The Bible Salesman - by Jacob Mertens

The Bible Salesmen

1. The men wear clean suits pinned against their flesh and mechanic smiles.
2. They stop me in the street and ask me about our savior, the one on the left clutching a leather briefcase filled with books all saying the same words.
3. Books should say different words.
4. Books are not meant to say the same thing. Language is meant to be a reckless creature constantly changing, contradicting itself, and so on.
5. I ask the man on the right how many bibles he owns.
6. I know that it’s more than one and I’m wondering what’s the point of owning several copies of the same book.
7. He owns six copies.
8. He has seven bibles on him.
9. He has sold eight bibles already.
10. I tell him the book is repetitive. Man sins, God gets pissed off, man gets comeuppance, learns lesson. I stopped reading about ninety pages in.
11. They smile knowingly at each other, the one on the left preparing a canned speech for the salvation of my eternal soul. You would think the two were getting a commission.
12. Fuck that.
13. I interrupt him somewhere in the dying for my sins part. I ask the other guy why he has six bibles.
14. The guy on the left is upset that his speech is getting interrupted, upset that I only want to talk to the guy on the right, upset that he always gets stuck carrying the briefcase.
15. The other guy talks about different translations or study bibles with liner notes or extras to keep on hand just in case some stark raving mad sinner comes pounding on his door demanding a bible, foaming, raving, only to be soothed by the clear and succinct words of the Lord God Almighty speaking “Go forth my son” and so on and so forth.
16. Alright, fine, let’s talk about the bible then.
17. How come God is such an asshole in the bible? God drowns the whole fucking world man? Doesn’t that feel like he was overreacting a little? Couldn’t he just talk it out, express his feelings, communicate, something? I tell you what, God needs anger management, he’s fucking cranky. Also apples are delicious! What the hell was he thinking? You make that shit a forbidden cucumber I guarantee nobody is touching it.
18. The guy on the right thinks I’m missing the point.
19. The guy on the left is leafing through a script he printed out, trying to find a way to get back on track. He starts stammering about the Kingdom of Heaven.
20. My great concern is to see these two as real people. Their bodies radiating the warmth of recycled blood, their thoughts sticking to their tongues like wet cotton, afraid of fear, adoring of adoration, loving of love, and so on until they become the same organic mass of chemicals as everything, breathing in the scattered atoms of the universe but only seeing truth in a book written by schizophrenics. Their words taking the shape of a dead cult still throttling the unconscious conscience of a people terrified by this single dominating thought of death that seems so fucking abstract and cruel that their God takes the form of this cruelty and yet they only choose to see it as love. God is ever loving and yet perfectly willing to send me to hell for not buying a bible and not joining his son’s social organization of baptized wine drinking automatons muttering their “amens”, “and also with yous”, and so on and so forth. God is ever loving but would send my mother to hell for being a perfectly nice and peaceful Buddhist. God is ever loving but would send anyone to hell, I don’t fucking care, God is God, God is great, God is all powerful and no one is beyond saving unless God is lazy. God is ever loving but hides behind his green curtain like the wizard, screaming “Faith! Faith! Trust me, it will all make sense after you’re gone.” That doesn’t even make sense! If that’s what God is then fuck him, give me eternal suffering on principle.
21. The guy on the left tells me the bibles are twelve dollars.

I don't know if Jacob has considered it, but this could translate into a fun and interesting short film.

Anti-Poetry by Jacob Mertens

Jacob is a film student, writer, and close personal friend. This and the next post are a couple of his recent writings. He considers them to be relatively playful pieces, none taken too seriously. I think they're quite good, and have a bit more than that to them. Not to mention, they're really F'n funny. Enjoy and thanks to Jacob for letting me post them. Follow the link on the post-title to go to his blog.

Fuck poetry

Sifting through the vomit of

Saints, and holding their random

Thoughts to light like spider webs

Sticking to my fingers

Fuck you Whitman, Dickinson, Hughes, Ginsberg

I have enough thoughts of my own

Yeah but my thoughts aren't ugly

Beautiful, they aren't crazed

Mad meditations of sand traps, they

Don't fit in iambic pentameter, I don't

know what iambic pentameter is,

Someone told me once and I

Thought "Huh, is that all?"

And promptly forgot

And pretty scenery, haikus with

Hummingbirds and damp rain, ah don't

It fill your soul with radio broadcasted enlightened

Microwaves, yeah I don't even

Know what that means, but I can make

It so I know that's all I'm saying

And the scenery--

How's a table with a trash bag filled with clothes, a mess of opened and unopened mail, how's a house full of cats that aren't mine sleeping, and the weeds in the back so overgrown they crawl over the glass and Son House muttering monologues over the computer and a refrigerator full of real estate agent magnets and pictures of distant family members that I've probably never talked to unless I have and I've forgotten and frankly that's no better and jugs of purified water because the tap probably has cancer and one stupid fucking fly stuttering around reenacting imagined scenes from the Red Baron and buzzing his filtered Nazi propaganda that he learned from the History Channel and if there was a smell I'd be used to it by now and running down the other five senses I got sight sound smell touch taste and I've only done two but the others are boring so fuck it right along with everything else.

Poetry is too serious anyway, I'm

too serious anyway, anything's too serious

Anyway and it's Words. You know what

Else is words--

A is for Aardvark

B is for Bear

C is for Cougar

D is for Deer

E is for Elephant

Is that poetry, cause that I like

Ricky Gervais and Heaven: Heaven offers a "happy" answer to life's questions

By Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson

What is Heaven? The band The Talking Heads tell us that "Heaven is a place where nothing ever happens." That sounds all right. Sometimes "things" are "bad things", so a place with no "things" at all would be a calm and safe one. But sometimes things are "good things" and I'm not sure I could do without those. After all, they're "good".

Hmmm... a pickle, this one...

...Good or bad, true or false, who wouldn't invent heaven for their dying mother?

While admittedly a dumbed-down version, the scene of Mark inventing heaven for his mother is how we (the creators of The Invention of Lying) imagine most religions were started: with people searching for answers to scary, unanswerable questions. Almost every culture throughout that ages have had different answers to the big questions: what is that big moon in the sky? Where does the sun go at night? What is the point of all of this? Where do my loved ones go after they die?

Not having adequate answers to these questions can be very anxiety inducing for adults and children alike. On the other hand, having a wonderful, happy answer to these questions can make life feel meaningful and calm. When I die I will go to a wonderful place and I will get to see all the people I love who have died.

A belief such as this can make almost any sadness or pain palatable. Add a set of rules to this equation (if I do A, B and C I'm assured to go to this place, or conversely, if I do X,Y and Z I will go to a very, very bad place) and you've taken all the scary unknowns out of life and given nearly everything purpose and meaning. In many ways, you've abolished chaos. You've also taken care of that pesky, nagging existential voice in your head asking, "why are we here and what does it all mean?" That voice can make it very hard to get any farming done.

And while heaven might have made it possible to get some farming done over the ages, one has to wonder now what it might also be preventing us from accomplishing or learning about our existence? Luckily, along with our evolution-granted ability to tell a lie, came with it the ability to reason, to question, and to occasionally poke some fun.

Ricky Gervais and Matthew Robinson co-wrote and co-directed the movie "The Invention of Lying"

This is from the Washington Post. You can link through the post-title for the full text.

Roger Ebert may be a more insightful philosopher than film critic.

http://blogs.suntimes.com/ebert/2009/04/how_i_believe_in_g.html

Beautifully expressed - honest, subjective contemplation. This is the most engaging piece that I have read from Ebert since his dissension review of Bonnie and Clyde.