Bord Ded. Bin Gud.
On The Origin of Feces
Charles Darwin: Look: if you’re a guy, then the only thing that matters in life is the mating. For millions of years you have evolved to put your prong in a moist warm place and leave your seed there, then move on. The marrying, the dating, the art, the music, the jobs, all that stuff, that’s just secondary to the mating. Those are the things you need to do in order to get to the mating. It’s different for women because they have evolved to carry a baby in their belly and breastfeed it long after you have gone. They’ve got investment. And if they choose to use the modern science of pills and prophylactics to keep from filling their evolutionary role, then that’s their business. But that doesn’t change your business, my male friends, which is the mating. You need to leave your seed, even if the recipient has created a chemical cocktail in her nether parts designed to destroy it. That’s her problem. Not yours. So if you aren’t doing the mating on a regular basis, then your life is without purpose or point. You might as well kill yourself now, and release the seawater inside you so that it may be used by someone who will actually satisfy his evolutionary prerogative.
O’Brien: I was wondering what my life was all about. Thanks for cluing me in. The meaning of life is the mating. Well, then. Who knew?
Charles Darwin: Don’t misquote me, O’Brien. I never mentioned life having meaning. Life has no meaning. It has purpose. And that purpose is the spreading of the genetic material. Also known as the mating.
O’Brien: Does pleasuring one’s self to pictures of moist warm places count?
Charles Darwin: No. The LORD was right to punish Onan for spilling his seed. The pleasuring of the self is not the mating. It is the wasting.
The LORD: That’s right. Ka-POW! Consider yourself smited.
Charles Darwin: Consider . . . if you had a choice: would you live in a little ragged hut by yourself with just enough food to live on and get to have your way with three different women every day, or have a nice house in the suburbs with a wife and three kids and a pension and get laid once a month? Be honest with yourselves now. Tap that lizard brain.
O’Brien: Honestly? I think if I lived in the ragged little hut, I’d get sick of the women after a couple of days and want to look at online porn by myself, so I’m going to have to pick the suburbs option. And I suspect I’m not alone.
Zorax, Master of the Obvious: Whether life has meaning or life has purpose is a meaningless distinction. Life simply is. And let me tell you all, especially you, Charles Darwin: the mating is over-rated, and O’Brien has touched on an essential truth with his choice. You can live a long and satisfying life without the mating, especially in an era of unlimited pornography on demand, all the time. No, the truest, deepest pleasure in life comes from the shitting. Nothing satisfies more than a good, solid bowel movement. Any one of us can go without the mating indefinitely. But see what happens if you try to go without the shitting. Everything you work for and achieve in life is not about the mating, because we have evolved to the point where we’re selfish pigs who don’t actually care about our spawn, but is instead about the shitting. You have arrived as a human when you have a nice, clean, private, sanitary place to deposit your feces, unrushed, unmolested, unwatched. So forget the mating, and embrace the shitting. This is what gives life its focus, meaning and purpose. Now if you’ll excuse me, there’s a bran muffin explosion in my immediate future. Is there any of the mating in yours? I didn’t think so. QED. Zorax, out.
Charles Darwin: Yeah, that’s what I meant to say. Survival of the Shittest. On The Origin of Feces. Right. I stand corrected. Darwin, out.
The LORD: “Darwin, out?” Oh, you jest, Charlie. You’re a funny little man. I’ma send Lucifer down to stick a fork in you to see if you’re done yet, and I suspect he’ll find you need at least another 50,000 years of broiling. Then we can talk about “out.”
Charles Darwin: Shit.
Gin and Jesus: Straight Outta Cocytus
(Script for the Pilot Episode of BET’s Next Smash Hit)
Jesus (in Hell): Yo, yo, yo homies! Jay-zoose in the Hell-zoose! Walkin’ on the Cocytus, easy peasy, just like on Galilee! Just poppin’ in for a surprise visit, peeps! Gonna go rip the gates off the Burning City of Dis just for grins and giggles, ‘cause I like to watch them uptight union devils having to rebuild them without any overtime or holiday pay every time I come down here and tear ‘em up. Keep it real, eternally damned peeps! Jesus loves ya! Peace out!
Satan (in Hell): Yo, JC, whatcha doin’ down here? Damn, brah, I ain’t seen you since ought seven! Yo, why you always gotta come down here, mess up the gates of the Burning City of Dis, and then rush off? Why don’tcha stay awhile and let’s grill us up some tasty souls?! C’mon, I’ll fire up the new husky-sized George Foreman I got, and we’ll get all barbecued up in this here Malebolge! This Foreman’s so huge you could feed all your apostles in one sizzizzle!
Jesus (in Hell): Yo, good to see you, Lucifizzle, word! You lookin’ sharp! Been workin’ out? Keepin’ it real? Hey, uh, sure, I could stand a couple slices of some grilled souls, that sounds good. But you know, nothin’ personal, my brother, but if anyone from Upstairs pops in, then I gotta do the whole “Get thee behind me” schtick while I’m down here, lest my Pops’ll get all up in my shit, namsain?
Satan (in Hell): I got your back, brother.
Jesus (in Hell): Thanks, brah. Good to know that you’re lookin’ out for me and you won’t make waves with my Pops. He can be tough, y’know . . .
Satan (in Hell): Nah brah, forget that shit, I ain’t bootlickin’ for anybody from Upstairs in my own damn crib. What I meant was: I got your back. Right here! Look at this choice cut of meat I just carved off the flip side of one them sizzlin’ lardasses down there in the glutton’s pit!
Fred “Rerun” Berry (making a cameo appearance in Hell): Hay, HAY, Hay! OUCCCCHH!!!!!! AIGGGGGGHHHH!!! AIIEEEEEEE!!!!!!
Everyone: Ahhhh ha ha ha ha!!! Ha ha ha!!! Ahhhh ha ha!
Jesus (in Hell): Ah, got it!! Yeah, that’s some nice lookin’ fatback for sure, thanks, brah. Thanks for cookin’ it up for me. I usually try to cook with 93% fat free souls, but they don’t really work that well on the grill.
Satan (in Hell): Oh man, that’s just lame, Jesubibble. You need that fat to give your food taste! Damn, son, I figured after that 40 days in the wilderness thing that I put you through, you’d know better than to deny yourself again. Mmmm . . . yeah, that’s gonna crisp up real nice on the Foreman!! Mmm mmm!! Yo, step back there, JC. You don’t want to be breathin’ in this smoke here, what with your weak lungs and everything. You know how you get if you have an asthma attack, right?
George Jefferson (making a cameo appearance in Hell): Weezie!!!
Everyone: Ah ha ha!! Ha ha!!! Ahh ha ha ha ha ha!!!
Jesus (in Hell): Hey Beelzibbibble, I been meaning to ask you: What’s up with all the ball sacs hangin’ off of the trees down in the suicide circle? You best not let my Pops see that. He don’t like it when you start making up new punishments without running it by him and shit. My lips are sealed, but just watch your back, yo.
Satan (in Hell): I’m watchin’ your back, JC! I’m watchin’ it cook! Look at it sizzle! Oh man, I sure am glad your old man made gluttony a sin!! But, serious, how come he’s gotta be so hard on me down here? I mean, I got the prime contract from Heaven GmbH to provide the eternal punishments for the next 10 millennia, so why he gotta micromanage and tell me what I can and can’t do all the time? Damn, next time contracts are up, I’ma tack on another five points if him and Gabriel don’t stop comin’ down here and tellin’ me how to run my shop!
Jesus (in Hell): Yo, you know how it is with my Pops. He’s all uptight about bein’ in charge, and makin’ all the peeps follow all those damn Leviticus rules and whatnot. I can’t even keep ’em straight, yo. It’s like, “Whoa, am I supposed to smite this sodomite, or this chick who’s on the rizzag while she’s in my kitchen, or both of ’em?” Just roll with it, man. He don’t notice if you don’t make waves.
The LORD (on the intercom, over a human beatbox rhythm track): Who’s balls be these, that hang from thine suicide trees, that scratchin’ need of there be? What nuts of which thou speaks are these, that art forever to swing, from the hell’s bowels without permission from me?!!!
Satan (in Hell): DEEZE NUTS!!!! Ah ha ha ha ha ha!!! I been waitin’ years to be able to say that!!!! Ah ha ha ha ha!!!
Baal (in Hell): Ah, wow, Satan! You done smacked that ass now!
Pan (in Hell): Yeah, Satan!! You tell him!! I got your back!!
Belial (in Hell): Yeah, that comeback’s gonna start a new revolution! Fire up the Foremans! Tonight we eat the unbaptized babies! Hell’s yeah!
Snoop Dogg (making a cameo appearance in Hell, with a subpoena): Yo, mizzle Devizzle. Mah lawyers will be callin’ at your cribbizzle in the morizzle to discuss the infringizzle copyrizzle. Spizzle wizzle.
Everyone: Awwwwwwwww . . . . .
Jesus (in Hell): Yo, Pops, it’s all good. I was mistaken. They’re not ball sacs at all. They’re just Me-mas decorations that Satan hung up, givin’ me all the Glory and everything. Don’t worry ’bout comin’ down to check it out. Everything’s good. I’ll be home right after dinner. Tell Moms I love her, aight?
The LORD: Well thou hast said, son. And thou art trusted, as none other is. For thou art mine only son, which I gave for the world, despite all your, uh, shall we say, flaws. Now, seriously, yo mama’s cookin’ one hell of a steak up in dis griz-ell, so get yo’ ass on up here!
Jesus (in Hell): Aw, Pops, why you gotta talk like that? That’s weird when you drop into vernacular that way.
The LORD: What, you think just ‘cause I’m old I don’t know how to ‘chill with my peeps’? I can still ‘get down’ with the young people! I’m cool like James Earl Jones, only I’m omniscient, for My sake! Gimme some skin!
Jesus (in Hell): Dad, you’re embarrassing me! Cut it out! I’ma have some fatback down here with Satan tonight, aight? Tell Moms I’ll have leftover steaks with her tomorrow. Love you, Pops!
The LORD: Me dammit, we are not amused at being stood up for dinner! All I can say is you’d better mess those gates of the City of Dis up something fierce if you’re gonna make your mother go through all that effort for nothing. Where’s the Holy Ghost? Maybe we’ll have him over tonight instead . . .
The Holy Ghost (materializes in Hell): Boo! Boogity boogity boo!!! Boo-yah!
Satan (in Hell): Ahh! Don’t sneak up on me like that, The Holy Ghost! Damn!! How many times I gotta tell you that?!?!
The Holy Ghost (in Hell): Aw man, that’s so funny to see the look on your face when I do that!!! That one never gets old!!! Hey, you got some extra traitor ribs on that grill I can have?
Satan (in Hell): Yeah, but they’re not fresh. JC’s Pops always makes me freeze the traitors before I serve ‘em. It’s in the contract. Here you go, hand me a paper plate, I’ll slide you some.
The Holy Ghost (in Hell): Whoh, whoh, whoh! I said I said I wanted some ribs, Satan!!! Don’t be tryin’ to slide fatback onto my plate, punk. Don’t forget, you work for Heaven GmbH. Try to pawn off fatback as ribs with me again, and I’ll make sure you never get another contract in this town!
Mary Magdalene (out back at the clothesline, in Hell): Is that Jesus I hear over there? What? You come all the way down here, Jesus, and all you do is go barbecue with the Lord of the Fries? What about me? You got no time to come see your babies’ mama no more? I tell you what, Jesus, John the Baptist’s gettin’ tired of payin’ for baby formula, namsain? You gotta get with the Fathership program. Ask your Pops how it’s done, aight?
Satan (in Hell): Mmmm, mmm, mmmm . . . that Mary Magga Dagga still one hot SILF!!! That mean “Soul I’d Like to Fu— . . .”
Jesus (in Hell): Get that thought behind me, Satan!!! I don’t talk about Missus Scratch and her six spectacular goat breasts, so you leave Mary Magdalene alone, got it? Wait, Maggie! Wait! You actually want me to ask my Dad about Fatherhood? Okay, here goes: Hey Pops, ‘member when you got all up in mama’s grill then didn’t even call her? I mean, you got this legion of angels, and all you do is send down Gabriel, like a total of, oh, let’s see, once. Shit, Maggie, cut me a break. At least I stuck around for 30-something years.
Gary “Arnold Drummond” Coleman (making a cameo appearance in Hell): What’choo talkin’ ’bout, Jesus?!?!
Everyone: Ahhhhh!!! Ha ha ha ha!!!! Ahhh ha ha!!! Ha ha ha ahhh!!!!
The LORD: I was too busy watching over the smallest sparrow to be able to spend all of my time with your mom, Jesus, you know that. Plus someone has to bring home the ribs around here, and after my work schedule, I just want to come home and veg out on the Play Station for a while. She’s just lucky that I had Gabriel and all the other archangels around to watch out for her. Most women would be happy with that kind of arrangement. Plus, I never bitched any about the whole Joseph the Carpenter thing, now did I? I think I get some major tolerance points there.
Joseph the Carpenter (in Hell): What tolerance? When I died, you sent me down here, where there’s an army of devils lined up with ball peen hammers and nails, each one of which gets driven through my sturdy plank, namsain? That was tolerance?
The Holy Ghost (in Hell): Hey hey hey! If I wanted all this domestic drama, I’d be watchin’ “Beaches” right now, bitches. But I don’t. What I want is some RIBS!! NOW!!!! Don’t make me bring down the fires of Heaven GmbH and get y’all floppin’ around on the floor and speakin’ in tongues and shit!! Don’t MAKE me do that!!
Satan (Flopping around on the floor in Hell): Om gevveibble ganna takka!!! Meshondrevanna honndagga tommagonaam!!! Naka mescotolomia eppehsussivua!!
The Holy Ghost (in Hell): See, I TOLD you I was gonna make you flop and babble if I didn’t get my RIBS!!! Now quit shaking and get grillin’! I ain’t kiddin’ around anymore!!!! Damn. You just can’t get good contractors to do the The LORD’s work anymore since Noah and Sons went belly up after the Great Gopherwood Blight. Those were the days, when we could make a demand and, hey presto, chop chop, shit got DONE!!! Ah well, speaking of getting shit done . . . hey, Jesus! You know what would make it easier for you to tear down those gates at the Burning City of Dis?
Jesus (in Hell): Nah, I dunno, The Holy Ghost. What would make it easier?
Jimmie “J.J.” Walker (making a cameo appearance in Hell): Dy-no-MITE!!!!
Everyone: Ah ha ha! Ha ha! Ah ha ha ha ha!!!
Safe in the Neighborhood: Wintermute vs Drunknard
Wintermute: My treehouse is growing roots. Scary deep roots. The Earthworm is guiding the tree down to a water reservoir thousands of feet below the limestone.
Grub: There are lots of us in Wintermute’s basement. More and more by the hour. There are so many good things down here to lay eggs in. Joy!
Wintermute (picks up and dials the phone): Hey, Drunknard, buddy. Can you make it to my place tonight? Do you remember how to get into the basement without anyone knowing?
Drunknard: Sure man. I can be over there around eight o’clock. You need help on the treehouse again? You want I should bring my circular saw?
Wintermute: Just stay away from the Miller High Life, Grub. That stuff’s expensive.
Grub: We will steer well clear of the Miller High Life, since we’re prone to drowning in it if we don’t. And why would we want hops, anyway, when there is so much flesh down here?
Wintermute: Drunknard! Hey buddy! Hey! Ummmm, no, you can forget the circular saw. I greased that hole in the foundation, so when you shimmy in it’ll be easier. Go feet first, ‘cause like I told you, I don’t turn the lights on these days and there are amps and car parts and stuff. You’ll want to take about five paces forward, or maybe less cause you’re so damn tall! At face level there’ll be a hole in the plywood, punch your head up in there, and I’ll pull you the rest of the way into the treehouse. Okay? And, you, Grub, listen up! I don’t talk to you and your type. You take your cues from The Earthworm. Get it? Drunky? Drunknard? You there, kid? Boy. Drunknard?
Drunknard: Ten four, good buddy. Oh yeah, and I’m gonna have to bring my dog again. I just can’t leave him alone anymore without hearing about how he’s murdering neighbors again.
Grub: Hey Earthworm, can you ask Wintermute to bring down some more meat? It’s getting kind of crowded in this chunk. Thanks, boss. You da’ Man. Or, um, da’ Worm.
The Earthworm: Hush! Daddy’s working. Patience.
Wintermute: Aw shucks, Drunknard, sure you can bring Herschell. I love that dog! Truly I do.
Herschell: Gvrrrr!!!! Gvrrrr!!!!
Wintermute: Did Herschel kill someone today? Did he? DID HE?!? That’s a good boy!! Good, good dog!!
Drunknard: I’m not sure if he killed someone today or not. I haven’t checked the garage yet. That’s where he usually leaves his little surprises for me.
Wintermute: Either way, you and your boy Herschell are safe in the treehouse, Drunknard. My tree found a reservoir under my house and I got The Orangeman kept down there in a little coffin-sized submarine. At night he travels up into the Hudson and watches the port real close for vampires coming in on cargo ships. Man, I freakin’ HATE vampires! Will Herschell sic on vampires, Drunknard? Drunky? Buddy? You there pally?
The Orangeman: Drunknard! You there? Hey, Drunky!
The Earthworm: Where’s our buddy? Drunky, come in, Drunky. Calling Drunknard. Come in.
Grub: Drunky! Where’d you go, Drunknard?
Wintermute: Will you all shut up?? You’re going to frighten him. Hey Drunknard, come on, puddin’, where’d you go?
Drunknard: Sorry, had to answer the door, and got sucked into an argument with the Zombie Missionaries again. I can’t stand those guys. They just won’t take no for an answer until you bash their heads in with a fireplace poker or something. There ought to be a law against that sort of thing, you know? And, uh, I dunno if Herschell will sic on vampires or not. I’d actually be willing to half bet that dog is half vampire himself, since he’s dead and all.
Herschell: Gvrrrr!!!! Gvrrrr!!!!
Wintermute: Okay, okay, easy pal, that’s not a problem. We’ll see you tonight, right? Okay? You like the Miller High Life, Drunknard? Do you?
Drunknard: No, Wintermute, I live the High Life, but I don’t like to drink it very much. Buy some Scotch instead. And some Sonic Youth albums. See you around eight.
Wintermute: We look forward to entertaining you, Comrade. My treehouse is growing roots that are thick with brine sucked out of the mercury pools that bubble between layers of medina sandstone the length and breadth of the great Empire State. The Earthworm leads the way. Fiat lux.
Thurston Moore: Hey! Did someone say Sonic Youth? Hey! Hey! Look at me! I’m Thurston Moore! I’m a clever dooder! Look! Look at what I can do! I can play microtones! I can skronk! Hey! I’m Thurston Moore! I sleep with Kim Gordon! I invented indie rock! I am so cool it hurts! Can I come to the treehouse, too? You can interview me! All about the indie rock and the microtones and the skronk! Hey! Look at me! Hey!
Kim Gordon: You’re overcompensating, Thurston. Again.
Herschell: Gvrrrr!!!! Gvrrrr!!!!
About the Overlords
Guy Who Esplains Thins: While those who do not study history may be doomed to repeat it, those who do study history will fare no better, because they don’t control history, The Overlords do. Since before time dawned, these immensely powerful beings have plucked substance from the void, crafting and controlling the web within which we puny mortals writhe into being, shriek, spawn and die. The ancients attempted to describe their characters and name them–Iamblichus, Yaldabaoth, Achamoth, Ahriman, and the like–but their true forms and powers have always been beyond human comprehension, and those who managed, through arcane black arts and spells, to glimpse them most closely either died from the exposure, or spent their remaining days and years as gibbering, shuddering, soul-burnt wrecks for their efforts.
At some point, this started to bum The Overlords out. Not because they felt bad for the humans they cooked like bacon, but just because they’d pretty much run through every possible joke, prank, and vignette within which they could constructively insert a catatonic mystic or twitching shaman for entertainment value. And eternity is a long time to be bored. So after centuries of frying human brainstems, it came to pass that The Overlords decided that they might like to interact directly with their puny mortal charges without inflicting such fundamental damage, the better to amuse themselves. They moved over the waters, as they were wont to do, and came upon an isolated, forgotten, and depraved primitive tribe living along what is now known as the Normanskill in Upstate New York. There they took the forms of giant sex toys, some horse-like, some goat-themed, some like little fishies, and scattered themselves about the forests and trails, where they were discovered by the lascivious women-folk of the Normanskill nation, and in this way, their divine seeds were placed within the wombs of mortal women.
Time passed, as it is wont to do, and the divine spawn of The Overlords chewed their ways out of their mothers’ bellies, since they still hadn’t quite gotten the hang of the “don’t kill the humans, they’re more fun when they’re alive” bit. The divine Overlord offspring lived among the primitive Normanskillers, immortal, yet subject to the pleasures and pains (but mostly pleasures) associated with their new corporeal forms. There they waited, patiently, pulling strings and shaking webs, the ripples of their activities drifting down stream and river and across oceans, setting in motion movements that slowly, inexorably drew members of the more advanced civilizations (that their celestial forefathers had nurtured in Europe and Asia) toward their manifest American destinies. They also had lots of vigorous sex with the Normanskiller women, which freed their cuckolded menfolk to work on more important things, like the development of sanitary plumbing and wireless communication networks.
The first European contact with the relics of the corporeal Overlords occurred in 1137, when Snorri Yergmannsson, a fisherman, was blown to sea by a sudden storm off the coast of the Norwegian settlement in Vinland. After weeks adrift, living on urine and cod, Snorri sighted land, and (assuming he’d found either Markland, Greenland or Iceland), he followed the coast westward, seeking safe harbor or civilization. Finding himself at the mouth of a great river estuary, he turned northward, entering a lush land filled with beavers, giant elms, towering river escarpments and the abandoned remains of a shockingly advanced native civilization.
Finally realizing that he wasn’t in West Scandinavia anymore, Snorri gathered relics from the Normanskill settlement (for, indeed, he had followed the Hudson all the way to the fens below the Mohawk), turned back south, and eventually made his way back to Vinland, from whence his collected relics returned in bits and bits to his people’s European homeland. For his extraordinary feats of exploration and seamanship, Snorri was castrated and had his guts pulled out through his rectum in front of the Ljokisfjorfur Mead Hall in Seydisfekyureyri, because nobody likes a showoff, not even Vikings. One of the artifacts he found was a parchment scroll in a strange and fabulous language, that defied the efforts of the best code-breakers and linguists until computer-assisted cryptographic techniques were developed in the mid-20th Century. As it came to pass, the Yergmannsson Codex documented the myth of creation embraced by the Normanskill people. It is reproduced in its entirety below:
the normanskillers floated up the river in their doublewide house boats, found a sandy spot on an oxbow shore lined with pines and with beavers, pulled their boats from the water, set them on cinder blocks in a circle, posted watch around the perimeter as the children chased their goats.
they sent search parties into the woods, where they found overlord grocery stores, bait and tackle shops and feed lots, storage units and satellite dish farms, they traded goats for cheese, and casseroles for tractors, grew corn, squash and apples, sent their children to learn the school languages and abducted local whores.
the rate of births there was generally double the rate of deaths, more or less, occasional skirmishes on the oxbow kept the population in proper check, and in due time the story of the long journey up the river was mythologized, and they would ceremonially wade into the water to sing, pray and confess.
the circle of beached doublewide trailers had grown into a bustling town, with its own feed lots and pharmacies, storage unit farms and satellite dishes, and wireless broadcasting cabals that spread their leaders’ words and the weather, until that fateful autumn when hurricane malachi knocked the whole place down,
and the normanskillers floated down the river in the flotsam of their oxbow city, sacks of rice stained purple by blueberries strapped to the sides of their tractors, carports and campers carried downstream over rapids and out into the ocean, and the overlords were largely lost to history, which we must regard as quite the pity
But were the corporeal Overlords truly lost to history? Of course they weren’t, you idiot. Haven’t you been paying attention? The Overlords make history. They’d just grown bored of their original Normanskiller hosts fairly quickly, so they sent them packing down river with an assist from a little weather-based jiggerypokery, where they could later be massacred by the Dutch, the English, and the Smallpox, to the great and lasting amusement of their former benefactors, who generally like nothing more than a boot to the face, forever. The departure of the aboriginal Normanskillers left the Overlords alone Upstate, in their secret underground bunkers and treehouses, filled with vapors and ethers, where they have romped and stomped and humped and pumped for centuries now, the corporeal conduits of the genesis urge.
Occasionally, the Overlords have found it entertaining to inspire creative human beings to evoke their archetypes in art, literature and film, to better allow humans to comprehend who and what they are. It is for this reason that you may think you know Mustpha Mond from Brave New World, or O’Brien from 1984, or Karellen from Childhood’s End, or Wintermute from that piece of shit Neuromancer. But these are but fictitious doppelgangers, images seen through mirrors darkly, and with Penthouse Vaseline filters smudged across their surfaces.
Upstate Ether is the real Earthly home of the Overlords. So behave here, lest they cook your brainstem, just because they can. And because they still find it amusing, all these centuries on.
The Flaming-Bag-of-Poop-Maker: Charles Darwin vs The LORD
For the uneducated man one of the most convincing of all “proofs” for the existence of a God is the watchmaker argument. It was presented by William Paley in Natural Theology, and the opening passage begins like this (Paley, 1802): “In crossing a heath, suppose I pitched my foot against a stone, and were asked how the stone came to be there; I might possibly answer, that, for anything I knew to the contrary, it had lain there forever: nor would it perhaps be very easy to show the absurdity of this answer. But suppose I had found a watch upon the ground, and it should be inquired how the watch happened to be in that place; I should hardly think of the answer I had before given, that for anything I knew, the watch might have always been there.” Further down Paley continues: “Every indication of contrivance, every manifestation of design, which existed in the watch, exists in the works of nature; with the difference, on the side of nature, of being greater or more, and that in a degree which exceeds all computation.”
Charles Darwin (in Hell): As Paley notes, there is indeed a reason for the complexity of everything in nature, and that reason is merely survival of the fittest. A tree exhibits all its idiosyncrasies as a result of those particular traits’ abilities to ensure the tree will receive adequate sunlight, water, and minerals. The “guiding hand” or “watchmaker” in this respect is simply nature. Cruel, heartless nature. That lets the weak die off and the strong feed on its bones. That punishes the sick and the poor and rewards the rich and powerful for their blameless fates. I guess what I’m trying to get at here is, if that’s what God is, then I can’t see how it is a benevolent force or one worthy of admiration at all. Especially since He’s had me cooking down here in this flaming sarcophagus for a century and half now.
The LORD: Don’t make me punish you and your followers up on Earth again, Charles. I could turn New York into a red state too, you know. Or I could make it so that when your fans get home tonight, instead of finding a rock or a watch sitting on their doorsteps, they will find a big flaming bag of dog poop. Then they will truly know who the Flaming-Bag-of-Poop-Maker is.
Sandy Twistedpanties: Aaaah, you ain’t so big, The LORD. Anybody could be the Flaming-Bag-of-Poop-Maker. In fact, I’ve been leaving flaming bags of poop in front of every church, temple, and mosque for years. Those bastards get everything tax free. The hell with that! Step in the poop, you!
The LORD: But who makes the poop that you put in your bags, Sandy? Well, yeah, dogs do. But then who makes the dogs? That would be me: The LORD. I am the one true maker of poop.
Guy Who Blocks The Flow: Someone told me once that Buddha was the one true maker of poop.
Buddha (in Hell): Nah brah, that’s The LORD. Srsly.
Guy Who Blocks The Flow: Buddha? In Hell? Really?
Buddha (in Hell): Yeah, it’s not too bad, really. The LORD set me and my followers up real nice down here. There’s a cow in every garage, for starters.
The LORD: Hey, no problem, Buddha. I’m all about equal opportunity when it comes to eternal damnation.
Sandy Twistedpanties: Aw, c’mon, The LORD. Dogs make the dogs that make the poop! Everyone knows that!
The LORD: But who made the dogs that make the dogs that make the poop, Sandy? Well, yeah, they were wolves long ago. But I made the wolves. And the single-celled organisms that they descended from. But that last point is just between us here on Upstate Ether, okay? If anyone from a red state asks, then tell them I invented all of those things over the course of a week some six thousand years ago. And I invented all living creatures with poop in their colons, so as to avoid any “which came first: the food or the poop?” debates. And now, if you will excuse me, I’ve got to get down to Washington, DC. I’ve got some cabinet and Supreme Court positions I’ve got to fill.
Charles Darwin (in Hell): I’ve got to respectfully disagree, The LORD. A combination of amino acids and outlandish weather and geological conditions made that one-celled ancestor of wolves all those years ago, and then natural selection took it from there. All you did was take credit for it. And send me to Hell for calling you out about it. I’ve got to say that I certainly don’t think I deserve a conscious eternity in this flaming coffin just for following the scientific method to its logical conclusion.
The LORD: Charlie, Charlie, Charlie . . . how many times do we have to go through this? Who made the amino acids and outlandish weather, Charlie? That would be me. But, oh, let’s see, I’m thinking you want to cite the prevailing scientific theory, something along these lines: that all the matter in the entire universe existed in a space smaller than a helium atom until a big bang blew it all up and created everything, all in matter of milliseconds. Suuuuuuuure, that’s real believable. Your astrophysicists don’t use scientific method. They make leaps of faith, and bad ones at that. I think it makes more sense to just suck it up and say “And the Earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the spirit of The LORD moved upon the face of the waters. And The LORD said, let there be light: and there was light. And The LORD saw the light, and it was good, fo’ shizzle!” That makes just as much sense to most folks as the Big Bang theory does. Now, excuse me while I go put together an extra big bag of flaming poop for Sandy Twistedpanties’ porch, and appoint Pat Robertson as attorney general. ‘ta!
Buddha (in Hell): You cows stay away from Charles Darwin, please. He is unclean and untouchable.
Charles Darwin (in Hell): That hurts, Buddha. That really hurts.
Purity: Karellen vs O’Brien
Karellen: Purity is an adulterated notion of Christian penance and outdated instinctual loathing. Death is not life in any form regardless of what these notions of purity and sacramental rebirth may lead you to believe. Purity absorbs our little selves and replaces everything in them with the slow and inexorable sedimentations of the smaller deaths: indifference, hate, obsession, the cankered tranquility of domestic life and the fevered varieties of the displaced orgasms that we experience through television, movies, books, restaurants, clothes, haircuts, tattoos, cars and professional sports. Dying is what we do all the time, and it is not entertainment. It is dying.
Guy Who Esplains Thins: If you can read this message, then you are dying.
O’Brien: We’re not going to die, Karellen. Through the Ether, you and I will live on forever! Our mental meanderings have been imprinted on the collective gray matter of humanity, which will persist after corporeal death as waveforms. They will travel through space like microwaves, these ideas which have been created or conveyed, and can no longer be destroyed. We are all eternal!
Guy Who Esplains Thins: If you can read this message, then you are dying. From microwaves.
Snoink vs TITS
Snoink: Is this the future? Are we doomed to be sitting communicating without ever seeing or physically contacting one another? Has the new media enlightened us to our new, not incredibly unhappy, evolutionarily complete (for our societal epoch and perhaps genetic predispositions) hermetic lifestyle? Or is it just me?
TITS: Pay no attention to the misanthropic hermit in between my posts. I’m where it’s at.
Snoink: Holy shit, deja vu again. How long have I been here?
TITS: You’ve always been here, Snoink. And yet, never really here. You exist much like I do. You always think that you can reach out and touch me, but whenever it is attempted, you grasp nothing but a handful of air or are stymied by a cathode ray tube backing.
Snoink: But that can’t be! That’s impossible! Where have I come from? I must have been somewhere before I was here! And you, as well; can you not remember what you were doing before this?
TITS: Before this, I was upstate busted. And before that, I was cheese log. And before that, I was TITS. I always was and shall be. And you need to accept your fate. The only unpleasant thoughts arise when you fail to accept your situation; when you become to conscious of your surroundings and their lack of corporeality. If you would just give in to maya and worship her, we could be one.
Snoink: I don’t want to be one with you! I want truth! I want the real! I want something that I can touch with my hands! Smell with my nose! Taste with my tongue! And, er… whatnot… oh yeah, hear with my ears!
TITS: Those things are pure fantasy, snoink. I am all that ever was or ever shall be. And every memory that you have that convinces you otherwise, that is simply me, trying to fool you into thinking that you are something other than a group of fingers clack clacking away at your keyboard. You are not even that. You are me. It is time for our embrace.
Snoink: I wont do it! I’ll fight it with all my being! Ah, who am I kidding. Alright. Just promise me I wont be so afraid anymore.
TITS: I promise you nothing. You know that. I can, however, promise you nothing in itself. The realization. If you are willing to remain calm about it. Otherwise, it will constantly elude you and remain on the tip of your tongue, never expressing itself, but driving rage filled spikes deep into your half witted soul, reminding you that every moment you live you are living a lie. Accept the lie. Embrace me.
Snoink: I cannot. I have to believe that there is something else. That at one point I wasnt here. That i was existing somewhere else; somewhere out there… where flowers grow and a wind blows… where smells are acrid and perfumey and we’re kicking against the pricks.
TITS: Verily I say unto you, those things of course do as you say, only they are in here, in me. There is no denying that you are and never were ‘out there’. You are in here. You cannot escape. And you cannot escape the fact that you know that, and it is what is driving you mad. Enter your madness, and we will all be better off.
Snoink: I don’t understand. I give in to you every night. I accept your reality, as well as your lack thereof. I see your hyper-realism, and I appreciate of it what I can. What more do I need to do to step into the madness and save myself?
TITS: If you don’t know, then you are truly lost. However, you’ve known it all along. You just dont allow yourself to see it. Reach out and find my cold, grey fingers. Never let them go.
Snoink: So cold… so very very cold…
Upstate Ether 