The Baby Jesus Butt Plug

I can't really write a long drawn out review for this book simply because it is a short Aesop's sort of fairy tale, illustrated and all. However, if you have no aversion to worlds where children are extinct, adults are photocopied into existence as adults, and everyone works mindless drone jobs at huge corporations in a viscous cycle of slave the day away and then spend your money on food, useless possessions, or pet babies -- because that is all the satisfaction you are going to get in life, and so you might as well shove it all up your butt -- then you will love this little absurdist allegory.Our poor couple just feels so empty that they decide to go a backyard breeder to pick up a pet baby. You can even get a clone baby of someone famous, if you like, and the baby Jesus clones are all the rage. But there is a dark side to this pet trade: the heinous abusers who use the pet babies as anal sex toys, and our loving couple is no different than any of the other Joneses on the block, except their little pet baby Jesus turns out to be something like Chucky.I have been recommended several of Mellick's books on Amazon, and I can say that as a writer of reactionary literature, he has a gift for using the dark, the disturbing, and the ridiculously offensive to state the obvious when it comes to drawing parallels to the ludicrous idiocracy of our modern world. Nothing in his writing ever seems gratuitous or all that shocking when you stop to think about what he is actually saying. This is high concept at its finest and its most deviant and its most perverse and subversive. It's art with purpose, and I like that ... a lot. Not to mention the illustrations are just wonderful. There are a lot of psychological, theological, and sociological themes being explored here, like the feeling of insignificance we have as just one of the many amidst the masses, or how humans have an innate capacity to pervert and abuse everything we can get our hands on in order to either make a buck or get gratification, or how every human has the subconscious desire to submit to a narcissistic need to "love thyself, plus a whole lot more, and all of the exploration is done quickly, so you have to pay attention. The writing has a deliberate lack of finesse, as if an 8 year old adult wrote it -- oh yea, our main character *is* an 8 year old photocopied adult. My only gripe was with the huge font. I understand it was to mimic a children's book, for obvious reasons, but I think a smaller book size and a denser font would have suited this story a bit better, say for instance a pocket size book, then the author could reduce the price to something more reasonable for its length. If it had been done as a proper children's book with a hard-cover and colour illustrations then it would have warranted a $10-15 dollar price tag.As for the subject matter, if you think South Park is obscene you might want to pass on Mellick. But if you like dark satire and absurdist humour, with a shot of blasphemy thrown for good measure, then you will love and appreciate this book. Some reviewers likened the thematic approach to Cronenberg, Burroughs, and Lynch. I would have to agree with that. This is hardcore punk literature for sure: definitely intellectual and not for the overly sensitive. Do not molest the Baby Jesus, you have been warned.

I'm going to qualify this review a bit: this is my first exposure to Carlton Mellick III, so I can't compare this book to any of his other work. And I'm happy about that. I've read most of the reviews posted on Goodreads and Amazon for The Baby Jesus Butt Plug and there are several comments about CM3's other work being better, or people didn't like this one as much as (fill in the blank). For me, that means I've got a lot to look forward to, I guess, because I really like this one.One other thing I looked for in those other reviews was mention of the Jesus/religious aspect of this story and its significance. I didn't find much comment about it, though. My first question before I even bought this book was, why baby Jesus and butt plug? Is it purely for shock value? My conclusion: no, but that's a big part of it. You'd be hard-pressed to find a more eye-catching (or controversial, or inflammatory) title than The Baby Jesus Butt Plug, but in its own weird way, it works in the end. Yes, there's the shock value, but there's also the things that Jesus, or more specifically, baby Jesus, represent: the creation of perfect life, the fulfilling of biblical prophesy, hope for humanity. I think each of those examples is present in this story, in one extremely weird fashion or another.For me, this is a cautionary tale about vanity and self-absorbtion. The main characters, aptly named Mary and Joe, buy a pet baby jesus, which are born in litters like cats, to use as a sexual toy. Joe grows uncomfortable with the idea and the baby jesus begins to change into something monstrous. People in this world are cloned at copy stores and babies are no longer born, unless they're in litters of famous people (Jesus, Elle Fitzgerald, John Lennon, etc.). Without delving too much into the nuts and bolts of the story, the odd happenings are not completely random, at least not all of them. There's structure at work here, and it's told in simple fairy tale-like prose, which in a way works to both disarm the reader and also provide more of a shock, like the slap of a wet blanket. On a base level, Mary and Joe desecrate something sacred and by the end, they must answer for their actions. And though they seem to be sincere in wanting to fix what they fouled up, it doesn't appear that they will be able to. Sometimes you can't fix what's broke.There's more to this story as well, a commentary on corporate life and a great passage about how society wants to rush kids into adulthood. A character says, "In this day and age, there's no room for babies. We're born into this world as full grown adults. There's no time to be children let alone raise children." I can see examples of this notion in my daily life and that line really struck a chord with me.I look forward to more Mellick, though this style and genre won't be for everyone. If the title alone makes you cringe or makes you angry, you should probably keep on going. If you can attempt to read this story with a bit of an open mind, then go for it, you probably won't be disappointed. I wasn't.

Unnamed narrator and wife Mary answer an ad for a free baby jesus- but no using baby jesus as a sex toy! "If you stick this child in your butt, you'll da** yourself to he**" warns the old woman they get him from. An acid-trip-gone-bad, comedic nightmare of emasculatory disquiet at the superfluousness of husband once baby comes into the picture; at the trivializing absurdity of corporatism; at the impotence of self in the form of clones who not only do not save the day, but can't stop themselves from humping like bunnies and turning into zombies and eating each other in a house transformed into living internal organs. Is this a surreal and macabre satire from the fevered imagination of one very sicko individual, or a true and factual tale of an old-lady curse come deservedly true on two perverts who do in fact use baby jesus as a butt plug? You decide.

So, it's the future and humans no longer procreate, they simply clone themselves. Some clones are created to be the next generation of office workers. Some are cloned for higher purposes. And some are temporary clones, designed to live a single day and then dissolve into a disgusting puddle of peach preserves. And then there are the babies. Babies still exist but they exist only to be sold as pets and sex toys. The author of this book should probably be arrested and sentenced to a life of servitude in the deepest, darkest pit on the planet, made a slave to worms and grubs. Merely reading this book should be, at the very least, a misdemeanor. And yet, this is one of those books that can't be put down. This is Carlton Mellick III at his most twisted. Buy this book! You won't regret it.

This is a very interesting book, if you like a funny read, get this :)

Es quizá el libro de Mellick III más rápido de leer, dada su extensión. Respecto a la trama, no es para espantarse, pues las descripciones sexuales no son tantas ni tan grotescas. Los giros argumentales típicos del género bizarro no quedan tan claros, pero las críticas hacia la monotonía laboral y la familia nuclear son geniales. Uno de sus libros clásicos.

Listen, if you wanna scream “wtf” every page, this is the book for you! It was amazing and even my HIGHLY RELIGIOUS grandma in law loved it.

Book shelf stuffer, as long as you keep it far from the reaches of any child. Nonsense of the highest order.

I mean, are you seriously hesitating !?