I have a hard time believing that this isn't parody, but that probably just indicates my lack of familiarity with the "inspirational quotes" genre.
The first step on the road to success is ignoring the analogy ban.
Jesus is the driver, and your friends are speed bumps? So Jesus runs over your friends? Christ, what an asshole.
1: I absolutely guarantee the person on FB posted in sincerely.
Driving down the road of life distracted by talking on a cell phone called Unfogged.
This is why the analogy ban needs to be universal policy. I mean, an analogy in the hands of an idiot is like a gun in the hands of a baby: certain to annoy.
Like your friends, the speedbumps.
Oh fuck why did I get in this taxi I think my driver's name is Muhammad.
By coincidence, the Inspirational Person in my FB feed just drove me to fix up a couple of her image files and post them in the Flickr pool.
Love your Enemies because otherwise you might get killed by cross-traffic.
And to think, people don't want to read Pilgrim's Progress anymore.
A little girl with a red wagon named Personal Growth.
Recited at the ceremony of the couple in the previous post.
...
...
Too soon?
I hate myself for making that joke.
Dammit! I hate you for pwning me.
12: The ground is lava! Wait, no, the ground is hellfire!
And to think, people don't want to read Pilgrim's Progress anymore.
Or to read comment 2!
No one has yet linked Plastic Jesus?
Driving on a road with a loop on it was a childhood dream of mine. Confusion sounds awesome.
I'm curious about how jobs are equivalent to flat tires. Something something culture of government dependency.
Our resident Mormon-raised can disabuse me of the notion that Mormonism is a fairly successful example of prosperity gospel of a kind. Because if they don't that's what it looked like to me many, many years ago in Utah and Nevada, nor has anything I've read or heard about since contradicted that impression.
Obamacare is a one way deadend.
This has got to be a parody.
I like the frank admission that jobs are just flat tires on the road to true Success, which whatever it is definitely involves the freedom to hang out all day doing nothing.
I've gotten the impression over the years that Mormons tend to be gorgeous.
Maybe it's just the ones I've met, but Mormons also seem to be more successful than you would predict. If you're into religion, Mormonism seems to deliver the goods. They also come with their own U.S. state and major university.
If you really hold to this analogy, then Jesus is going to run over your friends but stop for your enemies. Taking turn the other cheek too far!
By coincidence, the Inspirational Person in my FB feed just drove me to fix up a couple of her image files and post them in the Flickr pool.
See also: SEK.
Jobs are flat tires on the road to true Success, because having a job means you're wasting time working for someone else, time that would be better spent becoming the fully self-actualized master of your own destiny that Jesus and Ayn Rand always knew you could be.
I think MAE must also know the person that posted this. Also thank Jesus for his gorgeous girlfriend and well-paying job.
Mister, I ain't a boy, no, I'm a man
And I believe in the Analogy Ban
Also not a parody: the signature in the email at the top of my work inbox. Green bold Comic Sans describing (I paraphrase) the sun's rays at dawn promising to drive away darkness and provide an abundance of "Energy & blissful joy," and directing us therefore to receive it.
I could do without Jesus's choice of radio station.
29: I find this to be true.
31 is what I would post to Facebook if I hadn't stopped looking at it.
At the America's Cup, Emirates Team New Zealand is apparently becoming a speed bump for Oracle Team USA.
This post brought to mind the final words of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail '72:
Immediately after the game I received an urgent call from my attorney, who claimed to be having a terminal drug experience in his private bungalow at the Chateau Marmont ... and by the time I got there he had finished the whole jar.
Later, when the big rain started, I got heavily into the gin and read the Sunday papers. On page 39 of California Living magazine I found a hand-lettered ad from the McDonald's Hamburger Corporation, one of Nixon's big contributors in the '72 presidential campaign:
PRESS ON, it said. NOTHING IN THE WORLD CAN TAKE THE PLACE OF PERSISTENCE. TALENT WILL NOT: NOTHING IS MORE COMMON THAN UNSUCCESSFUL MEN WITH TALENT. GENIUS WILL NOT: UNREWARDED GENIUS IS ALMOST A PROVERB. EDUCATION ALONE WILL NOT: THE WORLD IS FULL OF EDUCATED DERELICTS. PERSISTENCE AND DETERMINATION ALONE ARE OMNIPOTENT.
I read it several times before I grapsed the full meaning. Then, when it came to me, I called Mankiewicz immediately.
"Keep your own counsel," he said. "Don't draw any conclusions from anything you see or hear."
I hung up and drank some more gin. Then I put a Dolly Parton album on the tape machine and watched the trees outside my balcony getting lashed around in the wind. Around midnight, when the rain stopped, I put on my special Miami Beach nightshirt and walked several blocks down La Cienega Boulevard to the Losers' Club.
Hunter S Thompson anticipated both the power of Internet inspirational quotes and the OPINIONATED GRANDMA meme.
Children are invited to make their way across the balance beam of faith while avoiding falling into sin and damnation (helpfully represented by cardboard flames) in order to reach salvation at the finish line.
I do hope it's called the Brant memorial playground.
How is it Emirates Team New Zealand and not Emirates Team UAE?
I mean, really, thats like having a Swiss Team Canada
That inspirational Hunter S. Thomson quote was Calvin Coolidge. (My son used to have that very same quote hanging in his room.)(It was a gift.)
Because the Emirates airline sponsor loads of sports teams around the world, and the UAE has no prominent sports teams.
Swiss Re is proud to be the founding sponsor of Climate Week NYC.
As inspirational quotes go the Coolidge one is pretty inoffensive, IMO.
49: Sure. In context, though, I think Thompson is making a grim joke about the futility of talent, genius and education when put up against persistent ignorance and bigotry.
The UAE is rich enough it ought to be able to just buy some prominent sports teams. Maybe the Jets?
I get the feeling Joe Smith kicked all the ugly people out of Mormonism early on, which has left the faith's remaining breeding stock uncannily attractive.
I saw 52 and my brain read "Bave" for Mr. Blandings... Which struck me odd.
As inspirational quotes go the Coolidge one is pretty inoffensive, IMO.
Any time someone says "All you need for success is X," you are insulting someone. It doesn't matter if the X is determination, Jesus, talent or whatever. There is someone out there who hasn't succeeded, and you are now informing them that if they had just had more of the One Special Thing that the elect have and they do not, they too would be successful.
Speaking of stuff from Facebook feeds, I think it's time to ask yourselves: have you trolled your local CrossFit enthusiast today?
56: That seemed like a well-reasoned piece until I got to "No, peeing during a workout is not alright. Ever." Like I'm going to get out of the pool just to pee.
But seriously, that was pretty scary.
57 is exactly right. What, I'm not supposed to sneeze ever again or jump?
Any time someone says "All you need for success is X,"
The drug? The band? Both? I'm on board, whichever. Let's do this.
55: Well, yes. That's why it's such a popular strategy for people selling X.
I get the feeling Joe Smith kicked all the ugly people out of Mormonism early on, which has left the faith's remaining breeding stock uncannily attractive.
Joking aside, they really did convert a lot of Scandinavians back in the day, so this is a pretty good place to move if tall blondes are your thing.
I hadn't really thought about it before, but I guess it has also been my experience that Mormons tend to be pretty attractive.
I also love that Stormcrow's question about theology has turned into a discussion of hottness.
You people are fucking high. Mormons are of below-average attractiveness.
They are surely gurning at the camera and would look fairly normal, if not hott, if you met them in the street.
Another vote in favor of the unusual attractiveness of Mormons. Also, along with Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and Seventh Day Adventists are always very nice people.
Episcopalians tend to wear nicer clothes than others, but I haven't noticed them being more attractive.
Kid B was wearing a Fields of the Nephilim t-shirt the other day, and this middle-aged woman walked all round her looking at it and then asked her, "are you a Jehovah's Witness?" Kid B replied, no, and the woman said that she was, and that she recognised all these bible verses, gesturing at the t-shirt. Which was a bit odd because on the back were a list of tour dates.
73/74: That's okay, we know you're a victim of your country's socialist grammar rules on pluralization of collectives.
"Northampton 5/6/91: Thou shalt wear a massive hat, and the inscrutable symbols thereon shall be seven times seven in number."
"Altamont 12/6/69: And fear not them which kill the body, but are not able to kill the soul: but rather fear him which is able to destroy both soul and body in hell."
"Cincinnati 12/3/79: Listen, a noise on the mountains, like that of a great multitude! Listen, an uproar among the kingdoms, like nations massing together!"
"Warwick 2/20/03: Depart from me, you who are cursed, into the eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels."