Hey, how ya' doing? God here. Right about now, you're probably wondering why I'm allowing things to come apart at the seams, what with the Y2K bug, the bombing of Kosovo, the situation in Iraq, global warming, Level Four viruses, Paulie Shore movies, and all that jazz. Well, truth be told, I'm not exactly in charge of everything up here. Now, before you go substituting your church newsletter for placards that say, "THE END IS NEAR!!!" and crap like that, let me hasten to assure you that I still have a lot of pull up here behind the Pearly Gates. But things ain't how they used to be.
To begin with, when they started killing themselves off in droves around the turn of the century and slipping up here before Lucifer knew they were dead, the Irish began taking everything over. Then, as time dragged on, the politicians and bureaucrats came up here and now I can't even make a garden slug without filling in requisition forms in triplicate and attending exploratory committee meetings.
Then Bill Gates sniffed out an opportunity up here (he even substituted the "Pearly" for his first name on the sign out front) and began ritually sacrificing software engineers and lawyers so they could begin a hostile takeover of Heaven. You may have noticed that sunny days don't download as easily (the picture above is a file photo) and you're seeing html gray above you. You have Microsoft to thank for that.
Now, it's obvious to anyone who knows the first thing about Bill Gates that the man never had an original idea in his life. Basically, he's the Andrew Lloyd Weber of software. It goes without saying that without Macintosh and Digital to steal from, Gates would still be toiling away in a clean room for 30K a year with maybe a shot at appearing in a tin foil space suit and essaying the Hustle in an Intel commercial. True to form, Gates had his emissaries post a list to the Pearly Gates a la Martin Luther and Wittenberg. It's Gates' list of the 95 things that would happen if he were the Overlord of the Universe.
1) The next Ice Age would be attributable mainly to the Solar Server being down.
2) The Evil Overlord would be Janet Reno and Hell would be renamed Netscape.
3) Comets and asteroids would be replaced with flying toasters.
4) Complimentary demos of Heaven and Hell would be available but would not necessarily represent the actual Netherworld.
5) Mother Nature would have 256 colors but she will initially have to make do with 16 until the video card upgrade is made available.
6) The Big Bang will fall on deaf ears unless you have RealAudio and SoundBlaster.
7) Limbo would be renamed "404- Dimension Not Found."
8) The Windows logo would, appropriately, be a nebula.
9) Existence could inexplicably end with no more explanation than "This dimension has performed an illegal operation and will be terminated immediately."