Bad credit risk

Heath Ledger, having gone the way of Disco, is in the news for all the wrong reasons; the new Batman film takes on the mythos of The Crow, and anything dire about his performance will be washed away in reviews by column inches remarking on the great loss to the acting community. But so what? We’ve got bigger fish to fry today- like my relationship with The Lord.

The agents of The Lord have never been the best clients for me- every quarter I submit to the tax office those who owe me money that cannot be retrieved, and last quarter, not for the first time, every one of them spoke heavily to me about their relationship with The Lord, who I now find is a bad credit reference.

He- and I’ve always thought of The Lord as a he, if only for all the smiting and violence and debauchery that litters the Bible similar to an end of season football trip fuelled by cheap rum and animal stimulants- is not to be trusted when it comes to monies owed. Great with rules, bad with debts, that’s what I’ve learned.

Today was marked by such a client. He came to me wheezing, and hacking, explaining that he wanted no further work done on his website, he’d come to realize that it wouldn’t make him a fast million. Which was fine. Inwardly I breathed a sigh of relief- it wasn’t the worst news I’d had this week.

So far he’d hadn’t paid a red cent and wanted a Radiohead In Rainbows style website to sell his music from. I said, “Fine,” but lost my mind when he told me he only expected to make five to fifteen thousand a year. I said, “Good for you, but you know I can only guarantee you’ll make nothing out of the Internet,” The words evaporated like a mist in a summer's morning every repetition. He didn’t hear a thing. He, like some evil-bent politician, tried to hypnotize me by smiling and staring into my eyes. Fortunately, in a past life I was Timeshare salesman and had become immune to such cheap trickery.

"You won’t get any money out of it unless you market it every day,” I repeated,

“We’ll put it on Google, then everyone will see it” he told me with the abandon of a drunken cowboy.

We did the best I could- the only change on the final version was the text.

It became a tract thanking The Lord.

Enthusiasm has never eluded me as anything but what it is, a glorious thing to see. Just not on the front page of a website hocking off mp3’s.

After three weeks of thankless work I was grateful to be done with the job.

I said, “That’s fine, I can see where you’re coming from. About the payments due…”

“Payments due? I know of no payments due, monies owing or promises made. Never mind the money, be born again, let The Lord cure you of your avarice” he said, thick spit flying from his florid lips,
Forget my avarice, Lord; bring me a regular paycheck and a kilo beefsteak done medium rare.

Don’t get me wrong, Jesus and I would have got along fine. He made sure his friends had enough wine, got stoned off his ass, liked fishing, and would spend his Saturdays running through the temple with a bull whip. He was my kind of guy, an anarchist, a great story teller and an underdog; just a pity about some of his supporters.

Yes, Jesus was way cool and the Lord had a way with words. Look no further than Revelations for that: Not every street preacher yelling chaotic drivel can come up with that sort of lightning in a bottle. Lakes of fire, beasts with many heads and The Great Whore- No wonder Ronald Reagan placed such credence in the thing.

Nowadays though, it doesn’t rattle my cage so much. I look up with a cynical eye and figure that if The Lord is anything like his followers the time of reckoning is about five letters and three crafty debt collectors away from coming through.