11.
"Hours later, the polar bear with the axe in his head
is still hiding under his bed, trembling.
He's never seen anything like that before.
That green thing can raise the dead.
That green thing can brainwash the most powerful coalition
in the world.
He doesn't want to mess with that green thing, not ever.
He knows what he has to do.
He has to get up, go into the bathroom, take a shower.
During the shower, the axe in his head
will miraculously disappear, and then he'll
get hungry, very hungry, specifically for Cheetos.
He'll walk out of town, cursing himself
under his breath, simultaneously ashamed and aroused.
The landscape will suddenly go arctic.
An igloo will appear.
Will anyone be home?
They will not.
He'll begin madly salivating.
God, he can't stand it.
It makes him so nervous.
He must have some kind of anxiety disorder.
He remembers the enraged expression
on the father Eskimo's face as he draws back
the axe, the frightened yipping of the malamute puppy,
the shocked way the Eskimo kids cover their O-shaped mouths
with their mittens.
His alarm clock goes off.
'I really don't want to do this,' he thinks. 'Please God,
send me a sign.
Tell me I don't have to do this.
Show me that you're a gentle, loving god who desires good
things for me.'
Suddenly, the roof of the house flies off.
The room fills with green light, and
a pulsing muscular green limb, like an arm hand but more
fluid, extends rapidly down from the hovering green symbol
and flings the bed aside, revealing
the trembling polar bear, ass up.
The polar bear gets to his feet, wets
his paw, pats down his hair.
'I was just cleaning under that bed,' he says.
'Of course I desire a good thing for you,' the green symbol
intones.
'Such as, I desire that you have the deep feeling of pleasure
that comes from doing your job and doing it well.'
'You can read my mind?'
the polar bear says.
'Do you sometimes have a sexual fantasy involving a vulnerable
reindeer who comes to you asking for help fending off a mean
cougar?'
says the symbol.
'Haha, well,' says the polar bear.
'Get to work now,' the symbol says,
'and don't think about it so deep.
Don't be so negative.
Try to be positive.
Try to be a productive part of our team.
Do you have any questions?'
'I can ask you a question?' says the polar bear. 'Sure.
Of course,' said the green symbol. 'Ask me anything.'
'Are you God?' says the polar bear.
'I can read your mind,' says the symbol.
'I can raise the dead.
I can rip off your roof.
Any other questions?'
The polar bear actually has a number of other questions.
'First, what did that penis-less guy mean when he refered
to devising an approach, quote, in which the sacred things
in life are no longer appropriated in the service
of selling what are, after all, et cetera, et cetera?'
The polar bear distinctly remembers
him saying the word selling.
'What's being sold?
Who's doing this selling?
If they're selling, mustn't there be buying?
Who's doing the buying?
Are there vignettes somehow intent to influence this mind?'
Are the instances of elaborate cruelty
he has witnessed ever since he was a small cub believed
to somehow positively impact the ability of the vignettes
to cause buying?
If so, how?
'How dare you even think of asking me that?' thunders
the green symbol.
'How dare you get all up in my business?'
'You said I could ask you anything,' says the polar bear.
Every vase in the house explodes.
All the flowers die.
The kitchen table collapses, then bursts into flame.
The polar bear, blushing, gets his towel,
goes quickly into the shower.
When he gets out, there's no axe in his head, no scar.
The green symbol is gone.
The roof's back on the house.
The vases are intact, the flowers alive.
The kitchen table's fine, and actually has
a nice new tablecloth.
'No problem,' the polar bear thinks in case the symbol is
reading his mind at that moment.
'No problem.
No problem at all.
Just going to work now.'
The polar bear walks for miles through the desert,
mumbling encouragement to himself.
Yeah, OK.
That moment when the axe goes in is bad.
At the moment immediately after when the Eskimo says something
in the Eskimo language and Eskimo kids laugh at him as he
stumbles out of the igloo, blinded by pain,
and the subtitle appears, 'Yo, keep your paws off
my cheeks,' not so great either.
The long walk home, dripping blood
into the fresh white snow, OK, also not the best.
But what's he supposed to do?
Fight with God?
He feels a chill that starts to snow.
Everything goes arctic.
On his left is a familiar glacial cliff.
The penguins he always passes nod gravely.
The igloo comes into sight.
Is anyone home?
They're not.
He begins madly salivating.
Filled with dread, he enters the igloo
and takes the usual single handful of Cheetos, waits.
In rush the Eskimo children, fresh from sledding.
Behind them comes their father with axe, enraged.
But for the first time, the polar bear
also notices in the man's eyes a deep sadness.
Of course.
It makes perfect sense.
How much fun can it be driving an axe
into the head of a perfectly nice polar bear day after day
in front of your kids?
He's heard through the grapevine that the Eskimo father drinks
heavily, has lately started having
violent nightmares in which he turns he
acts on his own wife and children.
The truth is, this stupid system causes
suffering wherever you look.
He's seen the puppet boy returning
from work sobbing from his excruciating leg burns.
He's watched Voltaire.
Blinded by the bright sun shining in his extremely wide
open eyes, struggling to find a story, buys his French bread.
He's heard the wives of the headless working class guys
fall silent whenever one of the headless working class guys
insists he's perfectly capable of driving the kids to school.
And the crazy thing is, it's not just the victims who suffer.
He's seen the T-Rex moping around the quarry,
asking passers by if the working class guys are still
mad at him.
He's seen the can of Raid absentmindedly
spraying its contents around, even
when there aren't any bugs because it feels
so bad about what it did to Voltaire,
whose work he actually admires.
The polar bear looks directly into the Eskimo father's face.
'I know you don't want to do this,' he tries to communicate
with his eyes.
'I forgive you, and please forgive me for my part in this.
I am, after all, breaking and entering.'
With his eyes, the Eskimo father communicates, 'Same here.
Totally.
This whole thing is just a big crock of shit as far
as I'm concerned.'
The polar bear communicates, 'Better swing that ax, friend.
It's getting late.'
The Eskimo communicates, 'I know.
I know it.'
And then he does it.
As the polar bear stumbles out of the igloo, blinded by pain,
he thinks about his mother, who all through his childhood again
and again while out gathering flowers nearly collided
with a guy in jodhpurs who then shot her.
After being shot, she was made into a rug, which is then
in montage sold and resold many times until finally it
was shown being cleaned decades later with Rug
Bright by hippies after a big hippie party.
He thinks about his father who every day of his working life
was given a rectal exam by Santa Claus.
In the middle of which, Santa Claus, who had allergies,
sneezed.
That was the big joke.
When Santa sneezed, Dad winced.
Was selling what all that suffering was about, selling?
Selling Rug Bright, selling Allernaze?
How should he know?
He's just a polar bear, and half the time he's
got an axe in his hair, which doesn't exactly
tend to maximize one's analytical abilities.
And usually, he's laying around his house with the ice pack
on, thinking basically nothing but, ouch, ouch, ouch.
The polar bear leans against a Christmas tree
trying to catch his breath.
It can't be true.
It simply can't be.
But it is true.
He feels that his heart.
The polar bear stumbles past the penguins.
Noting his agitation and the fact
that he goes right instead of left
at the large tuft of tundra grass,
the penguins waddle around excitedly,
gossiping among themselves.
All gossiping ceases when the polar bear
steps to the edge of a huge glacial cliff.
Then he throws himself off.
Falling, his only fear is that the green symbol will appear
and miraculously save him.
But no, the green symbol, it would appear,
is not truly omniscient after all, which means--
the polar bear realizes with a start--
that the green symbol may not actually be God at all.
That is, the symbol may not be the real actual God.
He may just be a very powerful faker.
He may have a touch of God, which he's distorted.
He may be, in other words, a kind of secondary guy,
a being so powerful relative to him, the polar bear,
that he appears to be God.
The real actual God may not even know
about the way his universe is being run roughshod over
by this twisted false god.
The real actual God, the polar bear
realizes in his last instant of life,
has been heretofore entirely unknown to him.
And yet, this true God must exist and be knowable
since the idea of this perfect and merciful God
is emanating fully formed from within him, the polar bear.
He has, in fact, already taken his first step
toward knowledge of the true God via his rejection
of the false god.
Shoot.
Dang it.
If only he could live.
The polar bear hits the ground.
And because no one in this sub universe
can die without the express consent
of certain important parties, does not die, but bounces.
As the penguins stand on the edge of the cliff looking
cautiously down, he rockets up past them.
'God is real,' he shouts, 'and we may know him.'
The penguins watch him reach the apex of his bounce
and start back down.
'The green symbol is a false god,' he shouts,
'a false god obsessed with violence and domination.
Reject him.
Let us begin anew.
Free your minds.
Free your minds and live.
There's a gentler, more generous God within us,
if only we will look.'
The penguins, always easily embarrassed,
are especially embarrassed by this
and looking around to verify that the tundra's
vast emptiness precludes anyone having witnessed
and actually listening to this heretical subversive nonsense,
waddle away to sit on their large ugly eggs and gossip
about the fact that the polar bear, about whom they've always
had their doubts, has finally gone insane.
'Talk about crazy,' one of them finally says,
in what they all instantaneously recognize as the sacred first
utterance of an entirely new blessed vignette.
'I myself am completely crazy for Skittles.'
Then they all stand.
As in a beautiful dream, their eggs
have been miraculously transformed beneath them
into large colorful Skittles.
The penguins look heavenward in deep gratitude, then
manically begin dancing the mindless penguin dance of joy."
Thanks.
[APPLAUSE]