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Latest in Making Light’s ongoing series of religious inscrutabilia: Custom Jesus KING OF KINGS GI Joe action figure. Mary Kay Kare found it on eBay. It’s too late to bid on it, but there’s still time to contemplate and marvel:
You are bidding on the greatest figure ever made! Now your 12 inch figures can have salvation and redemption from the one and only SON OF GOD. This figure was hand sculpted, cast in resin, hand painted, clearcoated and epoxied onto a 21st Century figure. The figure was done in the likeness of the late actor Jeffrey Hunter, known for His incredible portrayal of Christ in the movie “King of Kings”. The figure has interchangeable hands (3 included)and comes with a Holy Grail cup. Stand included. MONEY ORDERS in United States currency only. No personal checks.It went for $325.
I announced here back on 11 July 2001 that I’d settled—to my satisfaction, at least—the question of whether The Internet Changes Everything: It doesn’t. What prompted this decision was discovering that it’s a rare week in which someone on eBay isn’t auctioning off a bit of the True Cross.
At the time I posted that, there were three bits of the True Cross up for sale (excuse me: The reliquaries were for sale; the relics just happened to come with), plus bits of SS. Agnes, Anthony of Padua, Apollonia, Blaise, Catherine of Alexandria, Claire, Constantia, Didier, Dominic, Donatus, Felix, Francis of Assisi, “Francisci Solani” (?), Leonidas, and Romain, plus a bit of the Blessed Virgin’s veil and a relic of the Holy Lance.
That wasn’t an unusual week. Lots of relics changing hands on eBay. But this is the first time I’ve heard of someone selling off the Holy Grail—even the GI Joe version.
>> It went for $325.
This round to Cobra Commander, I think.
Though if I were David McCallum, I should be quite put out by all this.
I thought that eBay prohibited the sale of human body parts and remains. ("The cryogenic container is what is for auction. It just happens to contain a kidney fresh from a tourist in Las Vegas.")
I should have mentioned when I sent Teresa the url. I found on Feorag NicBride's Pagan Prattle site. All kinds of good relgious excess of all denominations.
MKK
But does Jesus have a Kung Fu Grip(tm)?
(Hmmmm..... I have a feeling this is the worst possible place on the Internet to be posting obscure one-liners based on TV commercials for toys popular on children's TV in the New York Metropolitan Area ca. 1970.)
(Okay, not the worst possible place. An Amish Web site would be the worst.)
TRUE SALVATION CAN'T BE BOUGHT!
TWELVE APOSTLES, THAT'S A LOT!
Doesn't that make you feel more at home, Mitch?
Now of course if it were a fantasy novel it would turn out that our hero, a mild-mannered, unassuminng sort of fellow, would order what he thought was a GI Joe version of the Holy Grail, only it would turn out that...
Worst, in that no one will know what you're talking about? The Kung-Fu Grip™ was a national ad for GI Joe. I prefered the Steve Austin (Six Million Dollar Man, not Stone Cold) action figure, with the ratcheting bionic arm and fisheye-lens bionic eye.
So, um, if you buy seven of these figures, can they be joined together to form a giant evil-fighting George W. Bush robot?
Signs and Wonders, NYC Division:
The Casting Out of the Dodgers
The Sermon in Bryant Park
The Transfiguration of Frank Perdue
The Walk to Governor's Island
St. Thomas Carvel's "Loaf and Fishie Puss"
Restoring the Roman Soldier's Torn Earlobe
Transforming the Water into Egg Cream
"He among you who is without sin, let him think of parking here."
Thou art the man, verily, and with gas do you cook.
"Fishie Puss?"
Don't you mean Cookie Puss, Brother Ford?
Of course, Cookie Puss's face was made from the body of Fudgy the Whale, who's kind of a fish, Biblically speaking.
Ray.
TRUE SALVATION CAN'T BE BOUGHT!
TWELVE APOSTLES, THAT'S A LOT!
Doesn't that make you feel more at home, Mitch?
Ray - Burma Shave.
Alan - Yep, a doll action figure where the chief play value was you could look through the back of his head! Whose brainstorm was that?
John M. Ford - The miraculous thing about the St. Thomas Carvel "Loaf and Fishie Puss" is that it would be shaped EXACTLY like the clown, Santa, Cookie Puss, and Fudgie the Whale ice cream cakes. (Did the clown have a name? Was Cookie Puss the clown, was the clown and/or Cookie Puss the same thing as the father's day cake? my memory of these points of theology is fading.)
Mitch: Cookie Puss was an winsome _alien_. Designed to cash in on the popularity of E.T.
I'm pretty sure that Fudgie the Whale was the first; the primal being of which the others are avatars. Cetacean with a Thousand Frosting Schemes.
I miss flying saucers myself.
Oh, and almost forgot:
KING TO CITY: RISE UP AND WALK
WHIPSWINGING NAZARENE IN SHEKELFLINGING TEMPLE
I can see it now. There's going to be a whole new round of those stories about the curious object found in a quaint old shop; only now it's going to be bought on eBay.
Of course, if the curious object is found on eBay, rather than the quaint old shop, then you miss out on the musty smell of the shop, the other knicknacks (some of which seem to MOVE strangely when glimpsed out of the corner of the eye), the musty elderly proprietor who mutters to himself in an eldritch tongue, and the fact that, when the protagnoist tries to return to the shop, he finds that it's an empty lot--been empty for years.
But you have the possibility of the following exchange:
WIZARD: "How didst thou find the Sacred Spatula of Sham-Ru? I was unable to acquire it, though I did engage in mortal combat with its dragon guardian and the Eight-Headed Soltort of Shomvath!"
PERKY GIRL APPRENTICE: "Bought it on eBay! And, look, they threw in a set of 'N Sync Bobble-head dolls free!"
(Actually, I think they used a gag like that on the TV show "Angel.")
Protagnoist
protagnosis
protagnost(i)
protagnuist
protagnu
....Don't mind me. I usually tape over my recorded episodes of Angel, but I saved the one where Wesley summoned Baron Samedi into an animated BigBoy hamburger sign.
"Protagnoist." It's how all the cool kids are spelling it this year.
Ken Hite wrote about eBay in America's Online Goblin Market, a Suppressed Transmissions essay. Pyramid is well worth the $15 annual subscription cost just for the ST, in my opinion.
I keep waiting for my Amazon Gold Box to offer me something legendary or unusual, such as a Golem, or a pane of slow glass, or 150 frozen sapient coyote zygotes*.
So far it's just had power tools, childrens' clothing, and gourmet cookware.
* For my personal Army of Darkness.
I wonder if Ebay has a copy of the Protagnostic Gospels?
Who was it who posted a while back about how lawyers are now using Ebay for evidence? Some lawyer bought an unopened pack of [some cigarette brand] from [some important year] so that he could show a jury how it was labeled.
Or was that something I heard on the radio? Memory...rolled trouser bottoms.
*LOL* That reminds me of a conversation my parents had a few years back:
DAD: I grow old...I grow old....
MOM: Oh god, he's going to cuff his pants again.
I once wrote a poem that had the following lines in the middle:
I eat peaches, I'm not afraid.
The mermaids sing to me. I try not to listen;
They want me to drown.