When I walk around Midtown Manhattan with the Midwestern tourist, I truly am lost in the supermarket of cultures. I can no longer shop happily. So of course my inclination was to do the slugliest of articles called: “The Time of Their Life: A Day in the Life of Midwestern Tourist in Times Square.” But the more I thought about it the more I was unable to write it. Who was I to say that their ability to stare up straight into the sky like turkey in a rainstorm was not an asset? Who is to say what is right or wrong in this day and age? Why, with all our modern ideas, and products!
I did a lot of soul searching about if I was being judgmental and condescending against these simple rotund beasts. Since the closer you are to a problem the harder it is to view it clearly, other New Yorkers were not much help. This is mainly due to the basic image these tourist generate for themselves by their actions while moving in herds on the busiest of streets.
So I knew I had to reach out to an old Instant Messenger Buddy and luckily he was on-line. So I had an impromptu to IM session with him. A few basic changes were made to the grammar to make it more readable, but here is the unedited version of my chat session with God.
Tejano del Jaguar:Hey tough guy you there?
G0d: Yeah, just finishing some left over business in the Crab Nebula, what’s up?
Tejano del Jaguar: Not much ye olde God of Abraham, was working on a new article and was wondering if I could get your input?
G0d: Cool, cool. I liked the last one, glad to see my chaos theory is still affecting your proofreading.
Tejano del Jaguar : Yeah, I’ll get that sorted out when you come down and sort out the Middle East okay?
G0d: Touché, so what’s the article about?
Tejano del Jaguar: Midwestern Tourist In Times Square.
G0d: LOL 😉
Tejano del Jaguar: Yeah really funny Allah. About as cute as the plague of locust in China right now.
G0d: They are the same if you think about it. Just depends on how you view the mindless consumption of animals, which you humans are by the way.
Tejano del Jaguar: Yeah, you remind me of that every time. But aren’t there varying degrees of evolution among your people?
G0d: Well, when I created earth for you clever monkeys I had a plan which you promptly threw out the window.
Tejano del Jaguar: How so?
G0d: In the beginning, I put you there to create me. Basically had the chicken lay the egg that was I.
Tejano del Jaguar: So the purpose of society was to create you?
G0d: There in lies the punch-line. You have left your original creation of a divine moral path, i.e. me, and decide to worship the dollar, an obvious Lucifer item.
Tejano del Jaguar: But you made him?
G0d: Did I? Since you technically created me, isn’t he the product of your own then?
Tejano del Jaguar: You and your freaking paradoxes.
G0d: Hey if you don’t like it, you know Buddha’s number.
Tejano del Jaguar: It’s not that, it’s just because they’re view on NYC doesn’t match up with mine, does that make their culture below mine?
G0d: Well to be truthful, they may be from the Bible Belt and think they are the ‘chosen’, but they have a lot of issues.
Tejano del Jaguar: Really? I thought they were up your ass all the time.
G0d: Up my ass, making an ass of themselves, you know how it is being a major deity. For all their problems, the main one is how they use me to feel superior to other people. Of course, we both know I’ve reserved the lowest spots in hell for those who use religion as their tool for this end, that and for profit.
Tejano del Jaguar: So Jim Bakker is fucked?
G0d: More times than Mother Teresa.
Tejano del Jaguar: What?!?
G0d: Sorry, inside Saint joke.
Tejano del Jaguar: lol.
G0d: You’re missing the point of why I made the Earth. Well not you, but supposedly “my people” as they like to call themselves.
Tejano del Jaguar: Which set of people would that be since we’re still technically fighting over who is the legitimate son of Abraham still.
G0d: Send me more checks in the mail and I’ll tell you when I add them all up who won.
Tejano del Jaguar: Dude, you got the racket going on. But back to the question, should we view every person as a pilgrim on their way to becoming a Zen master?
G0d: Zen Masters of Disaster. Heheh.
Tejano del Jaguar: But if one were to complete the journey to its end, wouldn’t they themselves become god-like?
G0d: Well, yeah. But since I don’t allow enlightenment to be sold at Wal-Marts or for Happy Meals to be upsized to nirvana, I’m not looking for hordes of Midwesterners to achieve that level anytime soon.
Tejano del Jaguar: But how could you let them become so blind to true authentic culture they eat at the Olive Garden instead of Little Italy?
G0d: Well, when you supplant my culture with a corporate one of your own creation to market to the sheep, you lose the shepherd don’t you =)
Tejano del Jaguar: who is to say folk art of the Midwest is not cultural absurdity?
G0d: Well me, but I am a god.
Tejano del Jaguar: The god?
G0d: Working on it, but you know how it is. Lol.
Tejano del Jaguar: Well I think that the people on Jerry Springer are high folk living theatre, like wrestling was in the 80s.
G0d: How many time do I have to tell you I meant it be called rasstlin’, and it’s suppose to be real.
Tejano del Jaguar: Ric Flair is real enough for me.
G0d: Yeah he ruled over the Von Erik’s. Wrestling for Jesus my ass, my son was all about Andre the Giant, not a bunch of hicks from East Texas.
Tejano del Jaguar. Heheh.
G0d: But just because I think its stupid doesn’t mean I am right. But since I am Allah, I am. Remember this young Skywalker, what is morally correct and a “decent” society is relative to your social conditioning.
Tejano del Jaguar: Damn that’s deep.
G0d: when you here the sound of one pop culture reference clapping, you are on the way to slug nirvana.
Tejano del Jaguar: Cu-caw! Lol.
G0d: Hold one sec, gotta do something.
Tejano del Jaguar: Cool.
G0d: Back. Some kid was begging for a kidney transplant. I did the whole speaking through a blinding white light in a cloud thing.
Tejano del Jaguar: That rules, that and the burning bush thing you do.
G0d: Yeah, I try and save that for the “big moments.” You know, the whole rock star god thing.
Tejano del Jaguar: Yeah takes it up a notch.
G0d: Yeah except I am god, only thing I can do to that is create that mountain I can’t even carry. Heh.
Tejano del Jaguar: So back to the tourist in Times Square. Do you think that their programming by advertising and television is so great that they truly believe that Times Square is truly a magical place?
G0d: It’s a mecca.
Tejano del Jaguar: Huh?
G0d: mec·ca (mk)n.1. A place that is regarded as the center of an activity or interest.
2. A goal to which adherents of a religious faith or practice fervently aspire.
Tejano del Jaguar: No shit, I can go to dictionary.com to wise guy. But is it your doing?
G0d: Of course, I do work in mysterious ways don’t I?
Tejano del Jaguar: Lol =)
G0d: This was my thinking. I am only a god per say when people worship me. The less attention I get; the less power I have. When was the last time you saw a temple to Ra? Or my homey Zeus?
Tejano del Jaguar: Oh tell him hi for me.
G0d: Cool, will do. So I figured since people’s minds were so deranged from praying at the altar of the All-Mighty dollar, I used one of Satan’s own agents to clean up the site for my greatest cathedral yet.
Tejano del Jaguar: Who?
G0d: Guiliani of course. Hehe. I had him clean up New York unbeknownst to Lucifer so I could make Times Square the new Holy Land for the cult of consumption in America. Since people can no longer can even think independently for a second with advertising bombarding them, why not beat Satan at his own game?
Tejano del Jaguar: Isn’t that selling out?
G0d: Ehh, St. Peter says so. But I think he is just jealous that the lights I manipulated being built in Times Square are now more awe inspiring than his Pearly Gates. I’m all about the bottom line. Followers.
Tejano del Jaguar: Yeah. So it’s okay to feel superior to Midwestern tourist because it’s all part of God’s plan to capitalize on their stupidity and lack of ability to think for themselves?
G0d: Yeah, until you and the others put that revolution together, it’s gonna have to do the job. I know it’s a Band-Aid on a festering wound, but could you imagine what would happen if they were all enlightened at the same time?
Tejano del Jaguar: World peace?
G0d: Ha, hell no. They would all realize they are all just a bunch of fat fucks and kill themselves for their sins. I don’t need a bunch of formerly morbid obsess martyrs trying to cram through the Gates of Heaven at once, just got them fixed from the Children’s Crusade.
Tejano del Jaguar: Cool, well the Age of Jaguar is almost upon us so I guess we won’t have to suffer too much longer.
G0d: Yeah, plus I got the aliens scheduled to arrive later this year.
Tejano del Jaguar: Wtf?!
G0d: Hmm, forget I mentioned it. Okay I gotta run. I gotta smite some people in the CIA for ruining my whole peace in the Middle East plan.
Tejano del Jaguar: Hey, thanks. As always it’s been, uh, unique.
G0d: Cool, and I’ll see you later today when that bus sends you to me.
Tejano del Jaguar: What!
G0d: just kidding, maybe. 😉
G0d signed off at 12:30 AM on 6/21/07
————–
My Top Five Favorite Things Today
1) Watch an Obessive Fan of Britney Spears (I swear, last Britney day!)
2) Art from a Single Piece of Paper
http://bertc.com/sub…
3) 1/4 of the Earth’s biomass is made up of these.
http://www.bio.miami…
4) Ice tsunami
http://www.area755.c…
5) Why the ancients believed in gods
http://pics.bestpice…
This is an open thread.
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reminds of the time I walked up the appalachian trail from georgia and got off at Tiorati Circle west of NYC and got a ride in with a friend. Like being on another planet. Biggest strangely out of frame but valid worry in my head was where would I find water. Then I sat in a pizza joint and a speed freak started mad dogging some guy and I thought he was going to shoot him. It was great to get back to 20 miles a day with 55 pounds on my back.
Nobody around but a few people you’d want to hang out with anyway.
See one over Mt. Adams sometimes, fairly common actually, but never this spectacular.
…NY would lose part of it’s identity. Coming from the west coast and living for a couple of years in Manhattan, I was endlessly amazed to see the busses full of midwesterners disgorged into times square. Nothing like it on the west coast to compare; they are their own spectacle. But I think they do contribute something to the iconic nature of New York — it’s the biggest, most amazing thing they’ve seen. They go home and talk about it, like it’s magic.
Besides it is fun to ride your bike two inches from their feet as the light changes.
1) had to bail out of the britney fan vid after about 10 seconds. there are people like that? really? and they SHARE that shit online? wow.
2) immensely badass. origami otherwordli.
personal note, tying in the remaining three of five: got a background in geology, studied in the northeast, so glaciers figured prominently.
3) i knew of diatoms (more particularly, the variability in their oxygen isotope ratios contained within their shell matter) to help piece together the timeline of recent ige age advance and retreat. never got ’em under a microscope to remark at their beauty though. lesson leaned.
4) ice, subjected to pressure, behaves plastically. sometimes, to mind-bending effects.
5) dunno if i’m down with the angry-bearded-white-guy model, but such sights as that move the needle on my agnostometer too.
nice intro piece, too. i’ve really gotta upgrade my calling plan.
and i can take a hint. ive moved on… 😉
and, would you really deny us our britney? some day her kids are going to want to see some evidence that their mother once had a career…and hair…this could be a really useful archive…(cause pics of brit are so rare…)
Don’t even notice ’em. Sheesh. I must be really out of it.
some fun stuff in here, pinche. thanks!
but tourists come to Memphis looking for the “authentic blues experience” and you can find it but not on Beale Street. If I come to NYC I will wear a t-shirt that says,”Not from the Mid-west, dammit.”
thank you. I needed this diary today, for some reason. Ahhh.
thx, pinche.
in this motley crew of east coast and west coast types? I am faux because I wasn’t born in the South. You always gotta have a token redneck at the party.
is that we’re all clueless tourists somewhere.
Speaking of which, here’s a message to New Yorkers (and all the rest): when you come to New Orleans, do not wear Mardi Gras beads, especially when it’s not specifically Mardi Gras week. The locals not only find it tacky, but they will dish out bad service and fleece you rotten as a way of getting back at you. Oh, and believe it or not, the city extends beyond the French Quarter, although we’re happy to pretend otherwise, since it means you’ll never crowd the actual great restaurants and bars.
Cheers!
And I almost picked Jaguar as my username when I first signed up at D-Kos.
Not much of a comment, I know, but it’s my first here, and I just want to see how it looks! : )