What the Hell Did I Just Read (John Dies at the End, #3)

by David Wong

The answer is one, by the way.

“You know how the earth is mostly run by assholes, who got their jobs either by accident, or by being the kids of other assholes, or via some other backroom assholery? Well, it turns out if you keep going up the ladder, past humans and into spirits and demigods and such, it’s just more assholes for several more levels.”

It’s fine, she says. You’re doing important work. Remember that I love you. Why don’t you fucking kill yourself?

Everybody likes to get preachy about drugs, John thought, because it’s a handy way to deflect from their own even worse vices. Dave drank every night and rarely ate a meal that didn’t leave a grease stain behind. Amy ran on sugar, caffeine, and pain pills, and would sacrifice an entire night of sleep to level up a character in one of her games. The people with health insurance get antidepressants and Adderall, the rich get cocaine, the clean-living Christians settle for mug after mug of coffee and all-you-can-eat buffets. The reality is that society had gotten too fast, noisy, and stressful for the human brain to process and everybody was ingesting something to either keep up or dull the shame of falling behind. For those few who truly live clean, well, it’s the self-righteousness that gets them high.

If you understand how this sort of thing could work, please write down your explanation with as much clarity and detail as you can, then throw it in the trash because who gives a shit.

In a town full of groups competing to see who could live the furthest off the grid, I’d say Christ’s Rebellion probably did it with the most style. The name wasn’t intended to be ironic or sacrilegious—Roach was a true believer. Once, while recovering from a traumatic brain injury, he had received a revelation from God charging him with a singular mission: to do exactly what he would have done anyway, only more of it. Thus, his faction of Christianity was based around the concept that the only law was God’s and that government prohibitions on victimless crimes were mere annoyances to be circumvented. Roach figured, if a person wanted to smoke methamphetamine or get a blowjob from a hooker, that was a choice that person was free to make. Harsh legal consequences were just adding suffering to sin, so humanity’s duty was only to ensure that all was done under the umbrella of safety and consent. Otherwise, he said, each of us is responsible for our own soul.

at the time the entire second floor of the abandoned cannery had been repurposed as a living space for a hippie artist commune. Back then, twenty or thirty people would drift in and out, living off the grid (though considering they were stealing power by splicing into nearby utility poles and getting city water from unmetered valves, they were actually very much on the grid—they just weren’t paying for it).