A Hell Of A Weekend.
Well, I made it back from Hell! Thank Heavens for the granola bars is all I’m saying – thanks be to both God and Randall for them. Shout out to Bock too for the Holy water! I showered with it every morning and evening and was completely immune to the corrupting sulphurous stench of Hell for a full 12 hours at a time – even in The Old Quarter where the worst of the Popes and Vlad the Impaler live. It’s stinkier than a lie in that place.
Hell’s not nearly as bad as it’s reputed to be. It has lovely sunsets. It’s not in Montana either, Apprentice. Hell’s a lot like Middlesborough but the Council have really tried to clean the place up: they’ve put out hanging flower-baskets and dog-poo receptacles – actually hanging the flowers over the dog-poo receptacles which is, you know, thoughtful. The charm is only compromised slightly by their having to use flowering cacti, but I mean what can you do? In that heat, you’re never going to get a forget-me-not to stand up straight and look nice. Forget-me-not’s are the petted slackers of the flower underworld.
In Blair’s Bush’s The New Hell there are creches for the Damned Working-Mummy and Baby set, and great fiery golf-courses for Dad. There are Youth Opportunity Schemes for the Teenage Damned, often run under the auspices of the Department Of Minor Mischief. Once there, a young sinner might perform entry level devilry on Earth; things like sales-calls during dinner; midnight paintingof blue wheelchairs in all but the farthest parking spot in the lot; spreading embarassing herpes infections amongst small rural Lutheran congregations.
They have the enthusiasm of youth, of course, but they’re also very enterprising in their own right. It was a young lad from Ealing who came up with these wee white spots you get on your fingernails that make you go out and pay money for calcium pills that don’t work. A small thing perhaps, but an effective way of strengthening the fear-therefore-consumerism link in the human mind. There was a lot of fiddly code involved and he won a prize for it.
These young “imptepeneurs”, as they’re known, really do a smashing job – especially when you consider that it’s not the big but more the little things that cause people to break up their 40 year marriages or shoot mimes in the park. All this despite being yoked to their cubicles in harnesses of spikey red-hot iron, and mercilessly poked by imps for the rest of eternity. These imps are real gits – they think they’re really funny (oh, puh-leeease!) and are always interrupting the Teenage Damned to tell them a joke they’ve just made up. If the teen doesn’t laugh heartily enough they have to work right through their lunch-hours and suffer not only trident pokings but quadradent ones too.
Said a spotty Damned Teen I spoke to, “Yeah like, if it wasn’t for this scheme, like, who knows what trouble I’d be getting into? This way I have a chance of like getting into college and stuff? At the end of my first eternity? What? Oh yeah there’s an eternity’s worth of eternities in the Aterlife – it’s to do with String Theory – asbestos-coated String-Theory down here, of course, haha. I want to train to be the Earthly Division Chief for the Generating of Red Tape? That’s my first choice but it’s very competitive? We have a lot of civil servants down here and, of course, they’ve got the experience like, the knack for evil.”
But it’s not all balmy evenings and cricket on the cloven-clovered Common down there. For a start, all there is to eat is marzipan, the Ambrosia of the Doomed. It is hell after all, and they can’t be seen to be making things too cushy. The bigwigs up in heaven are usually too blissed-out to notice much of what’s going on Below but you never know when they’ll sober up and pop into the office to check things are still going suitably hellishly down in Hell. You don’t want to make the Big Chief angry up there; ironically, he’s the very devil when riled, and not above a bit of random senseless smiting, citing the legality of “collateral damage” as his precedent.
So, there are rules to follow in Hell. For example, you’re required to do a certain amount of daily wailing and agonised writhing. You have to bench-press the more unattractive Members of Parliament; you can be put in isolation cells, tied up on a soulless Ikea chair with chai tea dripping on your head and Dr. Phil motivational tapes on a loop; you must wear only polyester despite the infernal heat; and suffer from really low self-esteem forever. And the beer’s warm in the American quarter which really pisses them off. Oddly, the bookshops don’t have any banned books as you might expect; There’s no Orhan Pamuk, no Rushdie, not even a Harry Potter – Heaven takes all of them. In Hell the only reading material is battered old copies of the Proceedings of The General Synod of the Free Church of Scotland.
So, all in all, I wouldn’t want to live there but we might go again next year if we can get a package. It was a fascinating look inside another Other World. And I came back with a fantastic tan.
March 7th, 2007 at 3:21 am
“spreading embarassing herpes infections amongst small rural Lutheran congregations.”
Could I do this one without moving to hell? Its the only part that appeals to me, on acocunt of there’s sex involved and I’m a man. Not too keen on the open sores, but I’ll muddle through somehow.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:31 am
Sadly, SafeT, there’s no sex involved. That’s the very devilry of it. See the Lutherans aren’t really having wild untamed sex with other congregants – not all of them. The Youth Opportunity Damned do it all with pew cushions and the actual application of stick-on boils when the blameless, blemishless people are sleeping. How’s my spelling? Can you tell I’m drubnk in charge of a laptop? Yhought not. I can handle my appletinis, me.
March 7th, 2007 at 8:13 am
There must be a lot of interesting people in Hell. All those bad humans with stories to tell. Not to mention Satan himself. Does the South Park Satan do anything for you, Sam, even though he’s in love with Saddam?
Whether you end up in Hell or Heaven, you should make sure that you’ll have friends in both places.
March 7th, 2007 at 1:46 pm
Did you happen to see the guy who came up with the idea of “The Happy Meal?” Putting small plastic toys with hamburgers to get someone else’s kids to scream for MacDonalds instead of a nice sit-down restaurant: That’s somebody I want to kick in the balls.
Cheers.
March 7th, 2007 at 6:23 pm
Just curious was Elvis there – is Rock n Roll REALLY the devils music. You wouldn’t think so with all the musicians who thank God at the Grammys. For once I’d like to see someone thank the Devil. Sheeeeesh!
March 7th, 2007 at 11:07 pm
So…like…what’s the deal with the constant insertion of the word “like”? I mean, it’s kind of like acne…they TELL you that it’s going to go away eventually, but it never really does. I catch myself saying it all the time. And every time, I’m like, what the fuck, you know?
March 8th, 2007 at 12:15 am
Nanas, the South Park Satan looks a wee bit like the genie in Aladdin except he’s red and has that skull cod-piece. Frankly, I’m not impressed. He’s supposed to be the incarnation of purest evil but he doesn’t look a bit like Karl Rove.
Randall, there’s a whole ghetto in hell set aside for the marketers. I expect your man was in there somewhere. Their own private eternal torment is to get toys out of their moulded plastic packaging without the use of any sharp objects. This isn’t for their own safety – they’re dead after all and the plastic itself, once torn, is more than capable of opening a vein as millions of parents on Christmas morning know. No, it’s to make them more bitter down through the centuries so they are driven to improve their insidious techniques. When one gets a particularly odious marketing plan they are sent to sit on the shoulders of live marketers on Earth and whisper their grimy little ideas into their ears. They have some competition on the other shoulder but it’s not usually too serious – everyone in heaven is baked on account of the bliss and they keep falling asleep at crucial moments. It happened to both Bush and Blairs epaulette angels. It’s getting to be a real problem up in Heaven. Some days you can smell the weed all the way over in Purgatory.
John Mc, Buddy Holly’s in Heaven as everyone knows so after that it looked pretty hypocritical to damn everyone who ever picked up a plectrum. God was all like “But I work in mysterious ways – we’ll just say it’s one of them.” But Gabriel’s a stickler for the rule-book and wasn’t having any of it. It’s him that’s really running the show up there. The only musicians God really can’t abide are those rap stars who thank God at award shows for inspiring them to pen lyrics about just exactly what they’re going to do to their hos and bitches after they’ve blown the face off a cop.
Kara, I was going to do a regional British yoof but figured you Americans wouldn’t necessarily get it so I peppered the young man’s speech with likes, universally recognized as standard yoof-speak if you pose each statement you make as a question. But you’re like so right and stuff and like who rilly, rilly gives a shit?
March 8th, 2007 at 6:26 am
I bet they’ve only got tequila there, though. That’s the drink of the devil. Tan or no tan, I’m not holidaying somewhere that won’t give me decent drinks.
March 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Where were the screaming babies, and the endless re-runs of the Waltons? Are you sure you went to Hell, or just a theme park run by red necks?
March 8th, 2007 at 7:06 pm
Carolyn, there’s hardly any alcohol in Hell – God says what’s the point in a diabolically horrific after-life if you can just numb the pain away? I don’t always agree with God, but He has a point of logic there. There are bars everywhere just to tease the Damned but they only serve warm milk-on-the-turn.
McCrumble! Hello old pal! The cutting edge of Hell research is looking into personal hells, specifically customised to torment the sinner in the worst possible personal way – like the room 101 idea. Happily they chose Hitler as one of the test-subjects. They put him in a room filled with capering gypsy music, and Manhatten Jews criticising his art. They allowed him the full range of human emotions which was new to him too. Remorse was a good one, it had him gnawing his fingers off down the the knuckles. He is seated on the points of 4 tridents with a holograph of Betty Friedan murmering feminist theory in one ear, while Susan Sontag eternally outlines his intellectual pygmyism in the other, explaining point by innumerable point why Mein Kampf is such a piece of poorly-written, self-indulgent tat that it would embarrass Hitler’s own Jewish ancestors. Eva Braun is there too, telling him how rubbish he was in bed and he is force-fed hearty German pig sausage every hour on the hour, but never given water. Black people wander by occasionally to stick his eyes with red-hot pins and laugh at his silly moustache. And mentally disabled people are told to play around his trousers with power tools in a nice twist on the experiments the Nazis conducted on Germany’s own mentally disabled folk. Engineers are still fiddling though – they’d like to incorporate Winston Churchill peeing on him but old Winston’s prostate’s been acting up and he’s not yet as reliable as they’d like. Work continues.
March 8th, 2007 at 8:42 pm
After reading this all I could think of is: h, I thought LSD was so 70’s
March 8th, 2007 at 10:25 pm
Nonono Joe! LSD is the new MDF.
March 9th, 2007 at 3:44 am
“Hell?s a lot like Middlesborough but the Council have really tried to clean the place up: they?ve put out hanging flower-baskets and dog-poo receptacles – actually hanging the flowers over the dog-poo receptacles which is, you know, thoughtful.”
A novel idea but surely they could use the hanging flower basket as the dog poo receptacle, this helping keep the flowers in bloom. Maybe you should write to whoever is in charge of that kind of thing. You might win a free holiday….or a hanging flower-basket in which to deposit your own dog poo.
March 9th, 2007 at 4:48 am
Eddie lad, there’s a bright future for you in the town-planning department of The Abyss.
March 9th, 2007 at 10:52 am
You know what with the beautiful sunsets and all it sounds a lot like Manchester and I’ve been there and done that and I’m not going there agaim. So from hereon in I’m going to be a betta girl.
March 9th, 2007 at 2:18 pm
Marzipan, Satan’s manna. Reminds me of Christmas cakes that would last until July when we were kids.
March 9th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
Been there but it was before renovation so things were a bit shabby and dated. The “hellfire & brimstone” was delivered via radiator which should give an idea of the state of things at the time. That said…the BBQ was exquisite.
March 9th, 2007 at 4:43 pm
I saw a cat in Nam that was the spitting image of Hitler….so I reckon he probably got out at some point!
March 9th, 2007 at 9:17 pm
Pat, I heard you’d switched to Betta Blogger.
Kav, I read that as Santa’s manna earlier and have been muttering “That Kav’s a right wierd one,” to myself occasionally, until I came back just now to reply.
Joel, Can’t beat the flamin’ ribs of Hell!
Birchsprite, did you take any photees?
March 13th, 2007 at 4:27 am
Fabulous. Let me know when you’re doing the slide show.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Glad you made it back cookie, Middleborough blech!
My favourite Hell goes like this.
Question to new arrival in hell, “Do you want to stand up to you knees in shite for eternity, or up to your neck in shite, but with a cup of tea?”
Arrival “Oh up to my nrck, but with the tea please!”
Arrival gets her cup of tea and steps into the steaming vat.
Ten minutes later a klaxon sounds and a voice shouts, “Right you bastards, tea breaks over, stand on your heads!”