I Talked to My Dead Friend The Other Day.

It was Tuesday. Or maybe Wednesday. Who fucking knows. Turns out in early retirement days blend together into a featureless blob of doomscrolling and questioning my life choices. In a fit of what I'll generously call "profound boredom," I decided to do something productive: hold a seance. My target was my old friend Danny.

A little background might be helpful. As a child, I was deathly afraid of the dark. I was terrified there were ghosts who wanted to contact me and just shoot the shit. The dreams were horrific. I don’t think I slept a full night from the age of about five until I learned how to drink at about 15. When I got a little older, I met some interesting folks who became literal ghost busters. They needed a producer, so I joined their ragtag team and investigated quite a few haunts in and around Philadelphia. Saw a lot of nothing, but once in a while, something quite strange happened. More than once. And whatever happened was enough to make even the harshest skeptic a believer. Long story short, I overcame my fear and now embrace the dark. It’s fascinating observing how the mind functions absent of a specific sense.

Danny checked out a few years back, courtesy of cancer in a particularly horrific, drawn-out fashion. Watching this former beast of a manly-man waste away over a year or so was one of the hardest things I’ll ever do.

Let's be clear: Danny was no saint. He was a lovable degenerate. A retired Air Force Captain who knew the best dive bars in twelve states and five nations. He considered the food pyramid to be a suggestion for stacking pizza boxes. But he had a heart of gold, buried under layers of sarcasm and questionable financial advice.

If anyone deserved a peaceful, quiet afterlife, it was him.

So, I lit a few candles that smelled suspiciously like "pumpkin spice regret," dimmed the lights, and broke out the ol' custom handmade spirit board we found partially buried near a gravesite in an old cemetery. Yeah, I know. But I was bored, and it was either this or finally organize my liquor cabinet, which felt like a far more terrifying journey into the abyss.

To my absolute shock, it worked. The planchette started moving. And it wasn't the gentle, spectral floating you see in movies. It was angry. Jerky. It spelled out D-A-N-N-Y and then, for good measure, a few choice words I can't publish here but that were super funny, and unmistakably him.

I asked the obvious questions. "Are you okay?" "Are you at peace?"

The planchette slid decisively to NO.

Then, the zinger. "Where are you, man?"

H. E. L. L.

Okay. I was surprised, but not that surprised. I mean, the man once tried to pay a bartender with stolen guns. But what came next is what really baked my noodle.

I asked him what it was like. Who was there?

Like anyone else, I expected murderers, mobsters, tyrants, and maybe even the fuckface who invented the pop-up ad.

Danny's answer, spelled out with painstaking, bitter slowness, was this:

"IT'S A GATED COMMUNITY FULL OF HYPOCRITES."

He said his eternal cul-de-sac is packed to the brim with the very people who spent their entire lives looking down on guys like him. His direct neighbors? A politician who ran on "family values" while juggling three mistresses, an insurance salesman who specialized in bilking the elderly, and a family of "devout" Christians who never missed a chance to tell you who was going to hell for their lifestyle choices.

And the absolute worst, the people who get the primo real estate right next to the lava pits? The folks who hunt majestic animals for "sport." The guys in head-to-toe camouflage, grinning for a photo over a dead lion, elephant, or even Bambi. According to Danny, there's a special circle of damnation reserved for those who kill beauty for fun and call it a hobby.

Apparently, the Almighty is not a fan of trophy rooms.

I was floored. "But," I spoke slowly and carefully to ensure Danny heard me clearly, "the Christians... don't they get a pass? I thought you just had to say you're sorry on your deathbed and, poof, pearly fucking gates."

Danny's response was the theological smackdown I never knew I needed. He explained that there's a cosmic asterisk on the whole forgiveness thing that the priests and the pamphlets always leave out. Asking for forgiveness isn't a magical incantation. It's not a "get out of jail free" card you play at the last second.

It turns out, the universe actually keeps receipts. Forgiveness is only the first part of the equation. Let’s call it the Salvation Clause, which seems to follow a pretty simple formula:

Let S be Salvation, F be the act of asking Forgiveness, and ΔB be the fundamental Change in Behavior.

The formula is roughly: S=F×ΔB.

You see the problem? If you ask for forgiveness (F=1) but your behavior never changes (ΔB=0), then your salvation score is a big fat zero. You have