You're tuned to the Televisionary Oracle

which will one day make heaven itself break open in your honor

revealing three 900-foot-tall angels with cracked smiles

playing your favorite songs through red plastic trumpets

while nearby a fluorescent green UFO flies loop-de-loops

and pulls a banner that reads

"We love you more than we love you"

and streams of gold confetti

fall from a cloud

shaped like your secret vision of paradise

Once upon a time. How it all began. The very first trickster, before all other tricksters, was a menstruator. Lilith to be exact. Adam's first wife, long before the docile Eve came along to take the fall. Lilith the Free. Lilith the Brave. Lilith the Master Purveyor of Holy Fun and Sacred Play.

The Moslems and Jews reviled her. "She doesn't come when we whistle for her," they whined. "She calls everything by its wrong name. Says our grave prayers are nothing more than smarmy flattery. For God's sake, she even uses our foreskins as jewelry."

The Christians were equally afright. "Succubus," they dubbed her. Monks were schooled to sleep with their hands crossed over their genitals, clutching a crucifix. "Every time a pious Christian suffers a wet dream," the old boys used to moan, "Lilith laughs."

Lilith! Let us sing her praises with chortling snorts. Let us celebrate her legacy with razzing guffaws. Lilith the Annihilator of Mediocre Desires! Lilith the Nourishing Source of Lovable Chaos! Lilith the Noble Asshole, scaring the shit out of all the mirthless ass-souls!

Lilith: the original woman who loved too much.

"Let me get on top," she badgered Adam. "You're missing my G-spot. You're boring me to tears."

But Adam was immune. Adam was outraged. "Missionary position or nothing," he bargained. "Cursed be the man who makes the woman heaven and himself earth."

"Plow me while I'm bleeding," she bitched back, giggling. "Lick me while I whistle."

"No way," spewed Adam. "You don't make the rules around here." (Dude didn't know what the ancient tantrics knew: that boinking a menstruator was like taking a genius drug.)

"Most of all," she dissed him with melodious snickers, "you hate my chuckle fucks; begrudge the way my orgasms and bellylaughs get all fluxed together."

That did it. He'd fix her. He wouldn't get it up. Couldn't get it up. "Get out," he decreed. "You embarrass me." Turning his gaze skyward, he croaked, "Dad!" and Jehovah thundered back in support, "Screech-Demon, begone!"

"Wha' the?!" Lilith mused. "Fuck 'em if they can't take a joke."

And so she split for cozy exile, shacking up with a horny crew of endearing robin hoods far from the scorch and belch of history. And the rest is herstory.

But as for history: There were never, no way, no more menstruating tricksters. A few phallocratic pranksters here and there, yes -- driven by revenge and one-upmanship and the lust to humiliate. Tricks, my ass! Just war by another name. Until now!

Until Yo Mama Persephone!

Praise goo and take a gulp! The archetypes are finally mutating -- and just in time.

All hail the Menstruating Trickster! Nurturer of the Drivetime! Dismantler of the Apocalypse! Psychic Judge of the Invisible Government of Bloody Disneyland and Sacred Janitor of the United Snakes of Rosicrucian Coca-Cola! She who stands in the doorway between worlds and bellylaughs in both directions at once!

Your pain and the healing of your pain

are brought to you by

your intense desire

to tease out the dormant potential

in the person you love most.