Author’s Note:

Vic,

Inspired by your Gonzo Station revisit piece and thanks to tequila and Hunter S Thompson this was written.

-Marlow

Editor’s Note: I had planned on posting this later in the week, when Marlow’s particular take on public emergency feels right. But times being what they are, it seems appropriate to release today. It is an adapting world. We are opening a new Cold War with China. Then, a trip to town to scare up some real fried chicken contained all the elements of an adventure in an exotic land. Times being what they are, you know?

– Vic

Alternative Viruses

For a long time it seemed that half of the country has wanted the government to act as some intangible parental figure who shakes its finger at us like some 3 hour long, movie God in a shrubbery high on a mountain top from thousands of years ago who says: “Don’t do it. Do it and I’ll freaking spank you!”

Yet, these same dopes back in the 70s came to view organized religions as passé if not archaic. People found the Bible’s Testaments obtuse, even downright hokey. To counter all that, churches incessantly announced year-long periods of renewal both of faith and of style. For example, the Catholic Church’s crucifix as a symbol of Christ’s ultimate sacrifice for mankind. A time-honored symbol for sure. But kind of a downer — Christ didn’t come to earth to scare us shitless. No, he’s our eternal buddy and dude. Like the Doobie Brothers sang “Jesus is just alright with me, Jesus is just alright with me, oh yeah.”

So, depictions of and references to his crucifixion agony plummeted.

And, thus, did the Lord get his Wow-factor on. Didn’t those folk and rock music masses just pop like Warhol?

Later after their dim lamps finally went out but their writing in the darkness continued, they created a backstory for SoG that gave him an updated yet still lowly beginnings. In summary:

He was born in a humble place like Queens. He and his parents moved to Flagstaff when he was a kid. He despised it. It was so boring and surrounded by a high desert. When he was 16, his father was killed in a car accident just outside of town. His mother, she’d been having these affairs, and his father suspected but couldn’t prove it, since she was still a verifiable virgin. Anyway, she felt so guilty she decided to become a nun. So, within three weeks of his father’s death, she and her sister Ann were in a convent somewhere in Mexico, and there he was — nowhere to go and no clue about what to do.

He just decided that his life was over, so he was going to kill himself . . . or at least he was gonna make people believe that he would kill himself by insulting all of local elites and overlords so they would kill him. That way he could get some attention, or something. He never really had any intention of killing himself. Others would do it for him or seem to do so.

So, he faked it. All of it. Got some out of work locals to help him stage it all.

Just like NASA did with the moon landing in 69.

Before all of that, in order to survive and spread his story, he started wandering about and telling folks all sorts of loopy stuff so they’d buy his story book that was currently in draft serial form.

The sole difficulty he faced was overcoming his fear of being trapped in that wretched cave. When he overcame that obstacle and pulled it off, he was stunned.

It was the first winning thing he’d ever done, and when he won it, it was probably the last time he ever felt the pure victory of having earned something on his own. No pressure from having to live up to his Father’s image and history of being a universal, hard-assed Goody-Two-Shoes. Nobody was breathing down his neck. He loved it. And that’s why before he launched his big sting he started telling folks — get back to where you once belonged. He knew he didn’t have his pop’s gifts, but he had a couple things the Big Guy didn’t have. Will and faith.

Don’t laugh, he was serious about that. He willed himself into the death-resurrection-assumption deal. And he got a boatload of folks believing in his little something. It was more contagious than a virus. And if folks hung around with people that had it, they might catch it.

This was a real but different kind of virus.

Like Jesus, we were spiritually somewhere out west between the coast and Vegas, well inside the edge of the desert, when this new social media Lord of the Flies thing first began to take hold of the country. I remember saying something like “They all sound to me a bit lightheaded, maybe they shouldn’t be driving let alone broadcasting or texting.” And suddenly there was a terrible roar all around us and the sky was full of what looked like huge orange haired dude balloons.

​Desert between Vegas and the west coast

Folks started running around and texting in ALL CAPS!

It was then that I knew we’d gotten into some really powerful strange stuff.

To date this virus like the one above has defied eradication.

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