Sensible Madness

After Moses got back to the top of the mountain, God started laying down the law, thusly:

1. I am your God, and I saved your whiny asses from slavery in Egypt. Don't even think about worshiping any other gods.
2. Don't make any statues or any other depictions of any living things in heaven or earth, not even fish (really, that's what it says). Further, don't bow down before any statues or sculptures you might already have, and don't do what they tell you either. Not only would doing so indicate a serious mental illness, it would also royally piss me off. I'm a jealous God, and if I see you hanging around worshiping idols, I'm totally going to beat them up. Also, I might write angst-filled poetry and stand outside your house with a boombox like that dude in Say Anything. If that doesn't convince you to come back, I'll punish you, your children, your grandchildren, your great-grandchildren, and possibly your great-great-grandchildren. So yeah, no worshiping idols.
3. Don't say my name in vain. God dammit Moses, look at me when I'm talking to you. I said no taking my name in vain. Good Lord, why can't you stop roasting those Goddamned marshmallows for one second and pay attention?
4. Keep the sabbath day holy. Don't let anyone, including livestock, do any work on the seventh day of the week. I created the whole damn planet in 6 days so I could have a day off, surely you can finish whatever piddling non-creating-everything-in-existence work you have to do in that time too.
5. Do what your mom and dad tell you to do. Seriously, if they have to tell you to rinse off your plate after dinner one more time, they swear to God they're going to knock you into next week.
6. Don't kill anyone. I'll probably tell you later that a whole slew of stuff is punishable by death, but don't worry, I'm sure people will come up with reasons why that's not a contradiction later.
7. If you're married, don't fool around with anyone other than the person you're married to. And no, there's no grandfather clause for people who got married before I told you about this commandment. Too bad, suckers.
8. Don't steal anything, especially not copyrighted movies. This commandment sponsored by the Motion Picture Association of America.
9. Don't talk shit about your neighbors, no matter how many times their snot-nosed kids kick that goddamn soccer ball into your yard.
10. Don't covet anything your neighbor has, particularly his wife, his servants, his ox, or his ass. And definitely don't go coveting his wife's ass.

While all this was going on, the people waiting at the bottom of the mountain saw a bunch of thunder, lightning, and smoke up on top where God was busy laying down the law. This scared the crap out of them, and they all went running away from the mountain. Moses came down and told everyone to relax, God was only trying to scare them all shitless so they would obey him. This didn't convince anyone to come any closer, so Moses went back up to talk to God some more.

At this point, God gave Moses a few bonus commandments:

1. Don't make any gold or silver gods. This seems like it was already covered in the second commandment earlier, but I wanted to reiterate this point. Remember the whole thing about smiting you so hard your great-great-grandchildren will feel it? Yeah. Don't even think about it.
2. You need to build an altar made of dirt and sacrifice various animals to me. I particularly like sheep and oxen, burned to a crisp. Also, some iced tea if you have it. Maybe one of those deep-fried onions to start off with. Thanks.
3. If you insist on making an altar of stone instead, don't use any tools to shape the stones. Just find suitable rocks in the area and use those. No, I don't care if that makes it harder on you. If you don't like it, make the altar out of dirt like I told you to in the first place.
4. Don't build the altar so that it requires stairs to get to. If you do that, everyone will be able to look up your robe and see your dangly bits, and no one wants that.