What is life if not an endless cycle of crime and punishment, sin and penance? I’ve been reading a lot of Old Testament lately and one thing has been made perfectly clear, foolishness is a sin and an abomination in God’s eyes. I always thought of a foolish man with a foolish tongue as someone whom God might view pitiful and regard with mercy. Nope, the sin of foolishness is no less severe and contemptible than that of the murderer, the thief or the adulterer. As it turns out, being a fool is not a get out of jail free card. I surround myself with evidence of my foolishness in the eternal hope that I may someday be enlightened and unburdened of my foolishness. My glassware mocks me with travel I’ll never experience because of my sloth. My stacks of 8-Track tapes waiting for repair remind me of the absurdity of my pointless pursuits. The quantity, the revolting volume of my collections remind me of my sin of pride. Every last album, book and trinket are nothing more than a Jack Horner plum, dislodged with sticky thumbs as I sit beaming in the corner while the rest of the world achieves. God likes achievement and purposeful work, he did not make me an ass, that is the Pinocchio path of my own choosing. Still He patiently watches over me, just as He does that other studio idler Huckleberry Crackpipe, waiting for either one of us to get up off our foolish rear ends and show Him a measure of initiative. God hates a fool but He despises an apple plucking fool and as I’ve loitered my years away, plucking and tasting every apple I’ve come across, in spite of the unheeded warnings and goodwill of my garden mate. I now realize that like Judas before me my destiny is etched in granite, carved in the tablet by His divine hand, I am the King Of Fools.