Blame Mary Kay Kare; she's the one who told me about that site. I just want to know what she was looking for when she found it.

Heh. I'll tell if you will. What were you looking for when you found the plage snowglobes?

MKK

I'm actually a little disappointed. In my local Catholic bookstore, I can buy a watch with a picture of Jesus on the face, as well as ones with various saints' faces. These are nice, but they only have a scripture verse on the back.

Berni

Years ago, when traveling in Ecuador, I rode in a cab that had a gearshift shaped like a head of Jesus. It lit up whenever the driver braked.

This lends new meaning to "I brake for Jesus."

Assuming it had any old meaning, that is.

The Woolworth's in Denver (they used to say it was the world's largest--entrances on both sides of the block) had a wonderful section in the basement where you could get all sorts of religious supplies, like incense and spray cans that spritzed out good luck. Regrettably, I didn't purchase one of the handsomely mounted wiggle pictures of Jesus agonizing on the cross when I had the chance.

Last time I went, I headed back down there to look for the stuff, and none of it was there any more. I didn't have to leave empty-handed, though. I found a table of Mexican videotapes and picked up two. My favorite was _El Puf1o de los Muertos_ (hope the tilde over the n shows up), starring El Santo. He spends most of the movie with his shirt off and his mask on, riding a swamp boat up the river. He eventually meets up and fights with the Evil Girl with the Pronounced Body (a dual role, though the Good Girl with the Pronounced Body just isn't as interesting) and stuff ensues. The other movie was an actual art film with critical acclaim and everything.

But still. I could have had that insane wiggle picture. What could have possessed me? Oh well. One day, I'll find my last copy of the "Rapture" postcard and scan that, and we'll see what happens from there.

The main core of the company is to lift up the name of JESUS above every other name [...]

Shouldn't they be in the satellite manufacturing business? Or maybe deep space probes.

Kip, O ye of little faith --

Which Jesus wiggle-picture postcard was it that you wanted? Was it the one that showed Jesus-as-Mike Glicksohn hovering in the air over a waterfall? Or the one with the blond Jesus who clearly used heat curlers that morning, and who's flying a rose-garlanded cross in the commercial jet lanes? Or the face of Jesus/Shroud of Turin transformer? Or was it something else?

I may still have extra copies of the Rapture postcard, too. I still have my death-dealing postcard collection. Just wait until you see the folk-art Easter postcard showing the defeated Serpent with its neck clutched in the mighty teeth of the Easter Bunny.

Furthermore, I can get taerosol High John the Conqueror Good Luck Spray (along with many other fine devotional supplies) at any botanica in Brooklyn. Along Fifth Avenue, which is the next cross-street uphill of me, there's very nearly a botanica on every block.

Note: Rapture postcards and High John the Conqueror Good Luck Aerosol Spray don't tend to be sold in the same venues.

Mary Kay, I found the plaguedomes linked from a website that compiled predictions of the end of the world, a sort of multivalent countdown. I can't find it now, and I don't recall how I got to it.

Teresa, I don't remember which Jesus was on the cross. I remember something of a point of view looking up, and an angry red sky (Mars? nah, not enough arms on the cross), but perhaps I'm conflating two semi-memories (or 'semories').

I'm glad to hear you have Rapture postcards. Especially "spare" ones! When I think back on how profligate I was about sending those all over the place (with a note on the back that this is where people go who laugh at Jack T. Chick), and only ended up with one -- one that I cannot find... well, the only thing I can compare it to is finding a stack of postcards in a shop near Harvard, depicting the proto-Alfred E. Neuman grinning idiot with the caption "I'm voting for Roosevelt!" and only being able to afford two of them. Thirty-five cents each, and I only had enough cash in pocket for two of them!

I'm fairly sure that as soon as I turned my back on the store entrance, the whole place shimmered briefly and became a blank brick wall. You only get one chance for something like that.

Next time you're out, you can poke through my postcard collection. It's good, but not great. We had these cards on consignment at the comic shop where I worked. They were there for months, and the owner finally came back for them. I made an offer on the bunch, and he countered by letting me buy as many as I wanted for like a nickel each, and I got some nice linen cards and 'actual photo' cards of small towns in Colorado.

I also pick up any I see of the ones that say "We alligators get to bite lots of cute chicks in the keister here in CLEARWATER FLORIADA." Is it just my imagination, or is it always the same alligator and a different chick? Apologies for rambling.

My girlfriend collects Floaty pens (www.floaty.com). For her birthday a couple of years ago, I bought her the best Floaty ever: Jesus walking on the water.

I see from their website they also make an Ascension pen.

Teresa said:

"I still have my death-dealing postcard collection. Just wait until you see the folk-art Easter postcard showing the defeated Serpent with its neck clutched in the mighty teeth of the Easter Bunny."

Oh dear. Oh my goodness gracious. I'd consider it worthwhile to make a trip to NY just to see that. Unfortunately, my schedule is full for the next few months.

I found the link to the Jesus pens on Pagan Prattle, a page Feorag NicBride does which details religious insanities of *all* denominations.

This goes in the small category of Store Names That Are Sentences, which Bernadette & I discovered in Durham, NC, where there was a store called "Aaron Sells Furniture." The Wiz has, alas, fallen from those ranks.

I mentioned to Avram this evening that the other day, I saw a woman on Jay Street near my home, wearing a T-shirt with Tweety Bird, the cartoon character, holding a book with a cross on it, clearly intended to be a Bible, and with the caption: "Jesus is the TWEETEST name I know." Avram replied that Jesus would probably throw up at that. Soldiers for Christ know no shame.

"Deezus Tweist Fwowwed Up."

The place where I work sells Department 56, and I think 56 must be in some kind of trouble, the way they're going in for licensed tie-ins. Those guys want money, and I don't think Department 56 (makers of Snowbabies and other Cute Things) really would be paying it if they didn't have to.

One of their pieces shows two Snowbabies on either side of Tweety, who is, of course, staring straight at us with his huge, alien-like eyes. I don't know what the caption is, but I always think of it as "Ain't I duss da cutest widdle fing you ever taw?"

The sad thing, as animation writer David Gerstein pointed out today on a newsgroup, is that the recent incarnations of Tweety have him as a cute and helpless little birdie, instead of the sadistic bastard he was created as. Dey don't know him vewwy well, do they?

Dey don't know him at awwwwwl.

My favorite Jesus-themed t-shirt is the one that says:

Oh, by the way, heh heh, I do happen to have a wiggle picture of the Shroud of Turin that turns into a painting (thus proving simultaneously that the Shroud is genuine, and Jesus was a European who ate regularly).

"Jesus is coming: Quick! Look busy!" My second favorite version of this is, "...and boy, is He pissed!" Some (not all, mind) of the churches with the three sturdy crosses out front almost seem to be saying Jesus is coming -- and this time, we're ready!

Jesus coming, hide your heart girl.

I did not sign off on any of these products, they are all unlicensed.

I knew I shouldn't have signed the deal with the agent when I was at Worldcon last year. I thought I wasn't going to need one the way my last book sold, but publishers today just refuse to look at unagented submissions, no exceptions.

Nonsense, J. Lots of publishers take unagented submissions.

I hate to have to point this out, but while your last book may have been the best-selling reprint anthology of all time, it was still a reprint anthology.

Did you notice, in that list of roadside signs, that one of them was the "Our Heavenly Father's, Jesus' and Our Bake Shop"?

Weird, but at least the grammar and punctuation are correct.

I haven't seen it, but a friend of mine who returns to Alabama for family visits says he used to see a Sno-cone franchise run by some tract-pushing Christians called NONE IN HELL."

Somewhere out there is a James Morrow quote about "the ongoing war between the people who believe the Bible is an anthology and those who believe it is a collection".

dhdhdhfh