Blog Post (Just let it flow over you)

I know this painter who paints the best paintings in the world; he’s even been certified as the finest visual artist by his province’s official committee of judges, which consists of a mix of fellow painters and critics of art. I’ve even heard film directors say about this guy: “Any one of his paintings is better than all of my movies.” 

Now, I know that none of this is interesting, so let me tell you the reason that I mention this master of painting. Despite having won the rest of the world’s acclaim, all this artist cares about is that his father and mother have never valued his work; despite his obvious talent, they’ve never given him the slightest acknowledgement; in fact, quite the opposite: they’ve repeatedly expressed the most insulting indifference. This lack of support from those who bore him and raised him means more than anything to this otherwise universally renowned master-painter; and therefore no measure of success can satisfy the man. When I was visiting him at his palace in Brazil, as we were walking thru the great hall, I stopped before one of the numerous golden plaques that hang there and remarked on its message of praise; but the painter only glanced at the object briefly, and then, overlooking the commemoration that I had highlighted, he said: “Do you know how my father reacted, the last time he was here, when I showed him the painting that won me the highest award that the country of France has ever given to a non-Frenchman? He glanced at it rapidly; then reached out his hand to feel along the edge of its frame and asked ‘Are there buttons installed somewhere, to change the channel? How do I get the football game to appear?’ You see, my father wanted to watch a sporting event instead of admiring my artwork; and he was hoping that the image displayed before him was the result of some type of computerized flatscreen, instead of being a picture in oils on canvas. And when I showed my mother the mural that’s considered my masterpiece, she just stood there silently; so I asked ‘Do you like it?’ and, after a pause, she said ‘I’m sure that it’ll turn out nice when it is finished.’ Then I replied, ‘But it IS finished: and the consensus among peers and critics is that it’s my definitive work,’ and she replied, ‘Well, if you’re happy with it, I won’t complain. Now, I’m hungry; when is lunch?’ — Do you see what torments I am afflicted with!” 

I draped my arm around this painter and said, “Dante placed you in the lowest circle of Hell, my friend. You make me thank my stars that I was orphaned. Now let’s grab lunch.”

So this painter and I took a golf cart to the market. We walked around and admired all the sights and sounds. Various butchers had displayed many choice cuts of meat from various animals: beef, pork, and fowl. 

When we encountered a soda machine, I inserted several coins and purchased my painter-friend a cherry-flavored cola.

Then we visited a clothing store. I bought my painter-friend a fresh, new outfit. “Your garments are at present bespattered with paint,” I said. “Here, let me purchase you a white collared shirt and some khaki pants.” Then I bought him some oxblood loafers at a nearby shoe shop.

Now we visited the lumber mill. We watched the wood for a very long while. This sawing of logs actually put us to sleep. I don’t know how long we were out, but when we awoke, the mill had closed down: all the lights were off, and, except for us, the place was vacant. At first my painter friend suggested that we try out some of the logging equipment, but I said that it would be unsafe to start up all this tree-cutting machinery before the sun has arisen, for we might injure ourselves, stumbling around in the darkness among such jabbing-sharp blades. But my painter friend countered my argument by reminding me that, once we switch on the electricity, all the interior candles of the mill will ignite along with its giant circular saws; thus our only concern should be whether the flames from the candles manage to burn up all the wood. 

So I said “OK, let’s give it a try.” — And everything worked out fine: we got a lot of logs milled before sunup. Then the next shift arrived and relieved us from duty.

At this point, my masterpiece painter-friend and I decided to move to America. Here’s how we did it:

We both found pairs of lonely rich Europeans and talked them into adopting us. Then we allowed ourselves to be seduced by their maidservants, so they (our adoptive guardians) sent us to the New World, on one of those boats.

The trip was truly awful, and my painter friend and I regretted having decided to become clueless foreigners in a hostile environment. Plus, the hustle-bustle of New York was annoying to us. We both hated the Statue of Liberty, as soon as we saw it. And a little girl nearby heard us making fun of “the green wench,” when we were approaching the harbor, so she informed the police, and they threw us in jail for one night.

After our imprisonment, we both learned that we are related to the same wealthy uncle. So, this man, who, in addition to being well-off, was also extremely physically large, allowed us to live in his Manhattan apartment. He gave us horse-riding lessons, and then he bought us a grand piano with an extra-long bench. I myself would sit at one end and play the low notes; and my friend, the famous painter, would play the high notes. We ended up mastering ten songs.

We eventually got to know all our uncle’s huge friends (they were all very fat in a healthy way), and they would bring us with them to their cabins in the wilderness of Long Island. Eventually one of the massive men’s daughters decided to invite us up to her room for a wrestling match, and when we lost, she gave us a choice of admitting our defeat to her father OR of joining the staff of a fast-paced hotel in Germany. My painter friend and I exchanged a look and then both answered in tandem: “Let us take another boat back to Europe; for there is no way that we are going to allow our relationship with your powerful father, whom we both love dearly, to sour our relationship with our own rich uncle.”

So we translocated to Germany, by way of a cruise ship. 

When we approached the brand-new giant copper woman with her torch upheld, and our vessel slid between her conquering legs, my painter friend and I both gazed upward with tear-filled eyes, thanking our fate. 

We reported to the head cook immediately, at the hotel (this is the same “Madame Head Cook” who shall reappear later in our story; but the hotel is not the same), and she gave us uniforms so that we could pose as bellboys. We took our job seriously. We worked all day, from noon till about two hours after noon; then we returned by speedboat to our apartment in Manhattan each night, to sleep in our own beds with American women (there was nothing wrong with our beds at the hotel or with the German women; we just preferred our familiar routine). This Manhattan apartment consisted of glass walls and a glass ceiling — it was situated on the top floor of a nine-storey high-rise. 

Soon, despite our attempts to remain romantically unattached and non-competitive, we both then fell in love with the selfsame damsel whose mother had died in a construction accident during a blizzard. “Our current predicament is terrible,” my painter-friend Jim exclaimed, with tears in his eyes; “you and I have been the best of chums hitherto, yet now that we both love Therese, henceforth we shall always be at each other’s throats, trying to undermine each other in the presence of this girl, so as to win her heart for our own self alone and exclude our former comrade from her affections!”

I stared at the floor for a long time, after my painter-friend’s speech. Therese was there with us, when Jim exclaimed the above — we were all three sitting in her room, which was a very small attic in the sweatshop where Therese worked perpetually as a seamstress — yet she averted her gaze in an attempt to remain impartial as we fought over her. 

So there we sat, each one of us fixing our eyes upon a different part of the room, which had four blank walls, two of which were slanted on account of the roof, and no furniture other than the cot that we were all seated upon.

After what felt like an eternity, I broke the silence: “Therese,” I said, “didn’t you tell us that your mother passed on?”

“That’s correct,” Therese nodded. “She died violently, in a construction accident, long ago. I was only five years old. She fell from the second floor of a glass high-rise that was being built, and then a pile of bricks tumbled down upon her and finished her off and effectively buried her.”

“OK, listen,” I said, placing one hand on the shoulder of my painter friend Jim and my other hand on the shoulder of our mutual love-interest Therese. “Therese,” I said, “it’s no secret that Jim and I are both madly in love with you: You’re the most enchanting young woman we’ve ever encountered; and, despite your preference to remain with us both simultaneously, neither Jim nor I believe that this scheme will work; at least, not in our case — our own situation is too different: Behold, for starters, my name is Bryan Ray, not Jules (this joke refers to François Truffaut’s 1962 film Jules and Jim, whose female star, Catherine, engages in a love triangle with the two male titular characters) — so here’s my solution: Dear Therese, I suggest that you and Jim here should take each other as exclusive soul-mates and possess each other monogamously…” (at this moment, my painter friend Jim gasped audibly and appeared to desire to interrupt, but I made a sign with my hand indicating that he should please allow me to finish my address; therefore he held his peace and returned to listening intently) “...and I myself,” I concluded, “shall transfer my love to Therese’s mother’s ghost.”

Therese and Jim were dumbstruck by my magnanimity. Once my speech ended, they sat quietly studying the expression on my face, trying to discern how sincere I was about this proposition. So I said flatly: “I’m very serious.” Then we all hugged and wept.

(NOTE: If this text were a novel, I would probably insert a chapter break right here, but, since it’s just a short story, I’ll continue talking…)

Now it became incumbent upon me to earn the affections of the heart of the ghost of the mother of Therese. First, I had to find out where she was living. It turned out that she had moved to one of the ancient islands of Greece. 

As soon as I found her, I almost fainted: she was so beautiful. “You’re even more attractive than Therese,” I exclaimed in an enchanted half-whisper, when we met. The ghost of Therese’s mother lightly curtsied. Feeling awe, I couldn’t help but ask, “How can this be? How is it that you outshine the resplendence of your own daughter, despite being decades older than her and deceased?” The ghostly mother admitted that although she did actually die, she was able to do so with such grace that she avoided the normal ravages of age and physical violence — for the pile of glass and bricks at the construction site which fell upon her when she tumbled from the second story building-frame only blocked her passage back to the upper-world: thus, what she did was tunnel down into the earth, towards the under-world, and she eventually arrived in the glorious land of China. The Chinese people showed her lovingkindness: they demonstrated true Christian charity by nursing Therese’s dead mother back to health. After which, she took a skiff to Greece; that’s how she came to inhabit this island. 

So the ghost of Therese’s mother and I fell in love; and our love triangle (now a love quadrangle) ended happily: my painter friend Jim got to dine with his soul-mate Therese, and I was able to bring her dead mother along, who is a succubus (anyone who’s read my journals to this point knows that I harbor a penchant for succubi); thus our joint-courtship transpired as a series of double-dates. 

But, in order to persuade Therese’s mother’s ghost — who was, I repeat, noticeably more attractive than her own daughter — to enter into celestial marriage with me, I was required to become adventurous and perform feats in war, so that I could amuse her by telling the tales of my daring exploits. Therefore I became a high-ranking general in the Persian Empire, and my friend Jim accompanied me as my flag-holder: 

Every fiscal quarter, after finishing our conquests, Jim and I would return to the place where the ghost of Therese’s mother now lived with her daughter.  The mother — whose name, by the way, was Madame Head Cook — was now employed at the same establishment where her daughter worked as a seamstress, and the pair occupied the same suite of rooms, up there in the attic; for the mother had achieved the highest position in the company’s hierarchy — that’s partly why she was christened “Madame Head Cook”: CHARACTER IS FATE. 

So everything worked out perfectly. My painter friend Jim continued courting his true love Therese, while I fell head-over-heels for, and eventually entered wedlock with, Madame Head Cook, the holy ghost of Therese’s mother.

Now what happened next will wow you. My wife Madame Head Cook suggested that the four of us return to her ancient island and live happily ever after. So we joined her in her skiff, and our servants each grabbed an oar…

Eventually, however, there was a tempest, with lightning and thunder — I assume we were about halfway to Greece when this occurred — and the waves rose up high and threatened to capsize us.

“I think the vessel is about to tip over,” I yelled thru the wind and the rain.

“No, this craft is sturdily built: she’ll hold,” yelled Jim between thunderbolts.

“Jim’s right,” said Madame Head Cook. “Lo, the first time I made this journey, the weather turned bad at precisely this point. That was back when I first moved to Greece. But the vessel held firm — it did not tip over. So I’m sure that it’ll be able to withstand a second attack. But there is a sandbar nearby that has a port where we could tie up the ship at one of the docks, using hempen rope, after dropping anchor, if you all would rather spend the night inside the combo restaurant-hotel that exists there, which is a synthetic replica of the place where we all used to work together in Germany.”

“Let’s do that,” said Therese. “I don’t trust Nature.”

So we entered the lower level of the Trumpeting Occident (that was the hotel’s name), which contained a cozy restaurant; and Madame Head Cook led us to a large booth at the back, which she explained was the place where she would usually sit whenever she came here during her initial expedition from the Far East.

“This is a nice place,” said Jim. “Low-red lighting, warm and womb-like.”

We all agreed. Then we placed our orders when the waiter appeared.

After the storm subsided, we went outdoors and picked bananas from the trees. Then we spearfished and made a bonfire and told stories and philosophized for a while.

Soon the great god Zeus appeared, strolling out of the ferns of the nearby jungle with his consort Hera. 

“Master! Mistress!” Madame Head Cook waved, “Hello!”

The divine couple approached us. “Madame Head Cook! It’s a pleasure to meet you here again! Please introduce us to your cohort.”

“First of all, this is my new husband Bryan; and here’s my long-lost daughter Therese and her fiancé Jim — they’ve been courting for roughly three months now. Jim’s a painter — he’s extremely renowned in the Americas.”

“Oh, the Far West?” said Zeus; “I keep meaning to pay a visit — I’m a fan of your literature.”

Zeus and I shook hands, and then he shook hands with Jim; then Jim and I kist Hera’s hand.

“I remember when all the continents were one,” said Hera. “It seems like yesterday.”

“Where’s Athena?” asked Madame Head Cook.

“We were just on our way to see her,” answered Hera; “but the storm started raging, so we decided to stop here for the night.”

“That’s exactly what we did,” said Therese.

“Yes, it was the identical style of storm that separated our entire family when Athena was born, remember?” Hera addressed this remark to my wife. “Zeus was pregnant at the time, and when the winds began howling, and the waves started to crash against the sides of our boat to make it rock as if it would flip, while water was splashing onto the upper deck, I feared that we would lose the child; but suddenly she burst out fully formed from Zeus’s forehead. I was relieved to see that our daughter was wise and well-armed. But then the ship’s medical staff gave us misdiagnoses: The doctor who helped with the delivery wrote up a report asserting that the babe’s father died during childbirth, when he was only in a swoon due to the cranial rupture; then the wet-nurse complained that Athena kept biting her nipple, so she wrote out a false lying death certificate and tossed the child in the sea. (Luckily this evil nurse had made a tiny casket out of bulrushes for the newborn, before abandoning her to destiny.) And even tho, in this affair, I myself steered clear of all biological collusion, by only providing the seed of the idea that resulted in making Athena reality, because I advised Zeus to swallow the woman’s true mother — that’s what made him big with child in the first place — one of the male nurses became infatuated with me, and, because I would never circle the correct choice on the valentines that he kept sending which demanded ‘LOVE ME BACK: YES OR NO?’ he ended up harpooning me with Cupid’s gun, over and over, and then tossing me into the ocean. So I drowned and washed up on the shore of what resembled Blue Pine Lodge in Washington State. But, as an immortal, I cannot expire; and neither can my husband or our brainchild. So, after enough time passed, despite winding up in different areas of the earth, wrapped in plastic swaddling-clothes or burial-shrouds, we all found our way back to each other. But then we lost track of each other, because we all got involved in other projects. Thankfully, however, Zeus and I are now finally making our way back to Athena, to see how she’s doing. Apparently she’s working on a collection of postmodern texts.”

“Hey,” I said to my ghostly wife, Madame Head Cook, after Hera’s speech above, “instead of having to part ways with your friends here, why don’t we just ask the waiter if we can use the hotel’s phone to call their daughter, wherever she is, and tell Athena to come and meet us here. That way our fourfold — you and I and Jim and Therese — can actually witness their threefold reunite, instead of having to learn about it secondhand, thru footmen carrying messages sealed with cryptic emblems.”

Madame Head Cook turned from me to the rest of the company, to study everyone’s facial expressions, so as to gauge how they felt about my idea of inviting the goddess Athena to the restaurant-hotel. Her own daughter Therese was beaming and nodding, as was her intended husband, my painter-friend Jim. Plus Zeus and Hera seemed happy with my suggestion. 

“Alright, let’s call her,” said Madame Head Cook; and she raised her hand elegantly to attract the head waiter’s attention; when he approached, she said: “Will you bring the hotel phone on a platter to our table? We need to dial long-distance on an external line.”

So the head waiter returned with the phone on a platter and bowed low while setting it down on the table before us, in a fashion that was almost comically gentle; then he quietly addressed my wife: 

“Madame Head Cook, you mentioned dialing a long-distance number. This type of telephone call is expensive: Would you like me to add the charge to your bill — or would you prefer that the Occident pay for it?”

After gesturing toward me, as if to say “Pick up the receiver and begin to make the call,” my wife replied to the head waiter with a smile while her eyes were locked with mine: “Just put everything on my tab.”

The head waiter bowed deeply and disappeared.

“Hi, is this Athena?” I said, after waiting a long time for the line to be picked up.

“Yes, this is Athena speaking,” said the most gorgeous voice imaginable…

So, after introducing myself and explaining the situation, I asked her if she could come meet us at such-and-such global coordinates, which represent the location of a little-known establishment that is a combination of a hotel and a restaurant. Recognizing the place immediately when I said its name, she replied: “Give me a moment to arrange for transportation.”

She arrived on shore in a gondola, and we all gave her a warm welcome. “Why don’t we refresh ourselves by spending the evening dancing to the hotel’s live band,” I said, on a whim. Athena accepted this suggestion, smiling brightly, and the next few days were dedicated to merrymaking. (You simply cannot imagine the amount of amusements that we engaged in on this occasion, which the hotel’s management generously made available: what feastings! what rejoicings! what costly shows and entertainments!) 

Yet, at precisely this point, our party received a postcard from THE VOLCANO, and the music and fun came to a halt. We all gathered close to read its message: It said that Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford and Cambridge have requested that our outfit make obeisance at the shrine of Diana. 

“Diana!?” said Athena. “But my name’s…” then she turned to us and said: “Do you think this is a misprint? Just to be safe, let’s go visit my own temple instead.” 

So we all undertook a voyage to our local library. The goddess herself piloted her gondola; and the rest of us got into a boat that the hotel provided us. As his daughter led the way, Zeus filled the sails of our vessel with prosperous winds; and, after a few weeks, we arrived safely in Bermuda.

There was standing near the altar of the goddess, when we entered the temple, my painter-friend Jim’s earthly parents — his father (now grown very aged) who had never valued his masterworks, along with his mother, who also never gave her son the credit he deserved. And Therese, my friend Jim’s fiancée (the daughter of my own wife Madame Head Cook), stood next to Jim before the altar, facing Jim’s parents. And Jim the painter, who was in fact the first Irishman to become a certified Dutchmaster, having passed many years in abject sorrow on account of his parents’ refusal to admit his artistic genius, now at long last confronted his progenitors, and he berated them stylishly. Therese observed her husband's features, as he blasphemed, and a smile began to form upon her lips; for when Monseigneur Jim approached the altar and began to emote, his voice grew satanic, and everyone in earshot listened to his words with childlike wonder and a joyful amazement: 

“Hail, Mother and Father. To honor thy commands, since you threatened me with punishment if I failed to speak in sooth, I here confess myself the genuine Prince of Tyrus. After exiling myself from your country, whose capital is THE PENTAGON (the world’s largest office building), I have wedded the fair Therese: that’s the name of this damsel standing by my side. Tho she died at sea in childbed while bringing forth her own mother beneath a pile of bricks on a worksite, my best friend Bryan here entered wedlock with the ghost of this woman, who has now become the Head Cook at the above-mentioned restaurant: therefore, beware. And you can see that Zeus and Hera have joined us, too — they are the highest gods presently known to humankind — and they are here in the flesh with their own adopted daughter, Athena, who owns this temple. That’s how much clout I have earned with my success as a creative entrepreneur.”

Now, Therese, unable to bear the transports which my painter-friend Jim’s address had raised in her, cried out loudly: “You are, you are, O royal Jim, Prince of Tyre, full of wisdom, and perfect in craftsmanship” — and then she fainted. 

“What means this woman?” said Jim’s father. “She dies! Prestidigitators, help!”

“Sir,” said Hera to my painter-friend Jim’s father, “if you and your wife truly belonged here as the protectors of our daughter Athena’s altar, you would recognize true art when you see it: thus, you would honor your son Jim’s paintings; for they are masterworks, and that’s our final judgment.” Then she turned to Zeus with a look that meant: “What say you, dear?”

And her husband nodded sternly and said: “They’re canonical.”

Now an earnest yet sultry voice announced “Everybody, listen; for I must share my testimony,” and Athena herself finally rose and took charge of the madness. She pointed at Jim’s parents and exclaimed: “I distinctly remember being thrown overboard by those very arms.” Athena then recounted how, when she was but newly born, early one tempestuous morning, this lady (Royal Jim’s mother) tossed her into a coffin made out of bulrushes; and THAT man (Royal Jim’s father) helped her do it. “They packed no provisions, neither food nor water, into my ark — only paper and quill-pens,” continued the goddess, “so, all I could do while waiting to die was inscribe scriptures. Therefore I spent the first half of my sea-life pondering deeply about what type of literature I desired to compose (this, by the way, is why the ocean traditionally represents the subconscious), and the last half I spent laboriously penning, revising, and binding all my books. Then, as fortune would have it, I washed ashore, and a poor scholar recovered me: he opened my casket and found me reclining on a bed of ruby gems, constituting my bibliography, for I am a vampyre. Well, that scholar sheltered me here inside this temple, which I slowly converted into a library, until these hellhounds…”  (here she gestured again to Jim’s parents) “...crept out from the gloom yet again and wet-blanketed the exuberance.”  

Now, at the end of this revelation, my daughter-in-law Therese revived from her swoon and looked back and forth many times from Athena to my wife, Madame Head Cook, and then she cried: “O my mothers, are you not ONE? You look exactly alike. Did you not both die in the same tempest, on the same worksite, being covered with heavy bricks, after falling from a cliffside on the beach? Did you not both enter existence as immortals, yet then willingly change costumes from birth-garb to death-garb?” 

Madame Head Cook and Athena, astonished, answered in unison, “The voice of our unborn daughter!” 

“That Therese am I,” she replied, “aborted from thy wombs since the beginning.” 

“O true Queen of Heavenly Darkness!” exclaimed Zeus and Hera, in a passion of astonishment. 

“And now,” said Therese, “I can perceive everything clearly. Such a ring as I see on your finger…” (she addressed this remark to Zeus) “...my deceased mother bequeathed you.” Then, turning to Hera, she said: “and you yourself and your own lovely daughter are the zoas of my mother.” 

“Enough, you gods!” cried my painter friend Jim, now Prince of Tyrus, “your present kindness makes my past miseries sport.” 

“O come, Therese,” said my wife, Madame Head Cook, now fused with Athena, to her still-living daughter “be buried a second time within these arms.”

And Jim’s fiancée Therese said to the phantom of her mother (whose beauty surpassed her own, even in death), “My heart leaps to be gone into thy bosom.” 

Then did Zeus fuze his daughter to Theresa and the ghost of her mother, saying to Hera, once the magic had cured: “Look who kneels here, flesh of thy flesh, soul of thy soul: a burthen at sea, now dry and on land again. Let us affix her to the sky.” 

“I have become my own Maker!” said Madame Therese the Head Cook, now crucified in Heaven. “Nobody can claim to have created me: I predate everything!”

And while she hung in rapturous joy over her child, which was forever after an inseparable part of herself, my painter-friend Jim knelt before the altar of Athena, saying, “Pure goddess, bless thee for thy vision. For this, I will offer oblations nightly to thee.” And then the camera panned over and revealed to the audience that Jim’s parents had been entrapped within glowing orbs and put to sleep during the above scene of identity-merging. So now those two cruel old folks who never supported their own son’s work will rest in peace till the end of time — they will neither give nor receive torment from any entity, ever again. (This is good news: we may applaud.)

And then and there did Zeus, with the consent of his consort Hera, solemnly conceive, gestate, and bring forth a seemingly enriched version of both Therese and her mother; and the divine couple presented these surrogates respectively to my painter-friend Jim and me (Bryan Ray, the famous author), to have and to hold. Additionally they urged Jim — as he had not yet been officially tethered to his replacement — to repeat the solemn oath “I will honor you, Spouse I.D. Number, all the days of my life.” 

ATHENA’S ANALYSIS:

The above parable depicts a number of souls triumphing over a universe of chance and change. In the author himself, we have beheld a notable pattern of truth, faith, and loyalty: for, when he might have succeeded to the throne of my good father Zeus, the famous author (Bryan) chose rather to recall the rightful owner (Jim) to his possession (Therese), than to become great by committing the sin of engaging in meritocracy. Moreover, in the worthy Zeus, my own progenitor supposedly, who restored Therese to life and mixed her spirit with various others, we are instructed how goodness directed by knowledge, in bestowing benefits upon mankind, approaches to the nature of the Ruling Class. Now, that’s a very high bar. — It only remains to be told that Painter Jim’s mother, the wicked wife of Painter Jim’s father, met with an end proportional to her deserts; in fact, they BOTH did — for they now hibernate as citizens on the Moon of Mesmer. Their naughty attempt upon my character in the parable was shown to backfire on them completely — if I remember correctly, Bryan (the author — rather, I should say: the FAMOUS author) locked them in some sort of confinement, like jail, which served as a place for them to sleep away their days in lethargy: that’s not at all a respectable outcome for two people who should’ve helped to elevate the future generations of womankind. So their fate sounds just. And I’m glad that Bryan allowed my character to set fire to the mansion of my own parents, Hera and Zeus, and that he insinuated that this event annihilated both him and her, and transformed them into heart-shaped emoticons, symbolizing love, and their whole household was rewarded with everlasting bliss of pure ignorance in the same floating heaven as Jim’s bad parents. And it’s nice that BRAHMA, the oversoul of everything, seemed satisfied with this outcome, because it neither complained nor enacted any type of auto-corrective measure.