The guy shooting up with Jesus? What's not to like?
I note that the mailing address is in Versailles, down the road 20 minutes from where I grew up. I trust it will surprise no-one to learn that Versailles is pronounced ver-SALES.
So, Jesus is a smack addict who gets his fix by stealing it from other junkies? What an asshole.
I seem to recall that having been linked here before, but I don't really know what search string to use to find it.
2: I know, right? how's that other dude supposed to get high?
I love the playing cards under the gun. That's how all this started, people!
The other works in the collection, while not quite as lurid, are certainly fodder for a lot of discussion. For instance, "Fire Dancer" seems to be celebrating paganism, while "Lover of My Soul" looks like it might appeal to some hella prurient interests. Squick!
"Round 15" is awesome though.
Isn't the best high the high you get from Jesus?
The years when you have seen only one track, my child...
Needles don't hurt that much, Jesus.
Of course my closing tag gets dropped. You win this one, Jesus.
Not shown: Jesus tearfully reading sarcastic comments meant for us poor sinners.
11: Of course they don't, That Much Jesus is one of the most powerful Jesuses. Beaucoup hit points.
3: I seem to recall that having been linked here before, but I don't really know what search string to use to find it.
It was in the one Ben posted (I think) about the guy's painting of all the Presidents gathered around in front of Capitol Hill pleading and crying. Try +Washington +Lincoln +painting er, uh, and I go blank, uh, +teacher. You could restrict the search to post-2007.
Is it bad that I kind of want this?
Yes: because it is not on black velvet. And preferably done with glow paints so you can turn on the black light.
It would be awesome if you had one on black velvet with the Dogs Who Play Poker taking a break to shoot up.
max
['Especially if one of the dogs was three headed.']
re: 2
There's a not very good novel in which Jesus is an immortal junkie living in, iirc, Melbourne.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Masterson
It's been years since I read it, but I remember the hard-boiled prose being a bit laid on thick.
The years when you have seen only one track, my child...
This made me laugh out loud.
So, uh, where's the junkie's left arm?
I'd also like to see the companion piece where he forces Jesus to snort those lines of cocaine.
Early goth band Christian Death had an album cover where Jesus eliminated the middleman.
He is able to charge over $1000 for a paint that he "highlighted"? Huh. I notice that he has a very prominent "no refunds" policy," which makes me think that there have been many demands for refunds.
This one cracked me up. The guy has clearly spent some time in the romance novel cover art business.
So, uh, where's the junkie's left arm?
The significance of the caption-like text to the right of the painting seems to have been lost on you.
The years when you have seen only one track, my child...
"And what about when there was only one set of footsteps and a sort of deep groove?"
"Well, my child, after I'd carried you for a bit you started to get heavy, so I dumped you in a wheelbarrow."
"And when there were no footprints at all, but a line of deep round holes in the sand?"
"Pogo stick."
The theme of the painting couldn't be lost on a jellyfish. But looking at it, all I can think is Photoshop Disaster.
23 made me laugh at work. (I am at work. The calendar said it's a holiday, so I cancelled class on the syllabus, but last night I found out that Labor Day is a "holiday" but not a holiday in the sense of not working. I still have cancelled the class, but came in in case any of the little buggers came looking for me.)
Also, the outline of Scandinavia, Great Britain and Ireland on the wallpaper. Europeans love them some smack.
I really want a bunch of the bookmarks to hand out at work.
10 and 23 are hilarious and flippanter just made my day with 13. you guys are THE BEST.
13: There needs to be an Internet addiction portrait with an agonized Jesus supplying the, ummm, working hand. Preferably while masturbating to the Jesus-as-a-boxer painting*.
(* Is there a NMM rule for Jesus? Seems like it might get a bit complicated... but I'm pretty sure this painter is breaking it in some way.)
* Is there a NMM rule for Jesus?
There was, once, for a few days.
29: Wouldn't the parallel be a guy furiously masturbating Jesus's cock?
I think that would be the perpendickular.
I love 31. What conservative's living room is complete without a 24x36 painting of Jesus saving some sinner from being sodomized.
I think this is actually an image that the church tries to encourage porn users to think about, that every time they masturbate to porn, they are masturbating to porn with Jesus in the room. I distinctly remember some such discussion at youth camp. It's really sort of a miracle that I didn't grow up to be someone who cries every time I have an orgasm.
It's really sort of a miracle that I didn't grow up to be someone who cries every time I have an orgasm.
You say that like it is a good thing.
35: If you were Alameida, as we know, it would have been very hard to stay hydrated.
I love the playing cards under the gun. That's how all this started, people!
Explains the subversive hidden message to my "Four Dogs Playing Poker" collection.
A cynic might observe the relative paucity of depictions of tough guys punching Jesus when they beat up children, women, nerds, gays, etc., and speculate about the egotism of evangelical sinning.
every time they masturbate to porn, they are masturbating to porn with Jesus in the room.
Disguised as ceiling cat.
A cynic might observe the relative paucity of depictions of tough guys punching Jesus when they beat up children, women, nerds, gays, etc.,
These sort of depictions are generally intended to remind the viewer that so-called "victimless" crimes aren't victimless after all (because you're hurting Jesus). Because of the presence of another person who is being punched, punching another person isn't usually considered a victimless crime; hence the relative paucity of depictions of the same in this genre.
Seems like a vaguely appropriate thread to link to this.
Because of the presence of another person who is being punched, punching another person isn't usually considered a victimless crime
What?!?? Oh man. Now I feel bad.
42.--At least some of those signs have to be tongue in cheek, surely?
44: I suspect porn culture has sunk into the awareness of pretty much everyone male and non-Amish, regardless of rurality or cultural signs and outward flourishes, so I don't see those signs as having much plausible deniability. Maybe a third are innocent, at most.
I think porn culture flourishes everywhere, but I don't know that people automatically identify double entendres when it's not in their immediate context.
44: The "Missionary Position" sign was definitely intentional. The rest I'd buy as serious; not that the writers wouldn't be able to spot the sexual reading, but they weren't bothering to work out a phrasing that couldn't possibly be misinterpreted.
Huh, I would have figured different ones as intentional: lubricant, ass, 4-inch. I would also guess that many of the signs are composed not by the minister but by someone well-intentioned and older who keeps the churches running.
Also, in my personal experience, the security against tampering for signs like that (also hotels etc.) is not always that, um, comprehensive.
Lubricant means what it means -- it wasn't a badly chosen word for the non-sexual thought they were trying to express, that's the word for something that reduces friction. '4-inch', again, the straightforward meaning is that something small can damage someone big, so the measurement makes sense, and the measurement doesn't actually make it any dirtier than if it had just said 'tongue'. "Ass" I must have skipped -- that's probably a joke, no American looks at 'ass' and thinks of donkey as the primary meaning.
49: Something you'd like to confess perhaps, JP?
49: It's getting harder and harder to find one that isn't locked or much higher than I can reach without a ladder.
no American looks at 'ass' and thinks of donkey as the primary meaning
I agree that it's probably a joke, but this isn't true. People who spend lots of time reading their King James bibles and very little time immersed in popular culture think this way. Sure, they know the word also has a "vulgar" usage, but it's not at the forefront of their minds.
Some of these same people can't believe "gay" no longer mostly means "happy". The double entendres just pass right by them.
Somewhere on the internets, somebody posted the default password for the digital highway signs that sit on the trailers.
53: You know, once you leave the coastal regions it doesn't turn into 1956 or anything.
53: Yeah, I'd buy that it wasn't a joke for those reasons if the biblical reference made more sense to me as something to put on a sign. I may be missing something, my knowledge of the Gospels is imperfect, but I can't think of anything doctrinally important that would be represented by Jesus saying 'bring me that ass'.
But if there were something that made sense, you're right that just the use of the word 'ass' wouldn't make it a joke.
55: No, I think he's right. It's not that it's 1956, but looking for double entendres is a habit, and if it's not a habit you have, you don't necessarily see them. Like, I'm sure anyone not brought up on a locked compound is familiar with 'entering' someone as a sexual term, but it's not necessarily going to be a big enough part of their thought process to make 'Jesus enters you' funny unless someone points it out.
From the same website, some of these are pretty funny. Although I think some of them are photoshops.
no American looks at 'ass' and thinks of donkey as the primary meaning
I think this is really context-dependent. Probably lots of Americans look at "ass" and think of donkey as the primary meaning, if the last three words they looked at were "an", "of", and "jawbone".
I'm not sure that there is a thing one could call "porn culture" any more than there is a "movie culture" or "book culture"--it's just too vast and niche-markety to have a coherent and nameable influence on "culture" as a whole. And certainly older people who come up with clever signs for evangelical churches are not really chest-deep in any kind of "porn culture," or if they are they wouldn't expect other people to be. It's still pretty queer to out yourself as someone who regularly enjoys specific kinds of pornography in the U.S.
61: I do think that one probably only even potentially applies to people over 80, but they're out there. I only raised the example because I ran into one recently.
60: I don't think 'porn culture' is really the right thing for what makes these signs funny -- 'dirty joke' culture is more it. The change in culture that makes it implausible to call a guy named Richard 'Dick' these days isn't so much about porn watching, as what ordinarily polite people are willing to snigger at openly.
Someone should tell Dick M-ran and his friends about that.
63: Agreed. It's possible that there's more awareness of previously undiscussed sex acts, so a four-inch tongue bringing a six-foot man to his knees says rimjob to me in a way that it might not have if I had been 32 in 1980. But that's more Dan Savage than porn-watching. Rimjobs are still not even terrifically frequent in porn. They happen, but it's not a constant topic of discussion.
Wait, why does it have to be a rimjob?
65: You went straight to rim job? Now I feel insufficiently dirty for assuming we were talking about frontal work.
AND we can tell how important this is issue is to the commentariat.
WE DEMAND TO KNOW WHY YOU'RE IGNORING THE POSSIBILITY OF A BLOWJOB, AWB!
Rimjobs actually hadn't occurred to me, but I guess a long tongue would be more important for a rim than a blow job? Is four inches long for a tongue, and where do you measure it from?
Why would you need a four-inch tongue for blowjob? That's more of a whole-mouth activity. The length of the tongue is more rimjob-relevant.
ALSO: you can still do it while he's on his knees. It's much harder to give a beej to a guy who is on his knees.
I could dispute 73.2, but that would just be obstinate.
And here I was just thinking "French kissing." Sweet little innocent me.
48 was me. There are counties where the median age is above 50, so yes, it is effectively possible to travel back into time by driving.
My limited contact with elderly people other than my parents (who are foreigners, don't count) suggests that avoiding as many intrusions of contemporary life as possible is a common mindset. Maybe that's unkind-- many elderly people are vibrant and perceptive, even if they're not fast-moving any longer.
71/73: assuming that it's supposed to be an unusually long tongue only makes sense if you assume it was supposed to be an intentionally dirty sign. I think it's meant to be describing a perfectly normal tongue, and that's the whole point of the sign--an ordinary little tongue is so very powerful. (When used for prayer, I think is the implication.) If it required an unusually-long tongue, the sign would lose a lot of its motivational force.
So, we're talking about ordinary tongues, not long ones. WHICH MEANS THE "DIRTY" IMPLICATION IS BLOWJOB, NOT RIMJOB.
(When used for prayer, I think is the implication.)
Huh. I took the straightforward meaning as being something about hostility -- that speaking unpleasantly could hurt people (sort of the opposite of 'sticks and stones'). Your reading seems to be an exhortation to the reader to tell other people to pray? Read this, and use your own tongue to make someone else get on their knees? That seems like too many steps.
Sure, it's an ordinary tongue, but I still don't see how naming the length of the tongue has much to do with a blowjob.
I think we can agree to disagree on this one, but I'm fairly sure rimjob is funnier.
Show of hands?
79 -- I was thinking gossip, rather than prayer, as the intended meaning.
Oh, I thought the non-dirty meaning was about witnessing. Through evangelizing and speaking up, you can bring a grown man to his knees to pray for forgiveness.
Actually, reading these as invitations to a shrine to the past (some church run by old people) seems much more interesting than teasing out the joke that the writers missed. For an elderly congregation to decide when it's time for an elderly pastor to retire must be a very complicated decision.
79, 83: Both of you have been more in the relevant community than I am, so you're probably right.
You'd be shocked how ignorant a lot of evangelicals are about the dirty meanings of what they say are, even among young folks. While in high school and college, my cousin used to write poems about Jesus and say prayers that were indistinguishable from gay porn. "Oh Jesus your love is like a waterfall pouring all over me, going inside me and making me clean, Oh Jesus I come to you with nothing covered, nothing hidden from you and I am ready and open to be filled with your presence" etc.
I thought the intended meaning was about the power of words in general, as in the penismightier than the sword.
87, cont'd: Whenever my cousin volunteered to pray over family dinners, my dad and I would be catching each other's eye over the table and just choking back tears of laughter while everyone else felt the spirit move or whatever.
Huh. An exhortation to pray for others, a warning against not controlling your own tongue (whether gossip or speaking cruelly), or evangelism--all are plausible readings. I actually think Charley and LB's readings are most likely. "Rimjob" strikes me as the least plausible reading.
82.2: I thought gossip as well, but suspect I was wrong.
"Loose straps lips sink mean fine tobacco flabby dicks".
|| I'm in the midst of sending out bills. Jesus, people, do not get sued!|>
87: This is what makes the Magnetic Fields's "Kiss me like you mean it" so genius.
It's about using the "tongue in the ear" move while making a tackle in a backyard football game. Believe me, that works.
It's clearly rimjob. I can't believe you people insist on persisting in error like this.
94 seems to be addressed to 92, but I'm not sure how it follows.
Isn't a lot of St. Teresa's poetry like that? Or am I making that up?
I asked Lee to buy me a cheap white wine with some sweetness and she came with some Peter Poontinger, I think without having read the brand. I'd this the kind of thing would appeal to hipsterish wine purchasers, especially since the logo is a jackalope, but I don't really want to bother finding out whether this is true. Not yet, anyway.
82.2: I think you are clearly right that they are talking about gossip.
102: It gets better. He's a Dr.
Dr. Peter Poontinger! (I keep wanting to write Poontingler?)
But if it were gossip, then falling to your knees would be a bad thing. In evangelical culture, "fall on your knees before the Lord" is just something you say all the time to mean getting humble and praying.
103 -- I'd already abandoned that reading -- it might be right for the Episcopal church of my youth, but not one of those contemporary rolling on the floor speaking in tongues places.
|| Billing done, now to get some discovery out. Gonna have to serve somebody, yes indeed|>
107 was my initial thought as well, but "bringing someone to their knees" is a common enough euphemism for rimmingdefeating them that I think it's a very plausible reading.
A four-inch tongue can make a man fall over with such force that only his feet and a sweat drop remain visible in the panel.
107: The person brought to their knees is described as a "6 Foot Man" with the obvious implication of bringing down the strong. The pastor (or whoever) is saying that gossip is as damaging as physical violence.
Another vote for evangelism. You really think they just happened to include the phrase "to one's knees" with no implication of prayer at all? On a church billboard?
The church in question is part of this denomination, The Church of God in Christ (COGIC) is a Pentecostal Holiness Christian denomination with a predominantly African-American membership. and is in Lakewood, Washington (suburb of Tacoma) if that gives any clues.
112: Unless the tongue is referring to the Holy Spirit (i.e. "Tongue of Fire"), I don't see that.
This thread is making me paranoid that I'm terrible at blowjobs because I've never made anyone fall to their knees while giving one.
114 was me. You are, in this context, to give credit the Word, not the tongue speaking it.
115: Selective use of teeth is the key I think.
I'm religion-free, but reading stuff, I never perceived it as somehow slighting God to credit conversion to an individual - surely God's inspiration of all is understood.
AWB is obviously correct on both the dirty and clean meanings, and the counter to urple's 79 is that the sign is telling us that rimjobs are so amazing that even an ordinary tongue can fell a strong man.
THANKS EGGPLANT.
Seriously, who can remain standing during a rimjob? It's impossible.
I think it should be obvious, at any event, that in the dirty interpretation it's not the size of the tongue, but how it's used. Google and Wikipedia both give 4 inches or over as the average length.
You'd be shocked how ignorant a lot of evangelicals are about the dirty meanings of what they say are, even among young folks.
This. Jammies was at a wedding a month ago, and the preacher's ceremony sermon was something like:
"Before the bride, the groom was alone with his dog. Now a dog can provide some good companionship, but it can't keep you company the way a good woman can keep you company. And then he met bride, who can really keep him company, better than the dog" etc, etc. I don't have the exact phrasing right, but it went on and on, and apparently Jammies and his father almost lost their shit.
Majorie says it is an old saying about gossip.
Hey, that post hit two of the signs, not just the four-inch tongue, but the loose tongue-tight place.
121: Urple's claimed that he doesn't think it would be prohibitively difficult to have sex on a moving bicycle. So who knows what he's capable of.
Salvation Mountain: "Jesus I'm a sinner please come upon my body, and into my heart."
128: Yeah, something Frank Booth from Blue Velvet would say. (Bu the wouldn't say "please".)
LOVE bade me welcome; yet my soul drew back,
Guilty of dust and sin.
But quick-eyed Love, observing me grow slack
From my first entrance in,
Drew nearer to me, sweetly questioning 5
If I lack'd anything.
'A guest,' I answer'd, 'worthy to be here:'
Love said, 'You shall be he.'
'I, the unkind, ungrateful? Ah, my dear,
I cannot look on Thee.' 10
Love took my hand and smiling did reply,
'Who made the eyes but I?'
'Truth, Lord; but I have marr'd them: let my shame
Go where it doth deserve.'
'And know you not,' says Love, 'Who bore the blame?' 15
'My dear, then I will serve.'
'You must sit down,' says Love, 'and taste my meat.'
So I did sit and eat.
I am frustrated that I can't think of any Zbigniew Herbert sexy-goddy love poems in reply, but I can't. Hmph.
Famously she descended, her red hair
Unbound and bronzed by sea-reflections, caught
Crinkled with sea-pearls. The fine slender taut
Knees that let down her feet upon the air,
Young breasts, slim flanks and golden quarries were
Odder than when the young distraught
Unknown Venetian, painting her portrait, thought
He'd not imagined what he painted there.
And I too commerced with that golden cloud:
Lipped her delicious hands and had my ease
Faring fantastically, perversely proud.
All loveliness demands our courtesies.
Since she was dead I praised her as I could
Silently, among the Barberini bees.
131: Maybe you'll just have to settle for the Burger King version of 130 instead.
dude, unfogged is getting to be like that infinite library in borges. shit be freaking me out.
ELVIS
Hail to your lordship!
HAMLET
I am glad to see you well:
Elvis,--or I do forget myself.
ELVIS
The same, my lord, and your poor servant ever.
132: To be a bit more on-topic with a subthread, in the first two lines replace "Famously" with "Lightly" and "Unbound" with "Iridescent".
I'm honestly perplexed that anyone could suppose the intended meaning to relate to gossip rather than witnessing.
137: Check out the link in 124 -- it apparently has history as such.
And I think we are not giving enough credit to the possibility that whoever came up with he sign was making a play on both of those meanings.
138: erm, not exactly. All Marjorie says is "I grew up hearing the following expessions". She's the one who interpreted it to be a saying about gossip. It's likely she just misinterpreted various adults she overheard talking about rimjobs.
If the saying is aimed at discouraging gossip, emphasizing how powerful it is seems misguided.
140: It may have been rimjobs, but Majorie is Jewish so it probably wasn't about witnessesing.
"You mean I can bring down just by talking? I don't even have to tongue-punch his fart box?"
I'm going to spell that however the fuck I want because the saying is about gossip.
141: I think the idea is that the six-foot-man brought to his knees is the gossiper, not the gossipee. I.e., the four-inch-tongue belongs to the six-foot-man.
Can we try to interpret "Loose lips sink ships" after this?
Some random people on the internet call this a "Japanese Proverb". Also, there's a version that's about gluttony/obesity, but for whatever reason those tongues are only two inches long.
Maybe the two inch long tongues are more appetizing.
That's no grosser than a front-lawn pig roast.
You could take it to work and eat it at a brown bag talk or in the break room. Try doing that with a roasting pig.
145: Don't be silly, men don't gossip.
I stand corrected, at least until somebody sticks a tongue up my ass.
After that I'll be corrected on my knees, IYKWIM.
