Postcards to say something: 010

An old friend, Anonymous Trad, sent me this. Like the lovely folk songs Mr Trad has been providing for a number of years now, the origin of this picture is shrouded in mystery.

As you look, observe the layers of meaning: an artist’s work is stolen and made into an image by people working to make an image, and somebody has come along and added yet another layer of meaning to the image.

And as for the big chairs? Takes a lot of chutzpah.

Postcards to say something: 009

When I had a Jesus, he was looking out for the little guy, standing up against mercenary, heartless authoritarians.

Other people have a stern Jesus with a stick, making everybody do his bidding or else. Rich Jesus and Pharisee Jesus seem to be the Malibu Barbie of accessorised deities.

Part of the fun is that you can dress up Jesus just like your fantasies!

Postcards to say something 008

Thanks to reader Nerdiah for another fine submission. As the Big Sell enters Phase II, no doubt telly sets will be proclaiming “Jeebus has cancers”. Darling little cells: what an expression of divine love they turned out to be.

Still, keep your eyes on the hot chips and birds in pants: Jeebus only gets the good bits, and you can blame the rest on the Bad Fairy.

Scrapings from the comment bin

Golly, it must be one of those Jungian synchronicity things… I was preparing a visual response (above) to one of the many comments that just don’t make it, and a colleague was replying by mail to the same member of Generation SuperficialBook™.

Here’s what he had to say:

I guess another mod deleted your comment to save you from looking like an idiot for not actually reading content on the pages posts, but just looking at pictures, then judging us on that.

What drives me personally, is that christians continually force themselves to have more rights than others. They also fight basic concepts of science, where humanity has to deal with people who believe bronze age concepts of the earth, and push it into our schools. Religion has a status above and beyond any secular group doing the same thing. Our children are brought up in a world where your bigotry is continually being reinforced as moralistic.

YOUR religion pushes itself and tries to tell OTHERS what to do. You invade our laws and try and tell women what they can do with their bodies, their lives, you say who people can love and show commitment to, you actively stop secular parents from being able to have their children taught ANYTHING while your kids get brainwashed by scripture. You hypocrite.

Have a read of some of these articles, then come back and post something that doesn’t make you look like an uneducated bigot cheers!

Thanks to my colleague Gee Suss.

Postcards from our friends: 001

Thanks to our friends who contribute postcards and comments: here’s the first few in an ongoing series.

We promise they won’t jump all over your screen or choke the household bandwidth like the other guys. (Also, contains no hot chips!)

More to come, and a big welcome to Gee Suss’s brother Mo Suss, who’s joing the Legion editorial cadre.

Postcards to say something: 004

Like the families and lovers of characters in TV detective dramas are always getting killed. arrested and so forth, it seems that hanging around with Jeebus will get you into all kinds of trouble. That car accident that killed half-a-dozen, “and God spared me”…. hey, doesn’t that mean he was a complete turd-croquette to the other six?

Or maybe shit just happens, and we think we’re important. What do you think, O Unique and Preshus Snowflake? (This is a rhetorical question.)

Chalk One Up For Jeebus The Graffitist, or “Postcards From The Dull Edge”

So, what’s new in the game of promoting Jeebus without mentioning bibles, churches, and all the other cultural and literary baggage that would normally be associated with this figure (who is, after all, a product of bibles and churches)?

There’s postcards… in which people express their gratitude for hot chips, termite mounds, poorly-cropped photos of people making faces, Ferraris, and dogs. Lots of dogs. I’m fairly sure the chips were made by Spiros Papathanassiou, from spuds grown by Bert Fernackerpan. As for the Ferrari… does one of them fit through the eye of a needle?

Top marks, anyway, to the team who are still trying to draw the fire away from the bad bits about Jeebus’s followers by making him all that much more nebulous.  The control over at that site is more rigid than we practice here: after all, we do let the occasional gripe or pretending-to-be-atheism-curious post in here from christians. But on the site of the Farceur, the (six-figure) Sum, and the Holy Post(card), there’s no chance of thanking anybody for herpes, genocide, deformed babies or jock itch.

We reserve the right, at any time, to refuse or remove any material from the Site for any reason in our absolute discretion, including without limitation where the material is considered obscene, offensive, inappropriate, blasphemous, or infringing upon the rights of any third party.

And of course, you don’t own it any more once it’s up there. Somewhere an ad agency creative is laughing, while Jeebus’s zealous people do his or her work, in their own intent-but-often-inept way. I loved the one that had still managed to maintain its “insert your text here” template.

But, just in case you’re wondering why our toothy little friend is grinning, he’s seen that postcards are not the bottom of the barrel…

In the spirit of Mr Eternity, Arthur Stace who wrote the word Eternity in chalk on the streets of Sydney for many years, the Eternity Chalk Challenge wants church youth groups across NSW to write ‘Eternity’ on as many streets as they can.

The Challenge will run from 1-7 October 2009 in conjunction with the Jesus. All about life campaign running on TV and other media. The Challenge is a unique, fun opportunity for young people across NSW to do something special in the holidays, for a great purpose.

The youth group that scores the most points in the Eternity Chalk Challenge will win an amazing weekend away at the stunning Youthworks Port Hacking camp complex in Sydney.

A fantastic prize will be awarded to the most creative expression of ‘Eternity’ chalked on the pavement.

The prize for the most creative expression of ‘Eternity’ in chalk is a free overseas Mission Immersion trip sponsored by Jesus. All about life.

The individual prize is open to anyone aged 16 or over who is a member of a youth group registered for the Challenge.

I hope the minions of Jeebus keep it legal. It would also be a shame if they inspired others to edit, add, erase or parody the chalkings…

Meanwhile, there are plenty of things christians could be up to, quietly. And some of them are, probably. Shame about the guys with the bullhorn and the billboard.