Sunday

I spent the afternoon sitting at a table on the corner of Haste and Telegraph Avenues in Berkeley hawking the Hotties of Harm Reduction Calendar at the Berkeley Holiday Street Fair, which is just another crappy street fair like every other one across the country with vendors selling crappy crafts and crappy art. So I got finagled into selling our cool but possibly crappy calendar (all proceeds-- after paying off the printer-- go to local needle exchanges), and I'm set up catty-corner to this tall swarthy guy selling some books. He has some illustrated placards in front of his little display, with a kind of heavy metal album cover-cum-Hieronymous Bosch picture of a cross-hanging Jesus with devil horns coming out of his head, who's overseeing an apocalyptic landscape (flaming skeletons!). The hyperbolic captions are "SHOCKER OF THE MILLENNIUM" and "THE BOOK THAT DEMOLISHES CHRISTIANITY" The book the guy is selling is entitled "The Plotted Course," and is apparently the sequel to his first book, "Jesus Is Satan." After accidently catching the eye of the dude for a while and smiling, as neither of us is exactly being swamped with business, he eventually comes over to talk to me.
"Interesting Title-- even more interesting illustration" I say.
I eventually find out that he is the author of the book, and he's a really nice, well-spoken guy. He's either Indian or Pakastani, and the book is self-published. He said he feels somewhat bad about bashing a guy (jesus) who isn't around to defend himself, but that he was compelled to write the books because of all the damage Christianity has done to the world over the millennia. He doesn't believe that Jesus really is Satan, any more than he believes he is God, but Jesus might as well be the biblical Satan for all the trouble he's caused. I asked him if he's taken a lot of shit for the inflamatory titles and pictures, and he tells me no, not really, but then he hasn't tried to sell his book in, say, Kansas. He's an interesting guy, so I buy a copy of "The Plotted Course" and start reading it in between begging people to buy my stupid calendar. Later my anti-christian friend tells me (jokingly, I hope) when his book is made into a movie, he wants me to play Mary Magdalene. Always the whore, never the virgin... anyway, I give him my email address, and I tell him to email me and I'll tell him what I think of it. I'm only a little way into it, and it holds one's attention; somewhat scholarly but nothing earth-shattering. As far as I can tell, the idea is that Jesus was brainwashed by the Romans to pretend to be the Messiah so as to undermine the Jewish resistance. It's not a novel concept, I don't think, but it would make an interesting movie.