Who Am I? A Blasphemer's Journey
Walker is the name and blaspheming is my game.
Have you familiarized yourself with the Epistles of the Fast Food Prophet?
Kristinehamn Brain Frog
Taco Bell Jesus Volume 1 Reissue
Boners, Blasphemies, and Blunts
Please Refrain From Boasting About Previously Earned Pizza Nights
Low Panic
Two Poems
Walkeriguess Sounds Off on Sounding Off
Average Read Time: 5 min
Hi, I’m Walker, (I guess). A few weeks ago I wrote a personal essay that I thought was pretty damn good and thought: but who will read it? So I started a Substack in hopes that people would skim past the “I’m a sad boy” parts and stop at the cuss words to read the funny parts. Cuss words = funny. Math isn’t my strongest suit, but that’s one equation I do remember from Algebra 2 (sadly I never made it to Algebra 3).
Subsequent to my first publication, “Kristinehamn Brain Frog (Ribbit),” I’ve had one other publication, a comic strip titled “Taco Bell Jesus,” and since then I’ve been questioning what I should write about next. For starters, I’m planning on making “Taco Bell Jesus" a Sunday (because…Jesus) regular. A lot of people have asked me: Why Taco Bell? Why Jesus? Why Now? All of which I plan to answer in this personal essay. And—stay with me now—I’m hoping by doing so, I’ll also give you, the reader (spelling it out for you), an introduction to who I am and what you can expect by subscribing to my Substack shenanigans.
If you search “Taco Bell Jesus” in the notes app on my iPhone—this search only works on my iPhone—you’ll see a note that was created on September 11 (never forget), 2021—the origins of the Taco Bell Jesus Comic strip.
I think the idea originated around the idea of not being able to order a Coke at Taco Bell and wondering, who could order said Coke? Jesus Christ, of course! But why so blasphemous, Walker? Patience! We’ll get to that, god dammit!
Why did it take me four years to turn it into a comic? Because I can’t draw. I can’t. I asked one or two people I knew if they’d be interested in drawing the comic, and even though I consider myself a bit of a Tom Sawyer vis-a-vis getting other people to do my work for me, as some of you may know, it’s hard to get other people to do your art for you. No matter how appealing you make painting that fence seem. Creatives are generally busy working on their own non-Jesus related creative projects because they are too busy for the Lord. Now who’s blasphemous?
With the creation of my new Substack, walkeriguess, I thought: Fuck it. I’ll make the fucking comic and I’ll do it in Keynote, which if you don’t know is Powerpoint for Macs (I’m living in the future!). “It’ll be fun,” I said! Who’s going to stop me?! See that? I just Sawyer’d myself, and with my new three step course I can teach you to Sawyer yourself too!
The idea for this comic strip eventually evolved into the novel I am currently working on, The Second Coming of Jesus Christ: A Guide to American Fast Food (The New, New Testament). If you couldn’t gather from the title, It’s a parody novel of the second coming and it’s a much bigger and more ambitious project than the predecessor from whence it came. Still. It’s nice to give a little space to the predecessor while I type away at my novel.
Now, why so blasphemous, Walker? The short and simple answer is because I find great humor and catharsis in blasphemy. I’ll start with catharsis. I was born and raised in the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, aka, I was a Mormon y’all. I even spent two years of my life as a representative for Jesus Christ serving a Mormon mission in Singapore and Malaysia circa 2008-2009 and have often considered putting that I worked for Jesus Christ on my résumé. Hell, I should have put him as a reference! “Can we contact your previous employer?” You bet your ass you can! Just look over your shoulders honey, ooh (he’ll be there)! And by “look over your shoulders," I mean, “kneel down and pray!”
I spent a lot of my life following this guy and I think some of my best qualities come from “trying to be like Jesus.1” I would even go so far as to say it was some of my Christ-like qualities, for instance: love thy neighbor, that led me astray from Christianity as I watched Christian nationalism tear our country apart from within (homophobia, anti-immigrant sentiment, misogyny, racism, etc.).
Every time I try to write about my Christian/Mormon past, I think I need to cover all the bases, but the reality is that it was a real mind fuck to make the decision to leave the Mormon Church. It was something I wrestled with for about five years, and now as I’m able to look back with apostate hindsight, I may have always been wrestling with it. There is so much societal and familial pressure to fit in and belong to the religious institutions we were born into, but we wouldn’t want to make our societies, families, or gods feel bad, now would we? Sorry, not sorry, god(s)!
The worst part is the mind fuckers (that’s what it’s called when the mind fucking won’t stop) don’t stop after you’ve made your decision and left it all behind. I slowly started realizing all the ways it fucked me up and that’s when I started to let the blasphemy loose. The sheer absurdity of my blasphemy helps lighten the weight I feel from having left what I would consider a cult. One of the main characteristics of cults is that they are really hard to leave, and boy oh boy does Mormonism fit that bill. Don’t believe me? Ask a Mormon that left.
Side note: I don’t want to single out Mormonism as a cult here—that wouldn’t be fair to all the other cults. All the religions are cults. Some are just more culty than others. Finding humor in all of this is what provides me with catharsis. I keep waiting for god to smite me since I left the Mormon church, but my penis just keeps getting bigger.
1 “I’m Trying to Be Like Jesus” is the title of a song taught to children in the Mormon church. Listen below!