Dear Swami:

You say you are from Oklahoma, and yet on your tapes you speak with an East Indian accent. I'm curious about this. How is it possible?

Hugh Vern De Wright
Natick, Massachusetts

Dear Hugh:

True, I am from Oklahoma. But as a teenager, I became quite attracted to the opposite sects. I came from a Methodist family, and I found myself drawn to an Oklahoma swami who called himself the Yogi From Muskogee (I have since inherited this title). I first met him when he did a yoga demonstration for my Boy Scout troop, and taught us how to tie ourselves into twelve different knots. I quickly embraced the path of the yogi and mastered many advanced techniques, including levitation. In fact, one of my favorite pranks in high school was to levitate over the crowd at football games and moon the coach. I was the only kid in the history of my high school to get suspended for being suspended. My accelerated path to yogihood hit a dead end, however, when my kundalini exploded in a crowded department store. No one else was injured, but I was left with a permanent East Indian accent.

*****

Dear Swami:

How do you feel about same sex marriage?

Dewey Chother
Lafayette, Louisiana

Dear Dewey:

I think same sex marriages are very damaging to our social fabric. I mean, think about it. Imagine all these married couples having the same sex all the time. Week in and week out, the same sex over and over. Now you know that is bound to get boring, and couples are more likely to go out looking for extra-marital sex. Before you know it, the marriage breaks apart. This search for different sex is the second leading cause of divorce (marriage being the first). So I say the most lasting marriages are different sex marriages — different sex, same partner.

*****

Dear Swami:

We've all been told that God created the world in seven days, and I'm wondering if He's done anything since then. Nietsche proclaimed that God is dead, and I would hate to have to believe that. Can you enlighten us, Swami?

Malik E. Fawcett
Hamtramck, Michigan

Dear Malik:

The FUNdamentalist scriptures tell us that on the Eighth Day, God saw that the world was funny and created laughter. He's been enjoying the show ever since. And He figured since we were humoring Him, He would humor us. So He gave us the gift of laughter so that we could see the world from His perspective. Because to God, it's all a joke. What does He care? Does God have to get up every morning and go to work? No, His work is done. He's only worked one week in the entire history of existence! Those people who insist God is dead, they are wrong. He's retired. He turned the whole business over to His Son about 2,000 years ago. And if I'm not mistaken, that means we own a share.

Being retired, the Creator sits around and watches us on Funniest Home Videos all day. And because we FUNdamentalists value His gift of laughter so much, we want to humor Him just as He has humored us. That is why the devout FUNdamentalist stops all other activities to play several times a day. This devotional state of playing to God — we call it "plair" — means surrendering to the Farce and offering oneself up as entertainment. Plair is not a purely altruistic activity, however. There's an old saying that idle hands do the devil's work, and God is no exception. Being retired and all that with lots of time on His hands, He has little else to do but think up practical jokes all day. FUNdamentalists believe that God is less likely to impose His brand of amusement on those busy amusing themselves. It is during these moments of fervently playing that FUNdamentalists have been able to feel the levitational pull to counteract all of the gravity in life, and been able to see things from the Creator's recliner right in front of that big screen TV — and clearly hear the laugh track.