So I’ve been in the biz’ for about ten thousand years now. To be honest it’s getting a little dull. I’ve heard all their catch phrases: Pleeeeeease don’t take me! I’m too young to die! What about all my precious money?! Oh, why have I wasted my life?! Bah! As though the accomplishments of a body in life have any bearing on the death that we all face. Eventually even I, Death, will succumb to the inexplicable entropy that gnaws away at the universe like a vicious dog, driving us all, spinning, to the apex – The One Great Death of All Deaths.

Now I’m depressed… I’ve no reason to dwell on such madness. Sometimes I think I’d like to just stop, smell the flowers. Roses particularly. Although I enjoy daisies as well, and I suppose violets are nice, too, poppies… Of course, heh, the flowers tend to wilt when I’m around. That’s why I like plastic flowers best, though they are cursed with sandpaper leaves, or better yet the immortal glass rose sprayed in crimson and ebony green. I could have real flowers frozen with nitroglycerin – so fragile. Heh, come to think of it –heh, heh – I once met a young man who died swallowing nitroglycerin on a dare in his science class! AP science class; supposedly containing the higher educated students! Ha! Oh, I relish the look that oaf had on his face when he saw me. And his teacher! The poor man walked out of the room for one second and all Hell broke loose, but when he saw his student dead, heh, he almost laughed! And I don’t blame him. I’m certain it was a joy comparable to the soul’s first cry as it is freed from its corporal prison to drop that dunce from the grading curve.

That’s the best, well, the only perk to the vocation of Death – the people you meet. Elvis Presley, Princess Diana, Abraham Lincoln, Adolf Hitler, and Chris Farley. Chris Farley, what a delightful riot. He helps pass the lonely hours I must spend in the Underworld, when Time halts the planets moving for a while to allow me the time I need to complete all the damned paperwork involved with death (its not as easy as it looks, I feel like a damned accountant sometimes). And Rodney Dangerfield, recently deceased, poor man – and Andy Coffman, too, they really crack me up.

A note concerning the demise of Mr. Farley. While I do find death by food, the most basic element needed to sustain life, is delicious ironic, I do feel sorry for the poor fellow as I would not want to die that way myself.

Cancer. AIDS. Leprosy. This is a messy business. Ten millenia of hard labor with the post-living has given me more humility that, I’m sorry to say, surpasses Management’s, uh, “concern” for humanity. I consider myself lucky to live in the shelter of immortality (well, almost) but I too long for rest. Here’s an interesting fact: all around the world, at least one person dies every three seconds. Three seconds! Why if I didn’t exist in the 12th Dimension we’d have an awful lot of traffic clogging up the cosmos, and its still a bloody race every time a body drops. I don’t see how Management expects one deity to get it all done. Management put four of us on the Weather Management Team. Where’s my team? Sure would be nice if I had some lower deities to boss around for a change.

Speaking of which, I’ve been considering making a few changes in the routine (that is if Management can pull His head out of His Ass for five seconds). I never understood why in Hades I should have to wear all black, not to mention a hood. Being Death, why should I have to suffer anonymity when all living beings will eventually come to know me? Its hyprocacsy, veritable idiocy! Why I ought to be seen in rosy reds or better yet ivory white. Perceived as a threat I’m best suited, only suited, to usher the next Joseph Stalin into the Fiery Pit.

Unfortunately, even if I do change, I doubt it will dispel all the bad press that swirls around my name. I’m not a bad deity, honestly, I’m not. I hope you’ve perceived this by now. Some may argue that my sense of humor is twisted, sinister even, but is it such a crime to be optimistic about the occupation I was given? None of us living in the 12th Dimension wanted the job of being Death. It was a necessary evil and a most undesirable position at that. The job of Death is equivalent in pleasure and importance to that of a high school janitor and like janitors I never receive any praise or credit either!

Time thinks clairvoyance makes him high and mighty, but before Management appointed him he was the biggest dunce of us all. If he were mortal he’d have been held back four years in the fifth grade and dropped out of high school by sixteen to smoke pot and become the world’s fattest human being. Then there’s Nature, Mother Nature as you so lovingly call her. Yet no hippie in the world has ever dared questioned the relevance of the platypus. That monstrosity was created in her younger days, but unfortunately she’s gone completely mad as of recent.

Oh festering psychosis, I’m late for another appointment. Anyway, thanks for listening, but now its time to go.

By the way, when we get to the Underworld, you can just call me Rodger.