The Great Hatching of the Mysterious Unknown Force

   The following is a selection from the Sacred Scrolls of the Gnostic
 Church of the Mysterious Unknown Force, compiled by His Holiness, Chief
 Profit George Schlepper the First:

   In the beginning there was Nothing. Lots and lots of it. Still is, in
 fact.and there with lots of Nothing in between, whereas once all the
 Something was gathered together in one place surrounded on all sides by
 lots and lots of Nothing.

   Don't ask me how it got there; only the Mysterious Unknown Force knows
 for sure, and he's not telling. He's not doing much of anything else
 these days either, which is probably for the best. He's gotten a bit
 rusty at mucking about with Reality, and would probably only make one big
 Cosmic Mess. Some people say he already has.

 Anyway, that big glob of Something at the centre of the Nothing was
 egg-shaped, and for very good reason; it was, in fact, an egg. Scientists
 tell us this was the Cosmic Egg, but we at the Gnostic Church of the
 Mysterious Unknown Force know better. The Something was all gathered
 inside the shell of a giant Silly Putty Egg, the biggest one that's ever
 been. We'll call it the Primordial Silly Putty Egg, because I kind of
 like the sound of that and I'm the Chief Profit and you're not.

   Well, this Primordial Silly Putty Egg was just sitting there,
 surrounded by lots and lots of Nothing, waiting for the moment we at the
 G.C.O.T.M.U.F. call the Great Hatching. Now, nobody knows exactly when
 this happened. Even if the aforementioned M.U.F. was in the mood to tell,
 I have it on good authority that his watch was on the fritz, so we'll
 just say that it was a long time ago, when Ronald Reagan was still a very
 young man. (I know, such magnitudes boggle the mind, but pretty soon
 we'll be getting on to more comprehensible things.)

 If you're going to make a Universe, you've got to break an Egg, and
 that's exactly what the Mysterious Unknown Force did, scattering bits of
 Silly Putty throughout the Nothing to become the stars, planets, and
 little tiny Silly Putty Eggs we all know and love. Everything you see and
 touch is made of nothing but Silly Putty cleverly disguised.

 (Yes, I know that the existence of a Primordial Silly Putty Egg implies
 the existence of a Primordial Newspaper with a Primordial Comics Section
 from which the entire Universe was originally imprinted, but that's
 really too deep for beginners, so I won't comment on it here, except to
 say that the Peanuts were a lot funnier in those days.)

 This revelation should make the Universe more comprehensible, even such
 strange things as psychic phenomena, deja vu, moons suddenly leaving
 orbit and Milli Vanilli, which result when the Silly Putty which forms
 the underlying structure of the Universe (which by the way is not just
 curved but shaped like a pretzel) stretches too far and either breaks or
 snaps back at you.

 (The preceding was a public service announcement of the Gnostic Church of the
 Mysterious Unkown Force)
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The preceding was copied into HOLYSMOKE as indicated 

(15128) Thu 23 Dec 93  9:22a
By: David Worrell
To: All
Re: Silly Putty
St:                                                               15160>
------------------------------------------------------------
   Area: Adult_Jokes_&
   Msg#: 1682                                  Date: 12-12-93  21:43
   From: Dave Coble                            Read: Yes    Replied: No
     To: Bill Eagle                            Mark: Save

   Subj: Force