Doing My Part for John McCain

“McCain told the Star that, like Bush, he believes ‘all points of view’ should be available to students studying the origins of mankind.”–The Arizona Daily Star

Here’s one for the kids.

The world started like this: there was a wide gaping nothing for a long time and then at one end of the nothing, it grew very, very cold and at the other end of the nothing, it became hotter and hotter. When the ice from the cold end met the fire from the hot end, the energy that encounter gave off started up the universe and recognizable things began to emerge–the world tree and the forces of chaos and out of chaos, the forces of order.

As things became more ordered, earth emerged and water and mountains and trees and the sky and wind and clouds and animals and people.

Still, because nothing had any relationship to anything else, there was no history, and without history, there was no life as we recognize it.

People were like trees–we grew; we reproduced; we died. We had no way of remembering it.

But, as is the way of the universe–order emerges out of chaos before descending back into it again–and as we were ordered, we developed life as we know it, with wit and emotions, and senses and speech–that “vital spark” if you will.

*******

Woo-hoo. It was hard to strip any mention of the gods out of it, but I think I did without masking my point. Now all I have to do is whoop up some quasi-scientific language to couch it in and I can get science teachers everywhere to further my own religious agenda!

Thanks, Senator McCain!

"I’m Alive!"

Most days, when Mrs. Wigglebottom and I walk by the run down house two in from the corner, there’s a loud knock at the window and a hand waves furiously.

I wave back.

The other day, there was no knock, but after we’d gotten a house away, an old man came running out, “Hey, pretty lady, good morning.”

“Hey,” I said, “Isn’t it beautiful out? How are you doing?”

He stretched his hands out and looked up at the sky.

“I’m alive.” He said happily.

Now, for two days, all I can think about is the ghosts of the Civil War who stole my fucking can opener. I mean, what if one of them was to start hanging out in the yard of one of my neighbors, waving at Mrs. Wigglebottom and I every time we walked by?

I’d never have any reason to suspect he was a ghost.

“I’m alive,” the old man in the run down house said happily. But is he?