I Interview Satan:
More and more over the past few years Americans have been using the term "evil" to describe the various manifestations of Islamic extremism. Are you concerned that terrorist groups are stealing your spotlight?
They're an inconvenience, I have to admit. But hey, if they're getting all the attention it just means I've been slacking off. The competition is ultimately a good thing because it will force me to improve, to take my game to the next level.
So in a sense you support a free-market approach to evil?
Definitely, and it's a real relief. Everything with the communists was this huge beuracracy. Evil was dispersed by the state and to do my thing I needed the approval of one committee after another. Everything had to be proposed, quantified, signed in triplicate...the Stalinists were a real bitch to work with.
How would you rate the suicide bombing, in terms of it's evilness?
I'm really not into this indiscriminate killing stuff. Where's the artistry? Where's the finesse? Back in the 80's, if I wanted to send a message, I would just write up a few evil lyrics and quietly place them (backwards) on a popular rock album. I was all about the subtlety. At the very most I might physically appear on someones shoulder and whisper evil suggestions in their ear...but I would be really, really tiny, an inch tall at the most. These jihadists, on the other hand, they're such drama queens. They're like, "Boy, America sucks. Anyway..." BOOM!! I'm not getting where the anger is coming from. There are worse things in life than having America level your country and building a giant shopping mall in it's place. I live in a frickin' lake of fire...I would kill to have a nice Starbucks in the area.
America has also seen a huge rise in the popularity of your rival, God. Is this something you are worried about?
Of course. I knew things were getting bad when 9-11 went down and the Christians blame, not terrorists, not me, but God. Falwell comes out and says 9-11 is God's punishment for our moral lapses, and I'm like, "What the fuck?" Back in the day I'd get the blame for a sick goat! It couldn't storm without people thinking, "Satan did it." Getting the blame, even for the stuff I didn't do, meant people feared me. I miss that. And note to Mel Gibson: die please. His action film starring Jesus has been a PR disaster for me. I'm seemingly invisible right now, yet Jesus is selling more DVDs than Shrek 2...so yeah, I've been a little worried.
[Next Week: I kick it with Allah.]
They're an inconvenience, I have to admit. But hey, if they're getting all the attention it just means I've been slacking off. The competition is ultimately a good thing because it will force me to improve, to take my game to the next level.
So in a sense you support a free-market approach to evil?
Definitely, and it's a real relief. Everything with the communists was this huge beuracracy. Evil was dispersed by the state and to do my thing I needed the approval of one committee after another. Everything had to be proposed, quantified, signed in triplicate...the Stalinists were a real bitch to work with.
How would you rate the suicide bombing, in terms of it's evilness?
I'm really not into this indiscriminate killing stuff. Where's the artistry? Where's the finesse? Back in the 80's, if I wanted to send a message, I would just write up a few evil lyrics and quietly place them (backwards) on a popular rock album. I was all about the subtlety. At the very most I might physically appear on someones shoulder and whisper evil suggestions in their ear...but I would be really, really tiny, an inch tall at the most. These jihadists, on the other hand, they're such drama queens. They're like, "Boy, America sucks. Anyway..." BOOM!! I'm not getting where the anger is coming from. There are worse things in life than having America level your country and building a giant shopping mall in it's place. I live in a frickin' lake of fire...I would kill to have a nice Starbucks in the area.
America has also seen a huge rise in the popularity of your rival, God. Is this something you are worried about?
Of course. I knew things were getting bad when 9-11 went down and the Christians blame, not terrorists, not me, but God. Falwell comes out and says 9-11 is God's punishment for our moral lapses, and I'm like, "What the fuck?" Back in the day I'd get the blame for a sick goat! It couldn't storm without people thinking, "Satan did it." Getting the blame, even for the stuff I didn't do, meant people feared me. I miss that. And note to Mel Gibson: die please. His action film starring Jesus has been a PR disaster for me. I'm seemingly invisible right now, yet Jesus is selling more DVDs than Shrek 2...so yeah, I've been a little worried.
[Next Week: I kick it with Allah.]
posted by Samwick @ 3:53 AM
14 Comments:
At 5:26 AM,
Sheryl said…
Yeah, next thing you know people will be cursing things like : "Go to heaven, you son-of-a-#%$^!!!!"
I know that is about what I think when I see some of these religious fundamentalists. Heaven can't be that great a place if that's where so many close minded people are heading.
At 5:29 AM,
Samwick said…
I'm gonna be really pissed off if my atheism doesn't pan out.
At 6:06 AM,
EUGENE PLAWIUK said…
Matt this is scary. Satan has been fooling around with your blog... why it's dated for tommorow....see what happens when you fool around with the devil he plays around in time.
At 6:55 AM,
Samwick said…
AAAHHHH!!!
I've gotta stop interviewing these eternal beings, they're messing with my head.
At 7:19 AM,
Anonymous said…
It's your duty to interview these eternal beings. Well, someone's got to do it - they've all been misrepresented for years. I'm sorry it's been a while since I paid you a visit. My only excuse is that the winds of change are blowing hard and driving me into an entirely different environment, swapping the sounds of police sirens for the gentle mooing of cattle and bleating of sheep. Oh, and goslings. Last sight, over fifty of them across the road from our new dwelling... which we move into on Monday 25 July, a month late.
Life in boxes in a time of chaos, eh? The Tube... now there's a post-bombing experience I'm finding hard to handle. I'm going to be back blogging regularly from mid-August, I reckon, when I'll probably revisit all this 'concepts of evil' stuff myself. Don't know if I'll ever move back to London... no plans beyond the next two years but in those two years, definitely planning a trip to the US of A. Ah, the mother nation... yeah, right... the child! Why didn't Blair spank Bush and send him to bed?
Hmm. Perhaps he did.
Nice piece of writing. I do have to say, atheism requires exceptional willpower to hold to. Some might say stubborn refusal? It says 'there is no god' whereas agnosticism, on the other hand, says, simply, 'I don't know'. To be an atheist is to have a very strongly held faith but a very bleak one. Like a Polo mint (do you have those in the US?), which is referred to in ads as 'the mint with the hole in it', so too is atheism the religion with the hole in it. It has its own rituals, its own conversational ceremonies to express disbelief, even its own aesthetic in shunning trappings of perceived religiosity.
Just wanting to challenge you there, hehe. :-)
Thing is, conviction in religion or spirituality (note no mixing of the two) can be a force for stability or upheaval, depending on the views expressed and the actions taken. With that in mind, I'm now of the opinion that if we hadn't had religions, we would have found other ways to inflict control and harm upon each other. Perhaps without Pat Robertson or Billy Graham. Fab, yes, but we'd have some other righteous bastards coming up to the line to get the weak playing 'follow the leader'.
You never know, maybe one day the creed I and many others live by - 'I am my own authority, nobody else can tell me what to believe or how to interpret my experiences of the world' - might be taken up by more people.
Take heart from the fact that while evangelical Christianity and radical Islam seem to be on the rise, so too is the open expression of the one spirituality most universally misunderstood and condemned: namely, Witchcraft and perhaps Paganism in general. The rise of these leads me to be hopeful, as while one side preaches intolerance and hate, the other suggests peaceful co-existence and working together to common goals. I believe pagan systems of belief make so much more sense; they certainly encourage rather than impinge upon your rights to believe what you will.
It matters not what, say, you believe, not to my mind anyway. What matters is that people are respectful, tolerant and capable of breaking bread and drinking a bucket of mead together....
Ever had mead? Strong stuff. x
At 7:30 AM,
Samwick said…
Actually I agree, atheism requires a huge leap of faith. But I would disagree that it's bleak...mostly because beer exists. I'm really not all that into atheism, I just think agnosticism is too safe, too neutral. It's the Sweden of beliefs. With atheism, on the other hand, I antagonize people with even needing to say anything. It's great! It's a one word label that annoys people...what's not to like about that?
"conviction in religion can be a force for stability"
No doubt about it. The only thing I loathe is the group mentality that can sometimes characterize religion (as well as atheism. There are just more religious folk walking around the earth...if atheism was the norm we'd be just as bad.)
To get back to the bleak thing though, I should be honest and say that I do have a rather bleak outlook on life. I think meaning is something the individual generates and, since I'm a mediocre piece of shit, I have very little meaning to offer the world. I've created my own little religion of mediocrity...it's not something I endorse, I just seem to live it and that's really the only thing that matters. Maybe I'll do an uplifting post on this.
Anyway, it's nice to have you back Andy, you've been missed!
At 1:58 PM,
Snave said…
You can count me as one of those safe Swedes. I like the bumper sticker that says "Militant Agnostic: I don't know and you don't either!"
Sheryl is right about "heaven"... if the people who so fervently believe in its existence are the ones going there in droves, it just might not really be a whole lot of fun.
At 4:47 PM,
Christopher said…
Nice piece you composed, Matt.
While a belief in atheism and no afterlife can be depressing, is it any more depressing than a belief in re-incarnation?
I mean, who in their right mind would want to re-live a life on earth?
At 5:41 PM,
Sheryl said…
I'm gonna be really pissed off if my atheism doesn't pan out.
Pan out. Hey, Pan is a god too. ;-)
Don't worry, Matt. I am personally convinced that God is an atheist as well. He might be a militant agnostic, but I think he is more absolute than that.
At 5:51 PM,
Sheryl said…
PS Is it just me or does something about an "after life" sound a little like an after thought?
At 5:51 PM,
Damien said…
A militant agnostic, god I've wandered into a verbal and creative gun fight armed with only a luke warm cup of office tea.
At 6:30 PM,
Snave said…
Damien... what if God is actually nothing more than just a lukewarm cup of office tea? Just kidding you, of course.
Sheryl is right on about Pan. Take a look at a depiction of Pan, and then think of the classic depiction of the devil... hooves, horns... That isn't a coincidence. In an effort to drive nature from Christianity during the past thousand years, the Devil has been drawn to look like Pan. At least according to author Helen Ellerbe in "The Dark Side Of Christian History". The book is a good read. You can find out more about it at
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0964487349/qid=1121902208/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/102-9578789-9972129?v=glance&s=books&n=507846
At 12:21 AM,
Samwick said…
"You can count me as one of those safe Swedes"
Your'e swedishness is preferable to atheism. I'm probably more accurately an agnostic, I just don't seem to have the personality for it. "I like the bumper sticker that says 'Militant Agnostic: I don't know and you don't either!'" This is perfect, I should make it my blog's new motto.
Thanks Christopher. "While a belief in atheism and no afterlife can be depressing..." I don't know, atheism has it's perks. Sure I'm going to die and rot, BUT...I get to skip church on Sundays. Woo-hoo! I think it all evens out.
Damien: "I've wandered into a verbal and creative gun fight armed with only a luke warm cup of office tea." If it's a glass tea cup try throwing it really hard, that could definately hurt. If it's a paper cup...go Swedish Damien. Go Swedish.
At 4:16 AM,
Sheryl said…
Hey Snave,
Aren't most of the christian rituals pagan? I know Easter is is a corruption on the germanic Ostara tradition for fertility, and I think Christmas was modeled on Saturnaliae.
I'm actually glad they ripped those things off. What a bore Christmas and Easter would be without all those rich pagan traditions.
I was brought up in an agnostic household, but I still got a kick out of Santa Clause and easter hunts. :-)
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