“Tell me a story, J-Rod.” She asks, playfully twirling a swizzle stick. With a quick wrist flip J-Rod spins a playing card forward and watches as it bounces off the lip of the plastic bucket on the floor of the tiki bar.
He fist-pumps the air. “Ohhhh! So close! A story you want? What kind of story?”
Marigold is leaning on the bar. “How the Schmeck did you end up on Mars, Jay?”
J-Rod is lining up another throw. He’s got the only sports coat / turtleneck combo on Mars. Lucky man. “Mars, heh. I was a man who had to get the fuck out of town.”
“Did you owe someone money?”
”No, not exactly.”
”What? Did you hide the body?”
”Heh, newp. Nope, nothing like that.” He lets the card fly, another miss.
“You might say they drove me out of town.”
”They?”
”Yup, it started with the TP in my trees. Then flaming bags of dog poop on my doorstep. Then the Ronald Chump doll.”
”Eeeww! Gross! Who would stoop to that?”
”The Science-ology Troopers. They’re like Storm Troopers but for the Church of Science-ology. They don’t like me much. A sense of humor is something they do not have.”
”Oh? Just what did you do? Piss in their corn flakes?”
”Nah. Worse.” He’s lining up another card. “I cut into their cash flow. They get antsy about that. I didn’t even need their money.” And it’s another miss. “Dang!”
”The whole thing started as kind of a prank.”
”Prank?”
”Yeah, it was the last night of the Drunk Weasel Fight Club NFT conference. Me and my crew had just cashed out…”
”Wait – you were into NFT’s? That fake stuff?”
”Nah, not really. We were into selling timeshares of NFT’s, for people who wanted to feel like they were playas, but couldn’t swing all the cash…”
”NFT timeshares were a thing?”
”Oh fuck yeah, you better believe it. We pulled the cord and bailed out at the perfect moment – just as someone came up with blockchain mining of new timeshare date ranges.”
J-Rod shakes his head and gives a card a quiet kiss. “You should have seen those people, the speculators almost had jizz coming out of their tear ducts, desperate to get in on the action…”
”Let me guess… they were using off-brand BitCoin to buy blockchain-mined dates which don’t exist on the calendar to commit to timeshares on NFT animated GIF’s of drunk weasels which also don’t exist.”
”Yep, the holy grail of ‘market over-exuberance’ for one whole evening.” He flips the card – pow! This time it’s in! “So we were sitting around, getting drunk…”
”…as one does…”
”…as one does while lounging on sacks of fresh, hot cash – spitballing what we were going to do to top that. Guess what we came up with?”
”Nostril deodorant? Aerosol helium cheese? Edible plywood?”
”Nah, right there at the bar we setup a GitHub repo for the ultimate self-exploiting scam: an Open Source religion.”
”I thought Open Source software was already a religion.”
”No, no this wasn’t software, we started a religion where the text of our holy book was fully open source and you could fork the project and have your own rules based on it any time you wanted.”
He spins another card, pausing as it wafts towards the bucket. A miss.
“We thought it would be funny to call it ‘Open Science-ology’ but the twits at The Church of Science-ology were not amused. Hey, it turned out that our cult was cheaper than theirs, and a whole lot more fun.”
”Can I join?”
He shrugs, “Sure. Raise your left hand and repeat after me:”
”I <insert your name here>, solemnly promise to not get dirt on the living room carpet, pee in the pool or let the monkey out of his cage. Tip your waitress.”
”I think I can pull that off. Does she take Simoleons? I use a pancake-based currency.”
”We don’t actually need your money, but you’d better tip your waitress. You don’t want to see Sharon when she’s hangry.”
”Turns out starting a cult is easy. Get a boat with an open bar, find some young, attractive women who don’t want a real job and the rest pretty much falls into place. Pretty soon we were so successful that one dazed and confused morning we found we’d also founded The Open Bullshit movement, which allows anyone to believe anything is true at any time.”
”Pull the wool over your own eyes!”
”Ah-men, brother! Our drive-thru ordering was quite popular. You could choose your own personality defects and also get a large fries to go in under five minutes.”
”It was about then we found someone had beheaded Mr. Bojangles.”
”Mr. Bojangles?”
”My cat. I got the message. Didn’t even pack my bong, left that afternoon before they came for my bunny slippers. Now here I am. How’s that for a story?”
”I’ll drink to that! Hey Marigold, these ice cubes are getting dry!”
Link to wikipedia entry on the Dutch tulip mania: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tulip_mania
create repo for open science-ology on GitHub.
make up a drunk weasel fight club event poster