Read The Gospel According to Larry for Free Online

“must have” collection. The contrast should be enlightening—or maybe just embarrassing.
    Doesn’t anyone else care about the increasing gap between the haves and the have-nots? Millions of people wearing the finest clothes, eating the best food, driving the fastest cars, while most of the world’s population eat a small bowl of food, then sleep on a mat for a few hours, resting up for another eighteen-hour workday.
    Did you know that HALF of the SIX BILLION people on the planet live on less than TWO DOLLARS a day? The price of a cup of designer coffee at Starbucks. Makes me sick just thinking about it.
    Our STUFF lives better than most of the people in the world do.
    To say nothing of how we’re treating
nature. Drill for oil in the Arctic Circle? Why not. Rich white men need to get richer, don’t they? Drop the emission standards so gas companies can turn a bigger profit? Sure! Why worry about the ozone layer when we’ve got stockholders to think about?
    Nature is going to mutiny one of these days—giant earthquakes or floods just to evict our sorry asses.
    I mean, doesn’t anyone remember the Lorax? Who is speaking for the trees these days? We’re producing and consuming ourselves into oblivion, completely out of touch with the real world, the natural world. If your life depended on it, could you tell what time it was by the sun? Could you find north without a compass? Could you tell the difference between a white oak and a red maple? Didn’t think so.
    We’re not fit to live in the world anymore; we’re tourists, clear-cutting our way across the planet till nothing’s left.
    (In case you’re interested, the maple’s the one with the wide three-pointed leaves.)

Over the next several weeks, I slowly started noticing that Larry might, just might, be having an effect on the rest of the world. In the next town over, citizens boycotted the new superstore trying to move in. Coincidence? Maybe. Maybe not. The school’s baseball team actually went on strike, saying they didn’t want to be billboards for Nike anymore because of the workers’ conditions. The amazing thing was, most of the students supported them.
    At first I thought this was happening at my school because the Larry vortex emanated so close by. But according to several newspaper and magazine articles, students across the country were beginning to reject the commercialism being shoved down their throats. The consumer backlash was bound to happen sooner or later—ebb and flow, supply and demand, that sort of thing. Did Larry deserve a tiny piece of the credit? Who knows?

    My feelings of joy were short-lived, though, because betagold left another message on the bulletin board.

    I JUST WANT YOU TO KNOW I’M CLOSING IN ON YOU, LARRY. AND IT’S NOT FROM ANALYZING YOUR POSSESSIONS EITHER. I’M GOING TO TRACK YOU DOWN MY WAY. YOU MUST BE USING A CELL PHONE, THAT’S WHY I CAN’T TRACE YOUR MODEM LINE. BUT SOONER OR LATER, I’LL TRACK THAT DOWN TOO. I KNOW SOMEONE AT THE PHONE COMPANY, AND THEY’RE COMING UP WITH NEW TRACKING SYSTEMS ALL THE TIME. LOTS OF PEOPLE THINK YOU’RE DOING GOOD WORK, BUT I THINK SOMEONE WHO DOESN’T STAND BEHIND HIS/HER WORDS IS A COWARD. EVEN THE NEWSPAPERS PRINT THE NAMES OF PEOPLE WHO WRITE INTO THE EDITORIALS.
    P.S. IT’S NOT THAT I DISAGREE WITH WHAT YOU’RE SAYING—I HATE CONSUMERISM TOO. I JUST THINK THE WORLD DESERVES TO KNOW WHO YOU ARE.
    P.P.S. DO YOU LIVE IN NEW ENGLAND, LARRY? HOME OF THOREAU AND EMERSON, YOUR IDOLS? LOTS OF RED MAPLES UP THERE.

    The pen that had been clenched between my teeth fell into my lap. I was usually meticulous
about not putting anything in the sermons that could lead to me, but red maples—who would have thought? And who was betagold anyway—a botanist detective? There was no way he or she could track me down, especially not based on a tree. I had a plan, goals. What did