The first version of the Boble, written during my freshman year in high school, ended after \u201cExit, Stage Everywhere.\u201d\u00a0 I\u2019d written it as a lark.\u00a0 Partially to come to terms with my mom\u2019s somewhat overbearing \u201cborn-again\u201d Catholic nonsense that she adopted after my father left, and, more importantly, because I was bored.\u00a0 I\u2019m always bored.<\/p>\n
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I poured over the Bible, which was my only birthday gift in 1987, and wrote the childish mockery of all the high points that you\u2019ve been reading for the last few months.\u00a0 In the end, I had over 70 pages.\u00a0 For a high school freshman, that was impressive.<\/p>\n
In the following school year, I took a theater class and was forced to confront one of my greatest fears:\u00a0 Public speaking.\u00a0 We started out delivering speeches and reciting monologues and shit like that.\u00a0 I don\u2019t know what my malfunction was, but I decided to read the Boble to the class.\u00a0 It was, somehow, an instant success.\u00a0 For an entire semester, I was asked to step up and read the Boble in five minute chunks\u2026all the way through to the somewhat rushed conclusion of Exit, Stage Everywhere.<\/p>\n
Then a new problem emerged:\u00a0 In the midst of the small bump in popularity that the Boble gave me, people started asking if there was more.\u00a0 The pressure was on, as I slowly emerged from my protective shell.\u00a0 People I had feared and admired were suddenly my new friends, and I found myself hooked on the ability to not only speak in front of 30 peers, but to have their attention, and hear their reactions.<\/p>\n
But how to continue?\u00a0 The Bible starts to get a bit more complicated after Exodus, and a bit more boring.\u00a0 In fact, from the writing viewpoint, I was long since bored with the Boble.\u00a0 Exit, Stage Everywhere suffers greatly from that, and I haven\u2019t ever been able to go back and flesh it out.\u00a0 So I decided to take a Cliff\u2019s Notes approach to the remainder of the Old Testament.\u00a0 I skimmed through, landing only where there were important stories \u2013 Samuel, David, Job, etc \u2013 and, a year later, with a different attitude towards the work, the first major change in tone started.\u00a0 BOB shifted slightly from the manic-depressive, often absentee meddler into a more cunning deity.\u00a0 The first wave was in 1990, with many more non-Biblical BOB scenes.\u00a0 The background workings of Bob Heavens began to emerge, and BOB himself started to enjoy the talk show and radio circuit.<\/p>\n
By 91, after the Old Testicle was finished (at a whopping 140 pages), a re-edit delved even deeper into the new BOB, and the Bob Heavens \u201cinterludes.\u201d\u00a0 BOB was awarded a lieutenant in the form of redheaded angel Binaca, and the somewhat nefarious plan for the coming of Bob Jr. was introduced.\u00a0 Further, we discovered that BOB had stolen creation from our true god \u2013 the Blood Mistress Kraal (who had been dating BOB).<\/p>\n
This narrative injection was intended to keep me sane as I paged through the Bible.\u00a0 A way to escape the restrictions of just writing a pure parody \u2013 something that didn\u2019t interest me and, given that I was a social misfit in high school, incapable of pulling off.<\/p>\n