Miles Kington: United Deities left traumatised by Bush/Blair axis of confusion

It's high time we took a return trip to the United Deities, which is, of course, the great debating chamber in the sky open to all gods past and present, where they pass in review everything that we poor mortals are up to. So let's have a look in the most recent minutes ...

1. The chairgod said that the next item on the agenda was the efficacy of prayer.

2. Odin, chief Norse god, said that prayer was a bit of a no-brainer. People on Earth could pray all they liked, but they never got what they wanted. He could hardly remember any prayers being answered by the Norse gods in a thousand years, and when they were granted it usually turned out a disaster.

3. Who was it, added Odin, who had said that the worst thing that can happen to you is having your prayers answered?

4. Oh, good, said Saraswati, Indian goddess of knowledge. She liked quizzes.

5. Quizzes be buggered, said Odin. The point was that prayers were a waste of time.

6. Well, of course they were, if you were an ancient Norse god, said the Catholic god. Disused gods did not get any prayers any more.

7. But the prayer channel from Earth to the Catholic office in heaven was a nightmare. A gridlock. A logjam. A snarl-up. All those things. Twenty-four hours a day prayers were coming in from millions of people all over the globe. Odin was very welcome to lend a hand on the switchboard, if he wanted.

8. Ah, but were they getting dealt with? That was what the Anglican god wanted to know.

9. The Catholic god said that he didn't know how these things worked, but his office had recently installed a spam filter to sort out time-wasting and repeat prayers from the genuine thing. Even so, they could still not deal with the volume of traffic.

10. The chairgod said that there was a specific query behind the general question. Both the leaders of the late invasion of Iraq, Blair and Bush, were said to be god-fearing folk, though it was never quite clear what gods they feared.

11. The Jewish god said that he didn't know what effect the gods had on Blair and Bush, but by gum Blair and Bush scared the bejasus out of gods like him.

12. Saraswati, goddess of knowledge, said that that was not an original quotation. He was just requoting what the Duke of Wellington said about not knowing what effect his soldiers had on the enemy, but by God they frightened him ...

13. Odin said that that was why he hated quizzes. You always got some clever-ass, four-armed nerd goddess being pedantic and showing off.

14. Brahma said he would be grateful if Odin did not talk about his wife, Saraswati, in those terms.

15. Odin said he was sorry. He did not realise the lady had brought her husband to the quiz evening.

16. The point was, said the chairgod, that there was some curiosity about whether Blair and Bush had invoked divine help in their operations in Iraq. Did any god present remember being prayed to?

17. There was a silence.

18. Then Ningirsu, the Mesopotamian God of War, said that, come to think of it, he had received some recent requests from the Baghdad area to smite the enemy. He thought the names Blair and Bush had been involved.

19. The Jewish god said that this was ridiculous. Why would an ancient war god be prayed to by Blair and Bush?

20. The chairgod said he thought he could answer that one. They now knew that prayer operated in a somewhat similar fashion to wireless waves, and that in some areas of the world some prayer networks were more effective than others. It quite often happened that prayers targeted locally did not get through to the god aimed at, but ended up with the local, traditional god. Like Ningirsu.

21. As a matter of interest, had Ningirsu dealt with these prayers?

22. Ningirsu said he had not. It was impossible. The prayers from Blair and Bush had been so full of misinformation, both deliberate and accidental, that they could not be dealt with honestly, so he had ignored them.

More of this very soon.

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