Dear diary,
OK (I begin to read in the paperback thriller titled The Seven Spirits of Saint John), page one has the heading “Dramatis Personae,” and it is followed by a list of names:
John the Elder,
John the Younger,
John of the Third Epistle,
John the Gospelist,
John the Favorite Disciple Whom Jesus Loved,
Johnny Patmos,
John the Dipper.
So, apparently there’s no women in this scripture. Maybe some of the Johns were given female parts by the Cosmic Toymaker — who is either a woodworker or metallurgist, depending on how robotic each of these Johns proves to be in the bedroom — so that they can keep the human race dominant. And apparently the whole novel is presented in rhymed verse. Here’s Act One, Scene One:
In bracketed italics the text explains that the backdrop should look like a green field with rolling hillocks. One palm tree exists at the edge of space, and a human being named Pig is watching what goes on; accompanying Pig beneath the palm are a bunch of bankster children, along with their cruel father whose spouse is a businessman named Humper Bunny, also Bryan the Narrator, and anyone else who the LORD might have blotted from his Book of Life.
John the Elder:
I want to go for a Sunday Morning cruise in my JET. / Let me see if my brother, John the Younger, has awakened YET. / Dear John, do you wish to fly up into the heavens without a safety NET? / I am asking you to pose as my co-pilot and fellow air-force CADET.
John the Younger:
My answer is not NO, / But I hope that you won’t mind, my dear big BRO, / If I invite my girlfriend to join our skyey SHOW. / For, you see, I just found out that she and I are in quite an IMBROGLIO.
John the Elder:
Is that a FACT!? / Were ye both involved in some criminal ACT? / (By the way, yes, bring her on board, since her luggage is PACKT.) / — Now I hope that my asking does not prove myself devoid of TACT, / But I wish that you would disclose in a way that’s just a bit more EXACT / The brief history that led to the two of you feeling so BEWRACKT.
John the Younger:
To make a long story short, she and I were simply playing CHESS / At one of the tables in Paradise, in a state of UNDRESS, / When our Creator appeared in a beast-form resembling the letter ESS; / Therefore, although the two of us are both utterly inexperienced in the ways of…
John of the Third Epistle:
We get the picture, John the Younger. You impregnated your girlfriend and now you’re trying to blame it on the Holy One of GOD. / That’s fine. We’ve all been there, done that. Nothing about your situation to us seems ODD. / Let us three brothers therefore hop into the cockpit of the flying space-POD / And see if we can pilot it successfully by pulling up and down on its steering ROD. / Maybe then the angels who are our audience will finally APPLAUD. / For I’m growing tired of looking out into the stadium seating and seeing most of them NOD, / Yea, they sleep thru our passion play (admittedly its pace does PLOD); / And occasionally I see three or more of them gathering together in my name for a quick SOD; / Tho I take that as a compliment to the perfection of my irresistible physique.
John the Gospelist:
In place of your final word there, you should have said “BOD”. / Perhaps the Judeans have infiltrated your faculty of articulation and are now manipulating your Christ nature so that it talks like a freak.
John the Favorite Disciple Whom Jesus Loved:
Ooh, I like what I’m hearing. Hi, y’all; I was just resting my head on our comrade’s bosom and lost track of time — am I late to the party? It looks like you guys are going on a plane ride or something. Why are you all standing around this idling AIRCRAFT?
Johnny Patmos:
That’s no normal JET. This is a single-seat German fighter plane: a FOKKER EINDECKER. I demand that instead of taking it out on a joyride, we use it to DESTROY ALL NATIONS THAT DO NOT BOW TO OUR ISLAND-CULT.
John the Dipper:
I just returned from the warm springs, where I saved a man from drowning. Does anybody have a towel? Preferably a white, fluffy one? Usually I bathe fully clothed in an icy pond, but I gave my outfit to Jesus — that was my beneficiary’s name — I bequeathed him the rest of my garments as a bonus, because he asked for my snakeskin boots. After that, I kept turning and letting him slap all my cheeks.
John the Favorite Disciple Whom Jesus Loved:
Both of them, verily, verily — either SET? / I myself have only offered my face, as of YET...
So now the italicized stage direction explains that John the Elder and John the Younger go up in the German fighter plane and almost immediately get shot down by some carnivorous sheep. These cute but vicious creatures take the Johns to their leader, who goes by the name of Lamb Bomb. After a multi-course dinner whose apex is steak tartare, the John Bros. convert to Lamb Bomb’s religion.
They then invest all their money in Lamb Bomb’s business, which is a diner whose menu appears 100% vegan but is made entirely of raw meats. What Lamb Bomb has done is contrive an ingenious system where ingredients of flesh and blood are prepared in a way that is outwardly indistinguishable from plant-based dishes — it looks, smells, and tastes exactly like a vegan diet; except it’s entirely animal products. Even cuisine made from human meat is served, if you order from certain parts of the menu. The only reason they don’t use the word “cannibalism” (despite that all the dishes proclaim themselves vegan) is that every living species is welcome to eat at this restaurant, and a cannibal meal would signify a different item depending on whether you’re a cow or, say, a bear.
John of the Third Epistle and John the Gospelist now accept an invitation to dine with their brethren John the Elder and John the Younger. They all bring their wives and mistresses to the cave of Lamb Bomb, and they are shocked at how good the food is.
John the Favorite Disciple Whom Jesus Loved is then shown dashing thru a rabbit hole… (“Hey, just like ME!” shouts my friend, the businessman Humper Bun, interrupting my reading of this airplane novel. I shush him and continue the poetic tale…) “I’m late!” sez John the Favorite Disciple Whom Jesus Loved. “My lover invited me to a feast where he teased that he might offer his body to me, so that I might devour him!”
Soon the rabbit hole ends in Sheol, where Lamb Bomb and the other Johns of the underworld are waiting.
Johnny Patmos does not receive his invite to the above feast, because he neglects to check his mail; therefore he’s a no-show. He spends the entire Next Age hiding out near a dumpster behind a popular restaurant, trying to decide whether he wants to chastise or accost the next street-strolling strumpet.
John the Dipper spends the Upcoming Age reclining with Jesus the Christ and the Variegated Buddha-Vessel (which is like a body-shaped essence that any chosen-one can don) beneath a palm tree in Paradise. THE END.
“Wow, I loved that story,” sez Pig.
“So did I,” sez Humper Bunny.
Now we all take a spin in the Porsche 356 Speedster that contains our supply of honey pots and airplane novels, to celebrate our finishing of this latest storybook.
When I screech to a halt, to avoid hitting a snail, Pig begins to chant: “Read it again! Read it again!”
So, leaving the engine running, I yank the shift-lever into “Park” and press the “Hazard lights” button, so that all the Porsche’s blinkers begin to flash, which warns other drivers of our presence, because we stopped right in the middle of a six-lane highway to re-read our currently favorite novel, and I don’t want any other vehicles to collide with ours and explode in a fireball of death. Then Pig and Humper Bun and I climb out and go walk over to the side of the road, which happens to coincide with the edge of space; and we uproot the palm tree that’s growing there and bring it over to the car and lean it against the back of the frame. Having a palm nearby helps us feel more at home; also it’s nice to have the same friends and family surrounding these communal readings. Tho I honestly can’t tell you what happened to Humper’s brood and legal spouse, who’ve all gone missing, because I don’t know — we either left them behind or they tiptoed away during my last novel recital to go check their respective profit-and-loss reports. (It’s hard for me to care, because I don’t really like them very much.)
Now I start to read the airplane novel that we most recently finished, all over again, from the beginning…
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