I'm sitting on my front porch, my feet up, my eyes shut, a book flopped open on my chest. I was reading it just a moment ago. I'm sure of it. The setting sun lights up my eyelids, toasts my arms and shoulders. Just off the porch I can hear the drowsy hum of birds flitting from feeder to feeder, can practically see the cardinals, the goldfinches, the red-headed woodpeckers, the indigo buntings. Ruby-throated hummingbirds buzz around my head up here on the porch.

My wife must be inside. But she's been in there a long time. On the phone, maybe?

Lazily, as I lie here, phenomena line up in the desert, waiting to shuffle through from nonexistence into material reality.

There’s a place they come from and a fountain inside that they go to. They take their buckets to the well of warmth and acceptance and love sunk deep inside me, dip a bucketful and leave.

Finally they get to the gate and go “Okay, my turn, beat it.”

They sift through me like ideas through veils.

A son grows up and his father leaves home. A woman gets pregnant and her boyfriend gives birth. A dervish develops a rare bone disease in both legs and starts winning foot races.

Dervish? An image nags at the inside of my eyelids, begging to be let in. I smile and shake my head a little. It vanishes.

Where's my wife? Should I get up and go find her? She's missing a glorious sunset.

Wait: could that be her down tending the grill, poking at the coals, brushing more marinade on the catfish?

Uh oh.

The catfish?

The FUCKING CATFISH?

I panic, go to open my eyes and sit up, check who the fuck it is down there grilling the catfish, but I can't. My eyes are sewn shut. I can't move. I'm still in the Falwell cyborg. It all comes flooding back in, the whole nightmare, the Mississippi rapture mud hot on my tongue ...

Then there are arms shaking me by the shoulders.

"Wake up, son. You're havin one a them bad dreams, I reckon ..."

And now I sit up, open my eyes, look around. I'm not at home, napping on the porch. I'm in a suburban back yard, sitting by a kidney-shaped pool blue as a baby's eyes. There is in fact a grill, a huge one, the size of an Escalade. On it does in fact lie a fifteen-foot catfish, roasting over hot coals.

"Where--am I?" I say, looking around at the strange-looking folks on plastic chaise-lounges around the pool.

One of them, wearing leather shorts and a football jersey and a plastic gold helmet, hamfists a Heineken in his left hand and some kind of toy lightning bolt in the right. There's a really fat bald man sitting in a lotus position, humming, with his eyes closed and his hands out in some kind of meditation pose. He's so fat I wonder where he got the loud Hawaiian shirt he's wearing. I doubt they sell them that big down at the Wal-Mart. Tailor-made? Another is a pretty young woman wearing a neon halo and suckling a naked baby boy at her right breast.

"Is this a potluck?" I say anxiously. "Did I bring the potato salad?"

"Never mind the potato salad, son," somebody says. It's a moment before I realize it's the baby talking. He's taken the breast out of his mouth with both hands and holds it there for a moment, still squirting milk. He's got a pleasant, rather bland voice, like somebody at a Rotarian luncheon. "Relax," he says. "Have a beer. You're in heaven."

And he goes back to sucking, giving me a friendly wink with his starboard eye.

Heaven?

When the rapture mud swept in, everything changed.

I could move--but only in extremely slow motion, as in a ghastly dream.

I could smell--but my nostrils were assaulted by the stench of Sunday School and the reek of the collection plate.

I could taste--but my mouth was filled with clayey hashy mud, and my taste buds, strangely, were assaulted with crumbled wafers in wine sauce.

I could feel--but mostly I felt like shit.

I could see--but what I saw made no sense. A giant Mississippi catfish--here, in the Mud of the Tribulation? With the Leg of the Limper in his maw? Could it be--the Catfish of Doom? And this turbaned mullah selling pornography and smoking a joint, grinning and dancing around on a surfboard that he rode on the waves of mud ... could it be ...

I could hear--but the only words I heard were from the porn-vending mullah's mouth: "The warp and the woof of creationist theology," he was saying as he danced around and around like a dervish on that surfboard, "weave the blindfold that blocks out the light, but it’s what the Qur’an calls the four birds that block your love."

The four birds? Could this be--Rumi? The Persian poet Jalal al-Din Mevlana? He was a dervish!

"Mullah Jalal!" I cry, choking on mud.

"Did I hear someone call my name?" the mullah says, squinting into the mud.

"Mullah!" I cry again.

"Say Bismillah," he instructs me, without quite spotting me, "and wring those four birds’ necks!"

"Bismillah?" I say.

"'In the name of God'," he explains, and starts ticking off Bismillahs on his four fingers: "Bismillah the crows of the cocks of the desire for pussy. Bismillah the caws of the crows of the desire to own stuff. Bismillah the screams of the peacocks of the desire to be famous. Bismillah the quacks of the ducks of the desire to get things done right now."

Right now? That didn't seem particularly pertinent to someone about to get raptured! But, I thought, hey, if it's Rumi ...

"You’ve got one of those ducks inside you right now," he goes on, "her bill never still, poking through the wet and the dry of you, like a burglar upstairs while the owners are in France, stuffing your stuff in his sack, quacking away, 'No time! No time! I’ll never get another chance like this one!'"

Well, he had a point there, in an extremely odd sort of way ...

"God’s fire in the marrow of your bones is death to ducks, death to cocks and peacocks, death to crows. Let God set your bones on fire and you’ll not worry about interruptions. Let God burn in your bones and you’ll binge on the balm of the birdless."

"Mullah Jalal!" I cried, thinking: what's this about birds, look out for the catfish!

But at that moment, as the Catfish of Doom reared up over Mullah Jalal to swallow him, he danced into position and gave the Catfish a little sissy kick, and Bismillahed that fucker over the Goalposts of Heaven. Both arms shot straight up over his turban.

"Field goal!" he cried. "Three points! Sufis win!"

And then I thought I was on fire ...

Once a busload of objectivists came to the mosque, looking for Mohammed. They knew the Prophet was always good for a free meal. Mohammed divided them up among his friends, saying that since his friends burned with his bone-fire, it would be as if he were every guest’s host. And so each friend chose a tourist and took him home for supper.

When they were all gone there was one moocher left--and he was enormous. This eater of objects was easily ten of Rush Limbaugh. Each of his chins was like a whole Jabba the Hut. The man was big. He sat there filling up the entrance to the mosque like hair clogging a drain.

Mohammed sighed and walked him home. There the son of a Ghuzz Turk ate everything. He ate fourteen roast pigs. He ate thirty-seven roast chickens. He ate seven head of beef, hooves and all. He ate Mohammed’s best camel. In the commotion of the cooking and the serving he even ate a stray analytical philosopher who had also wandered in off the street looking for a meal, and who from the look of him had not had his belly full in months, and now never would again. He ate the clothes off of three of Mohammed’s serving girls—break-away robes or they too would surely have perished. He drank eleven vats of wine and the milk out of seventy-eight goats.

Fortunately, goats were plentiful that year, as that spring they had rained from the heavens.

Still, the help was furious. When the glutton went to bed, the maid chained his door behind him.

At midnight he awoke to various urgent calls of nature. His bladder, which was the size of a small principality, was filled to bursting. His fifteen miles of bowels were bloated with enough shit to fertilize the Sahara. But the door wouldn’t budge. He rattled the knob. Bleary-eyed, swaying on shaky legs, he slid a knife through, tried to pick the lock. Nothing. The door was chained with a chain the size of a normal man’s wrist.

The swelling in his belly got worse. The room shrank. The fat man fell back into a confused sleep and dreamed of a barren place, because he himself was a barren place. In this place all was parallel lines that met at the horizon and Euclidean numerical values that added up to zero. The one object in his dream, gleamingly white and stable in a the strictest epistemological sense, was a perfectly cubical toilet.

So, dreaming he was lowering himself onto this toilet, breathing heavily from the effort, he voided himself. He pushed out great counties of shit. He sighed in his sleep, spent. Then, his great belly contracted again! And he pushed out whole new counties of shit. Whole mountainous regions. It was everywhere. It rose to the windows. It stank to high heaven. God Himself plugged his nose against the stink. Mohammed’s servants woke screaming with it, ran into the fields, their eyes running with tears, their throats scorched and raw. In the house only Mohammed was calm.

Now the fat tourist himself woke up, pulled at his covers, and discovered that what he thought were bedclothes were in fact great stinking waves of shit. And he was wracked with paroxysms of shame—the shame that normally keeps men from filling their rooms with excrement.

"My waking is food," he moaned, "but my sleeping is now this."

At dawn Mohammed came to the door, unchained his guest, but made himself invisible so the man could escape to wash up without the shame of facing his rescuer. Mohammed had seen the man’s sufferings, of course, all the gruesome night. Nothing is hidden from the man whose bones burn with God’s fire. He merely held back from unchaining the door all night so that everything might happen as it needed to happen.

The fat man, still weeping with shame, waddled down to the river to wash. Villagers fled in all directions. Even the water would have fled, if God in His great wisdom had not made it subject to man’s will. Still, it too cringed and tried to cover itself as he lowered himself into it, and made watery faces of disgust as it was forced to cleanse him of his own bodily wastes.

The unfortunate glutton, thinking to slink out of town unnoticed, next remembered that he had left his amulet at the Prophet’s house, and sloshed back to the scene of his humiliation, his shoes full of bitter river water. When he got there he found the Prophet himself cleaning his room: hauling the waste matter to the compost pile in a wheelbarrow, washing the linens in vat after vat of clean water.

The fat man forgot the amulet. Suddenly he was overcome with love. He tore open his shirt and struck his head repeatedly against the wall. Blood spurted everywhere.

Mohammed approached him with arms outstretched, but the penitent shouted "No! Stay away! I have no understanding!" and threw himself on the ground before the Prophet. "You are the whole," the fat Turk cried, shaking with remorse, "I am a shitty little part of the whole. I can’t even look at you!"

Mohammed bent over and touched the man’s leg. From that day forward the new believer’s bone marrow burned with the fire of God’s love. And though he limped to his grave, at that very moment the great hunger went out of him. Almost overnight he slimmed down to a fraction of his earlier size, and ever more gave praise to God, in whom truly is all food and all drink to those who believe.

I still can't figure out what I'm--experiencing, if that's the right word for it. There's some sort of light filtering in here, but it doesn't seem to come through the eyehole I occasionally see something out of. I still can't move.

If this is a human-shaped body suit, I don't fill it. I'm stuck in some tiny mechanical nook somewhere. Either this suit is something Moses' Colossus on the Mount stepped out of before getting in the shower--I mean Yahweh, of course, standing seventy feet tall and thundering at puny Moses--or I've been shrunk down to the size of a bent paper clip.

And it's like a radio is playing somewhere far off--but sounding from within my head. First I listen to some inane commercial about uvula enhancement, whatever the hell that means, then the bouncy commercial breaks off and some weird hoarse-voiced singer starts plucking some kind of string instrument I never heard before and, accompanied by what sounds like a crow cawing, sings:

Oh Zeus is a fucker, yes sirree,

He'd as soon fuck a swan as a shoe or a tree,

But that ol' Yahweh he don’t fuck at all

On account a cuzza how he ain't got no balls.

El-o-him ain't got no balls

El-o-her don't fuck at all

Well the virgins say sir and the virgins say please

But Mr. Elohim ain’t slidin no wheeze!

Now Bacchus is a bastard, yes it’s true

And he'll pump your butt full of slimy goo

But that Holy Ghost is such a bore

He'd talk the skank right off an Egyptian whore

El-o-him is such a bore

El-o-her skank off a whore

The zombies say sir and the zombies say please

But all that Ghost's a-slingin is rancid cheese!

Ialdabaoth was a momzer, yes he was

Cuzza demiurge'll do what a demiurge does

But now sweet Jesus’d put ol' Beelzebub

Up for membership in the Rotary Club

El-o-him ol' Beelzebub

El-o-her at the Rotary Club

Jerome says sir and Jerome says please

But Jesus says "buddy take a gander at these!"

El-o-us he’d shake your hand

El-o-them in the Promised Land!

Epiphanny says sir, Epiphanny says please

But Jesus just says "take a gander at these!"

This must be hell. I can think of no other explanation. Because, you see--I wrote that. Or, well, Bill and I did. It's from a novel we wrote called LXX, about the translation of the Hebrew Bible into Greek in Alexandria, Egypt, in 281 B.C. Could I have died and been sent to hell for that? And now, this is my punishment--to be reduced to the size and musculature of a used rubber and jammed in this hole, where I have to listen to my own clever blasphemies and stupid commercials for all eternity?

B-but--we never even published the novel!

Doug Robinson here. Not sure where, exactly, except that it's dark and staticky and all around me I hear the soft hum of oiled machinery. I seem to be completely immobilized--whether because I'm pinned under rubble, or drugged, or out of body, I have no way of ascertaining.

Somewhere in the far distance I can hear the faint gargle of what I take to be human speech, though I may in fact be emboweled in the Almighty and what I hear is actually the grumble of God's Holy Word.

No. Wait. I can move my head a little. And if I turn it just slightly to the right, I can make out some of what's being said:

"... have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked and when we destroy forty million little innocent babies we make God mad I really believe that the pagans and the abortionists and the feminists and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle the ACLU People for the American Way all of them who have tried to secularize America I point the finger in their face and say you helped this happen yes I'm talking about the terrorist attacks on nine eleven brothers and sisters I'm talking about last Tuesday's pseudo-rapture out of the whirlwinds in the Caribbean I'm talking about nasty biting Satan goats raining from the heavens in Alabama I'm talking about God's holy vengeance on America for straying from His Path my children I'm ..."

Isn't that--Jerry Falwell? Isn't he the one who keeps blaming 9/11 on the gays and lesbians and feminists and the rest? Or was that Pat Robertson? So many religious nuts, so little light to shed on their--

Something awful occurs to me. Could it be I'm trapped in the machinery that runs Jerry Falwell? Could I actually be inside the Falwell cyborg? And--worst thought of all--did I somehow bring this on myself, by leaving that note for our janitor, who coincidentally (but could it be a coincidence?) is also named Jerry Falwell?

Waiting in the Mullah Billdoug's inbox this morning was this letter from a Mr. Mike Riddle, professor of creationist meteorology at Oral Roberts University, whom Dr. Robinson quoted yesterday on the "pseudo-rapture" Tuesday. He writes:

Dear Mullah Billdoug,

I don't know why I bother writing to you people, who are obviously Arabs and atheists, but I am, after all, an educator, and committed to the task set us by our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ to make disciples of all nations, so here goes.

First off, while I don't have a graduate degree in Creationist Meteorology (none is currently offered by any American university!), I have taken several very demanding extension courses in meteorology. And while I know this won't mean anything to a bunch of freethinkers like yourselves, the Good Lord in Heaven has taught me more about weather than most people learn in a three-year Ph.D. program in meteorology. So you don't need to snipe at my credentials. They are precisely what Our Lord God wants them to be, to do His work.

Second, you misquoted me. You quoted me as saying "Here we have a perfect example"--but I didn't use the word "example" at all! I used an entirely different word: "case." My exact words were "Here we have a perfect case." If this is a perfect example or case of your journalistic integrity, well--I think we know just how far we can trust your comments on resurrection and time travel!

Thirdly, and lastly, but far from leastly, your editorial staff have once again blundered into territory where they quite simply lack the Bible-based science to know what the heck they're talking about. I am referring to the post on "robot goats vs. dervishes", a thin tissue of outlandish theories and out-and-out fabrications that doesn't deserve to be considered alongside serious scientific creationism. This is the paragraph that particularly, if you'll excuse the pun, "gets my goat":

"Others disagree with the robot theory, noting that there are verified reports of assassin dervishes dressed in goat suits raining out of the sky and wreaking havoc, especially after a convergence of storm fronts. 'Over a thousand rained down on Bainesville, Georgia, after Hurricane Floyd bumped into Hurricane Barney,' says local rapture scientist and weatherman Randy Stutz. 'Killed everyone on the town square. Just ripped out their throats with their nasty yellow teeth, then took off their goat suits and ran away. Robots goats from God, my ass. Satan is the one with the goats and the dervishes.'"

Precisely how is that paragraph wrong? Let me count the ways.

1. Barney Stutz. I know Randy. He's a good God-fearing church-going tithing man, though maybe he beats his wife a little more than the Good Lord would want. But he isn't a rapture scientist or a weatherman. Or else he's a weatherman only in the sense that any two-bit actor who stands up in front of a blue screen and reads off a teleprompter is a "weatherman." He knows nothing about Bible-based weather patterns. Why, he's never even taught Sunday School! So how could he possibly have mastered the finer points of creationist rapturology or meteorology? You tell me that. I'm waiting.

2. Assassin dervishes. There's no such thing! Do you even own a copy of the Holy Scriptures? If you do, open it. If you don't, borrow a copy and open it. Or, I don't know, go to crosswalk.com and run a search for "assassin dervish." Didn't find it, did you? That's because there quite simply is no mention in God's Holy Book of such a fanciful creature. And there is no mention of assassin dervishes because they don't exist. Pure and simple. You can take that one to church, my friends.

3. In no part of this elaborate fable is the true Scriptural precedent for goats raining out of the sky mentioned. Did you not think to check the Bible, to determine whether in fact there were cases where goats had rained out of the heavens? Turn your Bibles to Exodus 8:16-18: "And the LORD said unto Moses, Say unto Aaron, Stretch out thy rod, and smite the hard-packed soil at the crest of the hill, that goats may rain out of the heavens throughout all the land of Egypt. And they did so; for Aaron stretched out his hand with his rod, and smote the hard-packed soil at the crest of the hill, and goats rained out of the heavens, so that there came goats on man and beast; all the heavens became goats throughout all the land of Egypt. And the magicians did so with their enchantments to bring forth goats, but they could not: so there were goats upon man, and upon beast."

This was not, gentlemen, some weird liberal conspiracy-theory scenario such as you lot like to dream up over there in liberal la-la land. This was Divine Weather. This was the Holy Work of our God in Heaven, smiting the Egyptians for the evil they practiced against God's People. And He continues to do that Holy Work today, punishing sinners and rewarding the just and the righteous, in His Holy Name, amen.

Yours in Christ,

Mike Riddle

Professor of Creationist Meteorology

Oral Roberts University

I'm not sure what to say to this, except--wow! Everybody's out of the office. Dr. Kaul and Dr Robinson are AWOL, possibly dead, possibly sucked through heaven and transformed into zombies, nobody knows. Mulla Billdoug is down in the Caribbean riding out Hurricane Francis and Hurricane Ludwig. I'm just the janitor, Jerry Falwell (no relation to the famous Jerry Falwell). There's a note here that says "If anybody writes in, put it up on the blog. Don't let anybody get the idea that the office, or the phones, or the editorial staff are unmanned. Mullah Billdoug staff."

So, uh--whatever, dudes!

Tulsa, OK--Scientists in the Department of Creationist Meteorology at Oral Roberts University here today offered a Scripture-based explanation of the event they are calling the "pseudo-rapture," Tuesday afternoon.

In that event, thousands of people around the globe, living and dead, rose into the air, hung there for a moment, then vanished upward, as if sucked up by a giant vacuum cleaner.

Mike Riddle, President and Founder of Christian Training and Development Services and a recent hire in the Oral Roberts Creationist Meteorology department, explained what must have happened:

"In the 38th chapter of the Book of Job, God spoke to Job out of the whirlwind, and said: 'Who is this that darkeneth counsel by words without knowing?' Here we have the meteorological explanation for what happened Tuesday. It wasn't the Rapture at all; it was another whirlwind such as the one out of which God chastised Job and his misguided friends for their 'words without knowing.' The people who were taken up were in fact precisely such people, utterers of blasphemy and other words without knowing."

Riddle went on to link Tuesday's pseudo-rapturous whirlwind to the collision of fully seven storm centers in the Gulf of Mexico and Caribbean.

"Is it so farfetched," he asked, "that God should have descended to earth in the form of Hurricane Francis and Hurricane Ludwig, and Tropical Storms Gaston, Hudibras, Imogene, Jasper, and Krissy?"

When asked how a convergence of storm centers in one part of the globe could have instigated a global event like the "pseudo-rapture," Riddle smiled knowingly.

"Here we have a perfect example," he said, "of the darkening of counsel by words without knowing. Obviously God speaks to all of us everywhere, no matter where his whirlwinds might touch down. It's pretty obvious to anyone who reads the Bible that this convergence of storms is not just unprecedented in human history; it is a divine miracle of absolutely stunning magnitude."

Professor Riddle's appointment to the department this past summer caused a bit of a stir in the metereological community when it was learned that he has no degree in meteorology. His bachelor's degree is in mathematics, and he has a master's degree from Oral Roberts in education. His work experience has been almost exclusively in the computer business.

The Rev. Oral Roberts himself defended the hire, noting that as there are as yet no graduate programs in Creationist Meteorology in the United States, it would have been impossible for Professor Riddle to obtain the necessary credentials. And his computer expertise has proved invaluable in running meteorological searches on online Bible Study sites.

Looks like the Mullah Billdoug's blog is popular reading material at today's top (Christian) theological seminaries, if the email we just received is any indication!

Professor Chromgas Restek of Ecumenical Theological Seminar in Liberal, Kansas, writes:

Dear Mullah Billdoug,

You're the greatest! All my colleagues and I regularly turn to you for spiritual guidance in these trying times. I know you're a Muslim and we're Christians, but this is, after all, the Ecumenical Theological Seminary, in Liberal, Kansas!

Anyway, I wanted to correct one point in a recent post. I'm not sure whose reporting it was, but the writer of the piece on the Christian Coalition and "Rapture" seems to have taken the various fundamentalists' assumptions for granted that the "Rapture" would come before the end-times, before what's commonly known as the "tribulation." According to conservative fundamentalists, the Rapture will be the first sign that the tribulation is beginning. This is utterly unscriptural, and the conservative traditions that have grown up around the misreading are thus theologically absurd.

The actual passage in 1 Thessalonians 4, which Christian Coalition President Combs cited in the piece, reads: "For the Lord himself will descend from heaven with a cry of command, with the archangel's call, and with the sound of the trumpet of God. And the dead in Christ will rise first; then we who are alive, who are left, shall be caught up together with them in the clouds to meet the Lord in the air; and so we shall always be with the Lord" (1 Thess 4:16-17).

Note the sequence of events: (1) Jesus descends, (2) the dead are resurrected, and (3) those still alive are taken up (the Rapture). In the Book of Revelation, all three of these events follow the tribulation. If we want to be Scriptural about the Rapture, we have to assume that it will happen to those who are still alive after the angels of the apocalypse have destroyed the heavens and the earth. Hard to imagine who might survive that, but then, the apocalyptic passages in the New Testament never were strong on narrative continuity.

The pretribulation Rapture was, in fact, a Puritan invention--in seventeenth-century America. The great thing about the idea is that it makes the idea of the end-times much more attractive to Christians. If everybody's going to be suffering, it's best to hope the end won't come in your lifetime! But if you're among the elect--and all readers of Tim LaHaye's idiotic Left Behind series clearly expect to be--then you will be taken out of the world before the suffering begins. Whew!

Anyway, just wanted to let you know about that. Keep up the good work, and look out for angels bearing swords!

Best,

Chromgas Restek, LLD

Professor of New Testament Studies

Ecumenical Theological Seminary

I must admit, a little red in the face, that I was the one reporting on that Christian Coalition press release, and didn't think to challenge Rebecca Combs's Scriptural authority. The Mullah Billdoug, had he been in town, certainly would have noticed! Thanks, Dr. Restek, for straightening us out!

A surprising number of you have been asking who else reads the Mullah Billdoug's blog. And not just Gravity's Rainbow characters; you're talking about celebrities, right?

Well, here's a list of just a few of the Mullah Billdoug's celebrity fans:

• Vladimir Nonfried Thiegenberg


• Apolinario D. Nazarea


• Riza Hack Boanerges


• Mastny Trilabit


• Lennart Welin


• Charlie Mingus


• Alberto G. Zeera


• Lazarillo de Tormes


• Michelle Vieth


• Drazha Mikhailovich


• Chogyam Trungpa Rinpoche

In fact, Chogyam Trungpa writes just this morning: "I am loving your coverance of hurrigane season in Caribbean. It is most illuminant. And very true about destroy and build. Sufi way is very good way. Keep up excellent work!"

Thanks, Chogyam! The Mullah Billdoug is always going on about you too. You guys should get together some time, maybe, huh?

And thanks to all of our loyal readers, who have rocketed the Mullah Billdoug's wisdom around the globe on binary wings. Keep reading! Stay in drugs, and don't do school!

Breaking news from the Sufi Caribbean Times:

Turks and Caicos Islands--It's unusual, even for this time of the year, to have so much storm activity in the Caribbean.

Max Mayfield, director of the National Hurricane Center, told reporters yesterday that it is unheard-of to have not one but two hurricanes converging on our part of the Caribbean: the cores or "eyes" of Hurricane Francis and Hurricane Ludwig should both pass over Turks and Caicos Islands within a day or two of each other.

At the very same time, Tropical Storms Gaston, Hudibras, Imogene, Jasper, and Krissy are pounding the peripheries of the Gulf of Mexico.

"It's a great time to be director of the National Hurricane Center," Mayfield said.

For Caribbean Sufis, of course, the convergence of Hurricane Francis and Hurricane Ludwig has a special significance. Francis Skinner, the Limper, the Osteomyelitic, and Ludwig Wittgenstein the Mystical Philosopher King were the homosexual lovers at the very core or eye of twentieth-century Sufi power.

Skinner died in 1941, Wittgenstein in 1951. But death does not still the power of a Sufi adept.

Some Sufis on the islands, in fact, confident that the two hurricans converging on their homes in the next few days are in fact reincarnations of the great lovers, Limper and King, are refusing to evacuate. They are convinced that the hurricanes will bring not just great destructive force but great mystical power, and do not want to miss either.

"You can't have healing power without destruction," Mullah Billdoug, renowned Sufi time-traveler, said yesterday evening from the front steps of the Paris Hilton in Cockburn Town, Grand Turk. The hotel was hastily being boarded up, as storm winds stiffened. The Mullah Billdoug arrived late yesterday afternoon from the distant future, where he was hunting down the dastardly killer of his friend Bill Kaul.

He said his journey into the future brought many spiritual rewards but no word on Kaul's killer. He happened to read about the convergence of Hurricane Francis and Hurricane Ludwig on a scrap of newsprint in a Sufi museum several billion years in the future, and decided to return for it.

"Hurricanes are great sources of power," he said. "The destruction they wreak pulls down the old and makes room for the new. Spiritual insight becomes possible."

He said he was hoping the hurricanes would "show him the circular path to Bill Kaul's killer."

Washington, D.C.--At a press conference in a downtown hotel here today, Christian Coalition of America President Rebecca Combs categorically denied that anything like the Scriptural "Rapture" had in fact occurred yesterday afternoon.

"Sure," Ms. Combs admitted, "we had some mysterious disappearances. I'll grant you that. But this was not the Rapture prophesied in 1 Thessalonians 4:17."

What did happen around the globe yesterday remains to be determined. Living people vanished into thin air. Funeral processions were disrupted as corpses burst through coffin lids and hearse roofs and came to life in midair, emitting unearthly screams or, in some cases, sardonic comments on those left behind.

And those left behind did seem to include an inordinately high proportion of born-again Christians, televangelists, politicians on the Christian Right, and the creator of the popular Left Behind series, Tim LaHaye.

LaHaye himself urged Christians not to jump to conclusions.

"This was not an act of God," LaHaye told reporters yesterday evening. "We're not sure what it was, exactly, yet. I encourage born-again Christians to take their concerns to the Lord in prayer."

He agreed with President Combs of the Christian Coalition of America that, despite superficial resemblances, it was not the Rapture.

"The Bible tells us that God will take the born-again Christians first," he said. "And early indications are that very few, if any, Christians were taken. The entire student body and faculty of Bob Jones University, for example, was left behind."

Bob Jones III, president of that born-again Christian university, which is also LaHaye's alma mater, scoffed at the notion that yesterday's event might be construed as the Rapture.

"What, are you kidding? If it had been the Rapture, our school would be vacated. We're all here. No," he added, "this was some kind of Satanic mimicry. Satan has his tricks, you know."

Fuel was only added to such interpretations by revelations that many of those "taken up" were homeless people, atheists, homosexuals, feminists, and liberals.

"How could God have taken fornicators and polluters of family values and left His People behind?" Jones asked rhetorically. "No, this wasn't the Rapture. You can take God's Word for that."

President Bush has instructed the Department of Homeland Security to investigate the event as some form of supernatural terrorist attack. The FBI is in fact looking closely into reports that a dead Austrian philosopher appeared at the Republican National Convention just scant hours before the event. The philosopher, one Ludwig Wittgenstein, was not only a foreign national and fifty years in the grave, but a Jewish homosexual.

Another mysterious occurrence possibly tied to these strange happenings is the death-by-time-travel of a reclusive New Mexico professor of transition studies named Bill Kaul, who was murdered by a mechanical goat sent back in time from the future around the time of the Austrian philosopher sightings.

"Yeah, see?" President Bob Jones III said. "Evil goats from the future. In the end times our Lord and Savior Jesus Christ set the sheep on his right hand for salvation, and the goats on his left for eternal damnation. Matthew 25:32. It's as plain as day. This is Satan at work, sure as shootin."

Conservative politician Pat Robertson, founder of the Christian Coalition of America, was at first unavailable for comment, and some suspected that he had in fact been "taken up." He was found later in the evening, though, playing the videogame Worms Armageddon in his basement, at home. He'd been so engrossed in the game that he hadn't heard the ruckus.

Related stories: Wittgenstein sighted | Bill Kaul slain

Dear Mr. Rowbum,

Thank you for your interest in Sufi University. We are, of course, delighted to learn that you are giving serious consideration to [attending] [donating to] [applying for a job at] [publishing a lengthy profile of] Sufi University! We hope that the enclosed brochure answers some of your questions.

For the Pretty Darn Good Ayatollah Billdoug (traveling),

Doug Robinson, amanuensis

The Mullah Billdoug reports that he just made a stop in the year 00004.7, New System, or roughly thirty-umpteen bazillion photon years in our future, because he'd gotten word that a certain Austalian platypus might know something about Bill Kaul's evil killer.

At the time gate he found a Temporal Customs Agent blocking his path, checking for contraband.

"Do you have any Plants Fruits Small Animals Liquor Medicine Drugs Uncut Diamonds? How about your health?" she asked. "Any Running Sores Pustules Red Painful Irritations Annoying Coughs Loose Watery BMs?"

"Why yes," Mullah Billdoug smiled, "I have all of those things, and several that you didn't mention."

"Hand them over," the Customs Agent said, trying to look very stern, but recognizing the good Mullah as a renowned time-traveler and secretly feeling quite pleased to be frisking him.

So Mullah Billdoug emptied his robes and duffel. Out tumbled uncut diamonds and rubies and sapphires, and whiskey and rum and beer and heroin and cocaine and marijuana. Out tumbled televisions, radios, boomboxes, and fruit trees, melons, pineapple plants, and kudzu seeds.

Finally Mullah took off his robe completely and turned over his diseases: he gave over his bubonic plague, his polio, his melanomata, his cataracts, his liver disease. He gave over his painful rectal itch, his jock itch, and his seven-year itch. He gave over his annoying smoker's hack. He even threw in his dandruff and a few non-malignant dermatoid fibromata for free.

"Is that all?" asked the agent.

"Well, not really," said the Mullah, "but you really don't want this other."

"Tut tut, my good Mullah," the agent said. "We have rules, you know. Off with it."

The Mullah sighed. "Very well. Here you are. My addictions."

The customs agent gasped. "No! Not that! I didn't mean that!"

Too late.

The Mullah was gone.

There was nothing left but a pile of contraband, an empty duffel, and a robe.

There was an acrid, sulphurous aroma in the air.

"Jesus Christ!" cried out the next passenger in line.

"Not!" said the teenager behind him.

After all that, turns out the platypus in question had nothing of value for the Mullah. The guy he'd heard about had sent a mechanical goat back in time to kill another Bill Kaul. Some radio announcer in one of the Great Lakes states.

While Mullah Billdoug and Bill Kaul are off chasing their several will o' the wisps, following the wind into their particular willows, I thought I'd untie the knot on the mailbag that's been gathering dust over behind the door and see what our fans have been writing.

And oddly enough, what I find is that we have a whole spate of letters from Thomas Pynchon's characters in Gravity's Rainbow. Since this is an unusual enough event to be worthy of notice early on a September's morning, I'll open them first.

The first is from someone named 00000, which is an odd name to say the least. S/he/it writes:

Mullah Billdoug!

Hey, I love your stuff! You're the greatest! Nobody's better than you! I flip over to your blog ten times a day at work, whenever no one's looking. Whenever I don't find a new post, I feel more zeroes forming inside my hollow chest.

I just have one question. Where can I get a copy of Nothing From Nothing? That sounds like a really cool book. I bet it would be right up my alley!

Not just a loyal fan,

00000

Well, 00000, if you'll just set your coordinates dead-center in the Ground Zero Library at Sufi University, you might just find Mullah Billdoug's infamous classic somewhere in the ashes! Thanks for writing, and keep checking us out!

The next letter is from Jessica Swanlake:

My dear Mullah Billdoug,

When David Nixon choreographed Tchaikovsky's ballet for the Ohio Theater in Columbus, why on earth did he set the Russian Dance in the ballroom?

Yours most sincerely,

Jessica Swanlake

Dear Jessica--As you must have noticed if you were in the audience at that breathtaking première, that was the moment at which Odile had to convince Siegfried that the swan who resembled Odette was in actually her, or she, Odile herself. Does this not make more sense now?

Oh, and while we're on the subject, Jules Siegel tells me that you were based on his wife, with whom his best friend Tom Pynchon had a torrid affair. Is that true? That his wife, riding in Pynchon's car, bared her breasts to the passing motorists, and he put that in the novel as something you did? Please tell me this isn't the case.

Yours, etc.

The next letter is from Teddy Bloat, who writes:

Hey Mullah!

Party hearty, dude! Rock on! Light up a bong for me, man! I love ya, but only in a manly RAF sort of way.

Yours forever,

Teddy B., Commander, RAF

Dear Commander Bloat: Were you ever even in the RAF? Does the RAF even have commanders?

I'm pawing through the piles, here, looking for one from Tyrone Slothrop, but not having much luck. Unless this hasty penciled scribble on a torn dirty old yellowed envelope flap, saying only FUCK YOU, is from the good Lieutenant?

The last one is from Roger Mexico, Jessica's poor jilted lover:

Dear Mullah Billdoug, I sure feel sorry for your agent. You're giving away all your best material for FREE! (notice the allcaps and the exclamation mark - that gives it that extra umph.)

I'm glad that guy is dead. He was probably a Nazi sympathizer, hence his appearance at the RNC.

Well, Roger, if that's the kind of bitterness you're carrying around, I can see why Jessica left you! Maybe you should think about getting some therapy, or at least some psychotropic drugs?

And let me assure you that these posts are neither free nor "all our best material." You're paying for them, indirectly, with your cookies, which we sell to all the Fortune 500 corporations for (as the Mullah would say) oodles of moolah. As for it being ALL of our best material, well--let's just say we've held out one last bit of good material, which we're saving for tomorrow, or maybe the next day. Check back!

Oh, one last thing, while I've got you. That pubic hair you found between your teeth, two weeks after Jessica left you? How can you be so sure it was hers? How do you know it wasn't, say, mine?

Yours in Condoleeza,

Doug Robinson

That's all I've got time for now, folks. I've got some whaling to do!

Mulla Billdoug sends his greetings to all his gentle readers in August 2004 from the distant future, hoping that all is well with you in what for you is the present and for him is ancient history.

No luck finding Bill Kaul's killer. Yet. The search continues up hill and down dale in the great rocking sine waves of time, cresting into yet greener futures.

The Mullah is happy to report while the search proceeds, however, that the future is full of surprises. For example, contrary to popular belief, all food is eaten in pill form. All cars do fly, piloted by robots. And Chuck DeNomolos is the situp champion of the 26th century.

Oh, and in case you're wondering, the intrepid Mullah passed the Christian heaven eons since, spotted his old friend Bill Kaul in line, and waved a little, in a cosinish sort of way, but had no hope that Bill (whose hair had grown prodigiously, and seemed to cover his entire face) could see him. He has every hope to swing by the Muslim heaven any eyeblink now.

It was a sad day for the Mullah Billdoug today.

Professor Emil Wilhelm "Bill" Kaul, the Mullah's long-time friend and spiritual advisor, who was recently appointed to a coveted professorship in the newly created Department of Transition Studies at the Canter and Lope de Vega campus of the University of Tierra del Fuego, was cut down in his prime on the floor of the Republican National Convention in New York City.

Eyewitnesses to the slaying told police that the goat Professor Kaul was herding suddenly "went berserk," leaping across four or five rich middle-aged white guys to sink his teeth into Kaul's bared throat. Kaul died gurgling something in German that sounded like "Worüber man nicht sprechen kann, darüber muss man schweigen."

Police sources refuse to release an English translation of Kaul's last words, saying only "Sorry, there's nothing that can be said about any of that."

Preliminary police reports have found that the "goat," tracked down and captured by crack RNC security guards, was not a goat at all but some sort of highly evolved murder mechanism from the future, apparently sent back in time to take out Professor Kaul.

Dean Bernardo T. Wockle of the College of Transition Studies at Tierra del Fuego refused to comment on possible transition-related research Professor Kaul might have engaged in that could have provoked the time-travel attack. But unnamed sources close to the dean hinted that it had something to do with cheese.

The Mullah Billdoug plans to attend the nondemoniational memorial service planned for Professor Kaul on the weekend, then travel ahead in time to capture and spin the miscreant responsible for the dastardly murder.

Just found this article in this morning's Sufi Science Monitor (www.sufiscim.com):

Republican National Convention, New York.--Dervish delegates at yesterday evening's opening ceremonies reported repeated sightings of a delegate from New Mexico who bore an uncanny resemblance to the late Austrian philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889-1951), inventor of the philosophical ladder that automatically kicks itself out from under one's feet once one has reached the top rung, and, some say, himself a secret Sufi.

Other delegates scoffed at these reports, urging the dervishes making them to "stop spinning around for god's sakes, you're making me dizzy," and noting that Wittgenstein was "not merely deader than a doornail but red to boot, and the last person you would ever find at a Republican National Convention."

"Red" refers to rumors that Wittgenstein, mostly thought of as an arch-conservative in his lifetime, may actually have been the famed spymaster who recruited Kim Philby and other notorious KGB spies at Trinity College in the 1930s.

However, other commentators were quick to note that the Republicans were working particularly hard this year to make their delegates (in the words of Paulinus Pollsby of the Daily Gazette) "a little less white, a little less male, a little less rich, and a little less middle-aged," and could well have recruited a dead, possibly red, and certainly gay Austrian philosopher to attend the convention just for "good populist theater."

Republican National Committee chair Ed Gillespie was also quick to deny rumors that the "Ludwig Wittgenstein" being spotted at the Convention was actually Transition Studies Professor Bill Kaul in disguise. "We wouldn't let that f**king Kaul into the RNC in any disguise," Gillespie twinkled.

How can some guy that claims to be "Bill" post as "Doug"? a student asks.

Quite simple. Here at Advanced Mullaesthetics, we have a device called the Noumenal Uvulator. 12 volts of electricity generated from two beard hairs stuck in a lemon, and applied to the post through the uvulator, creates an amorphous amorous identity ether fog which allows Doug to be Bill or Bill to be Doug, or both to be neither (nor nether) depending on the weather at our branch campus in Tierra del Fuego and the size of their fires at the time of post. It is fully adjustable and available in the bookstore in school colors.

Science marches on. Mullah Billdoug will be attending the RNC as a guestblogger and spiritual advisor to Ralph Reed, and I'm sure there will be dervishes galore as the gong of The Age of Reason is muted by the cries of souls being saved and palms stigmatized in the sweet name of Compassion.

The Smegma Studies Program at Sufi U's effusive College of Pestilence announced the addition of an adjunct mullah today, the not-quite-grand, but Pretty Darn Good Ayatollah Billdoug. Among Billdoug's obsessions are wet orange things, hawking sticky phlegm for distance and accuracy, and making sandwiches in the dark...

I am Bill. Doug and I have been friends, if that's the right word, for what? 14 years? In that time, we have exchanged many many words and absoutely no body fluids, except for that one time in the cafeteria. Rumors to the contrary are the work of jealous lovers. I mean, regarding the exchange of words. He asked if I would like to post to this site, and so I am doing so... but this could be dangerous, even explosive. Control is not one of my more developed traits, especially when writing or walking. I gave up all other activities several years ago, including thinking, fucking, reading and motioning for more.

So be forewarned, readers. Or foreskinned. Or fore and aft, often.

The way I understand Sufi U can best be summed up by an incident that happened near the cafeteria, where the faculty, staff and students gather at odd times to sculpt cheeses, on a biweekly basis, only odder. We had a fine gouda bust of Edward II going, and we were set to top it off with a bandana made of gooey muenster, when damned if--from somewhere over to the top left by the shrine to Richard Burton's liver--came a ripping fart, a regular sphincter horn, complete with a fine mist of yellowish malodorous gas. We changed classes immediately and washed out our robes, taking care to save the lint.

That's what Sufi U does for development and karmic insurance.

Read story

Mullah Billdoug says: don't try this at home. He tried to fuck God once, and the Almighty backhanded him into last week. Turns out God don't appreciate being snuck up on from behind. And he don't like fuckin. Of any kind. Even of defenseless animals, or gay lovers, or (ick) women. (God hates women the most, because they're so wet. Our God is a desert god, who loves dryness. Sand, and long dry sermons, and such.)

This is the subject of the Mullah's short story "Elijah and Jezebel," available here. It's a pretty dry story, and has the Almighty's stamp of approval all over it, so you can hardly even see the words.

Mullah Billdoug was asked by the administration of Sufi University to create a university press.

Mullah Billdoug laughed, not just because there is no administration at Sufi U, but because laughter is just about the only plank of reality on which Sufi U is built.

The wise student attends Sufi U and studies diligently, and falls farther and farther behind. The average student attends Sufi U and parties and crams for tests, and just barely keeps from flunking out. The foolish student hears about Sufi U and laughs aloud, and so graduates at the head of her, his, or its class. That's mostly what Sufi U is. If there were no laughter, there'd be no Sufi U.

But the administration persisted in the face of the Mullah's scoffing, as administrations will, even at Sufi U.

The Mullah Billdoug then protested that he was illiterate, and couldn't possibly make decisions about book-publishing. But the administration replied that illiteracy had never been an insuperable obstacle for editorial staffs even at more traditional university presses, and shouldn't be a deal-breaker at Sufi UP.

So, reluctantly, the Mullah agreed.

The administration said they wanted to see the first Sufi UP book released the following day. The Mullah Billdoug knew this was impossible, but wasn't surprised at the request, because at Sufi U everything is impossible.

So Mullah Billdoug went home feeling dejected and used, which is a common feeling at traditional universities too, and, like a true Sufi master, tried to make himself feel better by kicking the cat.

The cat, however, was one of the first graduates of Sufi U and so was much smarter than Mullah Billdoug, and avoided his kick easily, with the result that Mullah Billdoug's foot crashed through the wall and exposed a gallon ziplock bag of marijunana between the studs.

Then he knew just what to do.

He took the baggie to a student he knew that was flunking out of the Pharmacy school, and offered him the weed if he would just follow the Mullah around for the next few hours and jot down his many wise sayings. The student agreed instantly, and lit up.

Well, needless to say, the Mullah never says anything wise. He mostly just grumbles and whines and complains about how others treat him and the unfairness of life in general. But since that kind of grumbling makes up at least half of all instruction on traditional university campuses, he figured that a book of grumbles might be just the thing to inaugurate Sufi UP's publishing venture.

Fortunately, however, the student was so high on weed that he heard everything--not just the grumbles, but the stomach rumbles; not just the whines, but the high-pitched hum of beta-blockers in synaptic uptake. And he put all of it into the book. Stayed up all night, smoking and writing, until the day dawned and the baggie was empty and the book was full.

The student passed out, smiling, while his hand was still reaching out, beautifully, to click Print. So the cat jumped up and did the rest. When the Mullah came in to see how Sufi UP's first book was coming along, it was finished, bound and shrink-wrapped, with only a few kitty teeth marks in one corner. Its title was Nothing From Nothing, which the Mullah thought would do as well as any other.

With great ceremony, then, which went largely unnoticed, except by the pigeons and squirrels, Mullah Billdoug walked the book over to the library, presented it to the freshman working the circulation desk, who happened to be the smartest librarian in the building. She processed the book, assigned it a Dewey decimal code in the high 000's, and walked it up to the stacks herself. Mullah Billdoug followed, intrigued.

"What's that rustling noise?" she asked the Mullah as she slid the book onto the shelf.

"I don't--" the Mullah began, but couldn't finish, because before their eyes and behind their ears, at that moment every book in the library collapsed into a little pile of grayish acidic dust.