You May Call Me Reverend Greg. Now Take Off Your Pants.

I noticed today that I had an awful lot of internet traffic the last couple of days. Five times as much, in fact, which was baffling because usually I have to violate some pretty major laws in order to get that much attention, and as far as I know I haven’t done anything like that in over a week. So I headed over to my Google Analytics site to see what’s what, and discovered that over 73% of my traffic the last couple of days was generated from a Google search on the phrase “God of the internet”. Really. All I can say is that it is about fucking time I got some goddamn recognition around here. You may now all bow before me. Go ahead, I’ll wait.

I still don’t know what the fuck is up with that Google search. When I search for “God of the internet,” my site doesn’t come up in the first twenty pages of results (this is what I did at work today). I figure someone is trying to tell me something though, so I got ordained. Yeah, no shit. I’m an ordained minister now, thanks to the wonderful folks over at the Universal Life Church. I can now legally perform marriage ceremonies in the State of Arizona. The first thing I’m going to do is marry a cat to a toaster.

But while I feel it is my solemn duty as an ordained minister to threaten you with eternal damnation in exchange for large cash donations, I should point out that my ministry will be different. Yes, I will get embroiled in tawdry sex scandals, and sure, a lot of the money raised by my church will probably wind up being laundered by a vicious drug cartel. You can’t escape those things in this business, you really can’t. But my ministry will be different in two crucial ways:

1. I will not finger little boys. I have no interest in it, I don’t understand why anyone would, and I’m going to take a courageous moral stand here and promise that I won’t ever do it. Period. You don’t hear that kind of promise coming out of the Vatican, do you?
2. I will ultimately have a really cool fucking title, way better than Reverend, or Minister – Calling myself Reverend Greg, while technically accurate, leaves a little something to be desired. I mean, I’m not going to scare you heathens into giving me money or carrying out religious assassinations if I go around calling myself Reverend, am I? No. So I’ve decided to spend $4.99 and get a better title. I’ve whittled the choices down to:

• Apostle of Humility – “Bow down before me, the Apostle of Humility, bitches!”
• Archcardinal – That’s cool because it makes it sound like I’m a villain in the next Batman movie.
• Canon – I thought this read “Cannon” at first, which would have been way cool. Almost as cool as Bazooka.
• Revelator – I like this, but I can’t say the word “Revelator” without putting the number 3,000 behind it: “Do you have questions that you’d like to ask your God or Deity? Simple put your question into the Revelator 3000 and your answer is seconds away!”
• Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality – Would you care to engage in an argument with a Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality? I know I wouldn’t. He’d be likely to stare at you until you cried, and then kill you by telling you your One True Name.

This is what you get when you Google Image Search “revelator”. I’ve got to say, it pretty much captures the essence of my church.

Since we’re going over the details, I may as well spell out some of the hard and fast rules. First of all, there will be no worship on Sunday. If God didn’t want us to watch football, why did he create bookies? Huh? Second, donations will be handled thusly: You put your debit card into the Holy Receptacle (currently a Bank of America ATM) and enter in the amount of money you’d like to donate. The church will then select the number it multiplies your amount by. Third, you totally cannot tell Tom Cruise about this new religion because if he happened to drop by and start asking questions, it’d be pretty awkward for me.

Tom Cruise: Hey, I hear you can guide me on a spiritual quest to enlightenment.

Archcardinal Greg: Oh, hey Tom Cruise. Yeah, look, I’m not… uhhhh… I’m not going to be able to help you out with that.

Tom Cruise: I see what you’re saying! Enlightenment must come from within!

Archcardinal Greg: No. No, in your case I’d say that’s not true. It’s just that this parish is, uhh… Full! Yeah! We’re at maximum capacity! State law prohibits us from saving any more souls. Sorry, try the Jesuits! Those bookworms are always looking for fresh meat.

Tom Cruise: Haha! Laughter is truly a gift from the Lord, isn’t it?

Archcardinal Greg:  Get the fuck out of my church.

I’m not kidding, Cruise, get the fuck out of here. Don’t make me call Jesus on you!

Ugh, the last thing I want in my church is religious people, or people looking for answers or shit. Really sucks all the fun out of Reverending. My vast experience (46 minutes and counting) has led me to believe that religion is something best kept to yourself. I mean, I told my wife that I was now a Man of God and that if she wanted me to put a Good Word in for her with the Big Guy, she’d have to unzip my pants with her teeth, and where did it get me? Fucking nowhere. And now my pillow is on the couch. That’s bullshit.

So I’m trying to keep religion completely out of this. If you don’t like going anywhere on Sunday, you’ve got a lot of money, you dislike Tom Cruise, and you don’t want your children molested, then my church is probably for you. Send me $499.99, and I’ll send you a free Religious Pamphlet explaining The First Blessed Church of Viscosity and how I should totally be a tax-exempt Universal Philosopher of Absolute Reality.

Amen.