The
Chairman’s Corner
From this year’s “Hell’s Annual Report to Stake Holders”
I’m excited to report that we’ve had a great first quarter and we’re
on our way to a record year! Use of contraception is on the rise
among Catholics, the rumors that the Mormons are looking to buy Starbucks
are true, and false baptisms are up 47% over last year, just for starters.
However, it seems that certain recent events and technological innovations
have caused consternation among the ranks, so I’d like to address a few
key issues to set the record straight.
The Internet: E-sin, not surprisingly, is where we’re making our
most marked gains today, and we have high hopes for even greater spread of
virtual chaos in the near future. Email, for example, is the
transport for over 70% of vicious gossip and rumors, thanks to the ability
to forward scandalous remarks to hundreds of other people with the click
of a button. We’re especially pleased to see the rise of email
ministries, where motivated and thoroughly unenlightened evangelists can
send daily bible spam to smear the Word of God, sometimes even more
effectively than we ourselves can. I can never say it often enough:
never underestimate what you can learn from the “faithful” about
twisting the truth.
We are concerned, however, about the Internet in general, and have formed
a special task force to determine how to undo the great damage that it
brings to our cause. For example, while open availability of
pornography may seem to be greatly in our favor, such material is too
easily available and actually reduces the magnitude and frequency of the
lustful sins. In the old days, when a man had to buy a magazine or go to a
strip parlor, he had to steel himself against the judgmental eye of his
fellow man. Under such conditions, a healthy pride of self and
devil-take-all attitude thrive as this kind of judgment actually
reinforces the sinful behavior. Today, however, in the privacy of
their own homes, men can feed their carnal desires with little resistance
and thus avoid building spiritual calluses. The same is true of chat
rooms; it is impossible for a person in Australia to commit any sin of
real magnitude with a person in San Francisco. Somehow we need to
get these people back into the bars where alcohol makes such a fine social
lubricant leading to those delicious you’ll-be-sorry-in-the-morning
regrets.
The Pope’s Apology: Some of you have expressed concern with the
Pope’s Apology mass. I’d just like to let you all know that
actually we’re quite pleased with the unforeseen windfall resulting from
this debacle. The confusion we’ve sown over the centuries about
the infallibility of the Pope has begun to yield real fruit with the
implied admission that a Pope can commit serious, damning sins against God
and humanity and that he can drag the faithful down with him.
Our greatest achievement, however, was the lack of mention of the
Holocaust. Actually, the Holy See didn’t forget it at all.
At first, they were going to name the Holocaust pretty close to the
beginning of the list. But our own Lord Screwtape started a
brilliant whispering campaign about how recent the affair was and that it
didn’t quite have the history or rich tradition behind it that something
like the Inquisition has. At one point, the cardinals actually
discussed how mentioning the Holocaust would take away from the impact of
repenting for the Inquisition. Screwtape’s subtlety was beautiful.
If he strove for just getting the Holocaust forgotten off the list,
someone may have noticed and put it back on. Instead, with great
care and exquisite manipulation, he got them to strike it off the list
themselves. Screwtape is an inspiration to us all, and his effort and
dedication have earned him an early nomination for Employee of the Year.
1900 Years Old and Still Going Strong: Sometimes it’s easy to
forget just how much we truly control church tradition and law, so I’d
like to point out that this year is the 1900th anniversary of the 10%
tithe. As those of you who have been with us from the beginning may
remember, it took quite a lot of work and heavy investment to convince the
church of the first century that tithing should be limited to 10%.
This was no small task considering that Paul and others prophets, as well
as Jesus himself, clearly recommended that the faithful give everything
they have to God and hold nothing back.
Let’s just say that 1900 years later we’ve reviewed our work on the
10% tithe and don’t think there’s any room for improvement. Through
this campaign, we’ve been able to convince the faithful that 10% is just
the right amount to give to God. The other 90%, then, can go towards
personal selfish and sinful endeavors, yet leave the “faithful”
feeling so righteous and holy. It also gives them the satisfaction
that their churches achieve “so much good” as a consequence of their
generous and voluntary tithing, not because of any grace of God’s.
The only other conspiracies we’ve instigated that have had more success
than the 10% campaign are our ingenious reduction of keeping the Sabbath
holy from a full day each week to a mere hour, and the brilliant one we
pulled over on the Catholics with the Holy Days of Obligation, which let
good Catholics drop mass attendance to only four hours a year out of a
staggering 8760, resulting in less than 0.046% for God!
The lawyers, of course, remind me that past success is no guarantee of
future returns. However, let past success continue to inspire each of us
to do the very best we can, even in the most blessed of circumstances.
The new millennium promises the delights of a whole new class of sin.
This is a time of rejoicing and we couldn’t agree more that it is indeed
a Jubilee year.
Lord
Lucifer
CEO
and Chairman of Hell
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