Not losing my religion

I’ve said this before but it bears saying again: the reason we are on this earth is to appreciate fresh strawberries. That’s it, that’s all. There is no afterlife, clearly, because although they will grow in thin, dry soils, strawberries will not grow in an ethereal plane. No strawberries, no need for people to appreciate them. So this is the one shot you get, and you’d do well to enjoy all the fresh (preferably local) strawberries you can.

It’s tempting to make this into a formal religion – partly for the tax breaks, partly for the costumes, but especially for a very tasty communion (finally). However, right at the outset there have been squibbles. For instance, there are those who believe that blueberries, rather than strawberries, are the foundation of human cognitive existence. While I hold blueberries in high esteem, second only to the divine fruit that has its seeds on the outside (and between my teeth), they are not the reason for our existence, and those who believe they are can only be deemed bog-lovers and their presence in our religion can only lead to discord. Therefore, we must undertake preventive shunning to avoid that discord. It all gets ugly pretty quickly, just like any other organized religion, and therefore I’ve decided to maintain our unofficial, fully taxable disorganized status.

Disorganized though we may be, something of vital importance to our beliefs came to my attention last night, and I need to make this clear to all our adherents. On TV last night I saw an ad for the International House of Pancakes (IHOP, for you hip Twitterers who don’t have time to use all the letters in words) offering “strawberry treats” that “sweeten the season.” I want there to be no confusion on this issue: Satan is real. He does not preside over a fiery realm of pain and punishment; that’s all made-up bogeyman nonsense designed to scare mouth-breathers. Here’s what Satan actually does: he packs strawberries, the very point of creation, into steel cans, smothers them in high-fructose corn syrup (which everyone now knows is the current sweetener of the Devil), and ships them off to hideous chain restaurants for use in the calorie-laden concoctions these dens of iniquity refer to as “breakfast.” In doing so, he hooks the masses on these sorry substitutes for fresh strawberries, and in their sugar comas they forget the very nature of our existence. This is the work of the Devil, and it is the only work of the Devil.

By the way, just as proof that this is not zealotry, I had blueberries on my Grape Nuts this morning.