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flood; but had I done so, everyone’s last thought would have been, “Wow, another apocalypse . . . guess Someone’s out of ideas.”
2 So I decided to take a different approach; to focus on a handful of Chosen People, already rich in righteousness, and, through a generous real-estate offer, incentivize them to spread their moral wealth, that it might trickle down to the less piously fortunate.
3 The quest to find these People became one of the first tasks of my new support team, and their solution was ingenious: they constructed, alongside a well-traveled trade route in Chaldea, a single wooden stall, like unto a lemonade stand in the middle of the desert;
4 And its top part bore a sign reading, “Wouldst thou be Chosen? Inquire within!”
5 And lo, on the very first day, who should stumble across the stand but a spry young man, no more than 75; with fire in his eyes, and dreams in his heart, and foot rot in his sheep;
6 That is why he was in the area, actually, to let his flock walk on the dry dirt, that they might obtain hoof relief.
7 He was, of course, Abraham; the patriarch of monotheism; the progenitor of my three great religions; the father of the Israelites, the Ishmaelites, the Edomites, the Midianites, and the Parasites;
8 Though he hated that last group; all they ever did was sleep in his tent and ask for money.
9 Abraham had already shown himself a literal iconoclast; for months earlier he had broken into his father’s idol shop in the town of Haran, and smashed all the idols to demonstrate the folly of ascribing divine power to manmade artifacts.
10 (He had also shown himself wise, by having previously purchased small-business theft insurance on his father’s behalf; and staging the crime scene so that it appeared to be the work of the Haran-sackers, a notorious gang of local cat burglars.)
11 I was anxious to begin; so I told Abraham that if he would move from his father’s house I would take him to a land where I would make of him a great nation, and make his name immortal, and bless those that bless him, and curse those that curse him; but that I needed an answer quickly, as I was kind of in a rush.
12 And Abraham agreed; so he left the land of Haran and set forth for Canaan, along with his slaves, and his considerable possessions, and his wife Sarah, and his nephew Lot; or, as the angels and I used to call him, “Vacant Lot”; for truly, he was not the sharpest spear-point in the desert.
13 I say not that Lot was dumb; merely, that his tent had a couple of poles loose.
14 [Rimshot on the tabor.]
15 Truly; I say not that Lot was dumb; merely that he was a few camels short of a caravan.
16 [Rimshot on the tabor.]
17 Verily; I say not that Lot was dumb; merely that his flocks tended him.
18 [Rimshot on the tabor.]
19 No, for the last time I plead with thee, do not misapprehend my meaning; by no means am I declaring Lot lacking in wisdom;
20 Merely, that they recently unearthed a book about him from a cave, called The Braindead Sea Scrolls.
21 [Large rimshot on the tabor.]
22 Yea, Lot was not very bright; nonetheless he was virtuous, and that is why he and his family (with one exception) were the sole survivors of the most famous strategic bombing campaign in all of scripture.
23 I speak, of course, of Sodom and Gomorrah; but I cannot speak of them without first addressing, in greater depth, a topic that has already been broached in this memoir.

CHAPTER 14
1 T he Bible’s verses on homosexuality have been the focus of more debate and rancor than any others; a fact I confess I did not foresee.
2 For when I transcribed the Torah to Moses, I anticipated the most controversy would surround the verses in Leviticus 27 mandating that those dedicating part of their family estate to me must value it according to the amount of seed required for its planting, at the rate of fifty shekels of silver per bushel of barley seed.
3 I remember dictating these lines to Moses; and afterward looking up to find him staring