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Then lighting flashed and thunder roared and the specifications and plans for the ark rode the lightning down from heaven. Noah picked up the smoldering scrolls and said, "Okay, LORD." His hands trembled with fear as he fumbled to unroll them. "On the day that I have set for the flooding of the world it will start to rain," said the LORD, "and it will rain for forty days and forty nights. So you had better have the ark completed by that day or learn how to float for a very long time."
Noah!" said the LORD, in a voice like the sound of many waters. "It's been a hundred years since you started working on the ark—WHERE IS IT?" A lightning bolt slammed into the ground near Noah's feet, dark clouds rolled in over the horizon, rain began to fall, and giant spouts of water began to shoot up out of the earth. "LORD, please forgive me!" begged Noah. "I did my best. But there were big problems. First I had to get a building permit for the Ark Construction Project, and Your plans didn't meet code. So I had to hire an engineer to redraw your plans. "Redraw MY plans?" thundered the LORD. "I tried to explain who I was building the ark for, LORD, but all the clerk at the permit office said was, 'Oh sure, and I'm the Queen of Sheba.'" There was a slight pause while the LORD checked the location of the Queen of Sheba, and then He said, "Was that the only problem?"
"Anything else?" asked the LORD.
"Did you get any of the animals I told you to get?"
"Hmmm, I wondered why I was hearing from the EPA," said the LORD. "Usually they don't bother with Me. Anyway, they didn't like the answer I gave them. It seems they never considered the possibility that they don't have jurisdiction over Me. So what happened then?"
"Nice move," said the LORD. "How are things going now?" "Not too good," Noah said, with just a hint of a whine. "Right now I'm trying to resolve a complaint from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission over how many Cainians and Giants I'm supposed to hire, the IRS has seized all my assets, claiming I'm trying to avoid paying taxes by leaving the country, and I just got a notice from the State about owing some kind of 'use tax.'"
The LORD was silent as Noah shuddered and waited. Then suddenly the sky began to clear, the water spouts sputtered down and stopped, the sun began to shine, and a glorious rainbow arched from the few completed ribs of the ark to some distant place.
"There is no need," the LORD replied, His voice gradually fading into the distance. "Government bureaucracy already has."
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And the LORD
spoke to Noah and said: "Noah, I am going to make it rain until the whole earth is
covered with water, because it is filled with nothing but evil. But I will save you and
your family because you have lived righteously before Me, and I will also save two of
every kind of living creature on the earth to repopulate it after the flood. Therefore,
you are to build Me an ark in which you and your family and the living creatures can
survive the flood of my wrath." 
Days
passed as the LORD waited, then weeks, months, years, and still there was no ark. The LORD
visited Noah again, and found him sitting in his back yard next to a few planks and the
beginning skeleton of a boat. He was weeping.
"Not quite, LORD. First I got into a big fight with the local fire
department over whether or not the ark needed a fire sprinkler system. Then my neighbors
objected to my building the ark in my back yard, claiming I was violating community zoning
laws, so I had to get a variance from the city planning commission." 
"Yes," said Noah. "I had a big problem getting enough wood
for the ark because there was a ban on cutting trees to save the red-breasted songbird. I
had to convince U.S. Fish and Wildlife that I needed the wood to save the bird.
But they wouldn't let me catch any of them. So we don't have our two red-breasted
songbirds. Then the carpenters I hired to help my sons and me build the ark formed a union
and went on strike. I had to negotiate a settlement with the National Labor Relations
Board before anyone would pick up a saw or a hammer. Now we have 12 carpenters working on
the ark, but still no red-breasted songbirds."
"Well, I started gathering up animals, but I got sued by an
animal rights group. They objected to me taking only two of each kind. Just when I got the
suit dismissed, EPA notified me that I couldn't complete the ark without filing an
environmental impact statement on Your proposed flood, and detailed plans on how I was
going to handle the waste disposal problem on the ark. I told them they would have to
check with You about the flood." 
"Well, after that," Noah continued, "the
Army Corps of Engineers wanted a map of the proposed new flood plain. So I sent them a
globe."
About
then Noah's wife came out of the house to see who he was talking to, and Noah moved a bit
behind her as he continued. "Considering everything, LORD, I don't think I can finish
the ark for at least another hundred years."
Noah moved his wife out of his way, looked up toward heaven, and smiled
hopefully. "Does this mean, LORD, that you're not going to destroy the earth?"