Here's the next page from my book of 294 Drawing Prompts. (The previous page appeared on March 23.) The prompt for this present drawing was "Personalized license plate".
#1
Peter P. is the first of my twelve Apostles. He works in a grocery store. He wears an apron; he cuts your meat; he bags your fruit. He stocks the cans on the shelves. He works Tuesday thru Thursday, three hours each day, and earns six figures by the end of the year, always. ($250,000.00 to be exact.) I like Peter P.
#2
Andrew A. was my second disciple to become an official Apostle. He has lizard hands; by which I mean that reptilian appendages extend out of the sleeves of his linen toga. He’s a very nice man. He works in construction. He also builds bombs. But he only uses his powers for familiar justice; so he refused to blow up the bridge over the River Kwai — he was like: “No! I don’t care if you’re my superior in this situation, on account of my being captured as your prisoner: I WILL NOT DO IT!” That’s what I like about Andrew A. — he’s stubborn.
#3
James J. is my favorite Apostle. Everything he does is kind. Once we saw an urchin at the roadside, and he was holding a sign that said “WANTED: APPLE” and James J. reaches into his rucksack and pulls out an apple. He hands it to the lad. The lad lights up. This lad became my fourth Apostle.
#4
John J., my fourth Apostle, is a terrible listener. I command him to do one thing and he races off and does a whole nother thing. So I tried to get wise to his numbskull ways, and the next time I shouted a command and he started to run away, I grabbed his collar and choked him back and said “Wait a minute, youngster. Before you leave, repeat back to me this command that I just gave you. (In case you forgot, my command was ‘Love your farmer’s daughter as yourself’).” And John J. answered, “Sir, yes, sir. Your command was for me to go out and cause divisions among the populace. Divide and conquer, sir. Especially those subgroups that don’t seem to belong with my cult of soldiers. I was just about to compose and print out a pamphlet abusing them mercilessly, sir; but you held me back.” And the thing that makes me mad is that this answer is somewhat plausible, because my question was unfair; for John J. doesn’t even have his own farmer — John steals all his fruit from any old orchard and then tosses most of it to the hogs.
#5
Apostle Five is Philip P. He reads the scriptures night and day. Only problem is, they’re not MY scriptures. They’re somebody else’s. But that’s OK. I can handle a little ridicule. I just don’t understand why anyone would go so far as to click the heart button on rival publications, since those products — in fact, that entire market — has never been my cup of tea. But I don’t lose my cool when Philip P. strays, because I practice T.M. (Transcendental Meditation); and I was taught by a proper master, so my grand-unified mind-state is noted in the official registry of the Everlasting One: go and look, if you don’t believe me.
#6
Bartholomew B. is a really good man. I met him in a saloon, and he became my sixth Apostle. He’s a jolly fellow, very large: he has big arms, big legs, an upper torso like a cedar tree, and his voice is deep and loud. When he orders drinks for our whole squad, as he’s known to do frequently, he always causes the candelabra to quake, because he pounds his fist on the counter-top to accent his speech.
Once, following a tornado, a house fell on my mother, the Wicked Witch of the Midwest, and Bartholomew B. lifted it off of her!—he hefted the whole entire house up with one of his arms, and then he used his free arm to yank my mother’s body out from beneath the foundation, where it had been crushed to death. This allowed my mother to receive a proper burial; cuz if she had been left under the house, within minutes her feet and legs would have shriveled up like a spider that’s been poisoned. So I appreciate Bartholomew B.
#7
Thomas M. is my seventh Apostle. He sleeps all day. He’s my second favorite disciple after James J. For I simply admire folks who sleep all day.
#8
Apostle number eight is Matthew T. He’s an illustrator of comic books. He works for both of those rival magazines: I forgot their names, but there are two rival comics that really hate each other; and they have a hard time reaching agreements about contracts whenever one of their artists, who is employed to draw a particular protagonist for his home company, is requested to do some guest drawings for the rival company, so that the character whom that latter company owns can appear in their magazine’s next issue winning a battle against his anti-hero.
Matthew T.’s favorite body parts to draw are bosoms and biceps, which is why all his characters look the way that they do. He also likes to draw legs.
#9
James Q.S. is my Apostle number nine. If you thought it was hard to keep track of eight Apostles, try hiring nine. Once you add a ninth cultist, you’re obligated under the current rules to offer health care to your entire team. So James Q.S. broke my bank. But he was worth it. He’s a clone of James J., my third & dearest. But his cloning went wrong: for the procedure was supposed to consist of James J. reclining in the bed at stage right, and his clone in the bed at stage left — THAT would have resulted in a perfect copy of James J. — but what happened is that my neighbor’s pet dog wandered into the scientific laboratory, and this dog’s coat (not his lab coat but his natural coat) is covered with giant blobs of light-brown and white fur. And he leapt up on the bed alongside James J. (for the two are friends); so, instead of getting an exact replica of my beloved James J., I ended up with this super fierce, strong, stylish alternative, whom I christened James Q.S. (the initials stand for “Query” and “Serpent”, because the question mark sorta resembles a snake); and he’s an airhead. But he’s friendly.
#10
The name of my tenth Apostle is Taddeus Q.S. — he’s a very good accountant, so he takes care of all our bookkeeping. He wears special gloves that have gel pens attached to all the fingertips, so he can write five scripts at a time, if the situation is critical or urgent; especially if it is difficult, such as that adventure that we undertook where we conquered half the known world, and we had to pay back all the private banks for the loans that we had taken out along the way, lest they garnish our future profits. Taddeus Q.S. is also a particularly talented builder.
#11
Judas. That’s the name of my eleventh Apostle. He’s my “brother from another mother” — I love Saint Judas. He shares all my interests: we both like U.S. rap music from the late 1970s to around the turn of the century; but we both HATE all the rap that came out after that. We also embrace the art movements of Surrealism and Dada, and we love the old Hollywood movies from the silent era to the 1940s and 50s, as well as the French New Wave; and we can’t stop reading the poetry of Walt Whitman and William Blake, and our favorite literary critic is Harold Bloom, and we love the film directors Werner Herzog, David Lynch, Errol Morris, and Guy Maddin (just to name the first few that come to mind — I stop here arbitrarily; I could go on for quite a while: Orson Welles, Michelangelo Antonioni, John Ford, Frank Capra, Paul Thomas Anderson...); yes, Judas is my best friend.
#12
Last and least I have my twelfth Apostle: Simon. He’s a dip; but he’s a mean dip, and that counts for something. If you’re ever locked out of a city, or banned for life from ancient Athens, as has happened to me a few times in the last week, it pays to have someone who can muscle his way into the hearts and minds of the founders. Someone who knows how to pick locks and fire cannonballs. It’s what I both like and dislike about my Apostle Simon: he’s like a boulder that’s hard to move. (But at least he’s not as under-the-table as Paul, my unofficial “Thirteenth Apostle” who, just last Friday, claimed to have joined our club by mail.)
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