the writings of johnny pain
This is part eight of the story of OUR GOD RALPH, a tale of the slacker god and his disciples cruising across the country attempting, usually unsuccessfully, to avoid being assasinated by a cabal of Scientologists, Kabbala-nuts, and the Mormon Mormon High High Council.
Ralph and the crew stopped for breakfast at a diner. The celebrity janitor took one look in the door of the dingy room filled with small troughs containing various types of gruel and said, "No! I will not eat in a fucking restaurant called The Pig Sty."
A pig just inside the door heard him and his hat actually rose up off as his head from the hairs on his neck bristling in rage. "What," he yelled at the startled celebrity janitor, who despite his physical job was actually weak and scrawny and prone toward lovers handles and a small, though quite noticeable, belly flap, "is wrong with eating in a Pig Sty?" Then he screamed in a squealing, high pitched voice that turned the heads of pigs walking all down the city block and further, "We got us a Muslijew!!!"
Ralph was stoned and the munchies were a raging and he was intent on getting pancakes smothered in rich, real butter and thick syrup into his stomach. He waved off the pissed off pigs in a way that sent their anger wafting away on an invisible breeze. "He is not a muslim or a jew. You know, you would think, victims of prejudice like you pigs would just get over prejudice altogether, rather than going down to their level and actually becoming part of the problem. Do what you want, though, I don't care as long as someone else makes me breakfast because, even though I am god and could just make the food appear, then there is no anticipation involved. . . lacking that, things simply aren't as relished, and if you don't relish, well . . you might as well have not been born at all, eh?"
The pigs around the table were impressed by what they thought were Ralph's words, though it was as much a reaction to his getting rid of the anger in their minds and tweaking the hormones that would make them receptive, so Ralph could get his breakfast quicker. Mugily and the other disciples had come to rightly fear the uses of Ralph's powers. Something usually happened to them, as if they were in a bad horror movie or a twilight zone with a Faustian air, where any use of magic brought a price in pounds and pounds of flesh. At the time, though, it seemed like their breakfast went on to take off without a hitch . . . What they didn’t know is that the pig that was pissed off was the son of the ruling porker of pigland. Hoppy had actually already been pissed off when the God and his entourage walked in.
As his father explained to him two days before, and set off such a quivering in his son's soul that he had been riding aimlessly around pigland on a motorbike ever since, "We have film of a rabbit that bested our god. A rabbit. Even a little wild pig could kill a rabbit, let alone with that gun... but no, our god is a baffoon."
The pigs had originally created their religion around what they believed to be the first talking pig. This sad fact was
based on very little evidence -- an amusement park hide and stills from various films showing a brave pig with a gun -- they knew not why he was walking with the gun, and assumed, in the revolutionary thinking that was popular just after the pigs settled Pigland, that he was hunting and killing his opressors --- the muslim and jewish religions, which the pigs slanged as muslijews. Hoppy had basically just lost his religion . . . and in walked Ralph, a god who could wave his arm and stop a murderous pack of pigs from verbally berating a group of muslijews -- and the pigs lived for such moments, which actually never came though they were often portrayed on Pigland soap operas and light comedic movies.
As they drove off Ralph explained what had happened to Mugily and Kiplo and gang. "Yea, they started this religion after finding an old amusement park ride featuring porky. It didn't work, wasn't much left – but they figured it was Porky hunting humans. So that became their churches, you know, rides . . . like the old haunted houses in the traveling circuses with their creaky little cars and chains . . . except a lot better. I think if I ever was to start a religion, I would use this style of worship."
"You have a religion, Ralph."
"No, I have a few humans I half-ass watch out for, a family kind of. I make the religion up for your kids, you know? I helped usher in the whole idea of Childhood, man. Before me, you humans treated kids over three as little adults. And usually little adults that everyone around was abusing, which taught them to abuse the kids. Avicious cycle. So I got the whole waiting until after puberty thing started. I tried to get it raised up to 21 once, but then I kind of sobered up and wondered where that impulse had come from, you know?"
"So we're not a religion?"
"Sometimes it would be fun to be worshiped, Mugily, but that’s all a big lie. You humans never really worship anything--- you are really mostly looking for an angle, some divine sugar daddy who can give you wealth. That's the kind of shit jesus does, man. Me? I’d rather just state what's on my mind. Hell, I’m going to anyways."
"Where are the humans from Pigland?"
"They went gamer -- umm, with the xxx-box, the one that hooks up ears, hands, genitals, teeth, rectum. They liked hearing like mountain lion, smelling like a hound, feeling another human stroke their glands in various sticky, gross ways. That game knocked out religion, self-help books, lapdog celebrity/wealth worship, sports, and anything else unrelated to what they call here, of course . . . The Game. They even hooked up food and toilet tubes, and shit. They consider it going out into society to meet others on the net, as avatars, where they have developed such unrealistic ideas about beauty that they think humans in person are remarkably ugly. They stopped all actual leaving of their houses decades ago. THey all live alone, of course; since their parents died and left them the houses. The pigs put them all on government assistance. They really are a lot better at running governments than humans. They aren’t afraid of their impulses. They want to eat, screw, drink all the time, and the only reason they don’t is that The Dream of Porky is drilled into them as the only thing more important, and as such they go to work and keep things going, all in all . . . and they don't actually like drinking until they vomit, which to the food loving pig is seen as a sign of the worst sort of excess."
"Are you kidding me, Ralph?"
"No... Come on, when have I ever kidded you?"
"You had me literally shitting in my pants, after convincing me that armagedon was exactly eight minutes off. Worse few minutes of my life."
"Visions of a nuclear armaggedon always get you baby boomers."