2 Guys Talkin'

J-Hey man

B-‘sup

J-Long time

B-Yeah, we’ve been busy. Give me a scritch.

J-Ok, how’s that?

B-ooooohooohhhohhhhhhh yeah mmmm

J-You’re drooling

B-Oh, get over it. You do when Mom and you…

J-HEY, HEY, HEY!!! Let’s not be talking about that. What is wrong with you?

B-Oh, I forgot-the bashful apes. Nothing in public. And yet acres of porn where they film themselves doing it and post on the 'net for the entire planet to see. Go figure.

J-This is personal.

B-One would think it would be so as well for those porn people. I guess not.

J-It just is.

B-All right, all right. Point taken. How’s your summer been? Stuff is growing.

J-Yeah but not producing much. No heat.

B-That’s fine by me with my fur pajamas and all.

J-Understandable. But we wait all winter for this and it’s disappointing. And the summer has flown by. “Oh but summer is gone, I remember it best, back in the good, old world.”

B-Oh Gawd, you’ve been listening to Tom Waits again. You guys just have to get over this obsession with death. It isn’t the end and oblivion. It’s the end of a particular cycle and you begin a new one.

J-What? There is reincarnation?

B-Sure. Everybody knows this. Just for some reason, apes forget about the last cycle. It’s a mystery to us but we accept it for what it is. We feel sorry for you.

J-Wait. What do you mean everybody knows? Everybody who?

B-All living things.

J-All living things come back?

B-Sure, in different ways. But there are rules. No species jumping. I can’t come back as a dog and you can’t come back as a tree.

J-Hmm..paging Baba Wawa.

B-What? Huh?

J- Never mind. And everybody knows this?

B-Yes. If Mom had been able to communicate with the big fishes she swam with, they would have told her.

J-They’re dolphins and they’re mammals like us.

B-And they’re tasty. Yummers!

J-OH NO NO NO NO NO..DO NOT TELL MOM THAT!!! When the hell did you eat dolphin?

B-Little Friskies Mariners Choice.

J-Hmmm better not buy any more of that.

B-I ‘spose.

J-So, getting back to reincarnation, how do YOU know this?

B-Sigh, Mr. Empiricist-what did I just say? Apes don’t remember and it’s one the wacky paradoxes of the world-big cranial volume but you don’t have this capability. We chuckle about it sometimes but frankly, it’s a monumental tragedy.

J-How so?

B-Apes forget the past and keep on making the same mistakes over and over.

J-Yeah, true that.

B-We told Jesus and he tried to tell you guys about reincarnation but the message got all mixed up and mutated. He could churn out some pretty good quotes but wasn’t too good on finessing multiple ideas. He also began to believe in the whole Messiah stuff.

J-WAIT A MINUTE!! YOU’RE SAYING THAT THE NAZARETH PROPHET, WHOSE LIFE, DEATH AND WORDS RESULTED IN ONE OF THE MAJOR ENDURING SPIRITUAL MOVEMENTS OF ALL MANKIND'S HISTORY, GOT HIS IDEA OF RESURRECTION FROM A CAT??? DUDE, EVEN FOR YOU, THAT IS A MASSIVE WHOPPER.

B-Oh, does this offend the apes whose main conceit is that they were created in the image of some deity? It’s the truth, man. Jesus had cats and they talked to him and he understood. Of course, he thought he was a bit nuts-you know, hearing voices in his head, hearing a cat speak. The truth was, that he WAS a bit nuts but for other reasons.

J-Well, a few billion folk ain’t gonna like THIS message.

B-Oh, well-we have survived persecutions before. Look at the middle ages. Millions perished. We shut up about it after that. Just let the apes suffer and be ignorant.

J-There is just so much here, I can’t get my head around it. Ah, but, uhh cats aren’t mentioned at all-to my meager knowledge of the Bible and the stories.

B-That’s correct. We aren’t. It was a political thing. People KNEW, his disciples knew, Magdalene knew. But aside from the obvious problem with “oh, our leader got his ideas from a cat and is hearing voices in his head,” there was the Egyptian connection.

J-????

B-Well, you couldn’t have a Messiah of the Jews with an Egyptian connection could you? That wouldn’t sit well with the populace whose tradition was that they were once slaves of the Egyptians. And who were among the Egyptian deities.....?

J-Cats.

B-Yep. So, right out of the box, this was suppressed. While most of the disciples weren’t the brightest crayons in the pack, they understood the message had to be from Jesus and his big Father upstairs. After all, back then people were a terribly ignorant and superstitious lot. I mean, look what they bought into. Son of god, died for collective sin, submit to me and I promise everlasting life. What am I saying? They still do!!! Oi vey!

J-So, to recap this astonishing revision of Western Civilization and Christian theology, a cat or cats told Jesus of Nazareth about reincarnation. He incorporated this into his many messages. And it got changed.

B-Well, look what happened and how it is today. Part of the problem was Jesus was unable to stay on message. He was getting nuttier everyday and had started to buy into the Messiah stuff. And became convinced that self-destruction was the only way to insure his message would be remembered.

J-You’re saying Jesus set himself up?

B-Yep. Judas didn’t betray him, Jesus SENT Judas to the authorities. Jesus knew what was going to happen and didn’t do anything to deter it.

J-How do you know this?

B-We were there.

J-A cat was there. Where?

B-In the Garden, on Jesus’ last night.

J-There was a cat in Gethsemane? Oh please, this is starting to sound like the Russians during the Cold War. They were everywhere and invented everything like the wheel, the New World, Legos.....

B-Listen-he was Magdalene's cat. Those knucklehead disciples drunk themselves into a stupor at the Seder and only the cat was left to keep Jesus company. He sat on Jesus's lap the whole time. It is from that cat that we know what Jesus was really up to as he talked quite a bit. The poor man was in quite a state. He had put into motion something that he had no choice but to go through with, including losing his life in a most gruesome manner. It is part of our collective memory.

J-None of this appears in scripture.

B-Of course not. The Patriarchs couldn’t have a lesser species involved or a woman for that matter. Magdalene btw WAS one of the disciples and frankly one of the brightest. She paid dearly for her gender and intelligence for as you know, the church for many years has portrayed her as a harlot. What better way to discredit a woman?

J-Was she Jesus’ lover?

B- I’ve never heard that but I believe they loved each other-like brother and sister. His mother hated Magdalene.

J-Why?

B-Female turf fight we believe. She didn’t want to share Jesus with Magdalene. She was jealous of their relationship-even though it was only natural for a man in his early 30’s to enjoy the companionship of a woman OTHER than his mother. I have heard that Mother Mary was instrumental behind the scenes on the slander of Magdalene. Pretty nasty stuff for the mother of the son of God don’t you think?

J-Wow. I don’t know what to say. This is just an incredible story. 

B-Well, back to the original discussion, stop being so melancholy about the end coming. It’s not the end, it’s just change.

J-Hmmm.

B-It’s all good, it is the way of things. You apes suffer so much about this. And back to Jesus-once he realized the truth in what we said, he saw how people suffered. THAT was his original intent, his original message: People- Don’t fear death. You continue. Problem was, how do you present this to people that are superstitious, ignorant and uneducated? His solution was to take current belief systems and piggy back on what was understandable to the common person-even as revolutionary as it was. But in that process, things changed and the whole thing became a different animal. Instead of talking about everyone's personal reincarnation, it mutated into Jesus solely resurrecting from the dead. But only for a small while to walk again on Earth. Then whoosh, back up to heaven. And the hook: follow my teachings and you can have what I have. Eternal life. Elsewhere. 
The idea sold well. 

J-A glorious triumph in marketing. Well, I gotta chew on this. Speaking of which,

you want a snack?

B-(jumping down) I thought you’d never ask. Is it dolphin free?

J-Groan-you’re bad.

B-Heh, heh. You walked right into that one, man.