digitaldiscipline ◾ ◾ Belial, you have a call on line two.

Handbasket Not Included

The devil can cite Scripture for his purpose.
-William Shakespeare

Part I: Handsome Devil

You were the model of perfection, full of wisdom and perfect in beauty.
- Ezekiel, 28:12

Rodney Dangerfield has nothing on me. Every piddly-shit cherub gets the full Hummel figurine treatment, a section in the Hallmark store, and new-age nitwits making the talk-show circuit every time angels come back into vogue. What do I get? The blame for everything that's wrong in the world. Oh, and horns. Can't forget the pitchfork and horns.

What am I, a big, pissed-off farmer? You don't see any of those pudgy, dove-winged calendar babies sporting anything but a spit-curl on their foreheads.

Forget who I am for a moment, and take a step back to think - I was the first angel, loved once above all others. I was God's favorite. Now, I won't pretend to know all of his artistic predilections (witness the platypus, the sea cucumber, and those amusingly burlesque coconut trees), but I think it's safe to say that they're not so disparate from you humans' as to render myself and my angelic colleagues anything but what you would consider achingly beautiful.

Why, then, this deep-seated assumption that I'm some aesthetic atrocity, foul enough to drive strong men mad if they so much as glance my direction? I obviously should have invented the Image Consultant and Publicist before that whole thing with the apple. Ah, hindsight.

That's me. Numero Uno on the "Victim of bad PR" list.

Please allow me to introduce myself, I'm a man of wealth and taste.
(as paraphrased by Mick Jagger, 1968)

Spin obviously worked for Nosferatu - the guy went from a gangling, blue-skinned cueball to getting played by Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt (who, I understand, were quite the heartthrobs), and developed a lusty little cult following in the interim despite the legendary impotence of the dead. Bob Dole's little blue friend may work wonders, but it doesn't perform miracles, folks.

But what is the vampire, except a pint-size version of me with some stylized proclivities? Where does he get off with being classified "Evil, but sexy," and I get lumped in with fire, a sulfurous reek, and lakes of ice?

At least some people give me credit for having some sense of style lately; I've been portrayed by worse guys (if you'll pardon the turn of phrase) than Al Pacino (The Devil's Advocate), Viggo Mortensen (The Prophecy), and Gabriel Byrne (End of Days).

Don't hate me because I'm beautiful.

Your heart became proud on account of your beauty, and you corrupted your wisdom
because of your splendor. So I threw you to the earth.
- Ezekiel, 28:17

Part II: Hell's a nice place, but you wouldn't want to live there.

That ancient serpent, who is called the Devil and Satan, the deceiver of the whole world -
he was thrown down to the earth, and his angels were thrown down with him.
- Revelation 12:7

Now that my image

Part III: There will be a test on this at the end.

Thou shalt be a terror, and never shalt thou be any more.
- Ezekiel 28:19

I'm not evil, at least in the assumed and expected way. In this, the more urbane twenty-first century since The One That Got Away (I was never any good at fish stories - the one I lost was about sixty-two inches and a hundred-ten pounds), anything that can't adapt gets run over. So it is with what you humans play at faith - God doesn't call down plagues of locusts, and I don't run a brimstone emporium.

So, what is today's Adversary to truck in? The same as ever - that which keeps children peering under their beds and into their closets, adults filling churches on Sundays (and temples, and mosques, ad infinitum), and the elderly hitting their knees every night.

My game is doubt.