A mystery buzzing noise is driving people mad on a Sudbury estate.

Residents of the Springlands area are demanding to know what is creating the torturous sound dominating their lives – and for someone to switch it off.
...
“It sounds just like a stereo speaker with the volume turned up but no music playing – and it’s relentless,” [said Bradley Smith, Sudbury’s community warden].

In other news, God has finally gotten around to reading White Noise, the 1985 postmodernist classic by Don DeLillo.

“It was better than I thought it was going to be,” admitted Yahweh, clutching a dog-eared copy of the National Book Award–winning novel, in which an ‘airborne toxic event’ serves as a stand-in for the constant barrage of media to which the modern Western individual is subject.  He went on to criticize the dialogue as “stilted” but ratified the portrayal of contemporary consumer-driven life, an abyss in which the semiotics of human affairs are distorted and drained of meaning, leaving only a kind of ‘white noise’ in their wake.

The next book on His list is alleged to be Infinite Jest, the 1100-page David Foster Wallace magnum opus in which a futuristic world suffers the advent of a film so entertaining that it instantly reduces anyone catching a glimpse of it to a salivating braindead shell of themselves.

Informed of the plot of Infinite Jest, Sudbury community warden Bradley Smith said simply, “Bollocks.”

Tags: science, britain, god, literature, sudbury, infinite jest, buzzing, david foster wallace, white noise, don delillo

On Tuesday, a federal appeals court panel in Washington upheld a lower court ruling that said the government discriminated against the blind or partly blind by making its paper money all the same size and texture.

To: YHWH, Lord God the Almighty, Creator of Heaven and Earth, of All Things
  Seen and Unseen, &c.

Fr:  Marty Friedman, Senior Partner; Friedman, Gonzalez, and Friedman

Our Father,

Hey Big Guy. How’s things?  We’re good down here, I’m good. Oh, and Evelyn asked me to relay how pretty the sunset was last Saturday from the PCH at Duma.  Nice work, Sir.

So, Chief, let me cut to the chase: I’m sure you are aware of the recent ruling regarding discrimination against the blind.  Let me be blunt, sir—this is not good news for us.  Right now the lawsuit just stands against the U.S. government for not varying the size and texture of paper money, but I think You and I both know where this thing is headed. It’s only a matter of time before the blind realize that there’s much bigger fish to fry—if the U.S. government can be held responsible for making uniform paper money, how about the guy who made these people be blind in the first place?

You see the problem.

And of course, once the blind sue us, that sound you hear is the proverbial floodgates opening wide up, Sir.  The crippled, the handicapped, the lisping, the incontinent, people who collect Hummels, the list just goes on and on.

I’ve been thinking about possible defense strategies, and the old ones aren’t looking great, Lord.  We’ve had some success with the Satan defense in the past, but that’s pretty well played out—your omnipotence is fairly well-established at this point.  The problem with omnipotence is that it’s hard to pass the buck, Sir.

Which brings us to your assets—since you own everything in the universe, you make a pretty desirable target, litigationwise.  And it’s hard to hide the universe in offshore accounts.

(I don’t want to say I told you so, but we wouldn’t be in this position if You hadn’t smote so many of the polytheists.  Back in the day, people would be pissed at Zeus or Quetzalcoatl or whoever.  We had some wiggle room. But now...)

So, options: I think we have a couple.  I would of course never counsel the utter destruction of the earth, on the record, but I would be remiss as your attorney if I didn’t remind you how effective the Noah Option was last time.  I’ve got a boat at the ready, is all I’m saying.

Barring that, I would recommend lying low for awhile.  I remember You mentioning how lovely the Andromeda Cluster is this time of aeon...so that’s a possibility, right?  If they can’t find You, they can’t serve You a subpoena, Sir.  That is also off the record.

To be blunt, Lord, it’s times like this I wish I hadn’t promised to be Your lawyer for all eternity, but there you go.  I guess we’re in this together.

I’d love to get Your thoughts on this, and Evelyn sends her love,

May You have mercy on my soul,
Amen,

Marty

Tags: god, law, government, the noah option, tort reform, blind people

Q ...Have you been briefed on tomorrow’s GDP numbers, and are you concerned—

THE PRESIDENT: No, I haven’t been.

Q Okay—and are you concerned that they will show us to officially be in a recession?

THE PRESIDENT: I think they’ll show that we’re—it’s a very slow economy. I can’t guess what the number will be, and I haven’t been shown, truly.

God, appearing suddenly, over the rows of reporters, in a cloudburst visible only to the president: George!  The number is 42! It’s 42.

President Bush:

God, waving arms: Helloooooo.  George it’s 42.  George!

President Bush, repeating himself for emphasis, staring resolutely into the distance: I can’t guess what the number is.

God: George George George.  It’s on this sign!  Look, I’m showing you this sign.  42.  Look look look at what I’m showing you.  George.

President Bush: And I haven’t been shown.

God:

President Bush: Truly.

God:

President Bush:

God: I guess my credibility is a little bit tarnished since the whole Iraq thing.

Tags: politics, religion, george w. bush, iraq, god, 42