A Ship Without a Rudder

If only I had been able to retrieve the Ark of the Covenant before that awful flood.

Look, I know what the Pharisees have told you. I'm sure you've heard them in the town center or at the well. They'll stand there and wave their arms around and look like snake charmers without the turbans. They'll tell you all about the Laws and the Prophets and the Ark of the Covenant.

If you are the common illiterate Aramaic, you'll ask commonsense questions, like, "How do we know you're telling the truth about what the Laws say?" and "Where is this Ark of the Covenant?" And the Pharisees will condemn you to live as a village idiot or make you shovel sand for some silly king, or some such nonsense. More importantly, they'll bitch at you about Moses.

"Moses went to the mountain and brought down the Ten Commandments! But the Jews were so devious that Moses threw the great tablets on the ground and they cracked! Now, the sight of these tablets are so powerful, normal peons like yourself would go blind and insane if you saw them! We've protected them! We've gathered them and placed them in a sacred place! The Ark is holy! Just believe what we tell you and put some coins in the box at Temple."

Lemmee tell you. Moses did NOT find those damn rocks; I did. I built the boat, I put the animals on it, I put up with my wife and in-laws for forty days and nights, and I saved humanity. Those damn rock tablets came tied on the back of an Asian elephant (the one with the small ears). The elephant had trekked all the way from China or someplace with her mate. By the time they got to the boat, the elephant was cranky and tired. We got some chimps to untie the tablets, but you know monkeys. They're just plain clumsy. By the time the elephant got on the damn boat, the tablets had slipped and fallen on the deck. They cracked, all right? Plus, they plummeted right through the deck into the cabin...right in with the penguins. I promise you, those were some unhappy flightless birds. Yahweh really gave them a shit deal. Can't fly, only hang out in the cold, very unimaginative dress. Yeah, you can imagine. Well, those two penguins are down there in the cabin and BAM! here come two big tablets.

Then, Shem, the black dude, gets all frantic. "Dad! Those rocks are gonna send the weight limit over! Look, we're working with some pretty intense measurements. The Big Guy said," Shem drew out the blueprints, " 'Make thee an ark of gopher wood; rooms shalt thou make in the ark, and shalt pitch it within and without with pitch. And this is the fashion which thou shalt make it of: The length of the ark shall be three hundred cubits, the breadth of it fifty cubits, and the height of it thirty cubits. A window shalt thou make to the ark, and in a cubit shalt thou finish it above; and the door of the ark shalt thou set in the side thereof; with lower, second, and third stories shalt thou make it.' Those stone tablets are gonna throw the dimensions off by 3.1456648789521256789432466614588751's of a cubit. We gotta lose 'em!"

(By the way, whoever started that crap rumor about black dudes only being good at basketball was SO off the mark...Shem whoops my ass on the court AND at calculus...)

So, the tablets got put in another box made of gopher wood and thrown overboard. They sunk. So began the concept of concrete shoes.

anyway, you know the story. We float around in the stinking mess of two million plus species and mates, miserable and/or drunk, until the damn dove got the olive branch and brought it back. We ended up in Hawaii, which was fine until the volcanoes started going off. Pretty soon, the Earth looked less like a dirty toilet bowl and more the way it SHOULD...with trees and fluffy little clouds and happy animals and all that Hallmark shit...

Don't you know those damn tablets washed up in Mesopotamia? MESOPOTAMIA! The country sounds like a damn dinosaur! Then, they got to Mount Sinai by way of confused camel, and here comes Moses, walkin' around with them like HE discovered them first. Buncha crap--don't believe a word of it!

Now, I know you're asking, "Why should we believe Noah over Moses?" Well, I'll tell you why. First of all, I actually MADE it to my destination...Moses never even GOT to the Promiseland. And that whole trick with the staff that turns into a snake? Pshaw. Try fitting four million animals, one wife, three lousy kids, their wives, grandkids and a smelly dog in one ark. THAT'S the miracle, folks.

Plus, Moses died at like, what, 950? Well, I'm well over 1200 years old. That just goes to show you...they don't make 'em like they used to. Man, I'm telling you, if I had been able to keep those damn tablets on that rotten waste of gopher wood, I'd be in good shape with a decent retirement. As it is, I just have to sit around these village squares, listening to Pharisees and watching idiots confuse Asian elephants with African elephants.

Sometimes, I almost wish that boat had sunk.

Oy, I gotta go. The wife is calling for some assistance with a balm. If I knew old age was this miserable, I would have signed off centuries ago.