Meanwhile, in the tiki bar…
As usual, the lights are low. On the screen behind the bar a lazy Tulum beach scene mellows out in a lazy Mayan afternoon. There’s a quite in and out rush of surf sounds, like a large animal quietly snoring. “Tell me a story, J-Rod.” Marigold asks, lazily swirling a swizzle stick on the neck of an empty glass, while taking in the tall, stylish black man. He looks like he smuggled himself to Mars on an Esquire cover. “What is this guy doing here?” Marigold’s wondering to himself.
With a quick wrist flip J-Rod spins a playing card forward and watches as it bounces off the lip of his fedora on the floor of the tiki bar. A nine of diamonds. He fist-pumps the air. “Ohhhh! So close! A story you want? What kind of story?”
Marigold leans his elbows on the bar. “How the Schmeck did you end up on Mars anyway, Jay?”
J-Rod lines up another throw. He’s got the only sports coat / turtleneck combo on Mars. And man, and do those shoes look good. Lucky man. “Mars, heh. I was a man who had to get the fuck out of town.”
“You owe someone money?”
J-Rod frowns. ”No, not exactly.”
”¿Que? A woman, maybe?”
”Heh, nah. Nope, nothing like that.” J-Rod lets the card fly, another miss. Three of diamonds.
“You might say they drove me out of town.”
”The cops?”
”Nope. Not the cops, it started with the TP in my trees. Then flaming bags of dog poop on my doorstep. Then the Ronald Chump doll.”
”Gross! What kind of cabrón would do that?”
”The Science-ology Troopers. My man Mr. Bartender, 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 to piss in their corn flakes?” Now Marigold’s curious.
”Nah. Worse.” J-Rod’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.” He pauses, thoughtful. ”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? What’s that… ‘non-fungus…’”
”N.F.T. ‘Non Fungible Token’. It’s a way you can pretend to own something that everyone already has a copy of moment they see it on their computer.”
“I’m going to pretend I understand that.”
J-Rod nods his head back and forth a bit. “Ah, it’s like everyone pretends you own an animated GIF that everyone already has on their computer. The whole thing was a scene, mah-man.” Marigold shrugs and he continues. “We were into selling timeshares of NFT’s, for people who wanted to feel like they were big time playas, but couldn’t swing all the cash to own their own…”
”So, these NFT timeshares were a thing?” Marigold looks doubtful.
”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 jack 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… but then the buzz wore off.”
”Let me guess. Marigold starts counting off on his fingers. “They were using some kind of BitCoin-thing to buy dates which don’t exist on the calendar to commit to timeshares on NFT images of your drunk weasels images which also don’t exist.”
J-Rod smacks his palms together with a loud clap. ”Yep, the holy grail of ‘market over-exuberance’ for one whole evening.” He flips the card towards his hat – pow! This time it’s in. J-Rod does a quick victory dance. “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?”
“Well, the Rodco Pocket Phisherman for mobile phone hackers was first but then, right there at the bar we setup a GitHub repo for the ultimate self-exploiting scam: an Open Source religion.”
Marigold scratches his thick locks. ”I’ve heard about Open Source stuff. Thought it was already a religion. And what’s a ‘github’?”
”No, no this wasn’t software. Github is this service that lets you share and collaborate to anyone anywhere on the internet. We started a religion where the text of our holy book was fully open source and you can add to it or even fork the project and have your own religion based on it any time you want.” He spins another card, pausing as it wafts towards the bucket. A miss. Five of diamonds.
“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 weasels out of their cage. Tip your waitress.”
”I’d change that to tip your bartender.”
”We don’t actually need your money, but you’d better tip your waitress. Now that you’re in the cult, you can add any rules you want. Right there on GitHub.“
J-Rod grabs his mug from the bar and takes a swig. He leans on the bar and looks Marigold close in the eyes. “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 they want is true at any time.”
”Isn’t it that way already?”
”Well, sure. But it didn’t have a name.” J-Rod pulls back and sighs. ”It was about then we found someone had beheaded Mr. Bojangles.”
”Who?”
”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?”
“If you didn’t have a Drunk Weasel Fight Club tattoo, I’d think you were making it up.”
”I’ll drink to that! Hey Marigold, these ice cubes are getting dry!”
Author’s note: Say what? Are NFT’s a thing?
Oh, and J-Rod’s open source religion really does have a very real Github repo.
Contribute some new religious thing to ‘The Bibble’ today!
And you can email J-Rod here: jrodgoinon@gmail.com