The Story of Nolah

As the English saying goes, new brooms sweep clean. And so it is that people like me often come across overly enthusiastic friends who were new converts to certain ideas and more than eager to share. According to some, they want to ‘share their message’ with me because as a friend they care about my future and where I will end up – you know, the one H or the other H. One of the most incredible topics that I had the chance of discussing with some of these seemingly intelligent and well informed people is the story of the Big Flood. Never can I find a nice way to communicate to them how simplistic if not silly I find that story to be. For one, when one compares the story to what is generally accepted general knowledge, the problems that one finds with the story is just too plenty that one do not know where or how to start. Then I was always told that I have to try and see it from their point of view. So I tried to do that but found that I had to fill in the gaps that I find. So I took the liberty to exercise some imagination to try bridge those gaps and here is the result:

Once upon a time about 5,000 years ago there lived a very, very, very old fella who lived in a place called the Blomiss Land. Apparently he was 500 years old then (clearly genetic inheritance did not work for this fella as all his descendants never lived more than 30 years until modern science & medicine came along 100 years ago). One day, while mucking around, our fella heard a voice tell him: “Humans had disobeyed me. I made them to be nice people but they kill and do all sorts of terrible things against my wish. I shall wipe them and everything else from the face of earth by way of a great flood. But you, my old fella, is different. You are my shining star. So go build yourself a boat and save all the animals of the world from this great flood by loading your boat with one pair of each animal.” (by the way, this Boss is a sledgehammer kind of guy. Humans disobeyed him but he decided to kill other animals, insects and plants too. And for all his supposed powers, flooding is a rather crude method of mass extermination. Perhaps it was not the right time for nuclear power, WMDs or laser guns for example. But who can tell what the Boss should do, hor?)

Our old fella thought to himself: “Waoh, incredible opportunity to be a hero not to be missed!” and he proudly answered: “OK, no problem Boss. Consider it done!”

And so this fella built himself a wooden boat the size of a house with his bare hands. Apparently he took 100 years to do that (clearly his wood cutting and boat making skills were limited and the Boss left the task very much to our fella). After he was done, the Boss told him that the flood would begin in 7 days and last for 7 days (7 days was also how long the Boss took to create the world but that is because 7 days is the usual quantum used by the Boss for all his undertakings. Hah, origins of quantum theory?)

The next day, our then 600 year old fella saw before him all the animals that the Boss had instructed to queue in front of his house. But you should have seen what happened before that. It was such an incredible sight of discipline, control and sheer super feats all round but the Boss left everything out of his book (perhaps he was napping). The kangaroos and koalas were swimming across the Indian Ocean with the penguins! The jelly fish were parachuting in air across land! The orang utans were swinging from tree to tree from Borneo and across the South China Sea! The salmons were mud walking with the tunas across the Palestinian desert, and the arowanas across the Himalayas! The rattle snakes, bisons and cougars among others swam across the Atlantic, round the Cape of Good Hope, up the Arabian Sea, and walked across Sinai to get to our fella’s boat! The eagles were ushering the robins, the robins the worms, the owls the rats, the lions the impalas, and the hyenas the deers all the way from Africa to the pick up point. And all that with their predatory instincts perfectly suppressed! Oh boy, the Boss would have been impressed if he saw that. May be he was still napping or perhaps he thought only a pair of those animals were involved - too few to be statistically important (see, statistics is a natural law). Whatever the case, the remainder of the animal kingdom had to meet their destiny of accompanying those bad humans.

Anyway, our fella was quite a sharp old man. He noticed that missing from the queue was a very important category of life form: the insects. He decided that he should do them a favour and include them in his boat. But “how many different types of insects are there?” he asked. He was smart enough to decide against undertaking a global insect inventory exercise. That would have meant engaging the services of a few hundred thousand people from a race known as the By-O-Logis (not to mention having to wait a few thousand years for them to appear on the face of the earth), and have them share in the glory. So, this smart fella thought “Aha, may be I go surf the Net. That thing should be able to give me what I want!”

And so on the second day, he proceeded to build this great thing called the Net that on the press of a button flashed for him the number of types of insects and a DIY guide on where they can be found. But he needed some papers to print out the DIY list for reference.

So on the third day he made some quality paper and a printer for himself (he was the inventor of paper and printer). In the list was stated that there was about 4 to 6 million species of insects. And, oh boy, how that frustrated our fella and he exclaimed “you mean after all my great feat you do not even bother to tell me exactly how many types of insects there is?” But adaptive as ever, our fella decided to cut a bit of a corner and decided there must be no more than 4 million “Heck, who is to be bothered if there’s 30% less of these insects!” (Oh, this fella is a big picture guy that doesn’t get caught up with details).

So on the fourth day, he proceeded to make 4 million plastic containers (one for each type of insect) all in a day flat (oh, he was a great oilman and plastic manufacturing industrialist. In fact, he invented drilling and plastic moulding. And he also invented the pump, pipe, nuts, bolts and many other parts needed to make that oil drilling and plastic factory. Trust me, he did! And the list is much longer than that. You guys just won’t be able to appreciate it – so I left them all out).

On the fifth day, our fella proceeded to load the ship up with the 4 million plastic containers. But after about 10,000 he found that there was no more space left on his wooden boat! So he decided to build a bigger one. But how big? He got hold of an abacus (he invented the first calculator) and calculated that assuming each container is 1 litre in size he would need a ship that has a holding capacity of at least 4 million litres just for insects (our fella invented the maths concept of multiplication, and the metric system). With that he surfed his Net again and found out that it is impossible to build a wooden boat of that size. But he found pictures of an aircraft carrier, and thought to himself: “Aha, that looks like a good idea. I shall build one of these ‘island of steel’ where all the birds of the world can take off and land safely. “

So, on the sixth day our fella built a steel ship the size of a small aircraft carrier. He was a master metallurgist and invented steel too. And he invented the steam engine and propeller on that same day to power his carrier but found that it was not powerful enough. So he invented the petrol engine and oil refinery but found that to get enough oil to power his carrier he would have to work with a neighboring people called the Allabs. But it would be below this fella who thought himself as the special agent of the Boss to have anything to do with the Allabs. So, he decided to can the idea of a steel carrier and stayed with his wooden boat (Einstein was also not there to tell our fella that nuclear power was feasible).

On the seventh day, our fella wanted to determine how long it would take him to get hold of the 4 million insects. But when he gave the abacus his little challenge, it told him that to calculate the time needed it would have to make some assumptions first. Like assuming it takes 30 minutes to find & catch one type, and our fella worked 24 hours everyday, that will take 228 years (this fella invented Algebra too). To which our fella replied “you nuts or something? Don’t you know I have to sleep and I don’t have an eternity to catch those insects? Tell me what it takes to get this done in one day and I need 8 hours of sleep!” “OK, that will be no more than 0.02 seconds per specie” replied the abacus. “You must be kidding me!” said our fella “can’t you figure out a better way?” “Yes, but you will have to reduce the number of insects you catch” (our fella invented articifical intelligence too). In frustration, our fella decided that he might as well start loading his ship with his family and the animals in his farm before the other wild animals in the queue, and in the meantime figure out a more efficient way to catch those insects. So he loaded his ship with his family, a pair of sheep, a pair of chicken, a pair of ducks, a pair of cow/bull, a pair of pythons, a pair of lizards, a pair of horses, a pair of pigs, a pair of goldfishes, and a pair of houseflies. By then it was dark and he needed his rest, so he said to himself “Done…”

But before he could finish his sentence (he really meant to say ‘done for time being’), the sky suddenly turned dark and water started filling up the land and soon the whole world was flooded and all life forms died except for our fella and his stock of farm animals on his boat.

Then the Boss appeared out of nowhere and asked our fella “So, I heard you are done with your great endeavor. Congratulations. By the way, what is your name and did you do as I said?” Too embarrassed to lie (this fella was quite an honest guy) the fella meekly said “No lah” (there, that’s proof that our fella was a Singaporean Jew). And the Boss said “Very well Nolah. Henceforth, you shall be one of the stars in my forthcoming book. And the name Nolah shall be known to the whole world as the one-man hero who saved all the animals from the great flood! I shall leave everything in your capable hands.” And the water around him disappeared as suddenly as it came (presumably they went to the poles as reserves, see below).

And so from that day, everything was in our fella’s hands. And, boy, what a great responsibility he had. There were no more wild animals left (remember, they all died in the flood?), and all the other insects, reptiles, fishes, and animals that Nolah left out were gone. How was he going to replace all of them? But the good news was that our fella was a master breeder and genetics engineer! As he does not believe in evolution, all life forms we have today has to owe it to our fella. So our fella bred a new stock of man from his family (this was the first recorded case of in-breeding which explains why we have so many idiots around), and he bred, cross-bred and tinkered with the genetic make up of his stock of farm animals and produced the following:

- from his sheeps, cow/bull, horses and pigs he produced lions, cats, goats, elephants, kangaroos, pandas, tigers, deers, and thousands of other species we now call mammals;

- from his pair of chicken and ducks he produced the swans, gooses, parrots, swallow, eagles, cockatoos, vultures, and thousands of other species we now call birds;

- from his lizards and pythons he created the iguana, komodo dragon, crocodile, cobras, vipers and all the other species we now call reptiles;

- from his houseflies he produced the 15 to 30 million types of insects we possibly had but he found them too pesky and so he invented Shelltox and Mopiko, and got rid of all but 4 to 6 million of them.

While performing those feats which were chicken feet for this fella, he also had some fun:

- he affixed a cat’s head onto an eagle and produced the owl;

- he painted a few white horses with black paints and created zebras;

- he found some of his horses smaller and more dumb than others so he called them donkeys. The yet smaller ones were called mules;

- he crossed a man with a goat to produce the apes, chimps and monkeys (that’s why these animals have nothing to do with man, only our fella);

- he taught a small bear to climb trees in Australia and called it a koala;

- he poked sewing pins through the ends of some houseflies to produce bees and wasps;

- he clipped the wings of chicken and ostriches and get the latter to hide their heads in sand instead of running away so that man can catch them (that’s in line with the special status of man);

- he stretched a yellow cat and painted it with black dots to come up with the cheetah, and he stretched a black one to make a panther;

- he shrunk his pythons to make earthworms and flattened them to make tapeworms, and he put some of them in some men’s stomachs if they were naughty;

- he pitied the kangaroos having to hop around holding their youngs in their arms so he gave them pouches (he invented the haver-sack);

- he painted the ears, arms, legs and eyes of stunted polar bears black, and forced them to eat only bamboo shoots in remote mountains in China to stop them from challenging the polar bear in his annual body building contests (hey, he is not the first or the last to believe in the concept of special status. Nepotism? You must be anti-semi-something). Later day By-O-Logis in their ignorance called them pandas;

- he crossed a young butterfly with a worm and produced the caterpillar but, incredibly to this day, the young caterpillars keep refusing to follow the script when they reach maturity (that was after our fella had already drafted the first statute on the right of all to self-determination when they reach adulthood. This was the precursor to modern international legal system and the UN Charter).

But of all, he had the most fun with water. You see, all water on Earth was fresh water. You know how we know there was only fresh water? That was because the Boss’ book never mentioned about our fella building huge reservoirs, swimming pools, or tanks to hold fresh water, and our fella’s family and his animals need freshwater to stay alive during the big flood.

But later, things changed.

- Our fella poured trillions of tonnes of salt into the oceans to make 98% of water on Earth saline and found that many of his fishy freshwater creations died. But luckily God knew ahead what our fella was about to do and kept 98% of the remaining 2% as spares at the poles (wait a minute, you mean this less than 2% of 2% of water at the poles was all it took to flood the whole world?), and freed up the other 2% so that our fella’s descendant and creations can survive. If u wonder why man has to share with so many other life forms 2% of 2% water, that’s because they are all special in God’s eyes, dumbo! And don’t ask how our fella got the salt (you won’t believe it) but that was where Gandhi got the idea of a mass non-cooperation exercise to produce salt a few thousand years later and how the kiam-her, Chinese salted fish, was created;

- and since our fella and his descendants don’t believe in evolution, our fella had to create sea water life forms from his kampong collection all from scratch;

- he whipped his goldfish in salty jello to re-produce jelly-fish;

- he crossed a goldfish and a sheep to produce the whales, manatees, dolphins and seals. He filed the teeth of a whale sharp and created sharks. In fact, all ocean living life forms was bred from his pair of gold fish;

- to give his salt water fishes company, our fella crossed his white chicken with his black duck and pumped it up with growth hormones to create penguins and forced them to live off the oceans but only south of the equator to also give company to his descendants in Australia;

- to encourage friendship across water boundaries, our fella commanded eels to live mostly in freshwater but breed only in saltwater, and the sturgeons and salmons to live in saltwater but only get fresh in freshwater. So these poor animals have to make pilgrimage of thousands of miles just to have one go at it in their entire life (that was the origin of the Haj). He commanded the American and European eels to put their entire stake in America and therefore can only do their thing there (see, he created NATO long before clowns like Churchill et al) and from there they invaded every freshwater hole in the American east cost, Europe and Western Asia (so, you think Columbus and Bush were the first that had those ideas?);

- because his Boss’ book said that everything on Earth is created for man, our fella created tubeworms, bacteria, shrimps and squids that live miles under the ocean so that 2nd generation By-O-Logis has something to do while his other descendants spend their lives reading his Boss’ book which, by the way, did not mention those animals because the Boss did not want to make the latter’s lives complicated.

Our fella liked to watch the private parts of male mammals so he had them hanging out in the open (but silly men after him who did not have the same taste covered them up!) but thought that since he had no scuba gears the dolphins and whales can have theirs concealed (hah, at least we know Jacques Cousteau’s idea was original).

His Boss did not believe in killing but our fella forgot his commandments on stone tablets, and ended up equipping many animals with poisons and created viruses. For the same reason, his in-bred descendants included people with screwed up brains that kill each other and our fella’s other creations for all sorts of reasons but he was smart enough to blame it on his Boss’ nemesis Evel (in fact, he popularized the concepts ‘thinking on your feet’ or ‘my foot’ depending on how you see it).

Our fella purposely had many animals born sexless so that he can play deputy Boss and individually determine what sex each individual will have years later depending on what happens around them or what man does. For those which are naughty he just switched them in mid-track as punishment. Now that our fella is no more around, those animals left the decision to man supposedly because the Boss’ book said man is actually mini copies of the Boss or mini Bosses.

Thus, according to the Boss’ book, all the people and animals of the present world owe their lives to the incredible genius of this fella he called Nolah. And since then, every animal on Earth lived happily ever after. With man as the mini Bosses, of course.

p.s. In his original book, the Boss did not mention all the great deeds and accomplishments of Nolah above because according to his readers he thought lowly of Nolah’s descendants (likely also because of the in-breeding). So, the book simply said that ‘Nolah saved all the animals of the world’.

Also, the idea that man is a mini Boss was actually not the Boss’ but one of his wayward sub-editors. But then, since the Boss speaks and writes only through self-appointed reps, publishers, family or deputies, and many of these later day fellas have a history of ego and other disorders above the neck, it was hard to figure out what the Boss really thought. But we do know there are at least 3 broad groups of mini-Bosses which are totally disagreeable to each other and, in fact, had been at each other’s throats for centuries till today!

The book also did not mention about the different types of vegetations that died in the great flood (in fact, the book did not say our fella was asked to save them) which our fella re-created through his great bio-agro-genetic skills. Our fella created all forms of present day vegetation single handedly using only wood chips taken off his wooden boat through the technique known as retro-genesis which was actually based on the retrogressive creation concepts developed by the Babylonians before him. And our fella even dived hundreds of feet under sea water without any aid to plant some of his new salt water veggies!

Our fella allegedly made over-sized versions of lizards and crocodiles but found that he could not control them. So he simply wiped them from the face of Earth and his Boss’ book through the use of WMDs (which stands for ‘What’s Missing from the book Doesn’t exist’). Luckily, Evel managed to hide some of the bones of these animals underground before the WMDs could take full effect. But according to followers of the Boss’ book, all that was bull since nothing was mentioned in the book. It was Evel who led a group of nutty scientists to his collection of toothpicks millions of years later and taught them how to put those pieces of longish crooked calcium strips together and come up with the idea of dinosaurs!

And some present day followers of this story are quite convinced that a small wooden boat found in some desert is the boat built by this great fella Nolah. They claim that, if true, that will prove the greatness of our fella. That’s despite many attempts by others to show that our fella’s greatness is not really in that wooden boat but in all the great feats implied and mentioned in accounts like the above. But, I guess, the Boss was right after all. Man will never be able to figure it out.