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The Goat With A Thousand Young Fights Back

I am pissed off, and it takes a lot to make me angry. Normally, if someone gets me even mildly irritated I simply eviscerate him and slurp his intestines while he watches. There's nothing like instant and total revenge to keep one's temper under control. However, there are some trends in verminous society that are really getting my goat (no pun intended).

Being a bloodthirsty and immortal deity just isn't what it used to be.The difficulty is, of course, that everything is so computerized nowadays. In my youth the world was a wild place. I could suck the bowels out of a living herdsman or fur trapper in the comfortable knowledge that I would not be disturbed. Oh, every now and then some ungodly monster would fly down from Fomalhaut and kick the living shit out of my gargantuan ebony butt, but that was just the cost of doing business on this maggot-infested

clod of Dirt. Basically, the pickings were good.

That all changed when the vermin started to get civilized. Soon, everyone knew his neighbor's business. If his neighbor was disemboweling virgins in order to summon me to preside over a cozy little orgy, why, the people next door simply felt that they had to interfere. I pretty much had to abandon urban areas for a few centuries. And then there was that sweet, sweet period in the 60s and 70s in which your neighbors didn't know you and the Government didn't either. It was all too brief, but I had access to places I'd been shut out of since before the Reformation. No one knew if they were hallucinating or if I really was gnawing on their vitals with my detestable tubular snouts-until it was far too late.

Nowadays, your neighbors still don't know you from Crowley, but every time someone sucks the marrow out of a 4-year-old, or rips the heads from a few strayed tourists, the government hears about it. And they're as bad as the Elder Gods for sanctimonious prying and interfering. Even worse, with the cheap construction so much in vogue now, if a few dozen of my acolytes scream Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! the sound cuts right through the walls. Some busybody inevitably calls the cops to complain about the noise, or about the blood dripping from the ceiling tiles. Dirt is getting so crowded that there's nowhere left I can snatch a bit of solitude, much less munch on a few victims in peace.

But I have a plan to solve my little problem. I realized recently that I'd become too stuck in my ways. I need to change with the times, and I know just what to do. I'm thinking of incorporating as a religion. I'm already an object of worship, and I have supernatural powers, so I fulfill all the technical criteria. Incorporating will have all sorts of tangible

advantages to complement the spiritual virtues with which I am already plenteously endowed. I'll be able to build temples anywhere (or my followers will) without any interference from the State, and we won't have to pay a cent in taxes. Best of all, if the present Administration has its way and prayer returns to the schools, all I'll need is a good lawyer. I'll be all over the places of learning like maggots in a corpse. I'll be

summoned at the autumnal equinox, by court order, to every public high school in the country. It'll all be part of the fairness doctrine. And remember, I'm a parent. School boards really listen to parents. Yep, if things go the way the stars prophesy, I'll be feeding high on the hog. If I can get into the middle schools I won't just be eating well, I'll be picking my teeth with virgin fibulae.

I must confess that it will be a relief to get a space at the public trough. I have plenty of mouths to feed and they're not easily satiated. This is just the beginning, too. I may be able to pick up a few acolytes among the young and impressionable. I just need to work on my schtick a little. Downplay the extraterrestrial horror and carnage (save that for

initiates), maybe do a little rap routine for openers, chorus of dancing girls, serve refreshments at all summonings. Yeah, this could really work.

Ia! Ia! Shub-Niggurath! Ia! Ia! Oooooh, yeah!