eports from the afterlife indicate the Reverend Jerry Falwell, who died last Tuesday after smelling one of his own farts, has indeed gone on to meet his maker, validating his lifetime of religious conviction. The reverend was, however, shocked and dismayed to discover this creator is, in fact, a large, friendly purple creature with a head ornament shaped like an inverted triangle, rather than the cloud-surfing white dude Falwell had been expecting.

Upon spying the return of his beloved son, whom God had not seen in over 73 years, the deity shouted an excited greeting of “Eh-Oh, Falwell!� before attempting to embrace the reverend, who recoiled in horror.

Eyewitness accounts indicate a stunned Falwell then began to shout Bible verse and incoherent, mouth-foaming nonsense. God immediately became frightened and confused, scurrying away while shouting “Run away! Run away!� Only after Falwell left could God be coaxed out for snack time.

Meanwhile on Earth, medical examiners attributed Falwell’s death to the reverend taking the holy vessel God had given him and crapping it all up with fatty foods and prescription medication.

One of America’s best-known religious figures, Falwell was famous for his amazingly untarnished record for being on the historically wrong side of every issue he ever addressed over the course of his long career. From segregation to civil rights, women’s rights, gay rights, and the rights of anyone who wasn’t exactly like Jerry Falwell, the reverend demonstrated an almost eerie ability to choose stances that would make him look ridiculously backward to future generations.

Falwell also set the bar unthinkably high with the sheer number of absurd public statements he made, and then later retracted, during his years as a spokesperson for America’s evangelical Christians. Decrying Archbishop Desmond Tutu as a phony, claiming that 9/11 was caused by feminists and lesbians, stating that AIDS was God’s punishment against homosexuals, questioning the sincerity of Martin Luther King, Jr., and claiming that the Teletubby Tinky Winky was gay because he had an inverted triangle on his head, carried a purse and was purple, all signs of homosexuality in the reverend’s feverish, confused nightmares.

In 1994, Falwell released a videotape called The Clinton Chronicles: An Investigation into the Alleged Criminal Activities of Bill Clinton, which inaugurated the “crockumentary� genre of filmmaking. Among other things, the film accused the president of smuggling cocaine, murdering journalists who got too close to the story, and being the devil. The film was voted 1994’s Worst Episode of Unsolved Mysteries.

Afterlife pundits suggest it may take years for Falwell to accept the truth of his origin, preferring in the meantime to blame his plight on the machinations of liberal angels or a Jewish afterlife conspiracy. Experts stress, however, that God will not hold Falwell’s convictions against him, and when the reverend is ready, he will know where to find God, sitting in the grass, playing and looking at bugs and stuff.

Lawyers for Gitmo Detainees Lobby to Stop Calling Them “Gitmo” Detainees

Fans Mourn First 30 Years of Puckett’s Life

Serial Killer’s Neighbor: “He just wouldn’t shut up about serial killing.”

R.C. Car Enthusiasts Angered by Latest Mars Mission Snub

Things have been gloomier than usual here at the commune offices, as Flatbush, New Jersey goes through another rain-drenched March. Some have always admired rain, looked into the gloomy darkness overhead and the water fluttering down from the sky and seen it as some kind of cleansing of the earth, a washing-away of the dust and grime coating the planet and the nourishing of its lush green life. I say that's horseshit. Rain is nothing but the entire population of a city, state, or country being thrown into the swimming pool a teaspoon full at a time.

God's laughing at us when it rains. That's right—I accept the Judeo-Christian concept of God, and sometimes He's a right asshole. If He's so perfect, couldn't he find a more productive way of doing whatever rain has to do? Why make plants that grow in the middle of a landlocked mass need water at all? It makes less sense than a movie starring Adam Sandler as a romantic lead. God's capable of making spiders, who reproduce with hundreds of offspring and spin elaborate webs to feed themselves, but the best he could do to get water around to all the soil is just to drop it out of the sky. I'm surprised He stopped there. Why not just have chicken wings plunge from the clouds whenever people need feeding? Hold your mouths open like turkeys staring at the sky, spit out the bones, there's no need to even take lunch. It's better than getting soaking wet through some ill-conceived water delivery system.

Imagine the scenario, good people: You've put on your best work suit, combed your hair into a stylish pompadour that's a magnet for the ladies, and you strut out the door early in the morning. Then some obstinate little shit pelts you with a condom full of mineral water. I suppose you addle-minded hippies would look up at him and blather on about the inherent beauty of getting pranked by a little preteen bastard. You'd write songs about water balloons and lovers would curl up next to the fire telling each other they sure like the smell in the air after you get socked in the face with a swishy prophylactic. To hell with that. You've been punked, nature-lover.

I'm not sure why I alone have this special insight, that rain is nothing but an amateur April Fool's joke. Perhaps standing at 3-foot-eight-inches and being particularly vulnerable to floods and watery basements makes me warier of water falling from the sky than most people. I don't accept all of the Bible as a literal interpretation, but I do believe there was a flood. I admit, I skipped around through parts of it, but I think I have the general gist—40 days and nights of rain (yeah, God, real funny), build a monstrous boat, take two of each animal. I'm not sure the wisdom of that, taking a couple of dinosaurs that are bound to eat the rest of the animals, instead of taking your hundred or so best friends. But I'm not concerned with that, I only want to keep a close eye on rain in case it gets the wise idea to do the same thing again. I haven't exactly kept up with my boat-making skill, and if I were hard-pressed to start collecting animals right now, I would only be able to find a couple of diferent breeds of dogs and a cockatiel.

However, let's make one thing clear: I will not hear a word against snow. Snow is the antithesis of rain—it's light and flickering instead of pelting and obstinate; it's pure and charming, instead of cruel and clothes-ruining. Plus, it sticks together and makes snow men. Anything that allows itself to be shaped by men into mock people cannot be bad. You just try and make a rainman, see where that will get you—a watery retarded man who counts matchsticks easily. Yeah, that was a great idea.

º Last Column: I Don't Cotton to Spandex
º more columns

Well well well, I have come to learn a few things about myself in these past few weeks, but nothing more important than this: I will never smoke PCP again. Unless it's free.

I've spent the past six weeks roaming the Earth, which later turned out to be my apartment, with my invincible quarter-sized right hand midget, Nevil. And because I spent most of my nearly two-month binge higher than Rodney King on payday, I was able to discover two important things.

One, I cannot stop a car moving at top speed with my face, as I may have wildly boasted in the past. And secondly, but most importantly, I am a master robot builder.

Now I use the word master somewhat loosely, because I've only built one. But oh what a robot she... he... s/h/it was.

The idea came to me while smoking pure PCP out of a trumpet I found in the trash, and watching that futuristic movie where Will Smith hunts down robots while wearing old school Converse sneakers. Now, I don't know if you've ever worn a pair of those, but whether you have or not, take it from me: They suck fuckin' whale dork. I say the future's looking pretty goddamned bleak when they can build robots that look and move like humans, but still can't make a pair of comfortable basketball shoes.

It was right about this time that I jumped up out of the bathtub and exclaimed "Holy shit!" That happens all the time, but this time in particular I capped off the gesture by dashing naked into the kitchen, to begin immediate construction of the Mickey Hanes 1.0.

Now the common moronic belief about robot construction is that you need a metallic skeletal frame surrounded by complex electrical wiring, a state of the art CPU brain, and some kind of gelatin-like skin to cover the whole mess. I'm here to tell you, that's a load of bullshit.

I made mine almost completely out of common household items: some toilet paper rolls, a few empty potato chip bags, and a ton of spare parts I found attached to my neighbor Tom's Mustang. You'd be amazed at all the parts that aren't being used under the hood and on the undercarriage. That's right; my baby is running on a turbocharged V-6. And just to make it super-bitchin, I sawed the head off my old NES robot and crafted it into the ever-vigilant crest of Mickey Hanes 1.0.

My original plan for building a high-tech computer brain out of an X-box and a Black & Decker toaster oven was cruelly kicked in the pills by the news that my neighbor's X-box had a porno stuck in it and some kind of heinous weasel had taken up residence in my own toaster oven. Always thinking, I ended up just sticking the antenna from my old RC car behind the robot's chrome-plated bumper shoulders. No points for style, but hey, fuck that.

When I fired up the robot for the first time, I almost dropped the RC controller, because it instantly snatched up Nevil and stuffed him in a shoebox in 2.3 seconds flat. I know this because I timed it several times afterwards.

I didn't know midgets had collapsible skeletons.

After several hours of laughing at Nevil trying to eek his way out of that shoebox before sicking the robot on him again, my face started hurting, so I decided to make some adjustments.

I tweaked a few wires here and there, played with a crankshaft or two, then yanked the ripcord to turn the robot on again.

I don't know what the hell I did that time, but when the V-6 started up, Mickey Hanes 1.0 made a sound like a roaring lion on angel dust. That was right before it made a bee-line straight through the front door, and hauled ass completely out of the range of my RC controller.

I vaguely remember screaming a semi-intelligible order at Nevil to stop that thing, but the robot mowed over that worthless, pint-sized meatsack like he wasn't even there. Nevil at least had the good sense to cling to the robot's underbelly and let it drag him through the door, and out of kicking range, before it peeled out on his face and left him in a smoking midget divot on the front lawn. I haven't seen the robot since. Nevil, unfortunately, hung around until I dug him out of the lawn.

Understandably furious at his letting-my-robot-escape insubordination, I hung Nevil upside down out of my window with piano wire for three days, by which time there was a family of birds nesting in his pants. Teach that goddamn twerp to disobey my orders.

In closing, wherever Mickey Hanes 1.0 is, I hope he's happy and doing good things, or at least running over important shit in that berserk way of his. But hey, no use crying over spilled milk, so off to my next task. I just tricked Nevil into eating two pounds of Alka-Seltzer by telling him the stuff will make him invisible. This is going to be awesome. Later.

º Last Column: Yuppies Aren't Real
º more columns