Satan and God Appear on Sesame Street - Forces of Good and Evil Clash- Elmo's Bed Catches Fire In Prelude to Kingdom Come.

The fortieth anniversary of Sesame Street, bite-sized education program has glittered with it's all-star A-List guests including the First Lady Michelle Obama. However, the final episode in the anniversary series promises to be a bock-buster with two guests never before seen on TV even on Larry King Live.

The Spoof has had a sneak look at the rushes and we can inform you that the final guests will be Satan and God!

The producer told us,

"We had to call in a few favours for all of our guests, because we were having trouble getting anybody at all. In the end we managed to get a few stars needing any publicity they can get. Hugh Jackman, Cameron Diaz and Jake and Maggie Gyllenhaal, to the slightly more eyebrow-raising Kobe Bryant, the equine Sarah Jessica Parker and that short-arse who can only play himself, you know, that limey with the French name, yeah, Ricky Gervais.

"We were pleased to get Michelle O, but that was easy, they love publicity in the White House and she'll appear in anything as long as it doesn't involve nudity and S&M. In addition they'd been pestering us since the won the election. But our really special guests this series will be the educational experience of a lifetime for the kids. Satan and God!"

We asked how they managed to get hold of them.

"Well our director has shares in the company making Aspartame, quite a few actually, so he has a direct line to Don Rumsfelt who is some relation or other to Satan and who can be very persuasive too. God was difficult, we had to get the whole of the Bible-Belt states praying simultaneously (God is an anglo-saxon protestant after all) for six weeks. Eventually he appeared in a vision to Elmer Hoositt, a preacher with the the Church of the Seven Quivering Bretheren in Hicksville Tn. God at first wasn't so keen but he came round eventually because of the educational nature of the program and he couldn't let Satan stel all the limelight. Satan was really keen right from the outset, star struck even."


As our reporter was leaving he surrepticiously picked up a disc of the rushes of the show someone had carelessly left on a seat. We can bring to you, the important parts at least, of this final show of the series hoping that you have a longer attention span than most kids.

---

Anouncer:

"Hi everybody, today here at Sesame street the show is brought to you by the two A's, an O, G, D, S and T."

Opening titles - Little 3 year old girl with a pair of big innocent green eyes is turning on a round-about singing:

Sometimes I need to get away
Find some place where I can play
All by myself
Well why not?


Sometimes I just need the time
To think about stuff where I'm
All by myself
I do it a lot


(Cut to same little girl playing in a sandpit)


Should I be good or should I not
If being born, I've sinned a lot
All by myself
Will I ever be saved?

Do I really have to pray
To save me on the judgement day?
All by myself
Does it matter one jot?

Should I have pinched my brother John?
Is it me who drops the bombs?
All by myself
Am I going to Hell?

Eschatology is fine
Puts guilt and shame into your mind
All by myself
I do it a lot

So as I play under these blue skies
Trying to theologise
All by myself
I pull wings off butterflies

---

The next few minutes follows Big Bird whose beak won't open because he said a naughty word and the difficulties his psychiatrist has to expunge the guilt caused by being beaten by a priest when he was seven for having said "Damn".

Then Ern and Co sing a rap song to stop the kids in ghetto slums getting bored and asking their moms to pass the crack pipe.


Finally it's time for bed for Elmo

---

"Having trouble getting to sleep Elmo? Would you like a celebrity lullaby?"


"Oh! Could I? I wonder who it will be tonight?"


"ELMO! Did you say your prayers tonight?"


Enter God stage right, to canned applause. God is a misty, foggy apparition coming into and out of focus.


"Oh no, I forgot, I'll say them now, Dear God keep all my friends in Sesame Street safe and a special than you for unsticking Big Bird's beak....."


"I think you'll find Elmo that was all the psychiatrist's doing and nothing to do with fog features there!"


Enter Satan stage left, to smoke blast accompaniment, hisses and boos from cast and crew.


"Who are you?"


"Get thee gone vile Incubus! Descend thee not unto the resting place of innocents"


"You always were one for drama, I bet you even taught Shakespeare to speak like that. Just because we are on TV there's no need to ham it up worse than they do in 'The Young and the Restless'!


In answer to your original question little fellow, how can I break the fortunate news? Well, most kids your age can't spell my names, so just call me 'Uncle Stan'. But you'd better get on with your prayers otherwise big G here will throw a hissy fit."


"......... and, I know I ask this all the time, but if you could see your way to making me a real person. Please forgive me too I have sinned because I often think bad thoughts about whoever made me the puppet that I am. Bless everyone in the World and make it a peaceful place. Amen."


"You know Elmo you should be careful what you pray for, it might happen."


"What, World Peace?"


"Well that couldn't happen could it, wars are always fought in God's name aren't they so they must be good."


"You mean that He starts all the wars?"


"Yes, in a way, who would want to start a war in my name? He's given me so much bad press that it wouldn't be very good PR to do that for any president or world leader. But I was talking about being a real human. The last one who made that choice ended up with a long nose and donkey's ears."


"Why was that?"


"Elmo, I know it's hard, but he wanted to be a real human and real humans have free will and free will means making choices between alternatives. Faced with uncertainties like that, humans tend to make the choices that will benefit them personally and they are not always the right ones. They get little guidance on which ones are most of the time."


"Who provides the choices?"


"I'll have to admit, there are some for which I provide that service. Chidren no, I couldn't do that to children. They just learn about alternatives from the world around them and the way people behave in different situations. When they get the choices wrong 'Fog Features' over there punishes them by making their noses grow or he bullies them in to taking a certain choice through fear of punishment. He is a wrathful, jealous and vindictive 'supreme being'."


"But those are sins aren't they?"


"There Elmo, your first lesson, those who make the rules think they are the only ones allowed to break them."


"Be gone Prince of the Shadows, Tenebrious Vile Worm that doth infect the World! I shall smite thee out with My rod!"


"What did I say about hissy fits? I hope you notice Elmo that he makes rather free with capital letters, don't follow his example or you won't do very well at school.


If I were you 'Fog Features' I would watch what you do with your rod, you'll have someone's eye out, it's not a good example for the kiddies all that smiting and you'll probably break it and it is so so difficult to get good staff these days, he he!"


"But Uncle Stan, I prayed for a toy choo choo last Christmas and I got one."


"Yes of course you did Elmo, but it wasn't him, he's been deaf as a post since the Big Bang. Serves him for setting a bomb on the road to the Universe. Big mistake! He stayed around to see what sort of bang it would make and ended up terminally deaf like that IRA bomber's head they found on a roof in Manchester, still had his finger in his ears! In this case he can't hear for ringing, that why churches have bells did you know that? In celebration of the almighty Tinnitus that stops prayers getting through."


"But who gave me the choo choo?"


"Why, Santa Claus of course you silly boy! Talking of presents, I have one here for you.


( aside to production crew: "I hope he can read, because after forty years on this show it would be a real shame for him to show you up now!")


"Goodee I love presents, I love stories, is it a book?"


"Well it's a series of lines from some important philosophers. A philosopher is someone who thinks deeply about important simple questions about which the answers aren't always clear. Here read it out for the girls and boys at home."

"Why won'y you read it to me?"


Let's just say it's better coming out of the mouth of a babe or suckling"


"One example among many of a formulation of the problem of evil is often attributed to Epicurius and may be schematized as follows:


1. If a perfectly good God exists, then evil does not.
2. There is evil in the world.
3. Therefore, a perfectly good God does not exist.


This argument is of the logically valid form modus tollens (denying the consequent). In this case, P is "God exists" and Q is "there is no evil in the world".


Another version would be:


1. God exists
2. God is omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good
3. A perfectly good being would want to prevent all evils.
4. An omniscient being knows every way in which evils can come into existence.
5. An omnipotent being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence has the power to prevent that evil from coming into existence.
6. A being who knows every way in which an evil can come into existence, who is able to prevent that evil from coming into existence, and who wants to do so, would prevent the existence of that evil.
7. If there exists an omnipotent, omniscient, and perfectly good being, then no evil exists.
8. Evil exists (logical contradiction).



Oh there were sooo many big words in that!"



"That's cheating! Beelzebub you are the King of all bastards, you put him up to that! You know nobody can come up with a good explanation for anything I do. Here Elmo here's my present it's another philosopher but more up-to-date."


"You see? He has no good answer to that even with unnecessary capitals and fancy language!"


"Alvin Plantinga has made a free-will defense which says that God allows evil in order to achieve the greater good of free will. Many philosophers accept that this standpoint successfully solves the logical problem of evil in terms of human action."

(looks up from the pages)

"But I'm just a puppet, why am I just a puppet?"


"Well It's all Mr. Henson's falt. Back in the sixties he was a struggling puppetteer (is that really the careers advice they gave people in those days?). He had a nasty growth on his hand and said one day in my earshott 'I'd give anything to get rid of this so I can be the best puppeteer in the world'. Well we came to an agreement, and I covered up his hand with you. Well, there were a few other favours I did for other people since the Grim Reaper got him, but that's roughly how it was."



"You mean that just because of some random happening in the past I spend my time on the end of someone's arm, I don't even have free will?"


"Well, little one, yes I'm afraid so, but the news isn't all bad. You might not have free will, but there are millions of humans who despite free-will are slaves just like you, they have no choice in their lives, condemned as wage slaves or who have the churches' representatives firmly forced up their furry little rear ends. They fervently believe in some 'supreme being' so that they spend their lives agonising in guilt.

You don't need food, you make lots of people happy and you aren't that much different to 90% of the human race. You make other peoples' movements, you speak words that others put in your mouth. You suffer very little in fact, that's what every one tries their best to do, not suffer too much. It's normal it's human it's Mazlov's Triangle, by the way that's on the last page if you need to look it up."


"Right that's it! You asked for it! I really am going to give you a fucking good smiting! Come here you florid fucking fiend how dare you indoctrinate innocent children like that that's my job!"


(Starts to chase him around the bed, much smoke and sparks)


"Here we go again, tearing down Meghiddo, getting all hot under the collar, do carry on, I love it! 'I'm a Celebrity Armagheddon out of here' attention-seeking drivel! What will it be this time? Earthquake, plague of frogs, more dead kids? Four mysterious Horsemen? C'mon you'll have to trot faster than that to catch me Dobbin! (sticks tongue out while leisurely cantering around bed)


Voices off: I told you two, everything except, swearing, paedophilia and the Holocaust. Security get these two out of the studio! Call the fire department, the bed covers are smoldering!)


Cut rapidly to Elmo, reading amid the smoke.


"The concept that non-believers face damnation is called special salvation. The concept that all are saved regardless of belief is referred to as universal reconciliation. The minority Christian doctrine that sinners are destroyed rather than punished eternally is referred to as annihilationism. The problem arises insofar as the existence of hell is accepted by faith and may be resolved by zzzzzzzzzz....."


Nighty Night