The thunder of Zeus be upon me this time, mortals.  I have failed you.  And I’m a big enough god to admit it. It is difficult for me to do this, but my sponsor, Demeter, has convinced me that the path to recovery begins with honesty.

And so I must confess that while the ships of men were engaged in a life-or-death struggle on my seas, I was nowhere to be found.  In fact, I only knew about it after the battle was done.  The fact is, mortals, that I, the great and terrible Poseidon, was on a bit of a bender.  I had drunk deep from the nectar of Bacchus and breathed heavily from the smoke of the oracle, and was pretty much out to lunch the whole time.

The divine truth is this: I have a problem.

O, cursed fate!  That this immortal life should yield such despair, such weakness!  I used to be bigger than Jesus.  I used to be Jesus.  Men worshipped me, prayed to me.  Lived and died at the mercy of my whims.  And then, in an eye-blink of eternity, it was all suddenly gone, leaving me holding the bag.  (I keep the fates in a bag since my divorce.)

Then, the millennia of waiting.  The silence, the banal, evil, crushing silence of mankind.  Some of we Olympians began to doubt the very existence of your souls, leaving a great void in our spiritual life.  For what meaning can there be to a world of clockmakers without clocks?  What is a god without his creations?  If men did not exist, it would become necessary to invent them.  And who wants to go through that whole business again?

But I chose faith.  I chose to see what was clear before my eyes, that your souls were indeed there—only astray.  Your prayers were not absent; they were simply directed elsewhere.  And with a little patience, a little grace, I might hear them again.

I wish I could say that my faith has been unwavering.  But I have been tested, mortals.  And your silence fills me with a sadness so deep I can only fill it with wine, and an anger so hot I can only cool it with bong water.  I am omnipotent, mortals, but I’m not perfect!

So I was not there to see your standoff.  But it wouldn’t have mattered anyway.  I was not called upon.  No prayers reached me.  Even in a crisis on the seas seen round the world, no one saw me, the one true god of the deep.

But I do not ask for your pity, mortals.  I still rule the oceans.  I am still master of all things wet.  I still carry your pitiful lives in my hands.  I am a great and terrible god, and you shall soon learn to worship me as of old!

In the meantime, though, my name is Poseidon, and I’m an addict.

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals! Your leaders have announced a great summit to address global warming this coming May.It is obvious that they intend to seek an audience with I, Poseidon, the immortal deity of the deep.

Although this post-industrial sorcery has left me sweaty and bloated, I am still omnipotent, mortals. I carry your fate in my hands, your life on my back. Yet still my hands go unwashed, and my back remains oily. Between tanker spills and pattern dryness, my godly visage has become worn and weary.

So it is with an all-powerful spirit of cautious optimism that I greet this news. I need none of your sympathy, but it would be nice if I had it. An occasional goat sacrifice might go down pretty well, too. And if your weak, flesh-bound leaders wish to meet me halfway, I may be willing to grant you a merciful passage on this salty earth.

Fools! You have engaged in the terrible heresy of monotheistic cults! You have abandoned the graven images that once granted you glory in battle and plenty in peace! You have worshipped a false God, a betrayal that would surely have led you to a chalice of hemlock if the great Pericles still reigned!

Socrates. Plato. Aristotle. Do you believe that these great men simply got it wrong when they worshipped me as a true and glorious god? Do you consider yourselves to be wiser than they? Pitiful mortals, your planet burns! Christianity, Islam, Hinduism, Confucianism, Buddhism, Sikhism, Judaism…In the words of Phil, that shiny-headed heir to Hippocrates: How’s that working for you?

What you mortals need is some of that ancient time religion: the faith that those philosopher kings and Mediterranean island-dwellers of 3000 years past knew to be true.

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals!  The hour of gloom has arrived!

But fear not, mortals.  For in your darkest hour—8:30 to 9:30 pm last Saturday—I, the great and terrible Poseidon, was completely available to you.  Should you have desired my presence or guidance, say in matters of religious worship, I would have been able and willing to oblige you.

And yet I received no prayers.  No worship, no devotion, no thoughts, no afterthoughts.  It is as though you want your triremes to be sunk!

Fools!  Do you not sense my power?  Do you not believe we immortals to be guiding the hand of fate?  Do you not see that I am as good a god as any?

My seas are rising, mortals.  My fury boils the very oceans.  So you find an hour of night to leave dark in my honor.  And I see the great landmarks of the world grow dim: the Eiffel Tower in Paris, the Empire State Building in New York, the dome of St. Peters in the Vatican—that crackpot outpost of newfangled monotheism.  (Give me a good Parthenon any day.)

But your hearts weren’t in it.  You believed Earth Hour to be a symbol of the need for conservation.  But you did not believe me to be the symbol of that symbol.

I cannot go on waiting by the phone for you to pray, mortals.  There are better things for we omnipotent deities to do with our Saturday nights.  Athena has been calling again.  I still enjoy being with her, but all she ever wants to do is talk about the old days, and that’s just not constructive for me at this point.  She acts as though we should forget ourselves because we’ve been forgotten.  That feels like a cop-out to me.

I refuse to move on, mortals, for my hour will come!

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals! The President has declared energy reform to be nonnegotiable. And yet I, the great god of the sea, wait for the prayer phone to ring.

The ringtone to my prayer phone is the sirens’ song.  It’s been two thousand years, mortals, and I’m beginning to think they will not sing for me.

How you have lost your way, seafarers.  How your monotheism and scientific revolution and liberal democratic government have forsaken we Olympians.  Do you no longer see our greatness?  Has my eternal glory become somehow less eternal?

You wish to end your dependence on foreign oil, curb the effects of global warming, and create jobs for recession-weary Americans?  Begin with the gods, mortals.  Begin by rekindling the millennia-old flame of my celebrity.  Pray to the king among kings, the lord of the fjord, the god with the most cod.

I carried the triremes to Troy, mortals.  I brought Ulysses home eventually.  The great Pericles himself kneeled before my image and worshipped me, before dying of an entirely unrelated plague.  I bring fortune and glory wherever I go.

Reform your pitiful energy laws if you so choose, mortals.  Tentatively begin to alter the course of the behemoth oil tanker known as America.  But know that my depths surround you, and that my seas are ever rising.  And recognize that whether or not you worship me, my godly power and everlasting fame are not negotiable.

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals!  I, the great and terrible Poseidon, can supply you with boundless alternative energy. Cleaner than clean coal.  Less wasteful than nuclear waste.  And with more career peaks than oil and Sylvester Stallone put together.

I offer you the limitless, otherworldly power of an ancient celestial god.  I offer you myself.

Another comeback lies before me, mortals, but only if you come back to me.  Audiences may be fickle, but the glory of we Immortal Ones remains.  And like I keep telling my agent, we just need to give the people a reason.

You are beginning to sense that the manipulation of your planet’s resources through traditional scientific means will not bring you the favor or the riches you seek.  The truth you all choose to forget is that we great Olympian gods are the real guardians of fortune.  And fortune cannot be taken by force: siphoned out of the bowels of the earth or captured from the sun’s rays or milled out of the very wind itself.  It must be given to you—by me.  And I’m not giving it up without a little respect.

You would not ask Brad Pitt to perform in films without the adoring attention of his fans.  You would not expect Britney Spears to sing without recording the minutiae of her life for all to see.  And you should not expect this great deity to provide you with a renewable energy source without affirming your devotion.

So pursue the blind alleys of witchcraft and sorcery you call science, if you so choose.  Ignore, if you will, the great passions and intricate scheming of gods that determine your earthly fate.  Pretend that you are not subject to my ever-changing moods, that it is not my anger that clouds the skies, my fury that propels the winds, and my tears that rain down upon the earth when I look back upon the glory days of old.

Foolish mortals!  Your quest for cold fusion will be met only with the cold fury of the gods if the flame of my fame is allowed to go out.

Worship me, and you shall be energized!

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals!  Blue war shall be waged on Greenpeace! For I am Poseidon, the great azure god, and my appeal is far greater than They of the Many Beards and Ponytails!

I grow weary of your foolishness, mortals.  You same creatures who once recognized me as your most terrible god now live in a prison of fear and reason known as environmental activism.

‘Over eighty percent of the ocean’s big fish are gone,’ you pitifully lament at your poorly attended meetings over Styrofoam cups of stale coffee.  ‘Overfishing threatens the balance and plenty of the ecosystem,’ you wail at disinterested passers-by as you clutch at your clipboards.  ‘The glaciers are melting faster than even the most pessimistic models have projected,’ you tell people shrilly at dinner parties as you munch on the meatless side dishes forced into service as a main course.

O you fickle fools!  Can you not comprehend the emptiness of your grassroots struggle?  You once believed me to be the master of your fates.  Now you believe that you know better, even as the seas rise furiously around you.

Your faith is misplaced, mortals.  This rigorous process of scientific inquiry allied with a solemn respect for nature only serves to anger me further.  There shall be no peace.  I desire no peace.  I shall reclaim my fame though war—publicity war!

And when all your greens have turned blue, and your men are weeping, and your women are awkwardly consoling them with guilty disgust in their hearts, you shall know that I am the greatest of all celestial celebrities.

I am forgotten, mortals, but not dead.  I shall be publicized, I shall be worshipped, and I shall be remembered!

The thunder of Zeus be upon you, O mortals!  Australia, the Great Desert, burns!

For I am Poseidon, master of the seas, lord of all things wet, and I have returned to claim my rightful place as a famous god.

I have been patient these past millennia, mortals.  I have awaited your worship, your prayers, your goodly sacrifices.  I have activated a Facebook account and long expected your friend requests.  And yet it appears that you have chosen to forget me: great, godly, terrible Poseidon.

Your ignorance has sparked my anger, your insolence has kindled it, and your arrogance has set it all ablaze!  The wildfires of Australia are merely emblematic of the awesome metaphorical heat of my rage.

I once believed my celebrity was assured.  You knew that the triremes sailed only at my pleasure.  You sensed how the smooth passage of your trade or the glorious victories of your wars were the gifts of my benevolence.  I was some deity.

And now I am all but forgotten.  Admired perhaps, but never loved.  Along came all those younger, next-best-thing gods, with their fresh visages and hip new centers of geopolitical power, and you fickle worshippers tossed me out like so much omnipotent garbage.

A few thousands years pass, and now look at me.  Look at me, mortals!  I’ve gained weight.  All that ice I fought so hard to keep on in the early days is turning into water.  I feel warm all the time.  There’s a patch of garbage the size of Texas on my back that I should really get looked at.  I’ve got higher mercury than Jeremy Piven—but he’s the one David Mamet makes a joke about.

Not worth a joke, no, alas, no!  Certainly not worth a sacrifice.  And it turns out, not even worth a decent movie.  (If you ask me, Wolfgang Peterson has just been phoning it in since Das Boot.)

At one point, I caught myself thinking: What happened?  I used to be such a big god.

And then I understood.  I’m still big.  It’s the religions that got small.

Mark me now, all; sailors, potters, philosophers, dramatists all: I, Poseidon, immortal Olympian and architect of fate, will no longer suffer your betrayal.  I will see my horse sacrifices performed with all due ceremonial ritual—in ancient Greek—or the fury of my comeback will know no bounds on this earth.

Australia is beginning to understand what you will all know soon enough: the inconvenient truth that I, Poseidon, have returned!

DAYTONA, FL – NASCAR’s most iconic race ended with a rain-out yesterday afternoon, despite pit crews making multiple sacrifices to the rain gods.

With 48 of the 200 laps to go, NASCAR judges had to stall the event, hoping that the rain would pass.

Pit crews went to work making sacrifices to appease the gods and end the rain.  Bulls, goats, and geese, are traditionally kept on hand for just this purpose.  Kevin Harvick’s crew had a full grown bull roasting on a makeshift altar in 3.22.57 seconds.

“There was some confusion as to which rain god we should sacrifice to” said Harvick’s crew chief James Hickerton.  “We decided on Poseidon, even though he’s technically a sea god, due to his recognizability.”

“Once we saw the rain wouldn’t be passing over in a couple minutes, we sent word to the teams to make sacrifice to their divine sponsors,” said NASCAR official Robert Biggle.

Teams offered up prayers to dozens of gods to please remove the rains so the auto race could resume.

These pit crews were fighting against the influence of Matt Kenseth’s team.  Kenseth was in the lead when the race was stalled, so his pit crew tried desperately to have the race called off.  The team sacrificed three bulls, two chickens and one unruly spectator donated by security while leading several VIP fans in a rain dance.

The rain kept coming and Kenseth was declared the winner of this year’s Daytona 500.  “I’d like to thank my pit crew for dancing so hard,” he said, “my wife for agreeing to give our son in exchange for this, and to the great Sky Father for making it all happen.”