Book of Jim: Agnostic Parables and Dick Jokes From Lucifer's Paradise by Adam Spielman Page A

took his leave of the small man on the wooden raft.  When he reached the edge of the cove, the man called out some parting words:
    “Jim!  Before you cast off, make sure there’s fish!”
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    With a bag full of nails, a good hammer, and planks of wood donated by the Presbyterian Church of Canada, Jim went to work.  He started where the crack in the firmament met the ground and he worked his way up.  And though he doubted that the advice of Jesus who was Josh had been sincere, it felt good to hammer in the nails.  It felt good to work .
    And he worked for a long time.  Days and then weeks and then years came to pass.  He went through thousands of boards and millions of nails.  He didn’t eat and he didn’t sleep.  He didn’t look up because it discouraged him, and he didn’t look down because it frightened him.  He looked at his hands and at the place where the hammer met the nail.
    But then one day the hammer broke and Jim looked around.  He was a mile high over the shredded fields of war.  His labor trailed behind him as a wooden rainbow.  Then he put his eyes forward and beheld that he had the whole sky to go.
    “I don’t think this is gonna work,” he said.
    Now a friendly and wise old face popped in through the crack in the firmament.  “Jim!” it said.  “You goddamn crazy hillbilly!  You can’t fix the sky with wood!”
    “Einstein.  Well, your dice didn’t work for shit, either,” Jim said.
    Einstein pulled himself up and mounted the firmament like a horse.  “I’ll make it up to you,” he said.
    “Yeah?”
    “This breach is distorting the antiverse as well.  Since it occurred my findings have been entirely anomalous.  But I think I’ve found a way to patch it.”
    “Alright.”
    “Do you remember what I said about philosophy, Jim?  The thoughts that can’t produce phenomena and the hyper-expansion of paradise ?  It turns out that all thought, phenomenally charged or not, travels through the vacuum at exactly the speed of light.  I have observed in the antiverse for the first time the velocity of philosophy, and against all intuition the non-phenomenal traverses the plane at the same speed as the phenomenal.  The difference is, the non-phenomenal – philosophy – is constantly changing direction, with such frequency and redundancy that it never gets to where it is going.  All of this churning and digressing eventually feeds back on itself, and the resulting energy is proportional to the square of the value of the original asininity.  And though each individual asininity is very small, the cumulative effect is what we observe as the hyper-expansion of the phenomenal sphere.  I have discovered the Paradisial Constant!”
    Jim scratched his head.  “Didn’t we go over this before?”
    “And here is the homerun kicker.”  Einstein spurred the firmament with the heel of his boot.  “The physical reason that philosophy cannot produce phenomena, is that non-phenomenal thoughts propagate entirely on waves.  Without the particle-wave duality of phenomena, these philosophical waves cannot collapse.  They can form nothing of substance.”
    Jim understood none of it.  He said, “Is there any fish back there?  Jesus said we should get some fish.”
    “What?”
    “Nothing.”
    “Fish?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Anyway, I’ve examined what’s left of this firmament, and I believe I understand its function.  Religious philosophy, like all philosophy, is based on several core asininities.  While these asininities cannot produce phenomena, the waves carry a certain frequency.  It is usually undetectable, but within a particular religion the same asininity is produced by a billion minds and the signal is strong enough to detect.  The firmament is fitted to receive these signals, identify the religion of origin, and then filter out whatever phenomena that religion opposes.  It’s simple and ingenious, and I may be able to improve upon it.”
    But it did not sound so