If You Donýt Give Me Heaven

By Noel Rogers

If you don't give me Heaven, I'll raise hell-'til it's Heaven
-Jay-Z

Go ahead, put this book down. You're probably one of those people who reads blurbs on the back of books and bases their decision on whether or not to buy it without even flipping through the pages. And even if you did you'd probably say, "Whoa, this is way too thought-provoking. Let me see if that guy who wrote The Da Vinci Code has anything new out. I really enjoyed that book."

So you'll put the book down and return to your mediocre unenlightened existence, having never experienced the genius of Noel Rogers. But don't let his ego fool you. The pages underneath this blurb are a giant bomb of knowledge that has waited twenty-eight years to drop into our collective consciousness. This is the most important book of the 21st Century-um, so far.

Take a trip into the mind of an artist who began life scared and alone, grew up angry and doubtful, but ends up believing in anything, everything and nothing all at once. If You Don't Give Me Heaven is a crazy concoction of metaphysical madness. There's something for everyone (yes, even you): rants, reflections and revelations. But don't let the alliteration fool you. Noel plays the tortured-soul angle like a finely tuned Theremin. He piles meta upon meta of self-reference on top of each other and still comes out sane. He remixes fact and fiction so seamlessly that there is no longer a difference between the two. He lifts us out of our mediocre, unenlightened lives and into the craziest reality ever.

Stop reading this. Flip the book over. Turn the first page. Keep going. It will all make sense if you have three brain cells.

-Marcus D'Ambrose
Teacher, Hero

• Language: English
• Publisher: iUniverse
• Release date: Mar 18, 2006
• ISBN: 9780595829767

Noel Rogers

Noel Rogers is a former child prodigy and social pariah (?Most Likely To End Up In A Straight-Jacket?, Beacon High School class of 1996?you could look it up) who spent most of his young adult life working as a Boolean Operator. Today he prefers to keep a low profile and remain behind the scenes. More of his work can be found, amongst other places, online at http://www.itsthecrew.net/. If you don?t know, you?d better act like you do.

Book preview

IF YOU DON’T GIVE ME

HEAVEN

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Noel Rogers

iUniverse, Inc.

New York Lincoln Shanghai

If You Don’t Give Me Heaven

Copyright © 2006 by Noel Robert Rogers

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

iUniverse books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting:

iUniverse 2021 Pine Lake Road, Suite 100 Lincoln, NE 68512 www.iuniverse.com 1-800-Authors (1-800-288-4677)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-38595-9 (pbk)

ISBN-13: 978-0-595-82976-7 (ebk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-38595-8 (pbk)

ISBN-10: 0-595-82976-7 (ebk)

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Preface

Introduction

PART I

ABSURDITY (PAUSE) DEATH

I WAKE UP

ARCHIE THE ROBOT

THE MAMMAL & I

MANY MANSIONS

GALILEO REDUX

TOP TEN SIGNS YOU HAVE A

SQUID ON YOUR HEAD

EXAMINING ANTI-ART

ACCOUNTABILITY

1 WEEK WITH JULIUS

ZERO

TWO SAGES

BOWTIE

DIGRESSION #1

PART II

I TRY ANGLES

INBOX

PAWN’S GAMBIT

ON A BUS

EGO TRAPS

ALL SO REAL

THIS IS NOT A REVIEW

THE CONSPIRACY

A RANDOM NEW YEARS 2003 ANECDOTE

CHOOSE YOUR OWN ADVENTURE

GARBAGE (an intuition pump)

HOSTA

RAGE CAGE

GROWING UP

GRAILLEGORY

PUZZLEBOX & FLU

A PROPHET IN HIS OWN LAND

IT WAS ALL A DREAM!

A CAGE WITH NO BARS

MEDITATIONS ON A COIN

TOP FIVE ANTICHRIST CANDIDATES 2004

BRUSH W/DEATH

DIGRESSION #2

PART III

NXIL

YOUR LIES BECOME YOU

I BOMB ATOMICALLY

WILD AND WHIRLING WORDS

R-PENTOMINO BLUES

THE GHOSTFACE PENTECOST TRICK

DREAM-LOGIC & THE SYMBOLIC BEAR

THAT LIGHT IS BRIGHT

YOU CAN DO IT YOURSELF

IL TRIELLO

BAPTISM

ONE LAST JOB

(ROOT BEER FLAVORED) SNAKE OIL

REPO

OPTIMUS PRIME DIED FOR YOUR SINS

POSSIBLE REASONS I HAVE NOT BEEN CONTACTED

FUCK SAINT PATRICK’S DAY

SMOKE SIGNALS

CURLY

FOCUS

DON’T YOU KNOW?

1META2MANY

A CONSPIRACY OF SILENCE

SKETCHES OF PAIN

THE VIDEOGAME MESSIAH

A WISH

DIGRESSSION #3

APPENDIX

NUCLEAR NED IN THE

SEWERS OF SHAME

Afterword

About the Author

Dedicated to me—now how’s that for a vanity project?

Preface

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Pay No Attention To The Man Behind The Keyboard

By Noel Rogers

It’s a bit of a cop-out, I know. I woke up one day recently and realized that I had been writing since I was knee-high and had well-nigh nothing to show for it. An old website I’d just as soon forget, lame and overeager as it was, and what else? Well, It’s The Crew, true, but that’s not really Art…The time had come for me to produce a book. And believe me, I have all kinds of ideas for real books. Guy like me, got ideas. But laziness always wins in the end—so here’s a complete and unapologetic vanity project to start with. A hodgepodge compilation of short stories, stories even shorter than those, fables, personal writings, school book reports and other miscellanea. At the end I have an FAQ I wrote a long time ago for an underrated PC video game classic as an appendix. It’s that kind of book—what can I say? Next time I’ll be all original and meaningful and everything you think I should be, this time I mean it. Meanwhile the contents of this book represent scraps I have been collecting and holding onto and remixing, some for as long as a decade, some since just last week. I like them. I hope you do too.

Sincerely, Noel (right now, reading over your shoulder and ready to pounce) P.S. Don’t waste any time looking for deeper meanings in the imagery, powerful cathartic release, skillful thematic development or metaphysical truths anywhere amongst these pages. I took all that crap out—who needs it?

Introduction

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By Douglas Palermo

I theorize. Besides wander aimlessly and wait for entropy to overtake me, that’s all I can do.—N. Rogers

I can proudly boast that I am one of the few people walking this planet who ever stumped Noel Rogers in a debate. It was way back in 1996 during our freshman year at Drew University. Noel and I were debating which was a better gaming system, the Super Nintendo or the Sega Genesis. Noel was arguing for the Super Nintendo while I was arguing for the Sega Genesis. I made the point that the Genesis was better because the signature game for Genesis, Sonic the Hedgehog, was far superior to the Mario Brothers franchise that Nintendo hangs its hat on. Noel countered that, since the design and playing style of Sonic was heavily influenced by Mario, there would not have been a Sonic without Nintendo—so my point for Sega was actually a point for Nintendo. It’s then that I went for the knockout. Without missing a beat, I calmly explained to Noel that obviously the people from Nintendo must have created a time machine sometime in the 1980’s in order to go into the future and spy on Sega while they were making Sonic, and then go back and use their ill-gotten information to create the Mario Brothers franchise. Thus it was Mario that was influenced by Sonic, not the other way around. Noel was speechless—and that doesn’t happen much when you debate Noel.

You see, Noel and I were both born in the year 1977. Seven is the God number, so 1977 was the year of the conflicting Gods. Noel and I were those conflicting Gods. I was the God that believed Everything—including history being altered by time travelers. Petty things like logic and rationality were mere nuisances to me. Noel was the God that believed Nothing. Logic and rationality were the weapons he used to cut through the jungle of lies and illusion. When Noel met me he instantly recognized that we were both on the same intellectual plane, but soon realized that his weapons were useless against me. That must have really threw him for a loop.

Fast forward to the present and the conflict is now over. I now see that the Everything I believe in is—at the end of the day—really Nothing. And Noel now realizes that the Nothing he believes in is in fact Everything. It’s not that we don’t debate anymore (Hey Noel, RZA’s Birth of a Prince is the best Wu-Tang solo album ever), it’s that we no longer debate as a way to defend our existence to each other—we do it because it’s fun. Everything is Nothing, Nothing is Everything. The Gods are playing on the same team now (www.itsthecrew.net), and we are going to have some fun raising Hell…until it’s Heaven of course.

I guess this would be a good time to talk about the book you are holding right now. I already gave the world a book showing how I was able to see that Everything was really Nothing [Learning to Live (Early Writing), IUniverse, 2004], and now, with this book, Noel shows us how he was able to see that Nothing was really Everything. It’s a damn good book. And it’s not just a damn good book, it’s a work of genius. Some people don’t like it when the word genius is thrown around loosely, and personally I try to resist any sort of labels—but if you are going to call anybody a genius, you must call Noel one—or the word no longer has any meaning. Noel Robert Rogers is a genius. Thus, this is a work of genius. If you don’t believe me, open up this book and read This is Not A Review (Strange Attractors by Edmond Lars). Pure, clean, unadulterated genius—the kind Grandma use to make on Sundays after church. This book is loaded with it.

LIVE reading this book. LOVE reading this book. LEARN reading this book. CREATE reading this book. HAVE FUN reading this book. And when you are all finished—HELP OTHERS read this book. That’s all I have to say about it.

Douglas Peter Palermo

Spiritual Consigliere

January 19th, 2005

Hip-Hopatcong, North Jersey

PART I

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ABSURDITY

(PAUSE)

DEATH

1997–2002

nothing ever changes

except the innocence

I WAKE UP

I wake up. The hotel room, in the middle of the night, convinced I’m back in my bedroom at home. It takes me a few seconds to be sure that it isn’t really that. But then a thought pops into my head, which for a minute totally unsettles me. What if I was in my old bedroom? What if this was all a dream, and that flickering hallucination merely a minor lapse into the reality that waking brings? What if none of this was real?

I don’t care if this is real or not, I say out loud, lying to the air. The thought that I am still at home is an appealing one, since it represents a second chance. All the wrong turns I’d made since whenever would be erased once I wake up, ready to begin my life anew. But then as time passes, I realize that this isn’t a dream, that I really am accountable for my failures, and the loss of hope and the future I suddenly feel keep me awake and in bed for another two hours. What’s happening to me? I brushed with this kind of delusional shit before, when I was a kid and I convinced myself that I was the only real person in the universe, that everyone else didn’t really exist. Held onto that one for three months, before realizing I was slipping into madness with it. So I let it go.

I wish I was the only real person. I wish this was a dream. I wish I could fly. I wish I was God. Escapist fantasies don’t get you anywhere, though.

ARCHIE THE ROBOT

The bard sits on the street-corner, plucks at his zither, and sings an old tale of a man who woke up one day and realized he was a robot. To this man’s further vexation, he soon came to the conclusion that all of his friends, his family, his co-workers, and in fact everyone at all, were also robots. He began to perceive his every action, and the ways of the world around him, as part of a vast and incomprehensible machine.

And, the bard continues, on the day of his fateful revelation the man shook his fist at the turbulent sky and swore to discover the creator of his absurd automaton existence and demand some sort of explanation for everything. And so the man (who the bard enigmatically refers to as Archibald, or mostly just Archie) began a spiritual and metaphysical journey towards his goal of a reckoning with his God. And, like most spiritual and metaphysical journeys, Archie’s eventually directed him to drugs. Seeking the mental expanding effects of chemical substances as a method of reaching a higher understanding, Archie tried a little bit of everything, all the neat designer drugs that had supplanted natural narcotics centuries earlier.

He popped pills of Pythagoras, a modified neuro-chemical that acted on the auditory center of the brain, making one hear the music of the spheres. However, in repeated uses, the music began to sound more and more like the crappy disco tunes he’d left behind with the rest of his life. He shot up with Mindwalk, a mental-enhancer that promised a passionately intellectual trip but after two hours of spurious and ill-conceived conclusions brought him right back to where he’d started, just more tired. He smoked Apotheosis, and it gave him visions of ineffable beauty incomprehensible to any of his senses, but when it was over he couldn’t remember any of it, or most of the week before.

And, after a while, as with all human endeavors, the means became the ends, and Archibald stopped using drugs so much for the boosts of insight and creativity they engendered, and started using drugs for the sake of using drugs. He used drugs to relax, to have a good time, to party, to just drown out the noise of the world. Finally, he forgot all about his mission to interrogate the Creator, and began a new goal, one of living life for drug experiences. The bard stops singing momentarily, and plays a mournful solo on his zither.

Eventually, his mind half gone to the cheap thrills he’d drowned his brain in for the previous few years, Archibald decided the time to do something sudden and radically different had been reached. He packed up his bags and moved to Las Vegas. Centuries earlier, Las Vegas had been a Mecca of corruption and iniquity, where the often interlinked drives of Avarice and Bad Taste had reigned supreme. Now, all that remained were the crumbling ruins of the sleazy former tourist attraction and the burgeoning city of misfits that had been built underneath it. Scores of people flocked to Vegas every year, seeking redemption, a new life, or just anonymity—the same reasons they once would have joined the French Foreign Legion.

Archie became a bartender in a club for Neo-Beatniks hollowed out two miles beneath the sin-ridden desert, serving psychotropic smart drinks and hard root beer to his grizzled and deviant clientele. Never once did the thought of Gods or robots cross his