My story is not for the religious or the atheistic or the agnostic... it is for everyone interested in the truth. This blog contains first drafts of poetry and prose for my series of books on Christ, the first of which, Waking Up Jesus, is being greeted kindly by critics. Thank you... John Scott Ridgway
WAKING UP JESUS...
We come into this life expecting too much and leave expecting too little
Thursday, April 14, 2005
interview with johnny pain for Zine This Fucking Life
Well, elf shits… here is an interview that is coming out in the Chicago zine scene, in This Fucking Life. . . sorry to say that I didn’t know about the existence of such a thing as This Fucking Life (dog, I love writing that) until I was contacted by Serena Six for an interview. She reads my blog and said yea to all that… So, here is a reprint of an Interview with Johnny Pain from the Zine This Fucking Life. And yes, I have permission!!!! You better get it too when you publish other peoples stuff, or I will have to kick your ass, or put you on a list… depending on how big and tough you are. I mean, should I one day have to wipe out all humanity to keep prescientifica-head-in-the-assica from infecting the next animals that learn to talk, the young and the weak and elderly will have to die first, I am afraid… plain and simply because they are easier and I am lazy. Any how, here is Selena Six’s interview with the asshole, as I call myself……
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since first reading about the bloody hell of the hamster wars, I knew I would sooner or later interview this other Chicagoan, Mr. Johnny Pain. Now, I was finally meeting him, going up three flights of stairs to the Elves Attic. I see him first standing at the top, framed by a dark wooden doorway wearing a torn black shirt with red, blood-dripping letters saying, KILL EVERYONE. His jeans are black, too, and his boots are once black, though now faded gray. He is slim, average height, cute… Long brown curls fall out from beneath a South Park hat with Stan barfing green over the maroon brim. As I reach the top of the stairs, he steps back to let me in and offers his hand with a scowl on his face, like he is being forced to shake hands with someone he feels is repugnant
“Nice shirt.” I step into the attic and notice the cats that Johnny Pain writes about in his blog, first accusing them of killing his first mighty hamster army, and then deriding the no torture policy that his girlfriend M. has instigate as the reason he can’t verify that the cats ate the hamsters. The gray tabby, Charlie Brown Bukowski, is lying at the top of the keyboards and looking up at me curiously. Mr.Yeats is curled up into a puffy ball, an orange, lionish looking cat sleeping on the back of a black leather love seat,
Johnny waves me toward a red wing chair, “ You agree with the sentiment of the shirt, I take it, or you wouldn’t be here. It’s easy to agree with a shirt like this. . “ He speaks in a surprisingly soft voice, sets me up to be startled when he suddenly yells, “are you willing to back that up with a few rounds?”
I jump, he chuckles and strokes his chin.
I laughed then and had an odd feeling that I had just entered a funny and disturbing Johnny Pain story. “ No, but your feelings on the matter are exactly why I wanted to interview you for my zine.”
“You have a zine, too? “ Johnny asked.
“Yes, This Fucking Life… I told M. all this on the phone.”
“Yes, well, she’s always telling me something she wants me to remember when I am too stoned to remember, but don’t try to tell her that’s a valid excuse for forgetting things… she can’t face a lot of realities, because she is just like everyone else.” He points at my handheld recorder and asks, “ You already have that thing recording, right?”
“Yes, from the stairs.”
“You want to do some bongs?” He asks as he pulls a knee high red bong out from behind his desk.
“Cool.”
“I’ll pack one, or however many ya need, got weed, got weed… yea, I don’t get interviewed nearly enough, and I think about how cool it would be all the time, know all the right questions to ask me… sometimes this is all I do for months at a time.” He looks puzzled, stokes his thin Vincent Price beard, a slim line of dark hair running down his jaw lines and ending in a graying goatee like beard. “ :Fucking eh, this is probably something I should just talk about with a professional… “ He laughs like he has been joking all along, hands me the bong and points at a lighter on a coffee table-- which he has painted with skyscrapers rising into a black city night filled with stars. The room is filled with his paintings, bright, colorful canvases that range from cubist to Van Gogh -ish landscapes.
“I love your paintings.”
“People buy this shit. I don’t notice them until someone points them out, actually. Painting them is the only part I like – selling them kind of sucks, makes me feel lost… like parting with a good friend forever… We are here to talk hamsters, though. That orange cat, his nickname is butboy, because he spends every night curled up on one of our Asses. He comes right in when you go to bed. Soft, warm… who knows why he does it? You ever kill anyone?”
“No, I would never kill anyone.” I tell him with a laugh.
“Never say never on that one, Bub . . . think a minute and you’ll realize there are all kinds of reasons one might have to kill. This is not some psychosis… Damn that fucking … oh, never mind that… No, you have to be ready to kill, like me, tough you know? I never meant to learn how to fight, it just happens when you live in a neighborhood full of bullies and hot heads. There was a fight at almost every game… Now, I know there are reasons to know how to fight, and justifiable reasons to kill, though dog knows, I’m probably not lucky enough to ever get a chance. Dammit!!!”
I smoke another bong and feel like my head has emptied out, look at my list of questions and then remember one Johnny Pain’s essays and come up with a new question.
“On your web sit, you wrote that you have,’ fuck your mother, kill your father,’ tattooed on your forehead, but I don’t see . . . ”
He takes off his hat and pulls back his long light brown hair, showing me a thin line of tiny blue letters right at his hairline, reading, yes, ‘FUCK YOUR MOTHER, KILL YOUR FATHER.’
“How drunk were you?” I ask him.
“Hard to tell… I can’t remember. My theory is, someone drugged me… besides me, I mean. I think it is obvious that the dog, Ruby-doo the husky, is behind this. She is ridiculously happy all the time, and I think that is because she finds this tattoo so damn amusing… I could find out, but you know M. and this anti-torture policy?”.
“ Did you ever discover who ate the first mighty hamster army?”
“Again, there is no shit-shrub not so president here to order M. to let me torture. The CIA gets to torture… bouncing crucified Christ’s, even those weekend soldiers get to torture!! I swear to god, I’d vote for a damned republican if that not-so-president would just call M. and tell her that this anti-terrorist effort requires hard, bloody decisions -- like torture… I’ve called the white house repeatedly and left messages, but no….
That fucker Clinton always called me back. All I had to do with him was say I had some juicy ‘pussy talk.’ Once he sent air force one to pick me up – that time I had memorized some penthouse forums, which it turned out he had already read, and then I had to convince him that the adventures indeed were mine and that I had sent in the letters… He’d buy anything to keep a good pussy talk going.”
M. comes into the room, her long red hair and big brown eyes make for a very cute
Face, and her body, to quote Johnny Pain, ‘could raise a woody on the dead.’ She looks at Johnny like she is a little annoyed with him, “Don’t lie to this young lady. You’re damn lucky to have someone around who takes you seriously for a few minutes. You better enjoy it while it lasts.”
Johnny laughs, though I am not entirely sure she is being facetious. M. sets down a cup of coffee for Johnny and asks me if I want anything; when I don’t, she bids us farewell..
“You can see the hamster room, if you dare… Just don’t say anything anti-rodent, or pro-cat in there, or I can’t be held responsible for your well being.”
The hamster ‘room’ is actually a closet, with the walls lined with empty cages.
“Come on in.”
“There isn’t room.
“I’ve had three people in here, maybe four?”
I suspect he is lying, though I go in any ways, enter a small space which smells of cedar chips and stand uncomfortably close to the interviewee. He doesn’t seem to know I am there as he looks from cage to cage with a contemplative look on his face.
Johnny turns on the light bulb hanging down from the ceiling, closes the door and tells me in a whisper, “Security,”
“Are there any hamsters?” I ask?
He taps his forehead and says, “They’re all in here, practicing on a purely mental dimension, for now…so, yea, there are a hell of a lot of hamsters. I spend my time now, preparing to train the other hamsters, the ones on… well, this dimension, you know… though in other dimensions, the ones I can only access up here." He taps himself on the forehead again, “the hamster army is making them tremble and shake… and when I bring them out of here, into here…” He points at his head and then the cages, “You will see Paintopia rise up and become the world government, or you will be killed as a resister. That will be up to you and how you act, unless I am really moody, and then I might have you killed for just being around and being human. Who can tell what’s going to happen, right?”
“Can we leave this room?”
“Sure. I know, coming in here reminds you that war is hell, and hamster war is even worse… it’s a. . . Hellish hell, I guess… Yea, let’s get out of here. And Don’t say anything about this to anyone, or you will hear the hamster’s squeal of death!!”
“This is an interview for a publication and…”
“I mean government people.”
“They don’t read my zine.”
“Well, I guess you get to live . . . for now.”
We go back into the living area of the attic-- half is filled with boxes, most of the rest is Johnny’s office. He sits in a red leather swivel chair in front of the computer and I lean back into the black leather loveseat, petting the orange Mr. Yeats as Johnny leans over the tray on the coffee table, takes out a bowl and begins stuffing in a bud. .
I ask him, “You know, wait, if I heard the hamster’s squeal of death, wouldn’t that mean that the rodents are dying? And why would that be frightening to me?”
He shakes his head no and looks up at the ceiling, “In the battle to kill you, there would be fatalities on the hamster side. Practically a suicide mission, really, since a human can probably kill like twenty of them before succumbing – well, that is assuming that the cloak of passive pet that the hamster now hide behind is lifted and they are known as the killers they are. Until that happens, subterfuge is best…a slow, cute, cuddly little killer that can get into the jugular kill zone . . . you probably would be able to kill the little trooper that tears open your throat, so a hamsters death scream would be the last thing you ever heard. Now that is frightening… you better wake up from your little dream world girl… Really and truly, now, you never killed anyone?”
“No.”
“Ah, you’re just being cagey, probably . . . Yea, that’s the way you got to be…. Never confess. Seriously, between us, you know, who did you kill, or should I say, how many?”
“I’ve never killed anyone, and I have no plans to.”
“M. said that you were a mercenary who was in charge of a special operations unit working clandestinely for the CIA, training and delivering killer gerbils to our enemies who enjoy rodents as pets?
“I thought you would find that a funny joke.”
“You fucking humans!!!! Why the hell would you think I would take that as a joke? This is war, girl, and you had better understand that right now.” Then Johnny started jumping around like a pogo stick and squealing like an angry rodent… this went on for perhaps a minute, then he began spinning around in circles while mumbling, “Oh, the shits with ya!!! Oh, the shits with ya!!! Oh the….”
M. came in. “I heard the jumping and squealing. He told me that was how he was going to end the interview…. Come on…. You know, he has some crack pot theory about finding nirvana by pretending he is a penguin spinning around saying, ‘Oh, the shits with you.’ He can keep this up for hours. No, seriously, of course you know he’s just doing this for your benefit? Like, he wanted the interview to be different. Though honestly, I don’t think he could be normal if he wanted to be, and he doesn’t. You know he was playing with you, right?”
“Well, yes… sure, I did…”
“He told me interviews are mostly boring, no matter how much you like the people … and something about how interviews don’t have the power of journalism or fiction? You know, he gets so excited and talks so much that you have to kind of stop listening to him sometimes….”
As she walks me out to the door, I can still hear him up there, spinning around and yelling his way into nirvana…
“He is one damn funny guy,” I tell her as we hug and part.
“Yea, if only some of it were intentional, you know?”
Despite what M. said about Johnny Pain acting his way through the interview, I am still entertaining the question of whether he is doing an Andy Kaufman, or is simply mad? I also look at hamsters now as the cut-throat cold ass killer’s they are… yea cats!!! May you and Ruby eat them all!!! Just kidding, Johnny; and Johnny, while I am at it, let me also write that you better remember how nice I was when you are the supreme commander of Paintopia, because I really want to live…. please let me live…please?).
note from Johnny Pain: I had to make up a much cooler journalist than has ever interviewed me... I lied for your interest, to amuse you... making you at least partially responsible for the ease with which I accepted satan into my life.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Since first reading about the bloody hell of the hamster wars, I knew I would sooner or later interview this other Chicagoan, Mr. Johnny Pain. Now, I was finally meeting him, going up three flights of stairs to the Elves Attic. I see him first standing at the top, framed by a dark wooden doorway wearing a torn black shirt with red, blood-dripping letters saying, KILL EVERYONE. His jeans are black, too, and his boots are once black, though now faded gray. He is slim, average height, cute… Long brown curls fall out from beneath a South Park hat with Stan barfing green over the maroon brim. As I reach the top of the stairs, he steps back to let me in and offers his hand with a scowl on his face, like he is being forced to shake hands with someone he feels is repugnant
“Nice shirt.” I step into the attic and notice the cats that Johnny Pain writes about in his blog, first accusing them of killing his first mighty hamster army, and then deriding the no torture policy that his girlfriend M. has instigate as the reason he can’t verify that the cats ate the hamsters. The gray tabby, Charlie Brown Bukowski, is lying at the top of the keyboards and looking up at me curiously. Mr.Yeats is curled up into a puffy ball, an orange, lionish looking cat sleeping on the back of a black leather love seat,
Johnny waves me toward a red wing chair, “ You agree with the sentiment of the shirt, I take it, or you wouldn’t be here. It’s easy to agree with a shirt like this. . “ He speaks in a surprisingly soft voice, sets me up to be startled when he suddenly yells, “are you willing to back that up with a few rounds?”
I jump, he chuckles and strokes his chin.
I laughed then and had an odd feeling that I had just entered a funny and disturbing Johnny Pain story. “ No, but your feelings on the matter are exactly why I wanted to interview you for my zine.”
“You have a zine, too? “ Johnny asked.
“Yes, This Fucking Life… I told M. all this on the phone.”
“Yes, well, she’s always telling me something she wants me to remember when I am too stoned to remember, but don’t try to tell her that’s a valid excuse for forgetting things… she can’t face a lot of realities, because she is just like everyone else.” He points at my handheld recorder and asks, “ You already have that thing recording, right?”
“Yes, from the stairs.”
“You want to do some bongs?” He asks as he pulls a knee high red bong out from behind his desk.
“Cool.”
“I’ll pack one, or however many ya need, got weed, got weed… yea, I don’t get interviewed nearly enough, and I think about how cool it would be all the time, know all the right questions to ask me… sometimes this is all I do for months at a time.” He looks puzzled, stokes his thin Vincent Price beard, a slim line of dark hair running down his jaw lines and ending in a graying goatee like beard. “ :Fucking eh, this is probably something I should just talk about with a professional… “ He laughs like he has been joking all along, hands me the bong and points at a lighter on a coffee table-- which he has painted with skyscrapers rising into a black city night filled with stars. The room is filled with his paintings, bright, colorful canvases that range from cubist to Van Gogh -ish landscapes.
“I love your paintings.”
“People buy this shit. I don’t notice them until someone points them out, actually. Painting them is the only part I like – selling them kind of sucks, makes me feel lost… like parting with a good friend forever… We are here to talk hamsters, though. That orange cat, his nickname is butboy, because he spends every night curled up on one of our Asses. He comes right in when you go to bed. Soft, warm… who knows why he does it? You ever kill anyone?”
“No, I would never kill anyone.” I tell him with a laugh.
“Never say never on that one, Bub . . . think a minute and you’ll realize there are all kinds of reasons one might have to kill. This is not some psychosis… Damn that fucking … oh, never mind that… No, you have to be ready to kill, like me, tough you know? I never meant to learn how to fight, it just happens when you live in a neighborhood full of bullies and hot heads. There was a fight at almost every game… Now, I know there are reasons to know how to fight, and justifiable reasons to kill, though dog knows, I’m probably not lucky enough to ever get a chance. Dammit!!!”
I smoke another bong and feel like my head has emptied out, look at my list of questions and then remember one Johnny Pain’s essays and come up with a new question.
“On your web sit, you wrote that you have,’ fuck your mother, kill your father,’ tattooed on your forehead, but I don’t see . . . ”
He takes off his hat and pulls back his long light brown hair, showing me a thin line of tiny blue letters right at his hairline, reading, yes, ‘FUCK YOUR MOTHER, KILL YOUR FATHER.’
“How drunk were you?” I ask him.
“Hard to tell… I can’t remember. My theory is, someone drugged me… besides me, I mean. I think it is obvious that the dog, Ruby-doo the husky, is behind this. She is ridiculously happy all the time, and I think that is because she finds this tattoo so damn amusing… I could find out, but you know M. and this anti-torture policy?”.
“ Did you ever discover who ate the first mighty hamster army?”
“Again, there is no shit-shrub not so president here to order M. to let me torture. The CIA gets to torture… bouncing crucified Christ’s, even those weekend soldiers get to torture!! I swear to god, I’d vote for a damned republican if that not-so-president would just call M. and tell her that this anti-terrorist effort requires hard, bloody decisions -- like torture… I’ve called the white house repeatedly and left messages, but no….
That fucker Clinton always called me back. All I had to do with him was say I had some juicy ‘pussy talk.’ Once he sent air force one to pick me up – that time I had memorized some penthouse forums, which it turned out he had already read, and then I had to convince him that the adventures indeed were mine and that I had sent in the letters… He’d buy anything to keep a good pussy talk going.”
M. comes into the room, her long red hair and big brown eyes make for a very cute
Face, and her body, to quote Johnny Pain, ‘could raise a woody on the dead.’ She looks at Johnny like she is a little annoyed with him, “Don’t lie to this young lady. You’re damn lucky to have someone around who takes you seriously for a few minutes. You better enjoy it while it lasts.”
Johnny laughs, though I am not entirely sure she is being facetious. M. sets down a cup of coffee for Johnny and asks me if I want anything; when I don’t, she bids us farewell..
“You can see the hamster room, if you dare… Just don’t say anything anti-rodent, or pro-cat in there, or I can’t be held responsible for your well being.”
The hamster ‘room’ is actually a closet, with the walls lined with empty cages.
“Come on in.”
“There isn’t room.
“I’ve had three people in here, maybe four?”
I suspect he is lying, though I go in any ways, enter a small space which smells of cedar chips and stand uncomfortably close to the interviewee. He doesn’t seem to know I am there as he looks from cage to cage with a contemplative look on his face.
Johnny turns on the light bulb hanging down from the ceiling, closes the door and tells me in a whisper, “Security,”
“Are there any hamsters?” I ask?
He taps his forehead and says, “They’re all in here, practicing on a purely mental dimension, for now…so, yea, there are a hell of a lot of hamsters. I spend my time now, preparing to train the other hamsters, the ones on… well, this dimension, you know… though in other dimensions, the ones I can only access up here." He taps himself on the forehead again, “the hamster army is making them tremble and shake… and when I bring them out of here, into here…” He points at his head and then the cages, “You will see Paintopia rise up and become the world government, or you will be killed as a resister. That will be up to you and how you act, unless I am really moody, and then I might have you killed for just being around and being human. Who can tell what’s going to happen, right?”
“Can we leave this room?”
“Sure. I know, coming in here reminds you that war is hell, and hamster war is even worse… it’s a. . . Hellish hell, I guess… Yea, let’s get out of here. And Don’t say anything about this to anyone, or you will hear the hamster’s squeal of death!!”
“This is an interview for a publication and…”
“I mean government people.”
“They don’t read my zine.”
“Well, I guess you get to live . . . for now.”
We go back into the living area of the attic-- half is filled with boxes, most of the rest is Johnny’s office. He sits in a red leather swivel chair in front of the computer and I lean back into the black leather loveseat, petting the orange Mr. Yeats as Johnny leans over the tray on the coffee table, takes out a bowl and begins stuffing in a bud. .
I ask him, “You know, wait, if I heard the hamster’s squeal of death, wouldn’t that mean that the rodents are dying? And why would that be frightening to me?”
He shakes his head no and looks up at the ceiling, “In the battle to kill you, there would be fatalities on the hamster side. Practically a suicide mission, really, since a human can probably kill like twenty of them before succumbing – well, that is assuming that the cloak of passive pet that the hamster now hide behind is lifted and they are known as the killers they are. Until that happens, subterfuge is best…a slow, cute, cuddly little killer that can get into the jugular kill zone . . . you probably would be able to kill the little trooper that tears open your throat, so a hamsters death scream would be the last thing you ever heard. Now that is frightening… you better wake up from your little dream world girl… Really and truly, now, you never killed anyone?”
“No.”
“Ah, you’re just being cagey, probably . . . Yea, that’s the way you got to be…. Never confess. Seriously, between us, you know, who did you kill, or should I say, how many?”
“I’ve never killed anyone, and I have no plans to.”
“M. said that you were a mercenary who was in charge of a special operations unit working clandestinely for the CIA, training and delivering killer gerbils to our enemies who enjoy rodents as pets?
“I thought you would find that a funny joke.”
“You fucking humans!!!! Why the hell would you think I would take that as a joke? This is war, girl, and you had better understand that right now.” Then Johnny started jumping around like a pogo stick and squealing like an angry rodent… this went on for perhaps a minute, then he began spinning around in circles while mumbling, “Oh, the shits with ya!!! Oh, the shits with ya!!! Oh the….”
M. came in. “I heard the jumping and squealing. He told me that was how he was going to end the interview…. Come on…. You know, he has some crack pot theory about finding nirvana by pretending he is a penguin spinning around saying, ‘Oh, the shits with you.’ He can keep this up for hours. No, seriously, of course you know he’s just doing this for your benefit? Like, he wanted the interview to be different. Though honestly, I don’t think he could be normal if he wanted to be, and he doesn’t. You know he was playing with you, right?”
“Well, yes… sure, I did…”
“He told me interviews are mostly boring, no matter how much you like the people … and something about how interviews don’t have the power of journalism or fiction? You know, he gets so excited and talks so much that you have to kind of stop listening to him sometimes….”
As she walks me out to the door, I can still hear him up there, spinning around and yelling his way into nirvana…
“He is one damn funny guy,” I tell her as we hug and part.
“Yea, if only some of it were intentional, you know?”
Despite what M. said about Johnny Pain acting his way through the interview, I am still entertaining the question of whether he is doing an Andy Kaufman, or is simply mad? I also look at hamsters now as the cut-throat cold ass killer’s they are… yea cats!!! May you and Ruby eat them all!!! Just kidding, Johnny; and Johnny, while I am at it, let me also write that you better remember how nice I was when you are the supreme commander of Paintopia, because I really want to live…. please let me live…please?).
note from Johnny Pain: I had to make up a much cooler journalist than has ever interviewed me... I lied for your interest, to amuse you... making you at least partially responsible for the ease with which I accepted satan into my life.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment