and without halos the whole scene somehow lost its religious feeling and started looking like three Swedes and three beatniks in bathrobes committing suicide together in a sauna, so
tee hee hee hee hee!
I take the Bible Sister Durrel gave me, flip it open at random, and look to see what God’s Good Book has to say to me today. My first flip is typical: “And
Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons
…
And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen, and asses …”
Ugh. I try again: “
And they made an end of all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month …”
Okay. That’s enough words. Time for illustrations. I hunt down every color plate in my Bible one by one, bending each at the corner so I can find it again. Then I decide to conduct an award ceremony among them …
First category? How about Stupidest Picture?
Ah. Our first nominee is one of Jesus trying to drive a pack of money-lenders out of the temple with a whip about the size of a spaghetti noodle. And here’s another candidate: an idiotic-looking Peter staggering across the water, his mouth wide open, his arms splayed out like a toddler’s, while Christ just watches, grinning like a mean big brother, rowing backwards in the boat. But hey! The surprise winner, I see, has just got to be Noah’s Ark. It seems like the typical illustration at first—just a big wooden barge perched on a mountaintop, with the rainbow arching over it and a puddle-pocked landscape looking soggy but fairly inviting down below. But soon as I look more closely it hits me: when Noah and the animals get around to stepping out the Ark door, they’re all going to fallabout four thousand feet straight down this humongous cliff and land splat in a pile of big sharp rocks.
Next category: Sexiest Picture. But in Bibles, this one’s always tough. My first nominee is Salome, standing in front of King Herod flashing a nice pair of dancer’s legs—but the head of John the Baptist bleeding all over the TV tray in her hands cancels the legs out fast. Here’s one of a Delilah, happily hacking Samson’s hair off, with a face a little like Sophia Loren’s—but it’s Samson who’s got by far the showier legs and breasts in the picture. That leaves just one other illustration with any amount of skin showing: the old standby, Eve and Adam in The Garden. They’re stark naked, which you’d think would help, but their backs are to the camera, and Adam’s lumpy body makes it darned easy to believe that God made him just the other morning out of a big wad of clay. On close inspection there does seem to be a sexy area on Eve at first—a nice little place where her naked waist curves in, then out again, as it works its way downward. But right where the crack in her bottom should start the trusty bushes rush up and wreck the view. It’s not the bushes that totally luke the thing for me, though. It’s Eve’s hair. Not only is it egg-yolk yellow, it’s all teased and ratted up, as if Uncle Marv had just been working her over at the Butee Bar up in Spokane …
I’m not sure what the word
sexy
even means sometimes. I don’t even
care
what it means, normally. It’s the kind of thing you think about at church, though, because there’s nothing else to do. In the end I pretend I’m a girl just long enough to give the award to Samson.
Best Picture? Now this one’s easy. It’s one of David, all the way. Not the king, just the kid. All he’s doing is walking along by a stream, a stick in one hand, a sheep across his shoulders, the slingshot he’ll eventually nail Goliath with dangling from his belt. I suppose the big meadow he’s crossing could be the green pasture he gets made to lie down in before he heads on over to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but the illustration doesn’t make you think of that. It doesn’t
tee hee hee hee hee!
I take the Bible Sister Durrel gave me, flip it open at random, and look to see what God’s Good Book has to say to me today. My first flip is typical: “And
Doeg the Edomite turned, and he fell upon the priests, and slew on that day fourscore and five persons
…
And Nob, the city of the priests, smote he with the edge of the sword, both men and women, children and sucklings, and oxen, and asses …”
Ugh. I try again: “
And they made an end of all the men that had taken strange wives by the first day of the first month …”
Okay. That’s enough words. Time for illustrations. I hunt down every color plate in my Bible one by one, bending each at the corner so I can find it again. Then I decide to conduct an award ceremony among them …
First category? How about Stupidest Picture?
Ah. Our first nominee is one of Jesus trying to drive a pack of money-lenders out of the temple with a whip about the size of a spaghetti noodle. And here’s another candidate: an idiotic-looking Peter staggering across the water, his mouth wide open, his arms splayed out like a toddler’s, while Christ just watches, grinning like a mean big brother, rowing backwards in the boat. But hey! The surprise winner, I see, has just got to be Noah’s Ark. It seems like the typical illustration at first—just a big wooden barge perched on a mountaintop, with the rainbow arching over it and a puddle-pocked landscape looking soggy but fairly inviting down below. But soon as I look more closely it hits me: when Noah and the animals get around to stepping out the Ark door, they’re all going to fallabout four thousand feet straight down this humongous cliff and land splat in a pile of big sharp rocks.
Next category: Sexiest Picture. But in Bibles, this one’s always tough. My first nominee is Salome, standing in front of King Herod flashing a nice pair of dancer’s legs—but the head of John the Baptist bleeding all over the TV tray in her hands cancels the legs out fast. Here’s one of a Delilah, happily hacking Samson’s hair off, with a face a little like Sophia Loren’s—but it’s Samson who’s got by far the showier legs and breasts in the picture. That leaves just one other illustration with any amount of skin showing: the old standby, Eve and Adam in The Garden. They’re stark naked, which you’d think would help, but their backs are to the camera, and Adam’s lumpy body makes it darned easy to believe that God made him just the other morning out of a big wad of clay. On close inspection there does seem to be a sexy area on Eve at first—a nice little place where her naked waist curves in, then out again, as it works its way downward. But right where the crack in her bottom should start the trusty bushes rush up and wreck the view. It’s not the bushes that totally luke the thing for me, though. It’s Eve’s hair. Not only is it egg-yolk yellow, it’s all teased and ratted up, as if Uncle Marv had just been working her over at the Butee Bar up in Spokane …
I’m not sure what the word
sexy
even means sometimes. I don’t even
care
what it means, normally. It’s the kind of thing you think about at church, though, because there’s nothing else to do. In the end I pretend I’m a girl just long enough to give the award to Samson.
Best Picture? Now this one’s easy. It’s one of David, all the way. Not the king, just the kid. All he’s doing is walking along by a stream, a stick in one hand, a sheep across his shoulders, the slingshot he’ll eventually nail Goliath with dangling from his belt. I suppose the big meadow he’s crossing could be the green pasture he gets made to lie down in before he heads on over to the Valley of the Shadow of Death, but the illustration doesn’t make you think of that. It doesn’t
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