Turns out that once you kill a god, people want to talk to you. Paranormal insurance salesmen with special "godslayer" term life policies. Charlatan's with "godproof" armor and extraplanar safe houses for rent. But most notably, other gods.

There are many perks to living for twenty-one centuries, and foremost among them is bearing witness to the rare birth of genius. It invariably goes like this: Someone shrugs off the weight of his cultural traditions, ignores the baleful stares of authority, and does something his countrymen think to be completely batshit insane. Of those, Galileo was my personal favorite. Van Gogh comes in second, but he really was batshit insane.

Peace be with you," I said, and as I turned to resume my journey with Coyote, I added under my breath, "and asskicking be with me.

You will respect my authori-tah!' Oberon said, in a passable imitation of Eric Cartman. I reminded him that I needed to concentrate. Sometimes dogs forget; they just get too excited.

Here is how you know someone has had a good idea: Other people freely admit to their friends that said idea has changed their lives. Most people today will grant that fire and the wheel are the big two. After that, any attempts to rank the greatest ideas of all time are going to draw lots of argument. You’ll have zealots pimping this god or that on the one hand, scientists pimping Darwin on the other, and then practical people pointing at written language and saying, look, fellas, the reason those ideas have gone viral is because someone figured out how to write them down.

Yes and I appreciate it. But this is going to be difficult enough without running my words through a filter of illiteracy.

There is always a price to pay for badassery. Neo was a badass in the Matrix and the Matrix Reloaded, but the price he had to pay was The Matrix Revolutions.