Dammit. I was wrong. I only won another £750 (yes I reinstalled the software because I thought it was my duty to fail, to teach you that gambling is wrong). What sort of lesson is this giving out? Someone up there is fucking with me, by turning me into the jammiest bastard who ever lived.
I think it may be the CNPS Gods. These are genuine deities, who lived up on Mount Olympus with all the other fellas, but didnÂ’t really get all that much to do in the days of yore, largely cos number plates had not yet been invented. So theyÂ’re making up for it now and are dicking with my mind in all kinds of weird ways (some number plate based, others outside their official godly bailiwick). I wonder if I can use them as a defence when I am finally caught for my spree of ripping based crimes
DonÂ’t worry, IÂ’ve only been ripping up objects, not any living creatures. ThereÂ’s no need to go mad. Those blokes who rip up people are giving us other rippers a bad name. I see myself as a suave, David Niven style cat-ripper (not that I rip cats, though no-one would blame me if I did. They're asking for it, those cat whores! No, I am just saying that I am stealthy.) only ripping things that belong to really rich people who deserve to have their more flimsy possessions torn up.)
No, no court in the land would accept that the Greek Gods in charge of consecutive number plate spotting had ordered me to rip stuff up on their behalf.
But is my religion any more stupid than any of the others? Just because I happen to believe that the world was created by some supreme beings, solely because they knew that one day men would invent the car, would make so many of them that each needed to be identified by a series of letters and (more importantly) numbers, then a very few humans would become obsessed with the idea of spotting all the numbers from 1-999 consecutively in numerical order (the chosen people), and then the Gods could screw around with their heads by sometimes engineering situations where the number required didnÂ’t come up for a while. That is the meaning of life. ThatÂ’s why weÂ’re all here.
Clearly that is a bit more stupid than most of the other religions, although similarly self-centred – “God created the world for ME! So, bum to anyone or anything that isn’t me or people who think what I think.”
I prefer the gods of more ancient civilisations, because they seem to make more sense of our chaotic life. The problem with an all powerful single benevolent deity (even if he has an opposing sort of equal, but obviously in the end less powerful, malevolent enemy) is that it doesnÂ’t explain why life is so random, or why bad things happen to good people, or why evil can even exist if everything has been created by someone is completely good).
Yet with the Greek gods you have a reason for all this. There are lots of gods with lots of different personalities – some are good and wise, others are stupid and selfish, many are just mischievous tossers (definitely the CNPS gods who are bugging me at the moment) and some have shoes with wings on which means they can fly. They all pretty much like having a good time and making the most of life. They are essentially human beings (though some of them have shoes with wings on which mean they can fly) or possibly like in some rubbish old episode of Star Trek, they are more like children (but aren’t most adults really?).
Another way to explain the randomness of life, is that life is just random. The reason it seems to be lacking control is because no-one is controlling it. The reason that bad things happen to good people is because no-one is keeping a tally of “good” versus “bad” deeds and because bad things happen to people (so good and bad will both be affected).
Of course, the reason this fails to catch the imagination of most people is because itÂ’s a bit scary and no where near as much fun as those shoes with wings on them.
So come on CNPS gods, stop playing with my head and turn me back into the unlucky loser that you designed me to be.
