i never did this on purpose

5/10/2006

part I
i died recently and unexpectedly.
death is nothing so much as incredibly uneventful. God was there. he looked Hawaiian and was in traditional Hawaiian dress. he was slightly bigger than normal people, approximately the same difference as between a 12" GI Joe and a Ken doll. when i first met him he told me it was okay to come to heaven. he made some conversation about my field of study and so on (kind of sad and ironic given that that was all over with now) then went to a meeting or something like that.
Heaven was very boring, so i went back to earth for a while. i stopped in a nice but not ridiculous apartment in chicago (white walls, wooden floors, fruit bowl, nice kitchen) and surprisingly my dad was standing in the kitchen, talking about my death with his best friend from grade school.
i realised i was completely visible and could pick up objects. from this i understood that being dead was not different from being alive except that dead people were no longer allowed to pursue things--for example, i could stand in this apartment eating fruit all day if i wanted to, but i could never go back to school or go to dinner/on vacation with my family or friends. it would also be frowned upon (by earth people, not God, who was probably golfing) if i went to the movies by myself or anything like that.
dad wondered aloud how i was enjoying the afterlife. i walked from the living room to the edge of the kitchen and stuck my right arm through the door so Dad could see it. i formed my hand into the shape of the number 4, as in ****/5. it was grade inflation, to be sure, but i wanted to make him feel better.
"Oh wow," said Dad and his friend. "Neat." He was referring to the sudden appearance of my hand. He did not think to look for the rest of my body.
He expressed disappointment that I only gave Heaven a 4/10.
"no no no," i thought, and changed my hand-shape into a 6.
"Oh, I see," said Dad, and he felt better.

part II
adrianne, another roommate, and I hopped a megabus to los angeles for the weekend. scav was coming and we needed to talk to some people in pierce about it. when we got to pierce's HQ, i noticed a poster on the wall. it was a detailed schematic for item 307: a lamer version of the coolest item from my application list (which i never actually sent in). that annoyed the fuck out of me.
los angeles pierce was beautiful, with bamboo floors, red-and-black hammocks and futons, lots of glass, and walls in various shades of blue that sometimes opened out to the air. we could see the ocean from part of it.
i noticed that some waves in the ocean were several stories high. i didn't say anything because i didn't want adrianne and the other californians to think i was lame [where i'm from, waves usually don't get over 4 feet tall].
a tsunami was coming to destroy LA, though. we got on the bus back to chicago.