War in Heaven: The Barbecue Battles

There's been a lot of talk about a vengeful weather god recently. And yesterday as I watched the rain pour down and thought about the steak in the fridge that I had been planning to barbecue for dinner that night, I cursed him under my breath.

When I picked up a new gas cylinder for the BBQ, the rain was pelting down. "There's no way you're having a barbie tonight," the guy said handing me a full cylinder. But an hour later, the rain had temporarily cleared.

So I defied the weather god, calling on the meat god to protect me and restrain the vengeful weather god while I cooked my steak. The grill slowly heated and the rain held off. Even the wind held off as I carefully cooked my steak to moist pink perfection.

A few times a couple of stray drops of rain started to fall, but I invoked the god of meat again and chastised the weather god for interfering with my offering to the meat god, and each time the drops stopped again.

Once I had finished cooking my steak, I took it inside and ate it as the wind blew up again. But the god of meat held back the rain until the BBQ had cooled enough for me to put the cover back on.

It would be in very bad taste to question the levels of vegetarianism in the areas affected by the earthquake and tsunamis, but in the light of these empirical facts about the relative potency of the gods of weather and meat, it is hard to avoid.

The actual steak wasn't very good though. So the meat god let me down in the final analysis - which is just like a god, so maybe I really am on to something.

Dr pHaesler, January 2005
Department of Anthropomorphic Gastrotheology