FIREZINE #5: Best of Planet Proctor

MEMO TO GOD: The most unfair thing about life is the way it ends. I mean, life is tough; it takes up a lot of your time, and what do you get at the end of it? Death! What's that, a bonus? I think the life cycle is all backwards. You should die first, and get it out of the way. Then you live in an old age home. You get kicked out when you're too young, you get a gold watch, you go to work. You work forty years until you're young enough to enjoy your retirement. You do drugs, alcohol, you party, you get ready for high school. You go to grade school, you become a kid, you play, you have no responsibilities, you become a little baby. You go back into the womb, spend your last nine months floating. and finish off -- as an orgasm.

LORD HELP ME: To relax about insignificant details (beginning tomorrow at 7:41:23 AM DST); to take responsibility for my own actions, even though they're usually NOT my fault. Help me to not try to RUN everything. But, if You need some help, please feel free to ASK me! Help me to take things more seriously, especially laughter, parties, and dancing. Give me patience, and I mean right NOW! Lord help me not be a perfectionist. (Did I spell that correctly?); and help me to finish everything I sta -- Help me to do only what I can, and trust you for the rest. (And would you mind putting that in writing?) Keep me open to others' ideas, WRONG though they may be; and help me be less independent, but let me do it my way. Lord, help me to keep my mind on one th -- Look, a bird -- ing at a time. Lord, help me slow down andnotrushthroughwhatIdo.

GOD IS LITE: A leading Orthodox rabbi in Bnei Brak, Israel has ruled that the word "God" may be erased from a computer screen or disk, because the pixels do not constitute real letters. Rabbi Moshe Shaul Klein published his ruling this week in a computer magazine aimed at Orthodox Jews,"Mahsheva Tova", a pun that means both "Good Computer" and "Worthy Thinking" and itself reflects the growing incursion of modern implements into the world of the ultra-Orthodox. According to Jewish law, printed matter with the word "elohim" in Hebrew and its manifestations in any other language must be stored, or ritually buried.

MY GOD: I read for the "voice of God" in a restaurant commercial the other day. Clever copy with lines like, "after a tough day of flooding the earth, an Absolute Being wants something fresh and natural to eat." But the ad agency's instructions for the character included the following: "fun, but not goofy." I'll never get that job. My God is a goofy god, what can I tell ya?