ADDENDUM

I do not believe in God or Heaven.

If I did believe in Heaven, I would believe it to be a gigantic videotape archive with a complicated cataloging system (much better than Dewey Decimal or the kind with the Boolean Search) and a team of really dedicated librarians. The videotapes would contain recordings of every second in the life of every single person who has ever lived on earth. The tapes would be available with or without closed captioning, and the closed captions would detail as closely as possible (using a combination of brightly coloured words and pictograms) the thoughts of the characters (we'll call them "characters", though of course they are not "characters"). There would be a function on the remote control which would allow you to toggle back and forth between the thoughts of the different people in a given situation.

The cataloging system would be so sophisticated that you could give the librarians pretty much any set of search criteria and they would bring you the tape or tapes you wanted within a few short minutes.

When I get to heaven I am going to order up and watch the tapes of all the happiest moments of my life. Then the tape of my funeral. Then of the day I looked the most beautiful as an adult, and of every person who ever fell in love with me, as it was happening. Then, because it's heaven, and my self-esteem is unassailable, I will watch the tape of the meanest thing anyone ever said about me, and I will turn on the closed captioning, which will prove that I was right. They only said it because I made them feel insecure.