When people hear the name Satan, they immediately think of the Devil. A mythical figure with a cloven hoof and a symbol of pure evil. In the Christian tradition Satan is Lucifer, the fallen angel.
My interpretation of Satan in “God Gets A Checkup” would be closer to that of the fallen angel, as he is not evil, simply irresponsible.
Yahweh, being the opposite of his little brother, is a highly responsible overachiever who simply cannot rest until the work is done.
How Satan became part of the story
Everyone has a wayward family member that does nothing but cause mischief. Even when they set out with the best of intentions they somehow manage to screw things up.
The God Yahweh in “God Gets A Checkup” is no exception. In his case, the disruptive relative is his own little brother Satan.
Satan entered the story when I started playing with the idea of God receiving prank calls, for when something goes wrong – is not Satan to blame?
He is in the hyper-religious universe.
The evolution of Satan
How Satan evolved from being to blame for the prank calls, to being Yahweh’s little brother and an avid Tom Waits fan, may have something to do with where I did a lot of my brainstorming.
The picture below is from the outside of a Devil themed restaurant in Prague (Restaurace U Čerta) and if you take a look inside you will find a picture of Tom Waits on the wall (who is of course a handsome Devil himself).
Satan invents ski jumping!
Only a madman would strap a pair of wooden planks to his feet and jump off a ramp with them, so it would make perfect (literary) sense that Satan had something to do with it.
According to Wikipedia, the Norwegian Olaf Rye was the first ever ski jumper, with a jump measuring a measly 9,5 metres. Today, the record is at 253.5 metres!
Despite its obvious madness, it is also a very beautiful sport, something even Yahweh acknowledges.
If you want to know what a perfect jump looks like, this is it.
Copyright @ Theodore Volgoff. All rights reserved.
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