Before we get started there is something I need to talk about. Speaking and writing intelligibly is in real danger. As the lowest common denominator slides faster than a woven leather deck shoe through fresh duck shit mutilated english is becoming more common than men with mini dinks smoking cigars to compensate.
The trend is being lead by the music industry, it has to stop.
So here's where you come in. I want to start a rock band and I need someone to play guitar, bass, drums, and 7 cow bells. I will stand on the stage and scream. I have 2 ideas for band names, Razorfist or Razorfish, either one will do since its easy to yell it drunk.
Every song will have flawless grammar and be in the form of rhyming humorous stories about fictional experiences I had with celebrities and other imperialist brass polishing scum. I like songs that are stories, like the house of the rising sun, or any song by Kenny Rogers, especially because they are all stories and at the end the storyteller always kills or dies.
So this is a call out to all you musicians. Normally I consider musicians scum, but now I need your help.
Now down to business.
Cult of the baby, cult of the snake
You may or may not be aware of this, but in the sultry drunken backwaters of the southern united states they have these rattlesnake churches. A rattlesnake church is like any other church in the way that they read and contemplate their religious book, in this case its the christian bible, but is different in that unlike most other churches, these churches are corrugated iron lean-to's in the swamp with a floor covered in rattlesnakes.
The idea they have is that snakes or in the biblical lingo, serpents, are actually the henchsnakes of el diablo sent to test us. If you can go a few rounds in the swamp shack with the snake and pass the test, god is in your corner. The snake gives you undeniable empirical proof that god likes you, as long as you don't die.
So these churchgoers stand around their wacky shack singing about Jeebus and hassling snakes. And they slap the snake in the face and tug its tail to aggravate it. "How do you like that Satan!" Slap! Slap!
I really like the idea of a rattlesnake church. I will never have the courage to do this, but I admire people willing to test their beliefs with their bones. Why they do it is totally insane, but the act is simple and ingenious.
The snake is a good metaphor. It snugly represents an incomprehensible and hostile world that wants you to give up and die. But you might be stronger, you may face the snake and maybe even win.
My life has no real challenges because I hide from all of them in my immaculately constructed fortress of conveniences and laziness. I don't doubt you do the same. But if I can survive the snake I might have what it takes to wade like through life's infinite bullshit coated in bullshit resistant teflon and not need my fortress of conveniences. The world will be my conveniences, the air and my hands and feet and dink will be all I need. I admit that sounds like a lot of bullshit. But what about it? Why do I need my little bubble? Because I'm afraid. I'm afraid the world will fuck me up beyond any hope of unfucking, and there is good reason to think so. But what if it doesn't, what if I win?
So if there is a God, hear my prayer Jesus, Moses, Allah, Buddha, Vishnu, Peter Gabriel, whoever, send me a rattlesnake to test my faith in their being a meaning to my existence. I don't care or even want to know how or when. Curl it around my bath towel, put it in my sleeping bag, drop it out of a tree onto my head, the bigger and more hilarious the surprise the better.
I need to see if I have what it takes to snatch the snake in my pudgy little digits and shake him around. In fact, I hope all of you, everyone, gets the challenge of the snake and does the same. I want it to rain rattlesnakes for a month. I suspect that after the snake test everything will seem easier. Maybe we will be reborn, full grown babies running amuck in a big colorful shiny world where we killed fear. If so I intend to piss in the sandbox.