The following can also be found in the book Chicago Stories 1996. Click here to learn more, and to download a free electronic copy.

I call upon the omniscient, omnipresent, all powerful bundle of energy and morals and one true savior of me, a sometimes wretched, sometimes beautiful but always human human being.

I call upon It to hear me if It has ears; to absorb my words into Its mass ball of consciousness, if that is what It does; to somehow recognize my prayer and pluck it out of the sky so that It will know the things I say to It.

I come today to worship It, to bless It for the creation of this earth and this body and this cigarette and everything else around me that makes up my existence. I come today to shout at myself and to shout to everyone around me of all the things I am grateful for, that make me happy as I plug through day-to-day life, edging ever closer to that final day where I will never have to worry any more about whether I believe in It or not. I come today to thank and also to be thankful.

I thank It for the northbound red line at three in the morning when I'm really drunk.

I thank It for giving me parents who didn't beat me or fuck me or burn me with cigarettes or tell me I'd never amount to anything or disinherit me for flunking out of school or not accept my gay friends or freak out when I decided to become an artist or ever once act ashamed of me when they talked to their friends about me.

I thank It for beautiful eighteen-year-old girls with holes in their jeans who laugh out loud in the wind and make life seem the most exciting it's ever been.

I thank It for Walkmans, and I thank It for giving me Bob Mould and R.E.M. and Small Factory and Liz Phair and Frank Sinatra and They Might Be Giants and Dave Brubeck, so that I have something to listen to with it.

I thank It for the Brew-n-View.

I thank It for the special wind It provides right when the weather turns from summer to autumn and you smell it whenever you're outside and every time you do smell it, you know something special's just about to happen.

I thank It for really cold orange juice when it's very early in the morning and I'm very hung over.

I thank It for infomercials on how to become rich through direct marketing.

I thank It for the opening chord of Pavement's "Crooked Rain Crooked Rain," which always makes me smile and get very excited whenever I hear it.

I thank It for amphetamines.

I thank It for these things, plus so many others that I don't have the time to list but It, in Its wisdom, must already silently know.

And now, as the dogma of religion dictates, I now beseech my omniscient force. I ask It to grant me things that I feel like I deserve for living what I consider a good life, but which have to now still eluded me. I ask It to gently push naturally evolving events just a step more in the right direction. I ask It to reward me for being the good, faithful follower that I am.

I ask It to please let me meet a woman who actually will call after she's spent the whole night at a party flirting with me and telling me she's interested in me and asking for my phone number because she wants to get together again with me.

I ask It to send a literary agent my way who will be interested in my novel.

I ask It to grant me a little more patience in my life, and to help me lose some of my anger and pessimism towards the world.

I ask It to spare me from ever getting Alzheimer's Disease, and to let me have solid stools the rest of my life.

I ask It to bless me with a healthy child when the time is right, one who will grow to be fine and strong and smart and bitter and gentle and funny, yet dry, and a sharp dresser and a purveyor of wit and good things in the world. A child I will be proud of, and who will grow one day to be proud of me.

In return for these things, I offer a sacrifice to the Life Force, the Harbinger of Energy. I sacrifice my hopes of ever finding a good job. I sacrifice the theoretical house in the suburbs and the minivan and the large dog I could have had if I had chosen another path less to It's liking. I sacrifice my free time and sense of leisure, as I fill it doing Its work. I sacrifice any real forward steps I have ever made towards a lasting, loving relationship, as I must to accomplish my goals. I even sacrifice the child I might have already had if my path had continued the way it was before It directed me anew.

I make these sacrifices because I love It. I sincerely and truly love It, no matter if It exists or not. It tells me how to live my life so that it is truly successful, or if It doesn't, It influences the things I tell myself, which is the same thing.

In Its name I pray.

Amen.