See you in hell, Mike! I scored slightly lower than you on the "Are You Going to Heaven" quiz. Who knew that the Bible provided specific information about how to score such a quiz? You can learn so much from the Internet.

Of course, if Jim and Colin score low, too, we'll have good geekly company. Just somebody remember to bring the 12-sided die.

Okay, so, you know, I've had the occasional impure thought, I admit it. Me and Jimmy Carter, we're not perfect. Anyway, apparently, the Holy Spirit doesn't even want to see my application. Here's what happened to me....

I got four questions in. They went like this:

Are you human. Yes.
Can you reason. Yes.
Where did you (humans) come from? Evolved.
What will happen when you die? Reincarnated.

Now, at this point, I'm just being a good Buddhist. Evolution and reincarnation, if we're talking big picture, aren't mutually exclusive. In fact, there are some interesing theories about the different kinds of things you might come back as, not all of which even have bodies. So, you know, I'm just answering questions.

So, the Big Programmer (I'm seeing a skinny guy with acne in a powder blue suit and a bad thin mustache) pops me in the sternum and says, and I quote:

"We're sorry but based on your answers, it appears that you may not be taking our little game serious. (sic) Because the game asks some rather important questions, about life, and death, and God, it is better that you not face them if you are only playing around. Please play again soon! May God bless you and keep you!"

(more)

Now, apart from the fact that that very message calls it a game twice and conjures me to "play again soon!" still I am not supposed to be "playing around" and I am supposed to take it "serious."

Holy smokes! If ever I had a gripe with organized religion, this is it in a nutshell. You can't "play" our "game" because what you believe isn't "serious." They won't even let me rate "roasting in hell" or whatever the bottom grade is... in some goofy flash game. In every other web survey, I'm persona grata: I've been a dead president, an OS, a kung fu card game preacher, and a muppet with a neurosis. But I can't even get kicked out of heaven.

I should point out that approaching this as a Buddhist and answering those four questions honestly gets you the same answer as saying you are not human and cannot reason (a+b=Ohio).

Ah, well, I have better things to do with my Sundays and my afterlife anyway. See you all on the next go-around!

Another confession while I'm at it (what am I, going Catholic all of a sudden?). This from Mike's other sidebar blog link about the fine products from Acme, Inc.

True story. When I was interviewing for my new job, I spent a little time wandering around the area (27th and Park Ave. So.) trying to get a feel for the neighborhood some of my friends call Tope (because that's the color of that unnamed block on the New York City cab map). [Quick side adventure: try looking up 'tope' on Dictionary.com and then Google; is it only a car color?]

Anyway, I'm walking around the neighborhood, looking for, you know, the local deli, the local Indian restaurant, the local Duane. Whatever. Just trying it on for size. You know what I'm saying.

And you know what that part of town is like: modest-sized office buildings, 5 to 10 to 20 stories, not skyscrapers, but, you know, buildings.

So, here I am wandering along, and I look across the street. There, in a big painted sign on the first floor of one of these office buildings, this one with a brick facade, maybe 12 stories, it says right across the front in big letters:

(you guessed it)

ACME SAFE CO.

And this is the really sad part, now. As a true blue pp-p-p-pp-p-post-Warner Brothers kid, what do I do?

I look up to check and see if there's a safe hanging off the side of the building. You know, with a big rope, dangling from a beam.

By the time my head was pointed upward and there wasn't one there, I realized what I was doing. But I played it cool, you know. "Just lookin' around, that's all!" (whistle indistinctly) Fortunately, of course no one could see what I was thinking.

(Unless of course there was a thought bubble over my head. Hmm.....)

The Heaven quiz wouldn't let me play, either, because I said (truthfully) that I didn't believe in God. They said they were going to pray for me. Now, having grown up in the South amidst many devout Baptists and Fundamentalists, I am quite surprised. Whenever I told one of them I didn't believe in God (or even just not in Jesus), they told me straight away I was going to hell. Won't anyone condemn me to an enternity of damnation?