Because I don’t piss off enough people in my day-to-day activities, I bring to you: The Story Of Easter!
DISCLAIMER: if you cannot handle inaccuracy and speculation in the name of humour and attempting to prove a point, stop reading this right now. Otherwise, read on and have a good laugh or two before I make you think at the end.
The Story Of Easter
This story takes place in Biblical Times (you know. . .when all the Bible stuff happened, specifically in the first four books of the New Testament).
Jesus, discounting all religious affiliations so as not to offend anyone, was a kind and caring man with miraculous abilities. (By the way, Jesus was black. Get over it.) He used his abilities, his gift of parable invention, and his strong faith in his deity to heal the sick, bring back the occasional dead person, and turn a Long John Silver’s snack pack into something that would feed the masses. Jesus, no matter what your particular religion is, was a good man.
However, the Romans felt their ways were threatened by the acts of Jesus and his apostles (in much the same way that allowing homosexual marriage threatens heterosexual marriage – some things never change). Before judging the Romans too harshly, let us remember that this is merely the way they were brought up: their upbringing conditioned them to see new ideas as a threat rather than accepting or at least tolerating them. So, you see, they weren’t really responsible for what they did, no more than, say, your average drug-dealing pistol-carrying gang member.
The Romans, acting as only their mental conditioning would allow them to, bribed the apostle Judas Iscariot. Normally, Judas would not betray Jesus, but his status as an apostle had cost him much in terms of finances, and so, to support his family and friends, he sang like a castrati on crack to the Romans.
Jesus was caught, tried, and convicted in an unfair court of law (no Amnesty International or ACLU back then, folks). His sentence was crucifixtion, and he was forced to walk to the spot with the crossbar on his back (the uprights were left standing between uses; the Romans were a bit lazy). It was a long, arduous trip, and he stopped on his journey only to sign a copy of the Old Testament for Roman Senator Strom Thurmond (something else that never changed).
On that cross, Jesus died (as crucified people tend to do). By the way, if I was Jesus, and I came back to Earth and all my so-called “faithful” were wearing a small symbolic representation of the weapon used to kill me around their necks, I’d be pissed. That’d be automatic damnation, in my book. You all had better hope I’m not Jesus returned, or you’re all screwed, Christians. Anyway, Jesus died and was buried in an earthen tomb, with a big rock placed across the entrance. A big rock. That’s it. The Roman idea of security was to put a big rock in the way. Thank God only the soldiers were strong enough to move it, so no one would go steal or loot the corpses or anything. That’s what I want when I die: to be placed in a cave with a big rock in the entrance. That oughtta keep the animals and insects out. But that’s a tangent. Back to the story.
Jesus was buried there after his death. The occasion is called Good Friday, and honest to goodness, I have no idea why the occasion of the death/interment of our savior is called Good Friday. When the stock market fell, it wasn’t called “Pretty Nice Monday (or whatever day it was; it’s five o’clock in the bloody morning as I’m writing this).” Maybe it should be called “Tragic Friday” or “Bloody Friday” or “Roman Oh-shit-what-did-we-just-do Friday.”
Three days later, on that Sunday morning. . .hang on. If anyone out there can add three days to Friday and come up with Sunday, you are either using “new math” (which i like to call by my pet name, “wrong”) or you know more about the Biblical calendar than I do. Yeah, I went to a Baptist university, but if you think a private Baptist university is going to give you an even slightly unslanted view of the Bible or of the times contained within, you’re using new math again. Plus, I was trying to figure out if it’s possible to be non-white and still sleep with uptight Christian women. (Hint: yes.)
Three days later, on Sunday morning. . .the Big Rock of Prudential Insurance rolled away from the tomb, to the astonishment of many onlookers, including a CBS camera crew that was doing on-location filming for “Messiah Screwed Over: The Story Of Jesus Christ” (an eight-hour television event. . .check local listings for time and date).
And when the rock rolled away, there stood. . .The Easter Bunny, bright and furry and wondering who’d put that big bloody rock in the door of his den. After getting medieval on the soldiers who put the rock there (despite the fact that medieval times hadn’t happened yet), the Easter Bunny then gave candy to all the children (which their parents took and ate, thus helping all the local dentists pay for their new Lexus chariots) and hid eggs for them to find and eat or open the inedible eggs for toys and more candy.
Not all of them could tell the difference between the edible and inedible eggs, and that’s why we have an appendix: it’s the evolved remains of little cheap plastic eggs that all those kids ate on that first Easter.
And so, the Easter Bunny brought cheer, joy, laughter, and smiles to children of all ages: even the Christians who fought the lions (no, not the Detroit Lions, though they really would have stood a better chance against them as long as they didn’t actually have to go into the city of Detroit. . .then they would be better off with the real lions) smiled as they went to their deaths (final score: Lions – untold thousands, Christians – 2).
And everyone forgot about Jesus.
April 22, 2000
Vagabond Saint 