Judgement Day (10 page)

My favourite
passage from the Koran was called ‘The Unbelievers
,
’ “To the unbelievers say, ‘I do
not believe what you believe, and you do not believe what I
believe. I will never worship what you worship, and you will never
worship what I worship. You have your own religion, and I have
mine.’” If only Muslim extremists would actually listen to that
passage, this whole September 11,
W
ar
O
n
T
error, thing might
never have happened.

There was
another passage in the Koran that caught my attention, “To the Jews
say, ‘If you say that you alone of all men are God’s friends, you
must wish for death, if what you say be true!’” It reminded me of
something my friend Adam told me once about the Jews. I once told
him I was considering converting to Judaism (a passing phase)
because I didn’t really believe in Jesus. He told me that the Jews
would never accept me, that they don’t like non-Jews joining their
club. It made me realise that the Jews non-acceptance of anyone who
isn’t Jewish really is the source of all of their problems. The
Koran taught me that really the Arabs just wanted in on their
religion, but they could never be accepted so they started their
own religion and made the Jews their enemy. The same thing happened
with Jesus, Jesus introduced the Jewish God to the Europeans
because the Europeans liked their God too, and the Europeans made
the Jews their enemy. The Jews think that they should stick
together because they’ve been so persecuted for so long, but it is
because they’ve created this exclusive club that others want to be
a part of that they have been persecuted. If you have a great
religion and you don’t allow others to be a part of it, then they
will get the shits with you. Instead of being “God’s chosen
people,” and accepting the praises of others, they ruined it by not
allowing others in on their faith. It’s not just their religion of
course, but to be Jewish is to be part of an exclusive society that
you can only join by birth. Separating themselves from the rest of
the world may seem to bring them safety in numbers, but it has only
ever caused problems for the Jewish people throughout all of
history.

I had begun
writing my new holy book, for my new religion of no knowledge of
good & evil. I had to write it at the library because I no
longer had a computer. I would write what I could, then save it and
email it to myself. Then the next time I would want to write
something, I would download my book from my email, write in it,
then send it to myself again. This is how I began to write about my
new religion.

I found
another book of interest to me, it was about a code in the Bible,
the book I read was the sequel, ‘The Bible Code 2.’ What most
caught my interest about it was the physicist who discovered the
Bible code, his name was Dr Eliyahu Rips, a Hebrew professor. I
realised that Dr Rips was the prophet Elijah. Not only was he a
prophet, but he was a mathematician, a physicist, and a Jew. He was
the one who would help me. I began to email him, slowly at first,
but with every lack of reply my emails became more and more
intense. Not only did I email him my theories, I posted them to
him, and I even used couriers. I tried everything to get his
attention, but still, there was no reply, he just sat in his own
stubborn silence. As time passed I became more and more desperate,
and more and more angry with this man who was supposed to help
me.

After a couple
of months or so of living with Nathan from church and his friends,
they were being evicted from the house we were in because it was
being demolished, and I had nowhere else to go. I also happened to
run out of medication a day or two before we had to leave. The
effects of running out of medication were unusual, I began talking
in funny voices. I was imaging people’s reactions to the things I
had been writing about in my holy book. I would talk in the strange
accents of people from around the world and laugh at the jokes I
had made in my book. Then it was time to go.

I didn’t have
anywhere to go, so I decided I would go camping in the bush. While
I was sitting out in the bush on my own, I began to develop some of
my characters more. I invented a character, ‘The B-Grade Celebrity
On A Late Night Talk Show,’ he tells the story of the time he met
Jack Nicholson, it was just an excuse to do his dodgy Jack
Nicholson impression and pretend to be famous by association. There
was a second B-Grade Celebrity, he talked about what it was like
working with Robert Deniro. I also began to imagine myself as a
South American revolutionary, and I would say “revolution not going
so well” a lot. I began talking in the voices of famous people, the
Pope, the Prime Minister, Fidel Castro, imagining their reactions
to what I was writing. I was creating characters to keep myself
entertained,
when
suddenly something clicked! “God does exactly the same thing! God
invents characters to keep Himself entertained, to make Himself
laugh!” This was the first of my revelations on The Stage.

After a few
nights in the bush, I went to stay at mum’s place. She picked me up
from the station and said “you can’t sleep in the bush,” “well, I
can’t sleep here, or anywhere else, can I? What the fuck am I
supposed to do?” I thought. I asked if I could just stay until the
weekend, when I would be able to afford to stay in a hotel. I heard
her and Ken talking, Ken said “Saturday?!” As if three nights at my
parent’s place is a lot to ask. I was awake all night that night,
not taking medication had turned me into an insomniac. I had bought
some herbal sleeping pills from the chemist, but it didn’t matter
how many I took, I still couldn’t get to sleep. I was awake all
night talking softly in strange voices and laughing to myself. I
left the next morning without saying goodbye and went back to the
bush.

When I left my
parent’s place I had forgotten my tent, but something was changing,
I felt like my time was about to come. I didn’t have many supplies,
I had plain rice, plain pasta, and a bottle of tomato sauce, that
was about it. “I was supposed to rough it,” I decided, “that was
God’s plan.” I didn’t have my tent, but I remembered a cave I saw
the last time I was camping, above Blue Pool in the National Park
in Glenbrook, “I could sleep in that cave.” I got to the station, I
was listening to ‘War Pigs’ on my discman, singing along and
laughing to myself. I was really starting to look like a fucking
lunatic. I hiked down to Blue Pool from the station carrying all of
my possessions on my back. When I got down there I dropped and
smashed my bottle of tomato sauce. “Great!” I thought, “now I don’t
even have any flavouring!” I climbed up to the cave, and you’ll
never believe what I found when I got there, a perfect natural
throne carved into the rock! I wrote in permanent marker,
“Judgement Day, Mick’s Throne,” and I drew a crown above the hole
for the head. “I was there, it was Judgement Day, and this was my
throne
!”

I thought
about Jesus in ‘The Last Temptation of Christ,’ when he sits in the
desert and refuses to leave until God comes and speaks to him. I
decided I was going to do the same thing in this magical place. I
was not going to leave until God spoke to me and it was Judgement
Day. I lasted three days on plain pasta and plain rice, then I
surrendered and went to the charity shop for some food, and I made
myself some Mulligan stew from a heap of cans of assorted shit they
gave me. After four days I gave up and left. I felt weak for
leaving so soon, but God wasn’t coming to speak to me.

When my
disability pension came in I booked into the Gearins Hotel in
Katoomba, then went to Silk’s place. His parents served me some
dinner, I couldn’t believe what they served, plain fucking pasta!
There were a few bits of bacon and stuff in it, but still, as if
three days of nothing else wasn’t enough. I picked at it a little,
but I didn’t eat much, I couldn’t handle any more plain pasta. I
asked if I could use the computer, I had been thinking a lot about
Britney Spears, I imagined we were like Romeo & Juliet, the
star-crossed lovers who were meant to be together. I pictured us
cruising all over the world in love, I imagined we were like
puppets or toys being played with by God, then I had a revelation…
“The World Is A Stage!” I could see it, the world is a giant play,
and I began imagining all of the great plays I could put on! The
great performances I could do! The great events! All of the
exciting things I would be doing with my life! “The World Is A
Stage! Shakespeare, like Spears! Me and Britney Spears were like
Romeo & Juliet!
The
star-crossed lovers that were meant to be together!
” (Yeah,
yeah, I know, Romeo & Juliet is a tragedy. Give me a break, I
was just a kid.)

I left Silk’s
place and went to my room at the Gearins Hotel. I was getting so
damn horny being off my medication, every woman I saw I would start
drooling. I would wake up and masturbate three or four times in a
row before even getting out of bed. When I was in bed, all I would
do is talk in the voices of my characters and laugh. Talking in
strange voices became an addiction, a compulsion, an obsession.
Even when I would sit down at the bar with a beer, I would hold the
beer in front of my mouth and mouth words and still do my voices,
just very quietly and hoping no one would see my lips moving. I
only had enough money for a week at the pub, and then it was back
to the bush. This was my pattern now, a week at the pub when I got
paid, and then back to camping in the bush. I did this for probably
a couple of months. Everything is a bit hazy from this time, events
in my mind are blurred, but this was how it worked.

I had found
somewhere a green army style baseball cap, and I drew an anarchy
symbol on the front, and I wore it everywhere. I loved my anarchy
hat! I met a man at Glenbrook station one day who started talking
to me, he ended up sitting with me on the train and giving me a
huge lecture on the evils of anarchy. I was getting so angry with
him, my entire belief system was based on lawlessness. He made me
furious, but as is my style, I kept my mouth shut. About a week
later I saw him again at Glenbrook station, this time he had a
broken arm and a huge scar and stitches on his head. He told me he
was in a car accident the day I saw him last and almost died. It
didn’t click straight away, but later that night I was in a room at
the Alexandra Hotel in Leura when I realised what had happened.
“God beat the shit out of that guy for trying to tell me about the
evils of anarchy! Fuck him!” I couldn’t stop laughing about it!

I began to
think about other things God had done on my behalf. I remembered
the way I hated the Tax Office, the way it towered over Penrith, I
cursed that tax office so many times when I was young. I realised
that the World Trade Centre was basically the biggest tax office in
the world! “Holy shit!” I thought, “God destroyed the World Trade
Centre because I hated the tax office in Penrith!” I thought also
about the way my arch-nemesis Stephen Hawking was massively
disabled. I called my newly discovered karma, “death causing
karma.” Somewhere along the way the terrorists were no longer the
problem with the world, the United States were the real enemy. They
were the destroyers of countries, not Osama bin Laden. I nicknamed
George W. Bush “the Burning Bush,” and whenever I referenced him I
refused to call him by any other name. I was young and immature
when September 11 happened.
I
thought I was here to stop Osama bin Laden,
I didn’t
understand that the United States was the true enemy of peace.
Then again, who knows? I’m now
a little older and a little wiser still. The enemies of peace have
changed so many times over the years since September 11, perhaps we
are all the enemies of peace, but at this time, in 2004, I had my
sights set on the Burning Bush. There are no good guys and no bad
guys in the world, just people who claim to have the knowledge of
good & evil.

When the
United States invaded Iraq I was watching live on TV. The whole
lead up to the war was always about weapons of mass destruction,
and disarming Saddam Hussein, but as soon as the bombing began the
name flashed up on the screen, ‘Operation Iraqi Freedom.’ I laughed
out loud! The name said it all, there never were any weapons!
The fucking liars!

I wrote my
first Judgement Day script while I was sitting in The Throne. I
imagined that I was becoming more and more powerful all the time,
that I could manipulate The Stage by the power of thought. “If God
does things on my behalf, then couldn’t I have God do things for
me?” I began to wonder, “could I manipulate The Stage with the
power of my mind?” I believed that if I believed I could, then I
could. Even though everything follows the laws of physics, I
believed that if I made some Judgement Day predictions, then I was
always going to make those predictions, and those predictions were
always going to come true. The idea was that I could predict a lot
of extraordinary, but still physically possible events for
Judgement Day. I could defy all chance, leave no doubt in people’s
minds, and whatever I decided would happen on Judgement
Da
y
was always going to
happen, it was written into the script from the beginning. The
Throne was a powerful place for me.

I began to
think about the Terminator movies. I felt like John Connor in
‘Terminator 3,’ I felt like I was “off the grid.” I was going to
run Judgement Day from this throne. Then my mind turned to
‘Terminator 2,’ when Arnold Schwarzenegger tells John Connor “your
foster parents are dead.” I thought someone was going to kill mum
and Ken, and do you know what? I wanted someone to. I imagined the
media turning up at mum’s place, and those two telling the
reporters that I’m not the Messiah, that I’m just a fucking idiot,
that I’m just some stupid dickhead. I was angry that they would
badmouth the Son of God, the King of Heaven & Earth. I could
see it in my mind, when the reporters told them it was true and
everyone in the world believed it, they would still think I was a
piece of shit. Then I began to feel bad, “how could I wish my
parents would die?”