Skype Outage Only the Beginning Warns an Angry God
By Biff Scuzzy

LUXEMBOURG – God has claimed full responsibility for the mysterious Skype outage that left an estimated five to six million of his subjects unable to make phone calls or to send instant messages via the popular Internet-based service last week.

In an instant message sent to every Skype subscriber yesterday, god declared not only that he had caused the outage but also that it was just the beginning of the divine wrath that will be visited upon the world.

“We’ll see who’s not great,” said god, who ended his message with a defiant signature—an animated-gif image of a lightning bolt piercing a caricature of noted atheist and author Christopher Hitchens.

Because god is known to work in mysterious ways, his instant message did not divulge the exact reason for his devastating attack on Skype, which one company executive likened to the plague of locusts visited upon Egypt; but an American bishop who spoke on condition of anonymity said that god has been fuming for some time over “the current atheism fad” in the English-speaking world.

“God will not be mocked,” said the bishop, who currently resides somewhere in the Vatican. “I wouldn’t be surprised if he orchestrated other proactive events to refute the false prophets who deny his existence.”

Prior to god’s claim, Skype executives offered more excuses for the outage than Greg Landis had offered for his positive drug test in last year’s Tour de France.

“A hacker at Vonage has to be responsible,” hinted one Skype official early on.

“If not, then it must have been Microsoft’s Super Tuesday barrage of security patches, which caused all of our users’ computers to reboot and their toilets to flush at once.”

“Wait,” said another Skype executive, “our latest research indicates that the worldwide observation of the thirtieth anniversary of Elvis Presley’s death was responsible.”

Finally, upon hearing that god had claimed responsibility for Skype’s troubles, one executive attempted to put a positive spin on the news.

“Imagine that,” he said. “Even god subscribes to Skype.”