Reluctantly fulfilling my obligation to society

Here is the next image from my book of An Hundred Drawing Prompts. (I shared the last one on Jan 17; if you love me you will look at it.) The prompt for this current painting was "Eiffel Tower".

Dear diary,

I am an unpaid blogger; my writings here are non-monetized: that's a fact. Cash-free life is nice becuz I can do whatever I want. But now I wonder: What would I write about if it were my JOB to compose a blog post today? If I were PAID to do so; like if I worked as a staff writer for the newspaper, and I was responsible for a daily column...

Let's try it, dear reader, you and I together...

FIRST EVER
PRO JOURNAL ENTRY:

Imagine you're holding a plank of wood. Do you know what a "knot" is? A hard mass formed in a tree trunk at the intersection with a branch, resulting in a round cross-grained piece in timber when cut through. Well I'm like a knot among creatures. When spacetime comes a-slicing, I make its job difficult.

I say this because I'm filled with anxiety and annoyance and anger. All the 'a'-words. Athlete, asshole.

Seriously tho, I wake up every morning with butterflies in my stomach and rage at existence. This is not how beings should feel.

So I assume that something is wrong with the world, because the world surrounds me and I don't control it. Each creature should feel at harmony with its environment, whereas I'm out of sorts.

Yet, on second thot, something might be wrong with myself. Maybe I AM to blame: perhaps I need an attitude adjustment; maybe I need to take a chill pill.

What's the answer? Is it the world's fault that I'm a bothered knot of angst, or am I just too demanding of reality?

Jesus

Allow me to change the official subject to Jesus. I'm trying to obey my initial intention to write a blog as if I am the gossip columnist for our local newspaper, The Minnesota Beagle.

Actually we have TWO state papers here in MN: "The Star Tribune" and "The Pioneer Press". My earthly father always favored the latter because he said that the former has "a liberal bias". My dad saw everything in terms of either "liberal" or "conservative", and those terms meant to him exactly the same as "evil" and "good". Conservative = good, liberal = evil. I myself am definitely the flesh of his flesh and the disposition of his disposition: cuz I look like a melted version of my dad on his worst day, plus I have a bad temper; but somethng must have gone wrong during the "copy-paste" process in nature's Heredity Transfer, cuz I disagree with my dad about politics as well as papers. I don't favor The Pioneer Press over The Star Tribune. I dislike both options; that's why I invented my own 3rd party, a pretend newspaper that doesn't exist: "The Minnesota Beagle". I choose the beagle because it's a small sturdy hound with a coat of medium length.

So today I'm writing a column about Jesus for The Minnesota Beagle. Why Jesus? Cuz people are crazy about that entertainer. His fan base is enormous.

Now, depending who you ask, you could get very different answers to the question: Who do you think Jesus was, and what did he mean to you?

Note that I do not ask "Did Jesus exist?" — cuz he obviously existed; otherwise, why would we be talking about him! Jesus is just as real as my local newspaper.

OK so what I'd do for my gossip column, since any column worth its salt will contain eyewitness accounts, is pay a visit to the mall and interview various passersby. And I'll include their responses to my church-backed inquisition as quotations among my 14 paragraphs.

Dan from Fridley says "Jesus was a man from the first century who was the only manifestation of God on earth; he was a perfect soul, yet he died as a criminal so that the wrongness of his death could offset the necessity of mortality among human beings: thus Jesus is important because, if you believe in the power of his sacrifice, you can inherit eternal life; and that means you can enjoy forever a perfect existence with Jehovah in heaven."

Stacey from Mankato says "Jesus was a moral teacher who collected beaver pelts. He planted apple trees wherever he went. He walked across all 52 states on foot, because he lived during the time of the great railroads. And the only city he did not visit was Edina, cuz Edina is filled with rich folks, whom Jesus despised."

Dan from Eden Prairie says "Jesus helped poor kids get a leg up in the world. He worked at food charities, serving soup to those who lack shelter. He worked at a bank. He worked as a carpenter. And he wrote the Ten Commandments before Moses broke them."

Lisa from Brainerd says "Jesus was a Jewish sailor. He sailed the seven seas and came home and started the sacrament of Yellow Journalism. He gave us Trump; but he also gave us the Last Trump. And that's not nothing."

Jake Jepsom from Blaine says "I hate Jesus becuz my parents raised me in the church and I was bored to death there. Their singing sounds like dogs howling at the moon. Their preaching makes as much sense as the plot of a Bryan Ray novel. Their morality is wickedness. Their breath smells like stale coffee. They don't drink wine, they don't smoke weed, they don't make love. How are they going to survive in this world? Without procreation, no children can work for slave wages in the sacred nursing homes. If Jesus really were divine, he'd have left instructions for his followers to get a good job and start a family business. He wouldn't have encouraged a pale white king to try to become the first black president. Jesus didn't believe in race. That's why they buried him in the cornfields of Iowa. He should've campaigned in Wisconsin, for Wisconsin basically borders Minnesota. ONLY THEN would he have shattered his own glass dream of being coronated U.S. Ice Queen."

Mister Lakeville from Shakopee and Brooklyn Park says "I don't have time to stop here at the mall and shoot the breeze with you. Not even on the very important topic of Jesus the Christ. I'm late for a business meeting. It's the most perfect meeting ever: for a bearable temperature is maintained inside the building where my employees and I have fixed upon butting heads. There is neither ice nor snow inside our board room, so we never need to hasten out to our minivans and fetch our ice scrapers to scrape the sleet from the countertops before setting our styrofoam thermoses on the..."

[Editor's note: Mister Lakeville from Shakopee and Brooklyn Park died before completing his affidavit.]

Nicole J. from Chanhassen says "Let me turn the question back to thee, Bryan. What dost THEE THYSELF think of Jesus Christ the only begotten son of Tyrant Yahweh?"

So I guess I'll have to conclude my column with the ANSWER KEY. Alright, here's the sole correct answer:

Bryan Ray of Thief River Falls says "Jesus is the love of my life, because I believe in tender porn. I believe that one should write biographies of one's lover. The more the merrier (but cap them at four, on penalty of death). I believe that Jesus rose and came again after umpteen days of being admired, and that the Sears Hardware Stores will have their bones similarly re-sinewed, when the moment is right. Presumably at a candlelight dinner; & Christ foots the bill. Now the reason that Jesus pays for all our meals is that he understands three things: (1) that we need just a little bit more than the bread of life in order to have good fun, (2) we can't let our taxes steal themselves goddammit they might help someone undeserving NO a thousand times NO only the rich should be allowed to game the system, (3) that Walnut Grove and Osseo and Waconia and Shoreview and Hibbing are the only soverign nations that wreak vengeance on holy scripture the true LORD's way; (4) that the Devil wants us to work strange hours, like any hours other than nine-to-five daily with only the weekends off to feed our sheep and no maternity leave at all, so as to confuse us into forgetting when the Baptist church is open; (5) that..."

[Editor's note: I can't think of anything more to let my characters say in this here article, so I'll go eat breakfast now. Thanks so much for reading.]