Personalize + Zephaniah = PersonaliZephaniah

[Here I traced the DVD case of Easy Rider (1969).]

Dear diary,

I read the Bible night and day. I read the Bible back and forth. I read the Bible up and down. I read the Bible south and north.

And I often wonder, when I read one of the biblical books that concerns other places and people from the past (as all of them do), like ancient Israel and Judah, and their deity Jehovah, what would happen if I changed the words so that they concerned things from the present that I myself am familiar with — would this help me misunderstand the text stronger? Or, even better: would this make soundlessness dirtier?

So, in this entry, I will simply steal three chapters from Zephaniah. Which is ruthless, because the man came to me this morning with nothing more than three chapters to his name!

For unto every one that hath shall be given, and he shall have abundance: but from him that hath not shall be taken away even that which he hath.

—Jesus (Matthew 25:29)

Chapter One

I shall totally annihilate everything from off the face of the earth! sez the ALIEN.

All humans and animals will be zapped clean. I will zap all the birds out of the sky, and I’ll zap all the sea creatures.

All the mean tricks that creditors and banks and their governments have been playing, I will foil. Then I’ll zap these gang-bangers straight out of this dimension! – This is the ALIEN speaking.

I will moreover solve all the problems in America. All the people who live in the United States, I will help you. I will remove the bad people from blocking your progress. All the rude and inhuman jerks, I will zap them. They shall disappear in a puff.

Anyone who listens to awful music at loud volume, or who practices a belief system that doesn’t respect all life (but which claims to be a sect of one of the popular religions) — I’ll take care of them for you. I won’t hurt them, but I’ll . . .

Actually, just trust me: I come in friendship. But one needs to clear off the table before a big feast.

So, anyone who has given up on trying to increase harmony and compassion among all living creatures, I’m going to reverse your good fortune and turn it bad. All the people who are in positions high up, who govern dishonestly (and I mean whether the group that you’re in charge of is public or private), I will flip you around. I’m here to change things for the better.

You’ll like the way that things look, when I’m finished. It’ll be like having an ugly room made beautiful: a skillful renovation. I’ll change all the furniture; install new flooring . . .

At exactly the same time that I’m refurbishing your planet, I will gather up all those jerks who’ve been acting violently and vandalizing your neighborhood, and I’ll toss them in the recycling bin. And when that happens, you’ll notice some strange noises in the distance — like the sound of people complaining because they’ve gotten their favorite toy taken away. Don’t fret about this: I’m not aiming to harm these violent jerks — I’m patiently letting them learn to love the world. They will return to you freshened.

When I do my work, you’ll notice the hills are vibrating slightly, so that the bells on your livestock might tinkle a little more than usual — that is normal. Again I say to you: Don’t fret.

And if you love money, then you better learn to cry hard, cuz I’m gonna zap money straight out of existence. Gold standard? Gone. Silver? Gone. And I will not be endorsing any type of cryptocurrency either, so don’t bother asking.

Now after all the above, I will climb out of my spaceship and begin to explore the landscape with my flashlight. I will do a complete inspection of America — but my purpose will only be to find those people who don’t believe that goodness can exist, and those who think that the ALIEN is their enemy. I am not your foe: I’m your friend. At least, I desire to be your friend. (I can’t force you to befriend me — real friendship is a two-way street; or rather, actually, as William Blake always sez: “Opposition is true Friendship” — so it’s OK if we don’t agree on absolutely everything.) All I can do is extend my offer to aim us toward respect. We don’t even need to talk much — just, every once in a while, exchange a cheerful greeting. If you ever require anything, I’ll give it to you freely.

My point is: Anyone who thinks that the ALIEN does not care about humans, and that the ALIEN will not come to help humankind if humankind requests the ALIEN’s help, should revise their theories about the ALIEN — becuz I DO care. In fact, I care quite a lot.

So if you’re taking advantage of your fellow beings — say that you’re charging them exorbitant rates of interest on loans that were preposterous in the first place, or that you’re stealing all their savings thru lawyerly schemes — I’m going to draw nigh unto you and change the fabric of spacetime so that it doesn’t favor you anymore. – You’ll then need to ask your neighbor for a glass of wine, instead of being able to offer him choice bottles from your own cellar. It’ll be humiliating, at first, until you realize that everything is friendlier now. (I’m sure I’ll win you over, in the end.)

And the day on which all these reversals shall take place, turning bad to good, and turning good to better, is very close. It is even at hand. You won’t need to wait long for any of this fortune-mending to happen. Those who are bullies now will be weeping like babies, once I engage the toggle switch.

But the transition period will be difficult. I’m just warning you so that you don’t worry too much. Cuz there will be a lot of mist in the air, and a distinct scent not unlike cucumber sandwiches. And the sun will seem a little less bright, for a while. Some of you might find this pleasant. I know that Bryan Ray of Thief River Falls enjoys cucumber sandwiches. But others will feel slightly sad for a month or two, due to the lack of sunshine.

And you’ll hear a lot of alarms go off: car alarms, home-security alarms. This is because the hills are vibrating. This machine that I constructed is a powerful invention. (You can’t break all the eggs in the world without at least stumbling upon one infinite omelet.)

Also people will feel a mixture of boredom and angst for a bit. They’ll pace around their neighborhood like sleepwalkers. But this will soon pass. So don’t go slitting your wrists or treating your body as if it’s good only for parachute-less canyon-diving.

Yes, I repeat: I’ll be zapping away all your money. Not because I’m stealing it — the ALIEN has no bank account: my personal credit score is horrible (zero credit equals bad credit) — but you’re going to need to learn how to live without using your plastic debit cards or your paper banknotes. – I’m also planning on zapping all the metal coins away. Presumably they’re susceptible to magnetism. If some of them remain, that’s alright: you’re not going to be able to jumpstart your economy with pennies and cigarettes. Those who do will only feel like fools and eventually repent. No, you’re going to need to learn to care about something deeper in one another, besides monetary value and market rates of exchange. – But I believe in you. I know you can do this.

Additionally you’ll see a lot of fires and lava rampaging over the landscape. This is no threat. This is a controlled burn. Don’t go taking the whole series of Monet’s “haystack” paintings off the walls of your museums & attempting to update them with acrylics so that they look like they’re mimicking the blaze — Monet’s works are fine just as they are. I’m a huge fan, myself.

Chapter II

I also would like to say a word to all the countries and territories that are relatively unpopular:

O thou lesser-known nations, I see you, and I care about you. Your people are just as important as the people in the so-called important nations. My aim is to help out ALL.

Mother Nature is angry with much of this planet, but I, the ALIEN, am trying to negotiate a settlement betwixt her and you, the People, despite the Gangster Class which owns the majority of the globe. I can’t promise success, but I’ll try my best to bring about a . . .

I’m just saying: Don’t interpret all unpleasant events as if they’re punishments for some eternal law that you transgressed — occasionally these types of deliberation just fall thru, and things happen that nobody expected and that none of us wants.

In short, DON’T lose faith in human goodness. Wherever you see even the slightest sliver of goodness appear, I, even I, the ALIEN, reside within it: that’s me trying to rescue you. Don’t lose heart.

Now, you might see the nearby planet Saturn explode, and also Venus and Mars might evaporate — but that won’t effect the orbit of Earth or your moon. The higher-ups just wanted to delete these items because they realized that they were becoming temptations for your criminal upperclassmen. Especially Mars, the god of warfare — jeesh! good riddance.

So there’s no way that we can avoid losing a lot of the fertile soil that was usable for farming before now; but I will try to invent new seaweeds that can grow on land, on the shores of beaches, so that herders can bring their goats to graze there and keep them satisfied. There’s nothing more cheerful than the sight of a satisfied goat.

I’ll also try to build a bunch of cottages along the coastline, and I’ll keep repositioning them, to save their interiors from flooding, as the water level rises. That way it’ll be fun for the both of us, and I’ll always have some physical puzzle to occupy my time.

Ooh, and I almost forgot to mention: All slavery, everywere, I will abolish. But not the way that it was abolished in the past, by simply changing its name & sweeping it under the prison-rug: no, I’ll truly solve this problem, once and for all.

And I’ve heard all the complaints that the 99% have been making against the 1%, and I am totally on both your sides: I believe that you should all have a fruitful world to live in, & that you should not be separated into two unequal pieces like this, with one being more than 300 times thicker than its splinter: Contrariwise, you should share the WHOLE PIE together; neither slice should abase itself to the other. So I’ll make that happen, as soon as I can manage it. We’re just waiting on a few technicalities in the heavenly bureaucracy.

Another interesting thing that shall come to pass, if you are willing to work with me to get thru this, is that we’ll be able to berate the gods of all the religions that nobody believes in anymore. This’ll be safe to do, because they’re all imaginary.

And, as I mentioned, there will be a lot of local skirmishes, but they will all wind up perfumed in the end, and your goats will be able to graze on the shoreline, due to the new types of plants and flowers that I’ll devise.

Two creatures that I favor, the cormorant and the bittern, shall lodge in the upper lintels of a tower that I will build with my own bare hands. Their voices shall sing in the window, replacing that roaring lion who was there before (near the beginning of older filmstrips); and then I shall pull back the curtain and uncover the cedar work that I finished last recurrence. You will think that you’re seeing me reclining there, on the divan, because this place will share a special fragment of spacetime with the back room of my summer house, which I will build at the base of my mountain, in the northwest region. All this shall occur near the end of the upcoming chapter.

In sum: No one shall ever walk thru your neighborhood and scoff at the appearance of your yard or your personal residence. All souls, instead, shall seem to live in a similar mansion. For I shall alter the popular taste so that everyone is accepting of pretty much whatever.

Chapter III

But shame on the ugly, filthy polluters of the atmosphere. I will teach you to shape up, or you’ll be asked to ship out; & if you refuse, I’ll zap you to Dante, & he’ll relocate you to a suitable environment.

Anyone who doesn’t trust me, please reconsider your stance. I am the ALIEN and thus I have powers that you’ve never even dreamed of — so let’s do this the easy way, not the hard way.

I also plan on making tygers and wolves more like pigs and dogs — I mean sociable. (I’m not talking about changing their appearance; I love their appearance.)

But the folks who will have it the worst are those who’ve been taking advantage of others knowingly, by bending the rules of law so that they favor low-minded activities, and anyone who cheats people out of the things that they need. You know the type. These people better get down on their knees and pray to their capital gains, asking them to construct a shield of protection for them which is reliably fate-proof. Cuz I come wielding fate; and most of the capital gains that I know are not very good at answering the prayers of desperate humans.

You won’t see many people on the streets either, cuz everybody left. The party’s over.

I wanna stress: All this happened because people were jerks to each other, and they chose to trust their worse nature rather than their better nature.

On account of all the above, just you wait. I am hastening toward you with more than a verbal message — even I, the ALIEN — & when I enter the airspace of your existence (which I will do, once I decipher its secret passcode), I will be like a huge robotic predator to all the rich and powerful. I will whistle for all the countries and their leadership to approach my personhood, and all the magnates of all the multinational corporations that rule the world will gather before me like pets to their master. Then I will take out my Ray Gun and zap their composition:

There will be a flash like lightning, & they will glow molten for an instant; then the constitution of their tangible matter will rearrange into an aroma. They will vanish, & there will be nothing left behind but a funny smell — & it’ll be a strong scent, because there were so many of them. I might even do this to the whole globe, if I find that I’m jealous enough. (I haven’t committed to a hard plan yet.)

But if I zap the earth too, I’ll still leave intact certain of its atoms to serve as some sort of substratum for you to stand on; because I will save all the people who are kindhearted, and also those who are hardhearted but enticingly creative. Those are the type of beings that I want to foster. The caring classes and the poetic geniuses.

And I’ll roll all the languages up into one, so that we don’t lose any of the uniqueness of each, but everyone will understand enough of the vocab to no longer suffer any imagination to be “lost in translation”. And my hope is that you’ll all have some compliments to give me, when your fiery tongues all merge.

And when you finally see me, I hope you like how I look.

Plus that place you named Ethiopia has good vibrations. The type of energy there is really attractive to me. So I will have the women who hail from that realm bring artworks to me, so that I can marvel at them. We might wanna build an underground labyrinth where we can display these things, sorta like a museum but markedly weirder.

Now, when all this happens, and I’ve transformed all the oppressive economic structures into a type of fragrant mist, you’ll all be so impressed that you’ll immediately begin to search your souls for all the “bad” things you might’ve done in the past — the so-called sins you might have committed: I’m not gonna tell you that you’re wrong to do so, because a little introspection won’t harm your character (it may even improve it); but please understand that there’s no need to dwell on your iniquities; just take note of them and move on. I’m interested in making a paradise on earth, not in punishing everyone.

I will, however, turn Sinai, that famous mountain, into an active volcano; and I will live amongst you inside of its red-hot, oozing, liquid rock. This is purely for style. I like how I look, floating in lava. And it’s a good place to park my space pod, so that the Antarcticans can’t get at it. (I mean the scientists, not the natives.)

Also there will still be impoverished people among you. But I will set up a fund of riches that they may freely draw from, and this fund will be limitless; for I’ll keep refilling it: therefore, those who are poor will remain so only because they refuse to accept this boundless free gift. They will say “No thank you; we don’t deserve it.” And the rest of us will shrug and say “Suit yourselves.” Cuz I don’t wanna force anyone to do anything against their will; and some folks are just set in their ways.

All the people who remain, whether rich or poor, shall treat each other with compassion: everyone shall live harmoniously — I mean, there will be much disagreement and fighting, but it’ll all be mental not physical: there will be plenty of arguments, extremely heated — the type that people lose sleep over — but never will anyone ever blast a firearm at anyone. The zap of my Ray Gun will be the last shot that ever gets fired, until time reverses.

And everyone will lie about everything, but none of these lies will cause much trouble — they’ll be like when a clever sage plays a trick upon a doltish follower. Like when my friend Jesus told Saint Peter “Get thee behind me Satan.” (Mark 8:33) Peter wasn’t really Satan — he was just ribbing him, cuz he was acting obtuse.

There will be a lot of picnicking. Lots of people lying down in meadows and fields upon blankets. But the ground will be a lot more comfortable, so you won’t really even need to bring any extra covering. You could even just use a rock for a pillow, like Jacob did (Genesis 28:11) on that night when we pranked him, via the rift in Dimension Seven.

If you feel heartened by these things that I’m telling you, then sing aloud to me! Let me know, with a little impromptu ditty, how much you appreciate what I’ve done. Don’t hold in your excitement. I like to know that my work is appreciated.

Aright, so, to review, I’m going to undo all the current judgments on earth: Right now, everyone selfish & rotten is at the top & successful, whereas all the people of finest mettle are downtrodden. I’m gonna flip that around, turn the tables. All those who roadblock progress or who care for nothing more than piling up more & more money, plus anyone who has harmed and slain people, or who likes to torment and act violently towards other living creatures, as well as all who have risen into prestige from this type of behavior — they’re all gonna get zapped up:

There will be no more adversaries or opponents: humankind will be at peace. You will no longer need presidents or representatives, or even any kind of government. Mere anarchy will be loosed upon the earth; and it will be blissful. Everywhere you presently have war and killing, death and bloodshed — all these things will be swapped out, and we’ll put in their place: lovemaking. Pervasive eroticism. Anyone who doesn’t like this can go clothe themselves in one of the coats of skins that have been provided, or one of the sewn aprons of fig leaves that hang near the Village of the Willfully Impoverished. Have it your way. We won’t make fun of you.

So nobody will have any fears except that their book might receive a bad review, or that they might behold an artwork made by someone else which is more exuberant than any of one’s own creations.

And I’m not kidding — I’ll live right in the midst of you, even I, the ALIEN. And I’ll disappear occasionally, but I’ll always come back soon enough. (I just don’t want you to tire of my presence.) And just as you sing songs to me, when you feel the urge, I will constantly be humming little melodies that I make up on the spot, and singing simple songs about whatever I happen to see going on around me: so I’ll routinely serenade you, and you’ll hear your own name in my song, if you come visit me in my volcano. You don’t need to come too close to the molten rock — no: stop! you’ll burn yourself! — but I’ll come meet you halfway, when I see you approach. Better yet, I’ll have a summer house built for me, at the base of the mount, on the northwest side, where we can sit and chat. I’ll go down there ahead of you, and take my place on the divan at the back of the room, and I’ll dress myself in pure white. I’ll have my butler greet you in the antechamber, and he’ll perform a welcoming gesture and invite you to the main room, at the back, where I await you, behind flowing drapery. The challenge will be to talk me into a state of intellectual satiety: and nobody will ever be able to do this. Instead, I myself will always talk everyone else to surfeit. People will fall asleep listening to my ideas. Verily, I assure thee: It’ll be a shock, if someone ever manages to exhaust me, in this respect: My appetite for conversation is insatiable.

Moreover, I’ll always help anyone who needs it. If someone trips and scuffs their arm, I’ll bandage it. I know everything about medicine: you have nothing to worry about: I know how to cure every illness.

But let’s say that you compose a lousy poem that everyone dislikes. If you come to me and sincerely ask for my help, I’ll give your work a read, and I’ll find certain aspects about it that are admirable, and I’ll go out into the land and publish my views: I’ll praise your poem to high heaven, until everyone changes their mind about it and thinks it’s really good now.

It’s important to me that you all see me as a decent guy. If other deities come and ask you how I’m doing, I want you to give me a favorable rating. – They’ll know if you’re faking it, tho; so it’s crucial that you do truly like me.

In conclusion, I will hug you all to my chest: very warmly. First collectively, then I’ll go around and hug each one of you individually. Plus I’ll make you all famous — not only for fifteen minutes, but for ever and ever. And I’ll order holograms to be made which look like your old bosses and managers from your ex-jobs, and I’ll program them so that they give you praise and worship, every time you pass by the door of their office. And, I repeat: wherever there’s slavery, I’ll turn it around & completely reverse it, so that everyone’s free at last.