The Greatest Story Ever Told

Much like any big city, London has its share of religious zealots out preaching the faith to the masses. Oxford street, the West End's main high street for shopping, usually has at least bloke with a megaphone telling the thousands of people on the street how they are going to hell. A good time is had by all, then.

But even in the smaller outlying burgs you still get accosted by those with a burning fever for God, and in Oxford I noticed that there was a group of people passing out books. Now, I was initially a little wary about taking a text from them, since one of the favored tactics of these groups is to give you something, and then try to guilt you into giving them a fairly substantial amount of money as a "donation." But as the cheapest man in the world, I knew this wouldn't be an issue for me. After all, I am the man who stole a pen from the Idaho State University Campus Crusade for Christ. And this was after I signed up my friends for their mailing list. What a great guy I am, huh?

So when one guy thrust a book in front of me, I grabbed it and kept on walking purposefully ahead. He walked beside me for a moment and, unsurprisingly, asked if I would like to make a donation for the book. "No, I'll just keep it", came my reply. This book is titled "Survivors: You'll be surprised who gets left behind." It was written by Zion Ben Jonah, and after reading through the introduction, it turns out it is all some sort of response to the Left Behind series of books.

Looking over the book now, I have to say it stinks. And that is not any sort of scathing literary criticism; this book quite literally stinks. It smells like it was printed on greasy napkins and was bound together with some concoction these guys ginned up in their garage from kerosene and WD40. It really is quite repellent.

What is great, though, are the small details. Like the cover art, apparently done before 9/11, as it shows a mushroom cloud over a New York with Twin Towers still intact. I don't know, maybe Condi Rice had a hand in drawing up the cover. And the bar code on the back reads "666", and has the words "Don't take the mark!" overlaid onto it, while inside one of the chapter is called "Soul Harvest." Classy.