry?
You can call me a fuckin' ambulance cause I think I'm having one of those LSD flashbacks the government promised me
back in the '60's, that never showed up! Are you really God? The God? Wow that's so fuckin', whoops. Is swearing OK
cause if you are, that is too fuckin' cool for school my man!"
"Yes I am. Aten, Jehovah, Yahweh, and a hundred others. I'm all those dudes. So where would you like to start?"
The breeze thing was a trip, but I needed a bit more reassurance. "Ummmm, how about we start with a dube and a 20
ouncer of some of that Kona to wet my whistle?" He didn't say anything. He just sort of lifted his eyebrow and all of a
sudden there was this light, about the size of a grapefruit, and twice as bright as the sun. All I could see was this big glow
in front of my eyes for about a minute, even with my eyes closed. I thought I was blinded, but it slowly diminished, and
when I opened my eyes, there was a cup of coffee sitting on the rock. It even was in a cardboard Diedrich Coffee cup. My
favorite store cause they roast the beans in house at each store.
"Sorry about the eyes. I should have warned you. Two packets of equal and two fingers of whole milk right?" He looked at
my dumbfounded expression and started laughing. "Dude you're tripping harder behind this shit than Moses did! Of course
I had a bit of an attitude back then though, so he was , how can I put this? OK hell, the dude was so scared, he shit in his
robes!" We both started laughing.
"No dube eh? You down on drugs? Or what?"
"Red flag fire danger today and with the dry brush and winds, I didn't think it would be too cool here to smoke. But I
have some bud of some righteous Afghani Indica, I'll lay on you before I split."
"OK well lets start this off at the beginning. What's up with the whole Adam and Eve, apple free will thing? I never could
figure that out."
Well you know I'm what you might call a social engineer. I make planets, and then populate them, and watch how it goes. I
watch things take shape, but don't interfere as a rule. Anyway, Adam and Eve. Well if you want to start from the
beginning then we need to talk about his first wife Lilith. I made them both from dirt, or clay actually. I like the feel of
working the clay. Of course when I first formed them, I gave them some basic knowledge, you know to help them get by?
Well I wanted Adam to be happy, but I had a little problem. See Lilith had a mind of her own. She liked to get down and
get her freak on. Poor Adam though, was into this dominance thing and wanted her to do things his way. As in the missionary
position. I never did figure out where that phrase came from. Anyway Lilith wanted to be on top, on the bottom, sideways,
laying in the branches of the trees, anyway she could. Adam was a bit dimwitted and was going into these jealous rage
trips, and it was starting to ruin my whole experiment. So I had to get rid of her. I turned her back into clay, but then
had a change of heart. I mean she was just being a woman in a bad relationship, that caused her to go into these non stop
scream fests, so I turned her into an owl. A Screech Owl actually. I'm a bit of a joker. But later I turned her back into a
woman and invited her to join us. In hind sight, I probably should have gotten rid of Adam instead."
"So what? You wanted to party down with some of that? That's funny. What was the deal with Eve?" I said.
Well I decided To redo Adam with the clay, and make some minor modifications. As for Eve, I decided to make her out of
a piece of Adam. So I took a bit of rib and made him a raven haired beauty with deep blue eyes. I mean, dude, she was a
piece of work. I showed her off for a week or so before I went ahead and breathed life into her. Well that was a bad
move, because Bubba got jealous, and wanted her for himself, so he started planning to perpetrate some shit.
I stopped him. "Bubba? Who the fuck is Bubba? You mean Bubba the Love Sponge?
That got him laughing, hard. So hard in fact that tears were getting in his eyes. "Bubba the Love Sponge! AH HA HA HA
HA HA! That guy is an idiot. I've seen his web site! No Bubba is what we called Lucifer. His real name is Ba'al Zebûb or
Lord of Zebûb'. Zebub is where he lives. There isn't one spot out there for Heaven. Our race is everywhere in the cosmos.
That's another thing. Being good isn't necessarily going to get you into Heaven. I mean, who wants to live with a bunch of
church ladies. No we only pick a few souls we have observed and found interesting enough to ask them to join us. See I can
make you one of us. An immortal, god, whatever you want to call us. Living forever with every wish you want you can make
come true. But only to a limit. We don't give out the big powers. And we decide who to take, by committee. There is a
group responsible for deciding who goes, for this area.
Anyway, I decided if I made her out of Adam, he could control her a bit better. I screwed that up a bit too. I made her
grow out of Adams side. So they were like a couple of Siamese twins, Then I separated them and laid down the ground
rules. One of the side effects of growing them like that, and then separating them, is now everybody is looking for their
other half, their soul mate. Of course you make a soul mate, you don't just find them. So Bubba decided he wanted to mess
with me, so he took the shape of a snake and went into the garden…"
Didn't you see him? What were you up to that he could sneak in like that? And where was the Garden of Eden anyway?" I
was starting to think this guy was a bit lame maybe?
"It was an island in a marsh in Iraq. It's still there. The Ma'adan tribe lives there still, although that asshole Saddam
drained it after the first gulf war. He was pissed that the marsh Arabs were aiding the coalition. Back to the garden.
Bubba snuck in as a snake, there were lots of snakes in the marsh, and I didn't notice. It's against the law to interfere
with another's experiment, but he did, anyway. So, yada yada yada the apple, Eve broke my rules, you know the rest of the
story. I found out about Bubba's part in it, and stormed his Citadel, and laid down some serious siege on it. But after a
few thousand years your time, I just said fuck it and went home."
"You know I'm curious about that. I've read a bit of the Bible, and there seems to be a lot of smiting and smoting and
general debauchery, butchery, and assorted mayhem in your name in the Old Testament. What was that about? Do you have
this violent streak or something? I mean this one guy was trying to tell me the new testament god was not the one from the
old testament." I was a bit tentative when I spoke. I mean holy shit I wouldn't want to piss this guy off. You know what I
mean?
"Every planet I do has to run it's own course, although from time to time I will make a few tweaks here and there. The
Adam thing just pissed me off. So I decided the best thing was for the guys on my side to do some serious damage to the
guys working for Bubba. By this time it was getting a bit complex. Bubba did his Cain and Abel thing, and then really
started interfering with shit. He gathered a bunch of followers, who he convinced that he was the creater, and they
worshiped him as Baal, or Ba'al, So I decided to kick some serious ass. That's all that stuff in the old testament. But then
after a while I decided that I would do a love thing. Killing people to get them to worship me is kind of weird. Worshiping
me is kind of weird too. I'm not really into that. I was deciding to try the kind of a hippie thing like you guys had going in
the '60's? I thought that was cool, but Bubba moved in and secretly took control of the pharmaceutical companies and
started perverting that whole scene with bad chemicals. You know. Speed, and barbiturates and LSD, laced with
strychnine, phony mescaline and all that other sick shit. Where were we? Oh ya, the peace thing."
"I decided smoting and smiting as you put it, wasn't working. So I decided I'd try another angle. I thought maybe if I
could get you guys to stop fighting and start loving more, there would be a better pool of people for us to consider for the
invite. So this time I decided instead of making my love messenger from scratch, I would have a woman give birth to him
like a normal human. I'll admit I never thought about how I would handle him as a little kid, and for a while he was a bit of
a turd, but I came and visited with him a few times and explained what I wanted him to do for me. Ya, Jesus was a good
kid. I never figured they would turn on him like that even without Bubba's interference. I found out later though that he
was twisting a few minds. God I hate that prick. So I went away for a few thousand years, and came back recently to see
how things were going. I guess I don't have to tell you what I found. Now they are killing in the name of peace. So, I've
pretty much given up on this experiment. I have a couple others going on that are a lot nicer, and I tend to like to hang
there. Well I wish we could talk more, but I promised this Archbishop in Greece I'd stop by for a Turkish coffee and
some Baklava. You're a pretty interesting character angry hippy. Maybe we might meet again. Who knows?"
So before you go, can you tell me something about the future? Like when I'm going to die or how my kid will end up?" I
had thought twice about asking him, thought better of it, then went ahead and asked anyway.
He just smiled and said "What will be will be. I just plant the seed. It's up to you all to make it flower. The whole Bubba
thing got me way too involved with this planet in the first place. No, it's not like I know what every person is doing all the
time. What a fuckin' headache that would be. I don't do well as a fortune teller either. You would probably get just as
reliable an answer from Madam Laura and her crystal ball who lives down the street from you." Then he held out his hand
and did the light thing again only smaller this time. "Here's that bud I promised you. Don't smoke it till you get home."
He turned to walk away. I looked at the bud in my hand, and when I looked up he was gone. I said to myself, "I gotta write
this shit down when I get home. Nobody's gonna believe God's name is Billy and he wears cowboy boots." I started the
climb down, back to my car. I was hoping he wouldn't get pissed if I smoked it on the way in the car, instead of waiting to
get home.
mean, I never actually wanted a kid. He was sort of the end result of pot, Quaaludes, Mandrax, and the back seat of a
Dodge Caravan one night. But I'm glad he came, cause he's a pretty cool kid. We're pretty tight, though I don't see him as
much as I'd like. Anyway, when my head starts getting a bit too full, I go to a place called Mount Boney in the Santa
Monica Mountains. Now Mt. Boney usually gets very little notice as it is only the 4th highest peak. What makes it special,
is it's a magic holy place. It was considered sacred by the Chumash Indians, and there are some burial sites there. So this
place definitely has a vibe. It's a 3 mile hike to the top, which early morning on a week day is guaranteed to be empty. So
I climb up to the peak, a little nervous cause it was gonna be hot today. The kind of weather that gets the rattlers stirred
up.
Now I'm sitting there centering out and getting my Ommmmm thing going. First, let me say I don't believe in religion.
Everyone is entitled to their beliefs. My belief is it's all a scam to get the collection plate filled. I do believe in
intelligent design though and have never thought this just came about by luck, chance whatever. So I'm thinking about the
creator, and in my mind I'm sort of wondering how come the world is so fucked up. You know what I mean? I'm so
engrossed in my own train of thought I never even seen this dude climb up.
He's 30ish, long brown hair in a pony tail, a big handlebar mustache, and skinny as a rail, with a big western buckle on his
Levis, and a tore up old pair of cowboy boots.
"Howdy do bro, what's up?" he said. He had a bit of a cowboy twang in his voice, but it sounded kind of forced.
"Hey, howdy right back at you partner. Nice day for a climb eh?" I could have gotten a bit irritated at the intrusion, but
that's not my style. He was actually pretty typical of the canyon folks I've known around here through the years, and as a
rule they are nice folks.
"Oh I didn't climb. My names Billy. I sort of dropped in, you might say, to have a talk."
"What do you mean you didn't climb? Have the rich shits that are moving in, and ruining the place with their uber homes,
installed an elevator?" All of a sudden I was starting to think this guy was a wee bit too high, and maybe he thought he
flew in.
"No actually I was having my morning cup of pure Kona coffee and I heard you calling. Since things were slow around the
pad I thought it would be fun to drop down here and have a little break from all of the tedium."
OK, Kona coffee is what, about $40 a pound for the unblended primo shit. And this guy looks broke on the verge of
homeless with holes in his boots and he's drinking Kona? All of a sudden it struck me what he had said. "Whoa! Whoa, slow
down bro. Take a deep breath and mellow out. What the fuck do you mean you heard me calling?"
"Ya I heard you saying, how come you let this place get so fucked up god?" He walked over and sat down on the rock next
to me. I was getting this goose bump thing going on, and even though I was ready for the next line, I was still in denial.
"I'm God, but you can call me Billy. Man it's getting hot early today. Would you mind if I kicked up a bit of a breeze?"
He didn't bother to wait for my answer, he just turned toward the ocean and made this come here gesture with his hand,
and I swear, this cool ocean breeze comes out of nowhere! "So Payton, is Payton OK or should I call you angry?
You can call me a fuckin' ambulance cause I think I'm having one of those LSD flashbacks the government promised me
back in the '60's, that never showed up! Are you really God? The God? Wow that's so fuckin', whoops. Is swearing OK
cause if you are, that is too fuckin' cool for school my man!"
"Yes I am. Aten, Jehovah, Yahweh, and a hundred others. I'm all those dudes. So where would you like to start?"
The breeze thing was a trip, but I needed a bit more reassurance. "Ummmm, how about we start with a dube and a 20
ouncer of some of that Kona to wet my whistle?" He didn't say anything. He just sort of lifted his eyebrow and all of a
sudden there was this light, about the size of a grapefruit, and twice as bright as the sun. All I could see was this big glow
in front of my eyes for about a minute, even with my eyes closed. I thought I was blinded, but it slowly diminished, and
when I opened my eyes, there was a cup of coffee sitting on the rock. It even was in a cardboard Diedrich Coffee cup. My
favorite store cause they roast the beans in house at each store.
"Sorry about the eyes. I should have warned you. Two packets of equal and two fingers of whole milk right?" He looked at
my dumbfounded expression and started laughing. "Dude you're tripping harder behind this shit than Moses did! Of course
I had a bit of an attitude back then though, so he was , how can I put this? OK hell, the dude was so scared, he shit in his
robes!" We both started laughing.
"No dube eh? You down on drugs? Or what?"
"Red flag fire danger today and with the dry brush and winds, I didn't think it would be too cool here to smoke. But I
have some bud of some righteous Afghani Indica, I'll lay on you before I split."
"OK well lets start this off at the beginning. What's up with the whole Adam and Eve, apple free will thing? I never could
figure that out."
Well you know I'm what you might call a social engineer. I make planets, and then populate them, and watch how it goes. I
watch things take shape, but don't interfere as a rule. Anyway, Adam and Eve. Well if you want to start from the
beginning then we need to talk about his first wife Lilith. I made them both from dirt, or clay actually. I like the feel of
working the clay. Of course when I first formed them, I gave them some basic knowledge, you know to help them get by?
Well I wanted Adam to be happy, but I had a little problem. See Lilith had a mind of her own. She liked to get down and
get her freak on. Poor Adam though, was into this dominance thing and wanted her to do things his way. As in the missionary
position. I never did figure out where that phrase came from. Anyway Lilith wanted to be on top, on the bottom, sideways,
laying in the branches of the trees, anyway she could. Adam was a bit dimwitted and was going into these jealous rage
trips, and it was starting to ruin my whole experiment. So I had to get rid of her. I turned her back into clay, but then
had a change of heart. I mean she was just being a woman in a bad relationship, that caused her to go into these non stop
scream fests, so I turned her into an owl. A Screech Owl actually. I'm a bit of a joker. But later I turned her back into a
woman and invited her to join us. In hind sight, I probably should have gotten rid of Adam instead."
"So what? You wanted to party down with some of that? That's funny. What was the deal with Eve?" I said.
Well I decided To redo Adam with the clay, and make some minor modifications. As for Eve, I decided to make her out of
a piece of Adam. So I took a bit of rib and made him a raven haired beauty with deep blue eyes. I mean, dude, she was a
piece of work. I showed her off for a week or so before I went ahead and breathed life into her. Well that was a bad
move, because Bubba got jealous, and wanted her for himself, so he started planning to perpetrate some shit.
I stopped him. "Bubba? Who the fuck is Bubba? You mean Bubba the Love Sponge?
That got him laughing, hard. So hard in fact that tears were getting in his eyes. "Bubba the Love Sponge! AH HA HA HA
HA HA! That guy is an idiot. I've seen his web site! No Bubba is what we called Lucifer. His real name is Ba'al Zebûb or
Lord of Zebûb'. Zebub is where he lives. There isn't one spot out there for Heaven. Our race is everywhere in the cosmos.
That's another thing. Being good isn't necessarily going to get you into Heaven. I mean, who wants to live with a bunch of
church ladies. No we only pick a few souls we have observed and found interesting enough to ask them to join us. See I can
make you one of us. An immortal, god, whatever you want to call us. Living forever with every wish you want you can make
come true. But only to a limit. We don't give out the big powers. And we decide who to take, by committee. There is a
group responsible for deciding who goes, for this area.
Anyway, I decided if I made her out of Adam, he could control her a bit better. I screwed that up a bit too. I made her
grow out of Adams side. So they were like a couple of Siamese twins, Then I separated them and laid down the ground
rules. One of the side effects of growing them like that, and then separating them, is now everybody is looking for their
other half, their soul mate. Of course you make a soul mate, you don't just find them. So Bubba decided he wanted to mess
with me, so he took the shape of a snake and went into the garden…"
Didn't you see him? What were you up to that he could sneak in like that? And where was the Garden of Eden anyway?" I
was starting to think this guy was a bit lame maybe?
"It was an island in a marsh in Iraq. It's still there. The Ma'adan tribe lives there still, although that asshole Saddam
drained it after the first gulf war. He was pissed that the marsh Arabs were aiding the coalition. Back to the garden.
Bubba snuck in as a snake, there were lots of snakes in the marsh, and I didn't notice. It's against the law to interfere
with another's experiment, but he did, anyway. So, yada yada yada the apple, Eve broke my rules, you know the rest of the
story. I found out about Bubba's part in it, and stormed his Citadel, and laid down some serious siege on it. But after a
few thousand years your time, I just said fuck it and went home."
"You know I'm curious about that. I've read a bit of the Bible, and there seems to be a lot of smiting and smoting and
general debauchery, butchery, and assorted mayhem in your name in the Old Testament. What was that about? Do you have
this violent streak or something? I mean this one guy was trying to tell me the new testament god was not the one from the
old testament." I was a bit tentative when I spoke. I mean holy shit I wouldn't want to piss this guy off. You know what I
mean?
"Every planet I do has to run it's own course, although from time to time I will make a few tweaks here and there. The
Adam thing just pissed me off. So I decided the best thing was for the guys on my side to do some serious damage to the
guys working for Bubba. By this time it was getting a bit complex. Bubba did his Cain and Abel thing, and then really
started interfering with shit. He gathered a bunch of followers, who he convinced that he was the creater, and they
worshiped him as Baal, or Ba'al, So I decided to kick some serious ass. That's all that stuff in the old testament. But then
after a while I decided that I would do a love thing. Killing people to get them to worship me is kind of weird. Worshiping
me is kind of weird too. I'm not really into that. I was deciding to try the kind of a hippie thing like you guys had going in
the '60's? I thought that was cool, but Bubba moved in and secretly took control of the pharmaceutical companies and
started perverting that whole scene with bad chemicals. You know. Speed, and barbiturates and LSD, laced with
strychnine, phony mescaline and all that other sick shit. Where were we? Oh ya, the peace thing."
"I decided smoting and smiting as you put it, wasn't working. So I decided I'd try another angle. I thought maybe if I
could get you guys to stop fighting and start loving more, there would be a better pool of people for us to consider for the
invite. So this time I decided instead of making my love messenger from scratch, I would have a woman give birth to him
like a normal human. I'll admit I never thought about how I would handle him as a little kid, and for a while he was a bit of
a turd, but I came and visited with him a few times and explained what I wanted him to do for me. Ya, Jesus was a good
kid. I never figured they would turn on him like that even without Bubba's interference. I found out later though that he
was twisting a few minds. God I hate that prick. So I went away for a few thousand years, and came back recently to see
how things were going. I guess I don't have to tell you what I found. Now they are killing in the name of peace. So, I've
pretty much given up on this experiment. I have a couple others going on that are a lot nicer, and I tend to like to hang
there. Well I wish we could talk more, but I promised this Archbishop in Greece I'd stop by for a Turkish coffee and
some Baklava. You're a pretty interesting character angry hippy. Maybe we might meet again. Who knows?"
So before you go, can you tell me something about the future? Like when I'm going to die or how my kid will end up?" I
had thought twice about asking him, thought better of it, then went ahead and asked anyway.
He just smiled and said "What will be will be. I just plant the seed. It's up to you all to make it flower. The whole Bubba
thing got me way too involved with this planet in the first place. No, it's not like I know what every person is doing all the
time. What a fuckin' headache that would be. I don't do well as a fortune teller either. You would probably get just as
reliable an answer from Madam Laura and her crystal ball who lives down the street from you." Then he held out his hand
and did the light thing again only smaller this time. "Here's that bud I promised you. Don't smoke it till you get home."
He turned to walk away. I looked at the bud in my hand, and when I looked up he was gone. I said to myself, "I gotta write
this shit down when I get home. Nobody's gonna believe God's name is Billy and he wears cowboy boots." I started the
climb down, back to my car. I was hoping he wouldn't get pissed if I smoked it on the way in the car, instead of waiting to
get home.
