The Leviathan Chronicles
From JUOD
The Leviathan Chronicles consist of three volumes of The Verities of Joining, the great masterwork of Harley P. Mathewson. The works are an odd mix of fiction and creative non-fiction, disquisitions on the nature of how to judge whether an animal has joined, pasted together chapters of a first edition copy of "Moby Dick," and recipes for various "sea monster stews." Volume I, by far the oldest of the volumes, is mostly a nonfiction account of the taming of the sea monster Leviathan, and accounts of the various adventures they had spreading "joining and death" about the sea ports of the world. Volume II, which was written much, much later concerns the nature of animal joiners, and, apparently bored with the subject by Volume III, which started out to be a philosophical study on the difference among human and animal joining in The Great Chain of Joining, the parts of the work degenerate into pasted together sections of various random things, interspersed with rhyming couplets insulting notable non-joiners Jim Henson and William of Ockham, and joinish jokes. Volume III was actually begun before Volume II, but not completed until afterward.
The Work
Part I: "The Seven Deaths of Non-Joiners on the Seven Seas"
The section begins:
On the Shores of ruined Atlantis did I sight
The most fearsome Creature stewing about the water.
A small Ship yawed in the darkest Night
Until the Monster set upon it for hilarious Slaughter.
Mathewson then describes taming the beast, after watching it destroy an entire ship. At first, Mathewson said, the beast approached the ship peacefully, but once he was attacked, he spared no living souls. Discerning a strong joinish attitude in the beast--that at first he merely wanted to join the ship of pirates, but once they attacked him, he brought on significant violence in response--Mathewson declared him a joiner. This, Mathewson said, was the first of the "Seven Deaths" that he and the creature, whom he later named Megatron, were a part of (in reality, it was more seven instances of mass killing, rather than only seven particular deaths, though one such of the killings appears to be an individual murder). Scholars have debated where this incident took place, as Atlantis has never been found. Most acknowledge it was probably on the beaches of the Azores.
The chronology for the six other major massacres is not clear within the structure of "the Seven Deaths" as Mathewson generally ordered them next by how bloody and ruthless they were, including how big and how many explosions occurred at the same time. For this, he used "a non-joiner Michael Bay scale of absurdity." What is known is that Mathewson and Leviathan did destroy a whaling vessel docked on the island of Nantucket after the group of sailors failed to believe his drunken stories of having taming the sea monster. It is estimated that approximately 30 sailors lost their lives. In fact, many mysterious ship sinkings and disappearances have been blamed on Mathewson/Leviathan, as scholars have attempted to fit stories from this section of the Leviathan Chronicles with history.
Reportedly, Mathewson and Leviathan's favorite area to swim and attack ships was the famous Bermuda Triangle, perhaps later inspiring his founding of AWESOMELANDIA. This would explain many ships' disappearances from those waters. Additionally, one of the "Seven Deaths," the only one that appears to be a single kill, contains some interesting lines. It goes:
And as ole' Leviathan bit the wings from the metallic bird
Her screams hurt my ears but warmed my heart.
Scholars have guess this is a veiled reference to the death of Amelia Earhart, as the "metallic bird" was most certainly a plane, and the references to both "ears" and "heart" are a typically Mathewsonian way of mocking the dead.
Part II: "On Animal Joiners"
Part II of the Leviathan Chronicles discusses the various qualities Mathewson said dictates whether a member of the animal kingdom joins. Because many animals cannot respond to The Proposition, Mathewson devised a schemata with some equivalencies to the Joining Index. The volume is also filled with various illustrations of animals with Mathewson triumphantly riding on their backs, killing many non-joiners.
Factors that cut for the creature being a joiner:
- Has the creature allegedly killed many people and/or other animals, not for the primary purpose of food?
- Is the creature a cryptid?
- Does the creature have "killer" in its name?
- Does the creature exhibit particularly joinish behavior?
- Can lasers or other weapons be mounted to the creature to make it a particularly effective tool in battle?
Factors that cut against the creature being a joiner:
- Does the creature have a particularly feeble mind?
- Is the creature a primate?
- Does the creature exhibit particularly Henson-like behavior?
Some other scholars have guessed that, despite these criteria, Mathewson possesses some sort of ability to communicate with animals, in the vein of Saint Francis of Assisi.
Part III: "The Philosophical Nature of Man Among the Animals in the Great Chain of...oh, screw it...I'm already tired of writing this section, so I'm just going to paste a bunch of stuff together and call it postmodern"
Philosophical Section
Mathewson briefly touches on Natural Philosophy, mostly deriding William of Ockham. He then expounds on Flip flop philflopflipsy, a branch of philosophy based on Mathewson's choice of footwear. Only through Flip flop philflopflipsy, Mathewson says, can true enlightenment and fullness be attained. (As opposed to simply life, which is attained purely through joining.) Mathewson especially derides all those wearing boots in the summer, and especially fur boots (Mathewson calls them "Abominable"). He then expounds upon the Great Chain of Joining, his overall hierarchy and order of joinish people (ordered from the tallest to the shortest), animals and plants, finishing with a response to notable non-joiner Jacques Derrida. Mathewson says of Derrida: "Even if you reverse that douche's binaries, he's still a fag." Strangely, Mathewson doesn't challenge the tenets of Derrida's deconstructionism, which had attempted to break down some elements of the JUOD movement and may or may not have been aligned with STAL. Rather, he just dismissed it and deconstructionists as "centered on little boys."
Pastiche
This section, Mathewson's shameless and sloppy attempt at being postmodern (at least indicated by the section title), contains many items pasted together, included receipts, lists of non-joiners, possible eras to visit with time travel (some have argued), lyrics from songs by REO Speedwagon and Huey Lewis, insults of Jim Henson, photos of the Great Hover-thon of '89, and various other poems, prose passages and drawings. Scholars have argued that this is the last section of the three-part Leviathan Chronicles to be written, and possibly Mathewson has added more elements to it recently. That being said, there are a several different versions of the compilations. The first was done almost entirely on a first-generation Xerox copying machine, and include photocopies of what appear to be various women's rear ends. The second appears to be a photocopied copy of the original with handwritten New Canadianese comments (no one has been able to decipher these thoroughly) while also, at random, some early computer printouts (Mathewson did not bother to remove the edges of the paper). The third is supposedly a hypertext version of the document, with some scanned additional files to download, though no such site can be found on the Internet.
Insulting Couplets & Joinish Jokes
Couplets
At this point in the narrative, Mathewson grew tired of pasting things together, and decided to write a numbered series of rhyming or nearly rhyming couplets insulting many non-joiners, most notably Jim Henson and William of Ockham. Scholars pouring over these works have noted that they consistently accuse both Henson and Ockham of homosexuality, as well as mocking them for various reasons.
1. Oh those muppets, they look like bags
With Henson's hand up their asses; what a fag!
2. Ole' Occam's razor couldn't cut any truth
The man's a man's man (and by that I totally mean he's gay, in case that wasn't clear to anybody), and a mega huge douche.
3. Henson or Ockham, the bigger homo's a tough guess
Doesn't matter to me, because they both deserved death.
Jokes
The jokes in this section all concern a pun on "join," and most regard none of them as funny. Mathewson prefaces this section by saying, "Laugh, or die!!!!!!!!!!!"
Q: If you see a bunch of people smoking, how do you pick the joiners apart?
A: It's easy, they're smoking joints!
Q: Who was the most joinish female runner of all time?
A: Jackie Joyner-Kersee!
Q: Where did Benjamin Franklin go to see French women naked?
A: A strip joint!
Reception
- Main article: Jacques Derrida
The attacks on Derrida and deconstructionism caused some consternation among the philosophical community, most notably by Derrida himself, who set out to write a now-lost essay entitled "Of Joinology" refuting the supposed binary of joining and dying, though it was never completed. Mathewson responded by suggesting Derrida writing a book titled "Of Faggotry" instead. He visited Derrida while he was writing, gave him The Proposition, and when Derrida tried to explain that there really wasn't a difference between joining and dying, Mathewson said, "Oh really?" and beat Derrida half to death with a dictionary. Derrida then later died of pancreatic cancer, hastened by Mathewson's beating. Mathewson held a public celebration of Derrida's death, consistently emphasizing that it was not a celebration of his life.
Mostly, however, TLC received a warm reception, though perhaps too warm in eastern Europe. The Ukrainian translation, only initially available in 2003, allegedly spurred the country's Orange Revolution.
