My friend Scott sent me a quote from some guy, who isn't even famous, but may be paraphrasing someone famous who said it,
"there are only five basic plots worth writing about in existence. They boil down to Romance (good person meets true love), Redemption (bad man turns good), Justice (good person is elevated), Tragedy (good person is fallen), and Quest (good person saves everything)."
It's a good one. But I think with enough monkeys and enough typewriters and enough years, we could probably come up with maybe a few more.
Speaking of time, one thing that's always puzzled me about the idea of eternity, especially when it's used to put the fear of God, or more specifically, HELL, into people, is that if something is eternal or infinite, it might as well be infintesimal. If your entire existence FOREVER is spent in burning flames, that's probably better than the immediate pain, framed as it is in the finite, of burning your hand on the stove. If fire and brimstone preachers really, really wanted to scare their flocks, they'd describe hell as having your hand stuck to a cast iron skillet, maybe with some nasty food burning it, and your feet stuck to the floor because of spilled orange juice and coffee grounds, and your feet are bare, and a bunch of pigeons just flew in the open window and are flapping around pooping on everything and your cat is alternately chasing them and hissing at you while your dog is peeing on your leg because you smell so odd with the burning flesh on your hand and the crispy liverwurst limburger sautee and the coffee grounds and your two year old child is standing on the 23rd story windowsill saying "I fly like superman" while the girl you wouldn't date in high school who became really, really hot later in life is video taping everything as she laughs until later after the demon fire department has come and hosed down the kitchen and you and sewn your little child's body parts back together she suddenly has a change of heart and decides to sleep with you but you can't touch her because your hands are all wrapped in gauze and you end up impotent and right before you go to sleep Jesus comes to you and tells you that you've suffered enough, and that he, after all, died for your sins, and that in the morning you'll wake up in heaven, and that morning starts with a phone call from that beautiful woman, telling you she'd like to have limburger and liverwurst with you that night, and to have plenty of coffee and orange juice around for her the next morning.
I think a really good hell would require some subtlety, some vestiges of hope, for any punishment to have impact. Otherwise, sinners would just be Pavlovian drones, inured to their electrocution tables.
12:53:55 AM 
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