Sensitive Compartmental Information Facility

Oh, so you say you CAN handle the kind of stuff McNeil and I talk about? All right. I'll give you the straight skinny, and then you'll be sorry. So McNeil sends an email: "Reading The Apocryphon of John and it's blowing my mind. BOOOOOM. In a way it makes the vicissitudes (!!look at my big word there!!) of the OT God a little easier to understand. I said a little. And I'm talking bout the Monad, y'all...which is what people really should be worshipping, I guess." All right! So it looks like McNeil is starting a cult and trying to get me to worship "The Monad." So I'm like, hey, I think I have that book around here somewhere. But I look all around and I can't find it. BUT THEN! I remember an anthology called THE GNOSTIC BIBLE, which is on a shelf behind glass, and I have to move my blood pressure machine to get to it, and I can barely be bothered to make the effort. Finally, I drag my old carcass over there and take it down and I'm like, hey! And I email McNeil: "one of the sections is called The Secret Book of John, which seems to correspond to the book you're talking about. For example, it mentions 'The One,' which a footnote explains is 'The Monad.' And so on. So let's get busy, Apocryphon style!" And there was some other stuff McNeil brought up about A.I., but let's not get into that right now. We have enough problems! Oh yeah, and McNeil had given me an assignment, which was to study "the passage about halfway through, maybe, where man is created. There is a long long list of people who worked on the project - and how they felt about it afterward." I still haven't done that. Sorry! So McNeil follows up with "There should be a place we meet and discuss the Apocryphon - a place like Omaha or Des Moines - and in a pergola near a nature preserve or something so it seems spiritual and also inexpensive. We could wear hats like they do in Masters of Atlantis." And I shoot back my own suggestion: Yankton, South Dakota! McNeil goes "At that pizza place you're obsessed with - but only if they can provide us with a SCIF." And I don't know what the hell a SCIF is and McNeil has to explain it to me. But about this pizza place... see, for my 60th birthday, I thought McNeil and I could meet at a pizza place I knew about through one tweet, back when twitter existed. The way I remember it now, this place had a pizza with crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on it, which was named (the pizza was) after Richard Burton and Elizabeth Taylor. Because you know how much they loved crab, beef, and cheddar cheese on a pizza! I even looked up local forms of entertainment and I think I found several casinos in the area. Alas, that plan came to nothing. A lot of things came to nothing that year. Some of you know what I'm talking about. Hey! Speaking of religion, I see that the announcement is up at Square Books: I'll be "in conversation" with Tom Franklin about his new novel DEVILWOOD in February! So I can finally tell you... remember when I said I was reading a manuscript with owl balls in it but it doesn't mean what you think it means? Well, that book with the owl balls in it is DEVILWOOD, as can finally be revealed. Owl balls!