MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents"
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MAIN EVENT. A Good Place to Get Started --- a.k.a "Table of Contents" |
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My original assignment here was to do Celebrity Interviews. In that capacity I met heads-of-state, diplomats, statesmen, movie stars, ghosts and ---in an unusual and exclusive Halloween segment, the Prince of Darkness himself. In honor of our fifth year of hell-raising, and at great personal expense, I have managed to acquire another Get with His Majesty, Lucifer, the Prince of Darkness, Monarch of the Nether Regions, Lord of the Flies. You Read It Here First!
G-21: Your Majesty, thank you for agreeing to be with us once again.
SATAN: The pleasure is all mine. You paid the price.
G-21: Ahem! Well, yes. But I'm sure our Loyal Readers are much more interested in you, Your Majesty, than details about me. Since our last interview, questions have come in which I hope you can address for us today. For instance, what exactly are the precincts of Hell these days?
SATAN: As you've undoubtedly read, Maxine---You do read, don't you?
G-21: Certainly!
SATAN: Very good. Then you know that we try to make the accommodations appropriate to the lifestyles of our guests. Thus, upon arrival, we ask our guests to join the fraternity or sorority of individuals most compatible with their proclivities. Liars, lawyers, pillagers all together. Adulterers with their sort, right before the guillotine. Thieves and pick-pockets. Rapists and child molesters near the bottomless compost heap. The French at the second circle. So forth.
G-21: You have a special category for the French?
SATAN: Don't you?
G-21: As I've said, Your Lordship---
SATAN: Yes, yes! Your readers find you uninteresting. But all that will change now that we've---
G-21: Your Majesty! perhaps we can talk a little more about your domain. For example, is it true that you've recently and successfully instituted a Reservations Service.
SATAN: Quite right! You---Well, Slobodan Milosovic, George Bush, Saddam Hussein, Maggie Thatcher, and the pop-star Michael Jackson all availed themselves of the new Service years ago. It's been quite bustling, actually. Belial and Moloch are pleased with the results of that brain-fire, I can tell you!
G-21: Then it wasn't actually your idea to revive the Reservation Service, Your Lordship?
SATAN: Let's not quibble. I didn't do the preliminary market research as to the renewed demand for our Reservations Option certainly, but all ideas spring from one source, don't they?
G-21: So what can we expect from Hell, Incorporated in the coming year?
SATAN: I'm so glad you asked that, Maxine! We are absolutely dotty with excitement about some of our recent triumphs! Business in the United Kingdom and the Commonwealth in general has been particularly good. Moloch was able to prevail upon President Mandela to continue the lucrative South African arms sales franchise; Prime Minister Major's Cabinet Secretaries have been most accommodating in the sexual scandal area; and Australia! Well, they have always had a special place in my heart being „Down Under¾.
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G-21: Your Lordship! Everything you've mentioned so far is catastrophic, horrible or sick! A litany of human folly, genocide, and self-destruction.
SATAN: So what's your point?
G-21: My point is, none of the people dealing with you seems to have made out very well.
SATAN: Well certainly that's a matter of opinion, isn't it? Its a deal, after all. Each party goes into the transaction attempting to get the best he can out of the negotiating process. But by definition, any deal has risk. Any deal is a gamble. You said that you read. Certainly you must have come across something on the subject? Let's see: America. Ah yes! Nineteenth Century: The Devil and Daniel Websterwould have been a good elucidation of my point.
G-21: I must have missed that one.
SATAN: The situation is simple, actually. With The Other One, you don't get to try cutting a deal at all. With Him it's all Thou Shalt and take it or leave it. But I'm a sport! I give you a chance to improve your situation overnight.
But, because it's a gamble, I'm like Las Vegas, too. I'm the house, and every gamble is always tilted in favor of the house, you see.
G-21: Could you elaborate on that, Your Majesty... Er--for the benefit of our Readers!
SATAN: My pleasure. Let's take a hypothetical example. Let's say that I told you you could have anything you wanted in exchange for your mortal soul.
G-21: AHEM!
SATAN: We're just saying this hypothetically. But in such a situation, you are at a disadvantage playing against the house. Why is that? Well, to begin with, you have no idea what the value of your soul could be. You can not even know with any certainty if you have a soul. So any value it has for you is mysterious at best. You have absolutely no problem bartering with it, since it carries little value for you in your present circumstances.
Meanwhile, I have been dealing in souls for millennia. So let's say, again for purposes of illustration, that while you may believe that your soul will only be with you the remaining say forty years of your natural life, I know that it's true value is actually on the magnitude---let's be conservative here and say--how about twenty human lifetimes? It was the key to you're coming back and living again and again all those times until you got it right?
Knowing this, and knowing that you don't know this, I could reasonably give you a solid gold replica of Mt. Everest and still come up nicely ahead! After all, you would only have access to that gold for the remainder of a single lifetime, while I would have a soul worth, conservatively speaking, 1600 human years! The house wins!(Emits a little chuckle.)
G-21: But our souls aren't worth--worth twenty lifetimes, are they?
SATAN: Come, come, Maxine. You know that I can't answer a question like that. It wouldn't be sporting, would it now?
G-21: It sounds like a person would, pardon the expression, Your Majesty, be a fool to try cutting a deal with you.
SATAN: How's that new phrase go? "Foolish is as foolish does, Ma'am."(Chuckles.)
Bosnia-Herzegovina is going brilliantly; Chechnya is marvelous; the Chinese have begun that wonderful slaughter of the Tibetans again, or will momentarily; Timor is being made appropriately hellish, thank you, Malaysia. And I would be extremely remiss in not mentioning Belial's work in sub-Saharan Africa, wouldn't I? Good show!
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Event #189: Toward All Saints Day
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