Take the skinheads bowling - Camper van Beethoven 1985

Must see: Take the skinheads bowling, remembering the Shout Bros in the Sandringham Hotel Enmore, circa 1991

Mark has skillz

FDM - compulsory viewing.

Christina Sornito

My excellent Coney Island tour guide, Christina Sornito has a fieldwork blog in the Philippines. I recommend very highly that you paste her url or atom feed into your google reader (or whatever feed reader you use)and keep up with the stuff. She promises to write about Islands, which is gonna make us all pine for those sunshine days...

http://recordingangels.blogspot.com/

and its really not just the place to go in search of pirates

Jesus Trinketizaton

This disturbingly interesting post is from youth worker Mark Oestreicher. The convolutions of owning and believing are curious indeed. I normally would not bother with god-botherin' types, but this is almost authorisation from above when he wants to get the law involved in terminologies/normative ideal typologies or whatever we might call em, that I am prone to use on the main pages of this blog, am I right? I reckon he can go ahead and copywrite "Trinketization of Jesus", but I do hope (and pray?) he will give me a free chain to put on the altar to Trinketization that I keep in my office at Goldsmiths. Whatever the ins and outs on smoking with the lord and so on, I think the best bit is the comment on the ipod picture by Patrick... Here is Mark O's post in its glorous entirety:

"a clarification on
the trinketization of jesus,
and, this doesn’t qualify as
jesus junk"

Friday July 06th 2007, 9:56 am
Filed under: church, humor

"so, you may know that i post these fairly irregular “jesus junk of the month” awards. they’re not monthly, in case you haven’t noticed. deal with it.

people mostly find them annoying or hilarious (as i do). but occasionally, i recieve a comment or email from someone who wonders why i feel the need to point out this stuff, because “it’s just good people”, and “can’t you just leave them alone and not buy it?” no, sorry. first, i think it’s funny stuff. but even moreso, i have a deep level of disdain for what i’m officially naming “the trinketization of jesus” (i just copyrighted that, and will be selling keychains with that phrase embossed on them in a few weeks). i’m not opposed to all products that have a christian angle to them; just those that cross the semi-fuzzy line into trinket-land. tchotchkes for jesus.

here are a few of my ‘favorites’:
the colors of faith duckey
p31 dolls
‘we are fishermen’ jesus figurines
weddings on water houseboat chapel (that’s a BIG trinket!)
the fire bible
‘your best life now’ board game
gospel golf balls
the jesus pan
jesus as a teenager painting

that said, i have a bit of hypocrisy on this subject. here it is: my stomach does not turn when the trinketization is done by someone outside christianity (most of the time). in fact, it’s at that point that i sometimes even want the product! yes, they are often kitchze. but that’s part of their charm! i bought a christian friend who smokes an ashtray with jesus’ face on it, and the phrase, “jesus hates it when you smoke”. i still think these bible jump drives are kinda fun. if they made this cross mp3 player, i might want one. i love wearing the t-shirt a friend made for me with a classical painting of jesus wearing a larry-the-cucumber t-shirt, or the one with a classical painting of jesus wearing a ys t-shirt.

and in that vein: i cannot give this “hymn book leather book cover for ipod” the coveted jjotm award. if it were in a christian bookstore, i’d disdain it. but created by a company called “suck, u.k.”, somehow i love it. sorry. my bad. jesus is probably rolling his eyes in my direction right now".

(ht to seth for the ipod cover link)

5 Comments so far
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the best part of that hymn book ipod case is that in the picture, the selected tune is a gorillaz track. from the album ‘demon days’. classic.

Comment by patrick 07.06.07 @ 11:53 am

Makes sense to me. This stuff kills me. Christian bottled water? I mean, seriously … let’s take the greatest gift in the history of all time, a relationship with God, and try to make money on it any way we can. Nobody is getting a testa-mint (Christian candy), and finally realizing they need a savior. I always try to explain to believers that this stuff makes them look like the extreme Star Trek fans. The ones that everyone else thinks is weird because they have bumper stickers, t-shirts, and Vulcan candy (which, by the way, I would totally buy in a heart beat). In other words, it only attracts other Star Trek geeks - to the rest of the world, it’s a giant “steer clear” sign!

Comment by Matthew McNutt 07.06.07 @ 2:11 pm

Marko - you should see the Youtube I’ve come across entitled Jesus Junk

Comment by Gman 07.06.07 @ 3:12 pm

This really does make a good ipod disguise. Someone sees an ipod on the seat of your car, he/she may take it. But who’s gonna nick a hymn book. Not b/c its a “religious” item (God will strike you dead, if you steal a hymn book!) - but your average joe just isn’t in the market for hymns these days.

Comment by doodah 07.06.07 @ 5:22 pm

The Jesus bobblehead doll is still my favorite. I received one a few months ago from ShipofFools.

Comment by Jimmy_C 07.06.07 @ 6:57 pm

No Borders Gatwick in Sept.

An Invitation To The Gatwick No Border Camp 2007

From 19th to 24th September 07 we will gather at Gatwick Airport for
the first No Border Camp in the UK. This camp will be a chance to work together to try and stop the building of a new detention centre, and togather ideas for how to build up the fight against the system of migration controls.

Gatwick Aiport - The Border Point
Gatwick is a border in the middle of Britain. People arrive hereeveryday. People are forcibly deported from here everyday. It is a place where people are imprisoned for unlimited lengths of time withouttrial, where people are forced to hide underground and be invisible,where people are treated as criminals for the 'crime' of crossing the border.In Britain, the government has recently announced its intention tobuild a new detention centre, near Tinsley House, another detentioncentre at Gatwick airport. This will be another in a long line of barbarous prisons across the world, imprisoning people who migrate.Unless we stop it from being built.Not far from Gatwick there are other border fortifications: theimmigration reporting centre at Croydon, the airline companies who charter deportation flights and the ID Interview centre in Crawley. Anda few miles away are the border posts at Dover and Folkstone, wherefear of detection by the border police forces people to risk theirlives hiding under lorries, or in suffocating containers.
While the physical borders get fortified, governments also tighten upthe internal controls: from international databases to videosurveillance, biometric ID cards to electronic tagging. Just recently,the UK government has announced the introduction of the Sirene System.
This will grant Britain access to the SIS (Schengen InformationSystem), a EU wide police database for refugees and migrants, plannedto be extended to keep protesters from moving around.
A Tactics Laboratory
How does daily life, from the need to work for survival to the welfaresystem, reinforce these borders? How can we fight against the commonacceptance of borders, the idea of an inside and outside? How can we claim freedom of movement as a basic right? How do we assert ourability to decide whether to go or stay, according to our needs anddesires, not the needs of the state or the economy? How can we escapecontrol, and start building a movement powerful enough to challenge the
divisions between people?We need to share knowledge with those who have broken these borders,the hackers who escape control, those who survive without work andmoney, those who fight the detention system , those who question identities, those who have learnt to organise themselves withouthierarchy or divisions.Camp(aign)ing Against BordersThis camp is continuing the tradition of the No Border camps across the world since the late 1990s, and like the camps taking place this yearin the Ukraine in August and on the US/Mexican border in November. Itwill be a space to share information, skills, knowledge andexperiences. A place to plan actions together against the system of borders which divides us.We are aware that the struggles for "no borders" reach far beyond "openborders". Without borders the idea of states will become obsolete,without states the national economies will be history. In a world without borders, nobody will ask for papers anymore.The camp will also be a laboratory of political and practicalself-organisation. The camp will consist only of people's contributionsto this. We are aware of the borders which divide ourselves from each other, be it sex, class, race, nationality, or whatever. The bordercamps are experiments in how to overcome these artificial andseparating identities.
No Borders
No Borders is a network of groups struggling for the freedom of movement for all and an end to all migration controls. We call for aradical movement against the system of control, dividing us intocitizens and non-citizens.We demand the end of the border regime for everyone, including ourselves, to enable us to live another way, without fear, racism andnationalism.
We move, we meet. We talk, we fight. Come camp with us.

< http://noborders.org.uk/>

And an idea for something to bring to the Camp... Let's bring a Uni. See here.
.