When asked if I believe in God, I usually answer with “Well, something got me through University.” At the engineering variety show night at Crazy Go Nuts University, I let them read my transcript as part of the between-act banter.
I accept the possibility that Jeebus might just have been a literary creation of some Israelis who got really high on ergot mold. He’d still be a good role model even if fictitious: after all, I count MacGyver, Encyclopedia Brown, Ferris Bueller and Columbo as my heroes too.
Let’s just say that Pascal is my bookie. And how can you disagree with a message that boils down to Bill and Ted’s credo, “Be excellent to each other”?
In spite of this, Christianity’s had a little bit of an image problem for a while. Some of the blame goes to the Americans. Don’t get me wrong: Americans are by and large wonderful people — at least part of my ancestry is American (I have blonde-haired blue-eyed blood relatives in Dayton, Ohio). Anyone who lives outside the U.S. knows that the Yanks have an incredible talent for becoming parodies of themselves. Had the Pilgrims been Buddhist, our friends to the south (as we call them in Canada) would’ve made even a guy a cool as Siddhartha Gautama look just as silly (and hey, lots of Western Buddhists are hard at work closing the silliness gap, particularly this chump).
Some of the blame goes to Creed. Their music makes me want to convert…to Devil worship.
But some of blame goes to a lack of good merch.
You can get really good Hindu T-shirts and Buddha pendants, but aside from some nice cross medallions, what do Christians have? Crap like this. (Admittedly, I’d be sad if Jack Chick stopped; he’s funny, even if unintentionally so.)
At least, until now.
X[alt]Gear sells some pretty cool stuff. Okay, maybe I won’t take notes in church like the suggest, but the notebooks seem pretty cool. The T-shirt designs are pretty nice, and unlike the Mormon prom fashions, they’ve got girlie Ts (“for Jesus’ girlz”, no less!). But the best thing — so good that I’m placing an order, seriously — is the ASCII art “Jesus fish” surfer dude neck thingy:
I realize that I’ve probably firmly entrenched myself in the Uncool Camp with this blog entry, but that don’t confront me none. I am, after all, an accordion player.
A tip of the hat to Kathy “Relapsed Catholic” Shaidle for pointing this one out.
Recommended Reading
The story behind the “Jesus Fish”.
Landover Baptist. Funny, funny reading.
Blogs:
- AKMA’s Random Thoughts
- Gideon Strauss (although he’s on hiatus right now, while he visits his homeland)
- Real Live Preacher
- Relapsed Catholic