Reference: Mark Twain's WAR PRAYER

Prayer to be offered up throughout the land on NATIONAL PRAY FOR MORE OIL DAY, the First Sunday of the Month of December, to be prayed on Oil Sunday every year until no longer needed…

Almighty God, Creator and Organizer of the entire Universe, together with Heaven and Hell, we the mostly Christianized descendant of those two Jews, Adam and Eve, (you may recall them as the two originals without navels or bellybuttons, they having been created by Thee rather than born and thus had neither innies or outies, but yea verily had smoothies) with whom Thou were wount to converse almost daily, we, their descendants on this tiny fleck of rock called earth, right smack-dab in the Center of the Universe, floating microscopically in Thy vast and endless firmament pray for a disproportionate bit of Thy omnipotent celestial and eternal time, in the small matter of the gift of Oil which Thou has bestowed upon us and which is now about half used up with all the cheap and easy stuff mostly gone and oil exploration rigs getting up around a billion dollars. We, Thy children, do not look forward to paying 15 bucks a gallon for Texaco.

Thou once spoke daily and visited with Adam and Eve frequently, we haven't heard from Thee in some time, at least as far as most of us can recall, except to television evangelists, who report they are in constant contact with Thee, Who hast told them to tell us to send money to support their ministries and treasuries in Swiss bank accounts. We can appreciate how busy Ye must be in listening to us, now that our population has swelled from just two lonely people to almost six billion, and it must be annoying after a while to listen to all the selfish yammering about things which would be better handled by an HMO or the fire department. We pray that the miracle of night and day Thou has given us to cause the earth to revolve on it axis will give Thee some relief from all the praying (except for this petition) since about three billion will be asleep half the time, thus cutting messages by half.

Oh Lord, it looks like we are going to run out of low cost plentiful and bounteous oil somewhere around 2009 years after the crucifixion and death of thy Son Jesus (Hi, there Jesus! How's it going?!"). Thy gift of oil has become very important to us. Without it we would not be exempted from thy Curse upon our Ancestors, Adam and Eve, that they would be cast out of Eden and live thereafter by the Sweat of Their Brows and bear children without Demerol. From Oil we have been able to make chemicals to put up our underarms (which thou, Almighty Caller of a Spade a Spade, originally named "armpits") so that when we are playing tennis our small sweatiness will be pleasant to us in our doubles partner's sight).

Our women have clad themselves in silky, slithery pantyhose and short libidinous skirts, and have climbed into the darkened back seats of Chevrolets, where they have been able to induce our men to remove said pantyhose blindly in the night by just sense of touch without causing runs…and those pantyhose are made from thy bounteous oil. Thy condoms are made from the organic sap of the rubber tree…and maybe That was the tree Thou toldest Adam and Eve to stay away from, and not the apple tree, which doesn't seem to make much sense….what dost Thou have against apples? Thy volunteer TV evangelist servants hereabouts report from personal experience that thou Hatest recreational sex but how does that square with Thy pheromones and natural aphrodisiacs?

We thank Thee for thy joyful extra-strength Testosterone and Estrogen (lest we forget) , which allows us to add still another million people to the earth's loading every 97 hours and 20 minutes (compoundable). Dost Thou intend that it is Testosterone which stirs the Gene Pool and keepeth it from stagnation? Thy bounteous gift of oil had allowed us to skitter about the planet, thoroughly mixing thy gene pool, so that if oil holds out long enough we will have been able to blend all the races into one (and Hey!, by the way, why hast thou made the separate races anyway, knowing how bigoted thy creatures can be?)

Now therefore: We pray that thou willst refill all of the empty oil fields with unending oil supplies so that we may have plastic bags, asphalt highways and continue our lifestyle as the Most Luxurious of All times, no sweat! We knowest that oil takes about 200,000,000 years to make a batch, but that is just unbeliever science talk and that the earth thou hast created is only a few thousand years old, so that whipping up a replacement batch of oil is something Thou canst do it Thou wantest without delays. Not to rush Thee Lord, but we've only got maybe about a dozen years left of the good stuff, and Thou shoulds't get"cracking" (a little play on words with oil refinery talk, heh, heh!)

May we humbly suggest Lord, just in case Ye haven't thought of it, that all that carbon we have put up into the atmosphere could be reclaimed and stuffed back underground while making oil, thus taking care of the little global warming problem at the same time. We can almost here Thee say, "By golly, now why didn't I think of that!" That's OK Lord, Thou that createst the Think Tank must have done it for the help Scholasticism could provide in overcoming unGodly Pragmatism, and Thou art most welcome…. Anytime!

Grant us another endless batch of oil, Lord, and we will pass a law that the Chaplain of the United States Senate will begin each day of Congress in Session with an obsequious prayer, petitioning for the discovery of new oil fields and the refilling of the old oil pools (which already have pipelines and refineries in place so it would be real convenient).

We will bring flattering Prayer back to our schools also, supplicating and whining for more oil so that our Juniors and Seniors may continue to come to school in their fat tired TransAms and Subarus and not be forced to ride in school busses among the poor. In order to get prayer back into school, we will trade off some church time on Sundays, beginning each service with two minutes of Silent Algebra (If Eve has six apples and Adam has none, and the Tree of Life is 200 meters from the edge of Eden, how many trips must Eve make if there are 6 thousand apples on the tree and Eve has no skirt to hike up with which to carry the apples, and can only carry two apples in each hand and another pair each scrunched between her knees and boobs?)

Oh Lord, if you don't do something about this running out of cheap and easy oil, we won't be able to afford to drive to church, nor put any money into the collection plate. Have mercy upon us Lord, and don't make us become physical like Ye did for Adam and Eve. We don't want to go back into the fields on our knees just because the cursed tractor wont run anymore. It would take 118 of us for an hour to do as much work as a single gallon of gasoline. Our neighbors who farm the seas know that lobster boats are a bitch to row! No more Agri-Business? No more 18 wheelers? No more electricity and no more computer hacker? No more Rock and Roll? Just acoustic? Walmart closed up! No Big Macs! Tampax and Midal gone? Comatose cities! Urbicide! No more small planes from Columbia? No more making donut tire marks on the road? Galley slaves and War with just sharpened sticks!

We're too civilized for this! What's with Thee God? Isn't once enough? Come on, Now!, humbly we pray.

Amen