Warning: This is a big load to read. Also, there is a chance of being offended, you religious-types!
Religion is one of those very personal and touchy subjects that I have always tried to avoid due to its volatile nature. I’ve been pretty indifferent to it in my life right now and I am thinking that all this arguing over god(s) is as stupid as a left-handed inflatable dartboard dildo. I am not here to talk about religion but rather, to talk about this religious activity book I attempted during my childhood.
There are two of these books. The one I am reviewing is called ‘Growing with the Spirit’ and the latter ‘Preparing to Celebrate’. These were intended to be used as these to prepare someone for Communion and Confirmation. A Christian/Catholic earning their C’s allows them to eat and drink Jesus’ blood and guts during mass and be under the title of a true Catholic. The child’s family is meant to help with the activity books but I guess mine were occupied with much more pressing matters such as, oh I don’t know, nothing.
Back in these days I was a pretty weird kid. I used to watch TV upside-down, walk around in public reading books while somehow dodging traffic, eating my toast with chicken salt on it and mixing ‘potions’ in the bathtub and drinking them expecting some sort of polymorphic change to occur which only resulted in disappointment and gagging up shampoo and hand wash. Past me was pretty damn stupid, and future me is a conceited arsehole because of his superiority to past me and the fact that he keeps on bringing up past me’s faults. What a douche.
I took pictures of these excerpts using my phone camera as my scanner has been broken. Also the second book, Preparing to Celebrate, has much less content. I won’t be able to upload those pictures and answers of Preparing to Celebrate due to the fact that I lost my phone. God damn it.
And sorry, I ain’t doing the image-name-caption-thingy I usually do. I blame past me for being stupid and lazy.
Without further delay I present to you Growing with the Spirit.
The cover sets the tone for the rest of the book. It features many religious symbols such as the words ‘peace’, candles and crosses in the sides along with very confused and unnervingly content children. The centrepiece of this cover shows all these claw-handed adolescents smiling and reaching toward the clawed robed figure in the middle. The child on the far left looks especially content with its mighty, uneven, lumbering torso rubbing against the backside of a child with an unseemly large cranium. What could possibly be going on here? Have the children plotted to take down the robed figure? Are they fighting over the bird for the rare sustenance that they crave? Are they all playing ‘Toss the legless dove’? These are questions that will never be answered. Let us have a look at the pages within the book.
We’ve skipped our way past walls of mind numbing text about the sacrament of confirmation and how community works and some hot shot named Luke. But that isn’t what we’re here for. What we are here for is to see past me’s abilities to handle these activities. I am sure I was a bright child back then. From here we can see that my handwriting was a lot better over a decade ago. Look at the disjointed ‘h’, and the mess of capitals strewn throughout my answers. Obviously we’re dealing with some sort of child genius here. I should give past me a pat on the back for being such an English whiz-ard.
Naw. Here is young Rohan outlining his morals. Whenever he and his family encounter a lost person they help them by getting them far away from the family. “Oh, Mr Burglar, it seems you are lost. Let me show you to the police station” brings back fond memories. Truly I was raised by a family of saints who were also highly-regarded scientists.
These next few answers are in response about the story wherein Jesus cleansed a leper with his healing touch. It shows the child’s ability to read and recall knowledge, even if all the answers are straight above the questions. If you solve these questions you are the super smartest!
How did Jesus heal the man?
“He touched him on the head.”
Well, past me, your answer there deserves a big fat tick. Obvious, but not so obvious that it’d trick you into thinking there was something else behind it. Solve another three questions and you will earn yourself a Jesus lolly.
My modern answer:
“He tried to face palm over the fact that Pringles weren’t invented yet and missed. He hit the lepers face instead, healing the bloke.”
How do you think the man might have felt when he asked Jesus to help him?
“Very dirty, poor, sick.”
Typing this sentence out in Word brings up the message concerning that sentence is a fragment, and it suggests that I should consider revising it. I think this answer is irreversibly gold, and that Word can correct itself for making such a pedestrian assumption. Let us not forget that past me wrote down that the leper felt very dirty. What could this mean? Did he have a history of perverse activities involving other lepers? This opens up an entire new window of examination allowing more of the leper’s story to be analysed. This answer gave it so much beautiful depth that I can almost weep tears. I am now weeping tears. You have solved another question, young maestro. Two to go.
My modern answer:
“He would’ve felt like vomiting because he was drunk.”
Why do you think Jesus healed the sick man?
“No one helped him.”
Wow - a question asking for the answerer’s opinion upon the motivations behind Jesus. This is truly a scaffolding question which allowed the construction of the mighty well-thought-out answer. A boy outstanding amongst my peers I would’ve been. But that’s not how I remember it. I must’ve been so great I wiped out my own memories of fondness. Three out of four, my boy.
Modern answer:
“Because the leper wouldn’t shut the fuck up.”
How do you think some of the people in Jesus’ world would have felt about what Jesus did?
“Yes.”
What the fuck is this. What on earth drove me to such a mind-numbing painful and WRONG answer? This isn’t a goddamn yes or no answer, past Rohan, this is a question about your opinion. Where the hell did you cross the wires in your brain to reach such a conclusion? Where you under the assumption that you were sieged by the mind crabs of the OmniSun and that you had to confuse them to death through inane thought patterns? Whatever. Sorry past me, you ain’t getting that Jesus lolly.
Modern answer:
“Nice bloke, but I don’t think he’ll change the world or anything”
Let me just recuperate from that strange answer past me submitted. Surely I have much more intelligent things to say and much more sophisticated and logical answers. Just like in my description of my baptism.
Uh...
Hm...
Okay, lemme try to pick it apart.
So I tried to write down my baptism date, but I accidentally mistook ‘baptism’ for ‘birthday’. Wow, what a goddamn loser you are, past Rohan. You scribbled it out in pen but you managed to salvage the year by writing over the ‘1’ in 1991 with a ‘3’.
My child-like train of thought here is broken. I assume the second sentence was about where my baptism was held, as in, what church or area. Uncharacteristically, I messed it up. Following my kid-logic, my baptism was at my baptism. Nice job, Boy Redundant!
The last of the second sentence and the third sentence was meant to be used to describe exactly who was at my baptism. But due to the evolved logic of my gifted past self, I just assumed the last word of the sentence had something to do with the proper answer. Maybe I just didn’t learn of the concept of what ‘present’ in that context was. It was a pretty stupid move, but at least I know that at my baptism I received at least one nice present.
I didn’t draw what I thought my baptism looked like, so I guess we will skip onto the next part!
The next bit was for me to illustrate the process in which a baby goes through baptism. I am sure that you will be thoroughly educated with the ensuing pictures. If you saw my hand drawn pictures in my other posts, you’d be without a doubt that maybe I have at least some sort of decent drawing ability. Coherent but not completely formed. Perhaps I was a better artist back in the day. We shall see.
Oh my fucking God. What the hell is that?
All I can ever see in my mind’s eye now is some sort of hellish demented demon cocooned in the husk of a bath towel, with attentions off-frame and feet smaller than the actual baby’s in size. The hell spawn is trying to dunk the baby in the empty tub and ends up missing it completely - smashing the duck-baby into the side of the ceramic bath. The monstrosity’s misplaced head, its heinously broad left shoulder, and uneven arms elicit a feeling of sympathy and yet also manages to stir thoughts of primal fear. I need a therapist. Right now. Right now right nowrightnowrightnowrightno
Okay, blacked out for a bit. I carved ‘BATHE IN THE BLOOD OF BABIES’ on my chest using my house key and I think my hands are covered in someone else’s blood - but it’s cool. I won’t let this set-back stop me from finishing this horror blog post of horrors. Good thing I didn’t draw any more pictu-
This is some Lovecraftian bullshit right there. That actually might explain what my illustrations are about. These illustrations are the forms of gods beyond comprehension taking shape through the weak will of my own subconscious feeding from the dark whispered echoes of space-time. A one armed surprisingly large baby with three-toed feet is having a cross carved into its forehead by some sort of bird thing with legs that point in polar-opposite directions. Its shirt is also its head-skin. Head-skin. The eye on its side of the head is no mere freak accident in my portrayal of drawing such a monster. The creature on the left appears to have one bladed arm, and another of feathers. It appears to wear a garment similar to females but looks alien in appearance. They seem to be lost in a world full of inconceivable rules in a forbidden kind of physics that us humans can never perceive.
This onslaught onto my being is almost unbearable. What I see here is some kind of intruder upon the senses, one that bears a great pleasure to the pain of greater and lesser beings. Some sort of claw demon is handling a butcher’s knife from the blade. It appears to be smiling. It may be about to cut off its nose, or sacrifice itself to the brood demon behind it. The brood demon is waiting ever so patiently with its demented portly frame ready to strike. I can only pray that this ritual will not let such beasts enter our world and rule it.
This is the most human thing in the entire four panels that past me managed to draw. It is the most human-like baby in a plain colourless robe which, although barely special aside from the cross on the sleeve, probably is covering up bruises, festering wounds and abhorrent tattoos of an ancient dead alien language that if spoken would end all that is. Apart from this deeply dissatisfied tyke wearing gumboot’s and sporting a horribly disfigured right hand, all I can say is that I hope it suffocates and has a swift merciful death as it floats away to be in the cold void of nothingness forever.
We trudge away from the sewers of insanity for this next bit. It’s another picture, but one that strikes a chord in the heart. Resonating for the future descendants of us to weep to.
Draw your own story about someone you know who cares for others and the world:
Alone in the large box given we have a being. A sheltered warped being. Their steel-wool hair, lack of mouth and impossible anatomy shed some light onto the characteristics of this forlorn character. We sympathise with them, as their situation looks bleak. They are under a shelter in the nothingness, away from harm, were the only order in this universe remains. He feeds a headless lizard of sorts some sand, hoping it’ll help it. This one cares for others and its world –its own private world. Who are we to judge upon this poor soul’s predicament if we were in the same situation. It is-
Okay no. This is a piece of shit.
NEXT
This next segment asks me to draw my answer again:
I cannot describe my fear in words
Is my family a bunch of indifferent monstrosities whose figures take on those of that which is overly normal? Does the sameness of each face match the level of indifference that I wish? There is that outlier though, the one with a big nose. Who could it be? It has a long nose and a cheeky grin. Perhaps it is the devil to me, perhaps an unsung villain whose grip in my subconscious strangulates my mental energy away, taking me further away from the main family and breaking away our bonds – leaving us as blank associates, not next of kin.
Or is it what I want them to be – wordless, expressionless automatons whose purpose is to serve me. They are to do my bidding, for I was but a lonely and unhappy boy and only power gave me the gratification to continue feeling my worth.
Whatever the fuck it is, I want to go back to sanity.
We skip ahead a bit past some more sane yet boring answers to the last known written things in this activity book. The first answer is sane enough.
But that second answer leaves one to ponder.
“Give a good ability to everyone”
After being deep in thought I remembered exactly what I meant. It did not mean that everyone would happen to be gifted at something – such as music, woodcraft or porn. It meant that everyone gets a superpower.
I think it’s time to admit that when I was young I prayed to God for super powers.
Yep.
I prayed to God for super powers.
Past me, you bastard. I’d never know for a boy to be so stupidly and moronically dumb. I cannot believe that past me (the guy who wrote all that stuff up here) thought you could’ve been some sort of golden-child, ready to be protected by esteemed black comedians. You are both so stupid. All past me’s are stupid.
Okay. Time to close this up with a look at my prayer.
Yep. That's making use of all that space all right. Let's see what I wrote up close and personal.
I admit that’s pretty cute. But it’s oh so wrong. The A in the 'Amen' looks like a H, making the word look like 'Hymen'.
I am going to hurt myself right now so when I look back I can remember past me and the pain that they had to endure. It won’t be counterproductive in the least.
Looking back, past me in the paragraph right before really had some shit ideas.
Past me is so stupid.
And future me?
You’re a dick.
