I hope I didn’t alarm you by my single missive and then the ensuing absence. It was wholly unintentional. I didn’t want to give you the impression that this Ricky* of ours had closed up so soon after it had opened. It does indeed remain open, though I have no idea how long it might stay that way. My knowledge concerning its dynamics is no better than yours. I can only posit theories, and it’s entirely possible that my previous theory – that this Ricky had suddenly opened the day I began to receive your universe’s Internet on my computer – may be wrong. It may have always been there, waiting for the perfect conditions that would enable me to discover it. Goddess only knows.
Yes, I touched on religion in my first note – in fact, the absurd beliefs of some of your rulers there in what you call the United States of America were what originally prompted my fear that my own universe might somehow become infected by yours via this odd portal – but I see now that a few of you have some even goofier notions, so much goofier, in fact, that I’m no longer afraid of any sort of thought virus you might send. It’s simply too ridiculous to be afraid of you kooks.
The religion in which I was brought up believes in dual gods – or rather, a God and a Goddess – one compassionate, the other vengeful. It shouldn’t take much thought to figure out which gender is which. But people who were brought up in this faith tend to believe that the Goddess is for praying to and the God is for swearing at. The simple explanation for this is that women seem to be better listeners. This religion (and I’ve yet to find any evidence of its existence in your universe, and trust me, I’ve looked) is called Nucleology, as in the nucleus of an atom, I suppose, which, cosmically speaking, requires two to tango, unless we’re talking about hydrogen, but we need not concern ourselves with a science lesson at the moment, especially since you’re probably smarter about it than I am. But one of Nucleology’s problems (of which, like any religion, there are a multitude) is that God – the One Who doesn’t listen very well – has most of the power, whereas Goddess – the One Who is compassionate and retains information – is relatively powerless, because, I suppose, the compassionate always wind up with the rotten end of the deal. What results is that Goddess is required to take your petition to God. As I said, Nucleology’s got its problems, but it’s rather convenient for those of us who are virtually without faith anyway. You hear a lot of phrases like “Goddess tried” and “Deaf God” and my own particular favorite, “Goddess only knows,” with its implied rejoinder, and God isn’t listening. (There is also the phrase “God-damn-it,” apparently popular in your universe as well, but I doubt that when you say it you also have in mind its own implied answer, because Goddess isn’t that cruel.) What little faith I have left in Nucleology mainly involves an image of God and Goddess in some sort of divine high-rise apartment somewhere, perpetually bickering. It’s the recovering Nucleologist’s tendency, when there’s a particularly nasty thunderstorm or natural disaster, to conclude that God is having a tantrum again because Goddess has once more bested Him in an argument. Nucleology may seem a bit ineffectual to those of you who damn people to hell for their sexual preferences or throw bombs at one another over a couple of cartoons, but that’s what most Nucleologists like about Nucleology – its harmlessness. The very best quality of any religion, in my mind, is that it do little to no harm.
That is not why I’ve been away, though. I’ve been busy trying to figure out what, exactly, a poetry slam is. I think I have a fairly good idea of what it is now, though if I’m wrong, the only way you can set me straight is by leaving a note on this web site. I encourage that, in fact. How often do you get the chance to speak to someone who exists in an entirely Other Universe? (I make an exception for your version of Laura Bush, of course, who happens to live with just such an individual.) This, though, is what I’ve gleaned: competitors are required to be entertaining for three minutes, at the end of which time they’re scored, like in the Olympics. Even though you call it a poetry slam, the “poet” doesn’t necessarily have to be poetic, just as long as he’s entertaining. (I use the personal pronoun ‘he’ here because a slam poet cannot possibly be a good listener, what with the fact that he seems to try to fill every single nanosecond of those three minutes with words.) There seems to be an emphasis on performance. Oh, and the “poet” with the highest score gets a prize or something.
It rather reminds me of the Kill the President contests we have in my universe. The process is the same (including the emphasis on performance), except contestants don’t pretend to have composed poetry; instead, they describe how they, if given the opportunity, would end their president’s life. These contests are not limited to the American United States – they occur in just about every country that has a president – so some of the contests are international, just as your poetry slam has apparently become. It’s obvious why you have poetry slams instead. Evidently, in your United States of America, it’s illegal to talk about killing the president. Maybe you should change that law. You’ve certainly had your share of assassinated presidents, so having such a law doesn’t seem to be doing you any good.
Judging by the few “slam poems” I’ve been able to witness on your Internet, the politics of your poetry slams tend to lean toward the left, so maybe this is the sole purpose of these events: to take out political frustrations that would otherwise be alleviated by being able to freely discuss how you would like to quicken things to the moment when your president is forced to make peace with his God. (It’s not necessary to make peace with your Goddess, of course. That’s rarely the problem.)
We also like euphemisms in this universe (as I said previously, the similarities are more multitudinous than the differences), but I think we like them a bit more than you, so perhaps your universe is a sliver more honest than ours. But I’m fairly proud of that one for death: to quicken things to the moment when you’re forced to make peace with your God. Perhaps I should start a contest for the most convoluted euphemisms. Something to think about, before I talk to you again….
Here’s hoping that the moment when you’re forced to make peace with your God is postponed indefinitely,
– Mike Ivy
From The Next Universe Over
* Random isolated cusp incursion – or Ricky for short.

I am only able to monitor your universe by way of your Internet, so if my perceptions seem skewed, I hope you’ll understand. But recent developments are such that I can no longer remain silent. Terrible events are transpiring in your world, and because of this sudden opening at the point where our universes overlap (this random isolated cusp incursion, or to make matters simpler, this Ricky) – because of this Ricky, the terrible events that are transpiring in your world may somehow seep like a virus into my own. Fortunately, thus far, the leak is a small one, and you have yet to find a way to poison my cyberspace with your diseased data. We can only pray to Goddess that this little leak of ours does not worsen.

This, then, is my attempt to stick my thumb in your dyke.
No pun intended. (I know too well how you folks like the dirty little pun.)

I’d like to try first to put your mind at ease, at least somewhat, by telling you that the similarities between our universes vastly outnumber the differences. A brief example of this is that there is a Paris Hilton in my universe, but we don’t have a Kid Rock. Similarly, you too have a Samuel L. Jackson, but no Jackson Slurry. The exact cause of these discrepancies is uncertain, although I believe I have isolated the crux, the point where our two universes diverge, and perhaps I’ll share more on that at a later date, but there are far more pressing matters to concern ourselves with at present. It may help a great deal if I tell you a little bit about myself.

My name is Mike Ivy and I live in the American United States, in a city called Great Bluffs, in a state called Michigan. I am a male human being with two eyes and a nose and a mouth, two arms and two legs and occasionally I stand upright upon them. The legs, I mean. I used to teach English at Great Bluffs Community College, but now I’m self-employed as a screenwriter, specializing in erotic science fiction, or blue sci-fi, as we in the business like to call it. Trust me, I didn’t set out to write erotic science fiction screenplays, but that’s far too long a story to describe here. As to why I have been chosen to receive your universe’s Internet on my computer, Goddess only knows. Why I am only able to contact you by way of this particular web page, which supports something you call a “poetry slam” (whatever sort of nonsense that is), is also another question I can only chalk up to Goddess only knows.

Here, then, is one fundamental difference between our worlds. Religion. Again, perhaps I’ll go into further detail at a later date, but what I say next is of the utmost importance:
Jesus isn’t coming back. There will be no “rapture” – at least not of the type I fear you mean when you say that word. How do I know this? Listen: why would there be two universes so close together that at one point they overlap, two universes so similar that even Paris Hilton exists in both of them, yet in one, on a tiny, lonely planet called Earth, all the true believers in the so-called “Christian God” will one day – say, a Tuesday – be whisked up into paradise, leaving all the philistine non-believer heretics back on that lonely ball of mud to suffer; meanwhile, in that other nearly identical universe, not even the belief, not even the idea that this might happen, exists?

Or, if such logic is too strange for you, how about this: if the belief in such a “rapture” exists in your universe, who’s to say that it hasn’t already happened? Who, exactly, keeps track of such things?

Look. Organized religion isn’t purely a practice of sanity in my universe, either. You don’t have a monopoly over there on suicide bombers who’ve been promised a paradisiacal afterlife in the company of dozens of willing virgins. But in your universe, the “United States of America” is the most powerful country on Earth, and it seems very dangerous to me that any country that happens to be the most powerful one on the planet could be run by a bunch of whackos. You guys in the “USA” are supposed to have a separation of church and state, just like we do in the AUS. You might want to start acting like it, before you have the blood of the 21st Century version of the Crusades on your hands.

Goddess forbid, that sort of backward thinking might leak through this Ricky of ours and into my universe. We’ve got enough problems of our own over here, Paris Hilton notwithstanding.

Sincerely,

Mike Ivy (From the Next Universe Over)