Jake’s Dream (4 January 2012)
Tonight, Jake’s pillow feels like a rock. He dreams of flying across the ocean, but not in an airplane. He himself is the plane or maybe a bird. He’s not sure; it’s a dream after all, as long as it fits into dream logic it doesn’t matter. In any case, he has an aerial view of the ocean spreading before him. He spies a ladder or staircase in the distance with creatures going up and down between earth and the heavens. They look sort of like large birds but he can’t make them out clearly. As he’s about to head in for a closer look, he hears an authoritative voice boom like an announcer in a film trailer: “And the gospel of the kingdom shall be preached in all the world for a witness unto all nations, and then shall the end come. Matthew 24:14.”
Jake is veered away from the thingy with the creatures as the voice booms and he finds himself flying across nothing but ocean for miles upon miles upon miles until he comes to a beautiful tropical island completely isolated. It’s so remote that Jake wonders if this place has even ever been on a map. He hovers above the island, and he sees a ship approach. On the shore two natives from the island gather to stare at the ship. One of them throws a spear at the ship but it falls short into the sea and the other native laughs. A small rowboat comes from the ship. On it are two men, one black and one white. The black man looks nervously at the natives as they approach the beach, but the white man, dressed in shiny white clothes, so as it seems to further emphasize his whiteness, stands up, spreads his arms as if to embrace them from thirty yards away, and smiles at them with a toothy smile that is so white it appears the man has been mainlining teeth whitening products.
As the rowboat gets closer to shore, Jake recognizes the white man as a televangelist with a bad toupee who often appears on the low rent television channel that broadcasts Christian wrestling. Christian wrestling was usually pretty bad, with the storylines even more primitive than regular wrestling. For example, the goodguys usually wrestled badguys who wore t-shirts with the name of one of the seven deadly sins on them. The devil was often the champion, but you could bet Wrestling Jesus would win the belt before the end of the night. Still it was wrestling so Jake watched it more often than not. His favorite Christian wrestler was Reverend Revelation who had a finishing move on his opponents that was pretty cool. It was called the End of Days Earlock. After his opponents tapped out, he always made them accept Christ before he’d let go of their ears. It was the gospel and a good gimmick.
Jake doesn’t see Reverend Revelation though, just the blinding white televangelist, his nervous companion, and the natives. The natives don’t throw any more spears. They seem transfixed by the approach of the men onto shore. Once, on shore, the televangelist starts preaching. It sounds as if he is speaking in tongues, but Jake can understand him. He says, “You people are the last people on planet Earth to hear the gospel of Jesus Christ. I bring you the good news that you have been waiting for. You don’t have television so I have to visit you in person. You are very fortunate pagans.”
The televangelist goes on and on. His companion pitches in with “Yeses” and “Amens” once in a while and even an occasional “Testify!” while the natives sit down crosslegged and listen. At the end, the televangelist asks them, “Are you ready to accept Christ into your life?”
To which, one of the natives replies, “No, but I’ll accept you in my belly. All white meat, you look delicious.”
“I want him extra crispy,” the other native drools.
With that said, the natives spear the televangelist and kill him. While they are so distracted, the televangelist’s companion makes a mad dash for the rowboat and escapes to sea. Upon his arrival, the ship leaves the island.
Nighttime comes and the natives roast the televangelist over a fire. He feeds them for a few days. There doesn’t seem to be anybody else on the island, and all the natives do is sit on the beach occasionally munching on the remains of the televangelist. Eventually one day, there is a large white flash on the horizon, and a tremendous noise reaches the island a little later.
“What was that?” the first cannibal says.
“Oh, probably nothing. Maybe one of the Gods farting,” the second cannibal says, “Pass me another finger. You know I love those.”
“We’re out.”
“We’re out?”
“Well, even the pudgy ones don’t last forever, and we ate everybody else.”
“I’m still hungry. Who are we going to eat now?”
The first cannibal looks at the second cannibal and salivates.
Jake wakes with a start, sits up in bed, and checks to make sure all his body parts are still there. He puts his right hand to his forehead, and thinks, “That’s insane. People are being born all the time. Even two thousand years on from Christ, how could there ever come a time when everyone on Earth had heard the gospel and been able to make up their minds whether they believed in it or not, so the world could then end? I must have read too much of the cannibal website and watched too much Christian wrestling yesterday.”
Jake continues to hold his forehead in his right hand, and looks at his left hand. He swears to God that he will never chew his fingernails again.
Blatant Product Placement (23 February 2012)
The store is called Stuff U Want, but it’s filled with stuff somebody at some point didn’t want. A closeout discount liquidation store, Stuff U Want stocks itself with: a) things somebody ordered too many of, b) things that didn’t sell, C) things that didn’t sell in time before the owner needed money, d) things that were taking up too much space in a warehouse, e) things that are slightly flawed, or f) all of the above plus more castoffs and casualties of capitalism. If you picked f, then give yourself an extra 10% off our already crazy low prices! Walking around in the store reminds Francine of nothing so much than a hospital or orphanage for stuff. Sick, unwanted, or both, the things seem to beg for some consumer mercy, to be bought, to be taken home, to be loved, to be used. Stuff U Want’s selling point is price. They’ve bought the stuff for pennies on the dollar so they can sell it cheap cheap cheap. Though there’s a small minority of stuff that literally no one wants and will end up getting recycled (if possible) or crushed in the trash compactor (more likely) because even Stuff U Want eventually loses patience for things once they stick around on the shelves for years like the 1997 Cleaveland Caucasians Baseball Team Calendar that some enterprising Stuff U Want sales associate noted on a sign is perfectly accurate for–2003 now crossed out–2014 (don’t expect it to make it to 2025; in fact, don’t expect Stuff U Want to make it to 2025 as the world of bargain retail is brutal), it’s amazing how most of the stuff, even the crap one would think that no one in her or his right mind would want, will sell if it’s priced low enough. People love to scavenge at the clearance rack, and this entire store is a clearance rack. Their business is picking up the remains of somebody else’s going out of business.
Francine wanders into the book section, steering between the twin mountains of videotapes (containing a Jesse “The Body” Ventura: The Mouth, The Myth, The Legend videotape from 1998 that Jake would probably buy if he saw it) and DVDs (Francine would buy Hijacking Catastrophe: 9/11, Fear & The Selling Of American Empire if she had the patience to dig through all the copies of Beowulf and other Hollywood movies to get to it), where she finds a number of books about 2012 already in the remainder bins. She thumbs through 2012: Kiss Your Ass Goodbye, 2012: What The Mayans Knew And You Don’t Unless You Pay $29.99 For This Book To Find Out, Resolution 2012: How To Lose A Pound A Day So You’ll Look Great When The World Ends, The Latest Year To Pin New Age Bullshit On: 2012, and 2012: The Return Of Chicken Little, before she gets restless and moves on. She finds about fifty-nine copies of some book called The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus in a pile in a corner. She picks up one, blows the dust off it, and finds that it has nothing really to do with emus, pornography, or being flabbergasted. It looks interesting though, so maybe she’ll get it.
Francine wanders into the food section. She needs some cereal. She picks up a box of Apple Crack cereal (“so good it’s addictive”) but knows to always check the dates of any food products in Stuff U Want very carefully. This box is stamped 15 October 2011. In a rare sighting of a Stuff U Want employee, a young woman with a red vest and big buttons on it (one of the buttons reads “You Can’t Find Lower Prices Except Off The Back Of A Stolen Truck”) passes by, and Francine says, “Excuse me, but this box of cereal is expired.”
The woman stops, takes the box, blows a bubble of chewing gum, pops the bubble, looks at the box, and then hands it back to Francine, “This is OK, sweetie. Those dates are kind of random, like ballpark figures. It’s what? February? It might be a little stale, but it’s edible, and at that price you can’t beat it. I buy almost all my groceries here. You should see our grocery bill, especially with my employee discount. It’s real low. In fact, I just fed my kids a box of this Apple Crack this morning and they were fine. Well, Jimmy was a little constipated last week, and come to think of it my husband’s colon blew out recently,” she pauses, “But, anyway, they love this stuff.. Especially, at this price. I stocked up for months.”
The woman moves on. Francine looks at the box of Apple Crack, looks at the date again, and puts it back on the shelf.
Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you’ve read, or you’ve read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.
Wred Fright is a PHD in literature whose dissertation was written about ezines. He lives in Cleveland, Ohio with his wife and cats.
Recent Comments