The Book of Essie

I’ve decided to leave my brief quest for religion and become a prophet. These are my words of wisdom:

A great white rapper shall emerge from the east and all the other rappers shall acknowledge that he is both the “shiznis” and the “biznis”.

Thou shalt not say “errbody” unless everybody in the club is gettin’ tipsy.

I have left a message for my followers in the latest Justin Bieber CD that you can hear if you play it backwards.

Hah! That was a trick. My followers do not listen to Justin Bieber.

If you are going to be any kind of asshole, you might as well be a “gigantic” one.

We are human. We are not dancer. Get your nouns straight.

It is forbidden to fantasize about the limpy guy from Dr House. He is mine.

Thou shalt fork over a tithe (10% of thy income) to thy prophet every month. In return, I shall grant thee eternal life. And not make you drink poisoned Kool-Aid.

Religion: wasting millions of weekends since 5000 bc...

I’ve never liked going to church. What if you pick the wrong God and you go and every week you go there just keep making him madder and madder? But then I got terrified that DW might use the Dark Arts against me and that I would get killed by a haunted scrotum, so I decided to enlist the help of a higher power. These are the religions I'm considering. You can vote on them. Like e-bay for the pantheon.

1. CHRISTIANITY

PROS: Apparently when you die you get a really cool house in the sky and there’s a chocolate fountain. We assume.

CONS: has historically killed more people than cancer

2. MORMONISM

PROS: plural marriage

CONS: only applies to men. You can’t have a lot of husbands. Not that I would want that. But apparently I can’t have a lot of wives either. What is the religion called where I can have a lot of wives and not cook or clean or anything? I want that one. Oh wait...maleness. Not so much a religion as a gender.

3. JUDAISM

PROS: Presents for eight days in a row over Hannukkah.

CONS: 6 of the presents will be a dreidel, guilt, persecution

4. BUDDHISM

PROS: meditation, peace, the Dalai Llama is really cool, don’t have to attend services, can make up your dogma as you go along

CONS: I can’t fold my legs in the lotus position very long. That’s also why I’m lousy in bed.

5. ISLAM

PROS: don’t have to worry about what to wear

CONS: no one wants to let you get on a plane to anywhere

6. SATANISM

PROS: I already have black clothes

CONS: Allegiance to the Dark Lord, demon possession, I can’t stay awake until midnight on a weekday

Hey, I was a grave digger in my past life

I did this thing online where you enter your birthday into the little box and then it tells you what you were in your past life. Mine says that I was a gravedigger in China in 1073. My mother has taken this as a total and complete affirmation for all of her bizarre beliefs (a mix between Christianity, Buddhism, The New Earth philosophy, Deepa Chopra's various books on tape and random things she reads in Cosmo). "No, no," she said, excitedly. "Think about it. You took Japanese lessons. You like Chinese food. You are lactose intolerant. And you were always digging holes as a child."

And now I have a complex because I don't like to think that I spent my entire childhood working at my chosen profession.