| | Jesus LubeLife, for most of us who aren't boring shut-ins, is often full of strange moments of sheerly iconographic irony, prone to illustrating the fucked-up dichotomy between the separate and subjective realities that most people believe in, or if I scrap the pretentiousness for a second, just showing how fucked-up the world is.
So on my stroll through the United Nations plaza on my way to go into the depths of this city, I stopped to spit on France on the little globe etched into the ground (as is my custom) and then when I look up, I see two things that this planet has in an absurd abundance scattered around; a used condom lying in a sticky latex puddle of itself, and a cast-off pamphlet for some religious group, culty "believe now or die in sin!" or otherwise.
I mean, talk about fucking strong symbolism.
It almost perfectly sums up the disturbingly two-faced American attitudes relating to faith and sexuality, and that conflicting battleground between them, trying to balance what we supposedly want as opposed to what we supposedly believe.
Admit it. Sometimes those creepy old men in cheap suits holding placards reading "Jesus Christ Loves You" bombarding you with scripture quotes while trying to hand out cheap environmentally unfriendly pamphlets about how we're all taking the highway to Hell unless we make a quick turn at the Savior off-ramp (or just tiny little Bibles with incomprehensible print) have a disturbingly alike feverous pitchman's quality to it, like they really don't give that much of a fuck about their Lord, they're just trying to sell him to as many people as possible...and they're matched oddly evenly by the greasy guys in ugly suits with creepy facial hair handing out fliers for All Night All Penetration All Girls All Toys implying you'll experience the most overwhelming hard-on of you life if you shell out some bucks to watch a bored girl with implants shimmy up and down some frighteningly oversize accessory. If you switched their products, you think they'd both sell the reversed boobs and Bibles with that same snake-oil intensity? Is ideology so important as making the sale? Soldiers for Christ and People For Larry Flynt fighting for the contents of your wallet.
It'd be a lot more showing of the strength of human nature if they were actually fighting for what they believed in rather than endless scourging out the last strips of cash from people's lust for flesh or salvation, but since half the PTL club seems to be caught in some scandal involving a lot of lube and a stacked secretary straight outta Christ-Camp and there's so many priest molestation references in today's culture that both sides have their own sexcapades and seem to have experienced a bit of terminal fucking overlap.
Soon the only people who will be seeing God will see Him because they picked up something nasty in a brothel in the middle of nowheresville.
But while the gray area remains mostly shady, for the rest of us nothing's ever subtle in being caught in this propaganda duel to control the biggest billboards and most posters that flood our eyes every time we step back into culture. Where not only does Mr. Crown-Of-Thorns-though-that's-very-last-season Jesus Saves, but Members Save Half Off and whatever inappropriate creation of filth they're saving half off of, Jesus seriously disapproves of. Paraphernalia loosely related to religion and sex toys clashing in the market while adult superstores are built next to churches. Guerrilla warfare starts upgrading to trenches and demilitarized zones of people who don't have the money to support. Not long before they start firebombing each other or trying to annoy the hell out of each other with that endless submission of proselytizing recruitment or just the power of sales, sales, sales! |
| | Posted 6/24/2008 8:45 PM - 793 views - 96 comments
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