Coming out of dinner last night, I saw a stand with The Onion on it. Not having read it in a while, I picked up an edition and laughed my way home (probably in danger of being hit by cars while reading). Among the headlines, “Activision Reports Sluggish Sales For Sousaphone Hero” and “Final Harry Potter Book Blasted For Containing Spoilers“.

But the one that really struck me, in the way that only satire can, was Various Deities Still Sorting Through Victims Of Tragic Queens Bus Accident, which outlined the divinely bureaucratic headache that tragedies cause for the Gods. These included multicultural headaches that arise out of people following religions that are not necessarily their “cultural” religion:

“Honestly, who ever heard of a Jew named Shinjoku Murikami?” the Shinto sun goddess Amaterasu said. “I had that guy halfway to haunting a shrine as a kami spirit before I realized my mistake.”

as well as sect-related issues, caused by humanity grossly Missing The Point:

While the aftermath has been generally chaotic, the most inconvenienced deity appeared to be the God of Abraham, who is worshipped by billions of Muslims, Jews, and Christians.

“Ideally, I’d just take all of them in one pile, but there are about a thousand little sects and denominations and all that nonsense that I have to act like I care about,” God/Yahweh/Allah said. “Did you know there was a guy who practiced Santeria on that bus? Christ, what a nightmare.”

Parallels were also drawn to other disasters which the Gods were required to show up to:

One god, who asked that His name not be spoken aloud, said the theological muddle was a rarity, and that He and the other deities usually have no trouble operating without an official post-disaster protocol.

“We don’t normally have to deal with these kinds of details,” the god said. “If there’s a rocket attack in the Middle East, it’s pretty easy to figure out who goes in to mop up.”

Of course, it was the last line of the piece which endeared it to me forever.

While surfing the internet, I then came across these other tidbits for your enjoyment and amusement: