In order to be less lonely my dad got a dog. Lizi, a yorkshire terrier. He picked her out when she was born and while she was getting big enough to bring home he would visit her every once in a while and all summer long he was telling my sister and me how excited he was about her and how he couldn't wait to get her. One time he ran outside in the pouring rain to fetch a photo of her out of his truck just to show us.

My dad brought Lizi home a couple weeks ago and it was great and she's great and I'm sure she sat next to him when he ate breakfast in the morning and slept at his feet at night, but yesterday, right around the time I was seeing David Bowie sing an Arcade Fire song, Lizi's kidneys failed. She's in the hospital now, hooked up to an IV. She weighs a pound and a half--she weighs as much as a pack of hot dogs--and that she now lay dying in a dog hospital is as good a reason as any, I feel, to not believe in God. Believe in David Bowie. He is awesome. And believe in Lizi. Poor, sick Lizi. And believe in my dad because losing a new dog wouldn't affect a person if they weren't real. But don't believe in God. Because even a bad god--a terrible, tyrant god--the worst god anyone could ever imagine into existence--wouldn't fucking let yorkshire terrier kidneys fail.

Let alone yorkshire terrier puppy kidneys.



UPDATE: September 19th, 2005:


(To be read in a slightly Southern accent accentuated to sound more Southern.)

My friends have I a story for you. A story a friend of mine relayed to me. Something his son Timothy told him.

Now, Timothy is in the second grade. At a school in Massachusetts. And well, one day Timothy came home and told his father, "Do you know what my Biology teacher did today?"

Timothy is a smart kid. A joy to behold. About yay big. Beautiful head of auburn hair.

Timothy told his father that his science teacher held up a chicken egg in front of the science class and said that he will deny God's existence by dropping that chicken egg and watching it break. Timothy's teacher dared Our Blessed Father to stop that egg from breaking.

Timothy's science teacher held that egg up in front of the class and- held it above his head, and said, "If God exists, may He stop this egg from breaking!"

And, well, my friends. My friends the second that egg left the science teacher's hand, a janitor entered the classroom. And my friends, what happened was, that janitor wheeled his garbage can into a fish aquarium, and that fish aquarium, which was also on wheels, got pushed under the egg, and...

Plop.

That chicken egg fell right into the water. Unbroken.

Un...broken.


(Lizi lives.)



Tom, September 15, 2005, 7:49 PM       (link here)