It was after the flood and I had been hanging out in what is now South America. I spent a lot of time down there eating chocolate. They were doing this great pagan worshiping thing for a variety of gods. The more gods they had the more festivals they had. The festivals were amazing. Everyone would wear these rainbow-colored feather costumes or nothing at all or somewhere in between. It was right after the “Damn we’re good, because our Gods didn’t flood us” celebration that I decided to head back to see how Noah and the kids were handling their life after the flood.
I came across the growing city of Babylon where Noah’s generations began to flourish and start a new civilization. It was here that I met Edmond, who was biblically known as Nimrod, which was actually Noah’s fault. The story behind Edmond’s nickname stems from when he was just a toddler. Noah had spent the afternoon in the mountains in a flurry of home grown induced meditation. I personally think it was purely accidental that Noah ended up at the house in that state. It was later conveyed that he was on his way to get some dried potato slices and remembered that Charlotte had made a fresh batch the night before. It was the desire to eat something crunchy and salty that motivated Noah to head home when normally he would not. Charlotte had been dealing with their newest little one for most of the day and in seeing Noah walking up that path that lead to the front door, she knew for certain is that it was time for her to take a break, and she wasn’t going to be home until had consumed at least two margaritas.
Noah was in the introductory stages of realizing that he has in front of his own house. He was at the point he felt he had seen everything he was looking at before, but he was not 100% sure why he had the feeling. When Charlotte walked out of the front door and handed Edmond to him, and walked off, well, it kind of freaked him out. Edmond was about 18 months at the time. Noah, being in the mental state he was in slowly started to realized that he was in charge of a small child that was currently dependent on him for everything. This made Noah nervous and to help him deal with his nervousness he began inhaling the smoke of certain medical remedies until the feeling went away. The problem was that while he did this he instinctively held on to Edmond so that the kid would not wander off and get hurt.
About an hour later both he and the kid were in a very relaxed state. As a result of this relaxed state a foul odor began from Edmond’s nether regions began mingling with the incense-like odor already in the house. The odor help Noah realize that a messed had happened and was pretty sure it was either him or the kid. After thoroughly checking himself he proceeded to investigate Edmond’s bottom wrappings. All it took was placing the little one over his knee and pulling back Edmond’s diaper with his index finger to discover an over abundance of the vile smell that had invaded his bonding time with Edmond. Noah knew what he was going to have to do. He was pretty sure he had done it before.
Noah removed Edmond’s dirty nappy and noticed that Edmond had…well…a small…ok to be fair the kid was only a year and a half old, and any kid a year and a half old is going to have a small…well, Noah sort of over looked this fact and made a little remark about it, “Well hey there nimrod, how you doing?” Now it really wasn’t that funny, but in his present state of mind, it was the funniest thing he had ever heard. When Charlotte finally got home, Noah was still laughing and Edmond has still not been changed. Noah retold his self proclaimed comedic genius to his wife to which she called him and idiot and to never call Edmond that again.
Noah refused and from that moment on, Edmond was deemed Nimrod. When Edmond got older he asked Charlotte where his name came from. Being the quick thinker that she was she told him that he had always been such a good boy and always followed the Lords instructions that he didn’t need a large guiding rod to keep him close to the Lord. He only needed a small one or a “nimrod” because he was so righteous. Well the kid bought it and from that time on requested that everyone he met call him Nimrod.
When I got to Babylon I found Noah and we started to catch up. After hearing about all the places I had visited and seen in the past years, he informed me that his boy Nimrod had been placed in charge of the growth of the city and asked me to go check on the boy and if possible to give him some pointers if you could see some areas in the city plan that could use my help. I promised him that I would and the next morning I headed to town to pay the lad a visit. Since Noah had always talked favorable about me Nimrod was more than happy to invite me to stay with him for a while. The second night I was there, Nimrod invited me to tag along to a social gala to honor their wealthy pettiness, meaning the wealthy felt the need to ignore the poor and starving and consume a ridiculous amount of over priced finger foods and alcoholic beverages.
The gala seemed to be celebrating how wonderful all the people were that were at the gala and to discuss the common people and how something needs to be do about them, or to help them. There always seems to be a fine line when that topic comes up. It’s always either, “Can’t we just find a ways to get rid of them?” or “Someone should do something to help them.” But it rarely (I believe the figures on this are 1 in 100,052) includes the wealthy who are saying someone should help them.
So where does the Tower of Babel come in to all of this? Not that my goal is to name names but…I mean in truth, I was only trying to help. I was surrounded around all these snobs down talking their fellow man and ingesting drink after drink, becoming louder and more pompous, which was really starting to annoy the hell out of me. It was clear that the main goal of the evening was to complain about the poor underclass and not discuss any ideas to help them out. If I was going to drink the wine that the poor folk had made for these rich snobs, I figured the least I could do is start some discussions in their favor, so started asking questions. I was winging it, and when I start winging it, let’s just say I don’t always come up with my best plans that way, and this was no different. The thing that kept me going was the thought of Carl, since he wasn’t here yet to steer these people right, I had to do my part help out.
“Nimrod, tell these people about the story about the flood.” was all I said to begin to change the tone of the party. Nimrod’s eyes started to sparkle as all eyes turned to him. He went through the story in slurred detail about the building of the ship and the wrath of God upon the people. Sure it was a bit embellished, but the basic story was there.
After he got done I started the discussion by saying, “Now in my experience in dealing with the great and mighty one I’ve noticed that His actions are not always based on rational thought. Sometimes He’s just being reactionary.”
This seemed to confuse a number of people at the party so I attempted to clarify myself, “Have you ever woken up in the middle of the night needing to use the bathroom, and half way to the facilities you stub your toe on a rock, or chair, or step in a pile of donkey … you get my point, and you get very angry because of it.”
Everyone seemed to be nodding in agreement. “And then the next person you see gets the brunt of your anger simply because you’re mad for something you had no control over and something they had nothing to do with.”
“But how does that relate to God or the flood?”
“If you are made in His image and you experience this mishaps, which is purely random, wouldn’t it make sense that God could experience.”
This got a few more heads to begin nodding in agreement. “Everything is going fine and boom He stubs His toe, or has a bad hair day, or something random and unexpected that can alter His mood and boom you’re hit with a plague, or flood. Something happens to you because He’s mad and you are the first person He sees.”
A unified “Ohhh!” filled the room, “Don’t you think preparation for something like this might be a wise choice? Perhaps a place or building that will keep you all safe in a time of flooding. I mean it worked so well last time, why wouldn’t He try it again?”
That seemed to do the trick, the smugness had been wiped from everyone’s face and replaced with the “How can we make me safe.” look of concern. An active discussion started and the sole topic was keeping all of them safe from deity induced doom.
The problem with the wealthy is not a matter of group longevity, but with singular longevity and when surrounded by the rich and powerful that have been drinking too much, you hear a lot of babblings that include me, me, me, me, me. So I offered this solution, “What if you were to build a tower, a huge stone tower that will be on a hill and that can be filled with food and rooms to live in. It could be climbed incase a flood comes again, and will made so it is unable to be burned, and can withstand the elements. A place you can all help pay to build and all of you can be saved.”
It was quiet now with all eyes staring at me. I was close, I just need one last thing to pull them all in, “And this way we could hire all those commoners who need work and money. They can afford to buy more food from you, and rent places to live. You can help them and they in turn will be building you a save place. If they have money for food they will stop bothering you and at night the streets will be clear because they will have a place to sleep. And on top of it all you will be smiled on and admired even more than you are now for saving them from their poverty.”
I hadn’t fed that much crap to a crowded room of people in a long time, and all I can say is god bless the alcohol because they actually bought it. There was smiling and laughter and more drinking, and applauds to me. They started talking about hiring contractors to find the perfect location to build, the stone needed to build it, and the floor plan. The rich were of one unified goal, to protect them and their stuff. The Tower of Babel was now an idea and its construction was going to be a reality very soon.
I might have gotten a bit carried away, but I was trying to figure out a way to get these wealthy people to give some of their money to those that really needed it. I figured the best way to do it was to make them think it was in their best interested with something to show for it at the end. In my experience if the rich think they are doing something for themselves then they are much more apt to send some money.
During the following month contractors were hired and plans were drawn up and finally a location was selected. It was on top of the tallest hill that was closet to the city. That way there was less traveling required incase of a sudden disaster. People started working and Babylon really started to flourish. Because of the size of the job a number of outside contractors were brought in, they were what you would call cheap bastards, they brought along their own work force, all of which happened to be slaves. The purpose for this was to get more money in the personal pocket of these contractors. Because of this their costs were lower and happened to get more and more work as the building of the tower went on.
It was well into the third year of constant construction and the tower was coming along nicely. Babylon was a melting pot of different cultures and beliefs, due mainly to all the outside help coming in to help. Then in about mid April the unthinkable… ok so it was thinkable just unexpected and on a grandiose scale. I’m not saying the contractors should have known better, in that day and age there was really no way of testing for this type of thing. I guess if they really wanted too they could have gotten a fortune teller to give them a little additional insight, but I really don’t think anyone was to blame. The point being that on April 17th around 2:29 p.m. the hill that was the foundation for Babylon’s tower of safety experienced an abrasion of the earth’s plates and three years of construction turned in into a hill covered in dead builders, contractors, and a variety of different sized rubble.
This level of mayhem offered a number of events to happen. First was the mass exodus from the area by all the slaves that were working for the contractors that were now embedded at the bottom of the rubble. This is the reason there is reference to this type of story throughout the Middle East region, as the slaves where returning to their homeland, they would tell everyone they came into contact with about the tower and it’s destruction, which was responsible for their freedom. For some reason this story was always laced with a great deal of deity connotation to it. People thought God was responsible for the destruction so that the people could be freed. Sure you can agree and say that God saw an injustice and wanted to free these people, but then you have to give the “all-powerful” credit to the god of the people that were freed and not the God that is talked about in the Bible. This concept is usually a difficult matter to get people to comprehend. I will say that in 99.99 to 100% of the time these types of stories have nothing to the “gods will” but more to do with “that’s just the way it happened”. Think what you will, but the fact remains that humans give their deity credit for things that their deity probably can’t even spell, let alone single out one individual to play miracle favorites on.
After the tower fell there were a few of the original architects still alive, mainly Jaffy. He was the key individual that recommended the location and was head over the entire project. All the wealth mongers were more than a little pissed that all the money they poured into this project only had I hill covered in debris to show for it. They wanted some retribution so a big meeting was called to publicly blame someone, and Jaffy’s head was the first on the chopping block. I was sitting in the back of the room as things started getting underway, and let me just say it was an amazing thing to watch.
This mass of people were yelling and pointing fingers and calling out for punishments most of which would result in death as some point. Jaffy just stood in the front of the room with a number of guards around him, to either keep him safe or keep him from escaping, I wasn’t sure which. As Nimrod attempted to get people to calm down, Jaffy pulled a brilliant maneuver in the art or working a crowd. He dropped to the floor almost like he passed out. This caught everyone off guard, and even got a few gasps of surprise from the mob. The room soon became silent.
Jaffy then began to shake a little, and in a sudden jerk, hopped up to his knees with his eyes wide open, and began speaking. “My friends, death and destruction have fallen on us today and the spirits have just told me the reason why.”
The entire room stared at Jaffy breathless. Finally Nimrod asked, “Why Jaffy?”
“Why did we start building this tower in the first place?” No one replied.
Jaffy went on, “To keep us safe from God’s wrath. We were building a structure to withstand His anger and ability to harm us, but all this did was anger Him. We thought we were as great as Him, or greater, greater to the point that we could make something that would protect us from His anger. Today He showed us that He is greater than we are and that no matter what we attempt to create for ourselves He can take it away if we don’t remember Him and give Him the reverence He deserves. Instead of trying to show Him we were better than Him, we should have dedicated the tower to Him, as a place to worship Him and give thanks. We have angered God and He has shown us that He is more powerful and we are.”
As Jaffy was saying all of this a few heads started nodding in agreement, followed by more and more. By the end of his little speech he had everyone agreeing with him. The first thing brought up at that point was that we needed to construct a building to dedicate to the Lord and they wanted Jaffy to get started on it right away. The people needed to make peace with the Lord.
My god that man was brilliant! Not only did he get out of being tortured and eventually killed, but he turned the entire congregation into thinking that God was punishing them for their pride and he was now being rushed out of the room with a new job that was going to keep him employed for another few years.
It all sounded correct and made sense to the common man, the only problem is that everything he said was a big lie, made up on the spot to save his own ass. Jaffy knew that the earthquake had nothing to do with God. And for the record earthquakes have never at anything to do with any god…ever. They are one of the experiences you get due to living on a faulty built planet. Built by a bunch of kids pretending they knew what they were doing. I will say this though Jaffy was the first silver tongued devil I’d ever seen in action, and to this day I admire him for his skill and impeccable showmanship.
It was because of Jaffy’s successful attempt to save his own skin that the story of the Tower of Babel was written down and canonized as holy writ, and how the crumbling of a pretty massive tower became an example of God teaching His followers about humility and about Gods greatness and power. When I stop and think about it, it still makes me smile to know that this great religious story actually had nothing to do with Pops or any poignant lessons. And yet, the old man still gets full credit for it. Pop’s I tip my hat to you, that is some good work, even if you had nothing to do with it.
