Devil

Lucifer, having sinned, was banished from Paradise to the Nether Region. On his descent, he paused for a moment, then went back and approached the Almighty. »I just had a thought,« he said.

»Go on,« God allowed.

»I understand that you are about to create mankind.«

»What of it?« replied God.

»He will need laws....« Lucifer mused.

»Wretch!« thundered He. »You have committed the most grievous sin, yet you ask if you can write mankind's laws?«

»Beg pardon,« bowed Lucifer. »I only ask that he be allowed to write them himself.«

Why do they have angel-food cake and devil's food cake. Is that what these supreme beings actually eat? Probably thay have some ephemeral afterlife version of these cakes, which are, like, 10,000 times better than our finite, earthly version.They probably have everyone go to the breakroom, sing "Happy Birthday, Dear Gabriel, or Beelzebub, or whatever, and have the most delicious, most badass cake ever. Cake so good that it would kill you or me. Well, I really like chocolate, so I guess I know where I'M going. I just hope they have baseball.

The word 'devil' spells 'lived' backwards. Is this a reference to what poor old Lucifer did before he fell – or an intimation of what he could do again, if only he could turn himself around.

gradually I came to wonder what might be my place in that city on the strange plateau betwixt strange peaks. at first content to view the scene as an all-observant uncorporeal presence, I now desired to define my relation to it, and to speak my mind amongst the grave men who conversed each day in the public squares. I said to myself, "this is no dream, for by what means can I prove the greater reality of that other life in the house of stone and brick south of the sinister swamp and the cemetery on the low hillock, where the pole star peeps into my north window each night?

what does it mean to live in the shadow of devil mountain? we watch the sun fall behind the devil's shoulder. the sky glows red, deepens to purple and the shadow swallows the mountain, setting the people free.

When bored in a bar, Frank usually talked to the bartender.

»Why hello,« said Frank. »You look like a fine Fonzi guy.«

Frank looked into the mirror above the bar. The horizon stretched over his shoulder. David Bowie's face appeared and then dissolved in the low light, until nothing was left but Bowie's snaggle tooth.

»Now this,« said Frank, raising his glass full of blue Newton's Apple, »is living.«