Oakland's Inferno - Part II

Bet you thought I wasn't coming back! Well I did. Now let's continue the story:

As Obi-Wan and I stood on the edge of the river Acheron, a boat drifted towards us, captained by a solitary figure. "Charon!" my master called out, "come. You must ferry me and my companion to the other side."

"I can take you, Jedi. But you're companion still has a living soul, and cannot pass here," replied Charon.

"What if I knocked him unconscious, would that do?" replied my master.

"Yeah, I'll let that slide."

"Wait, wha-" I started to say, and then world went black.

I awoke with the back of my head throbbing. Rubbing it, I looked around, and saw the old Jedi. "Ugh, what was that about? You could have warned me, you know." Obi-Wan looked at me and simply raised his eyebrows. "Well where are we anyhow?" I asked him.

"We are in Limbo, the outermost circle of Hell. Here reside those who were virtuous in life, but cannot go to Heaven because nobody dumped some water on their heads. Even those who could not possibly have been baptized because they lived before the ritual was invented, or come from a galaxy far, far away, must linger here for eternity. There's not a lot of logic to it. Kind of like on a boat with women and children first. I mean why should they..."

"Did you just quote Arrested Development?" I asked, stunned.

"Yeah," he replied. "We're dead, so we don't have any responsibilities, and we've been here for eternity, so we have a lot of free time. The invention of the TV has really helped. Anyway, let's keep moving, we have a long way yet to go."

As we walked along, Obi-Wan pointed out the great thinkers of history, like Socrates and Plato, Euclid and Archimedes. I longed to talk to them, but they were in the middle of an episode of How I Met Your Mother.

At last we came to an imposing figure. "This is Minos, the judge of the dead. Long ago he was the king of Crete. Now he decides which circle a sinner will spend eternity in. Come, let us speak to him," my guide said to me as we approached Minos.

"Halt!" he cried out. "I have been on the lookout for two souls of your description, one living, the other dead. You cannot pass here!"

"We are not the souls you are looking for," Obi-Wan said with the wave of his hand.

"You are not the souls I am looking for!" boomed Minos.

"We can go about our business," replied the old Jedi.

"You can go about your business," said the judge of the dead.

And we passed deeper into Hell without further molestation.

"That was AWESOME!" I shouted when we had gotten out of earshot of the ancient king.

"Just an old trick I knew," Obi-Wan said, and winked at me knowingly.

Tune in next time to find out what horrors lay ahead in the depths of Hell!

Pat is Crazy.

Tiny Paper Plane

Oakland's Inferno - Part I

Well boys and girls, I've been gone a long time. Where have I been, you ask? Let me tell you, it is quite the (completely true) story:

One day I was out camping in the woods of Minnesota. As is tradition on camping trips everywhere, I had been drinking. Stumbling through the woods looking for a place to relieve myself, I came to a clearing. Suddenly I heard a fierce growling coming from the long grass. There a saw a leopard crouched and ready to pounce. From the left I saw movement and when I turned, a mighty lion did I behold. The breaking of a branch behind me alerted me to a giant she-wolf approaching, cutting off my retreat to camp.

"What the shit?" I muttered to myself, "was there a breakout at the zoo or something?" I could no longer tell whether I was urinating from the pressure on my bladder or the terror in my heart. Without zipping up, I fought the urge to run and slowly backed away from the three beasts. As I turned to run in the only direction left open to me, a root grabbed my foot and I fell to the ground. When I looked up I beheld a sight even more unbelievable than the previous three.



"Help me Obi-wan Kenobi, you're my only hope!" I blurted out, not knowing what else to say.

"Relax, son. Fear not, the beasts will not hurt you, but you cannot go back to camp that way. You must follow me down through the depths of the earth. It is the only way." And with that he led me through the dark and tangled woods, away from the three vicious animals.

"All hope abandon, ye who enter in!" read the sign above the gate to which Old Ben had led me. "Are you sure this is the right way, master?" I asked.

"Trust your instincts," he replied, "or better yet, trust mine." Thus we entered into that horrible place that only a handful of living souls have ever seen: Hell.

On the other side of the gate I beheld a vast crowd of people. All of them were facing a giant white flag, and appeared to be saluting. "Who are these people, and what are they doing?" I asked the old jedi.

"In life, these people were neither good nor bad. They had no causes that drove them, and so now, they must salute this flag every day. The rest of the day, they pretty much just sit around and play Xbox," replied Obi-wan as we walked through the crowd. At length, we arrived on the shore of a great river. "This is Acheron, the river that divides Hell proper from this outer region."

And so I stood at the edge of hell, not knowing what lay ahead, but not able to turn back. I trusted that my guide, the old jedi Obi-wan Kenobi, would lead me through safely, just as he had led Luke safely to Alderaan (it wasn't his fault that it had been blown up when they arrived). Tune in next time to find out what happened next!

Pat is crazy.