Discussion (43)¬

1. Ophelia Benson says:

   January 2, 2013 at 11:28 pm

   Word missing in the first panel? “over”?

2. Ophelia Benson says:

   January 2, 2013 at 11:29 pm

   And HA! That’s hilarious.

3. Author says:

   January 2, 2013 at 11:29 pm

   Thanks, Ophelia. I noticed that, and corrected it, but it is taking forever to show up. Very frustrating!

4. E. A. Blair says:

   January 2, 2013 at 11:32 pm

   “Thank god the season of debauchery is…”

   Is over? Is here? Is being observed in the apartmetn upstairs and keeping me awake?

   I think a word got omitted from that first balloon.

5. jean-françois gauthier says:

   January 3, 2013 at 12:41 am

   not quite over, mo: can you spell “russia” with half a gallon of vodka in you? (most russians can’t either, though some give it an earnest try.)

   i say jesus’ spiel is much more consistent: live a long, boring and mostly-sexless life and you could find your way to a place where you will live a long, boring and sexless life. (you can even go sexless right here on this earth if you mary god and become a priest; work hard enough, you get to wear prada.)

6. emptyoysters says:

   January 3, 2013 at 1:08 am

   Love the comic, keep it up! I love reading it via my RSS reader, but the comic is no longer being included in your feeds. I would love it if you could fix that!

7. emptyoysters says:

   January 3, 2013 at 1:11 am

   Love the comic! For some reason, it doesn’t show up in my RSS reader anymore – I would love it even more if I could keep reading it in my reader!

8. Darwin Harmless says:

   January 3, 2013 at 1:53 am

   Great strip again, Author. Bravo. Unfortunately, a sexless life on earth is not the goal or expectation of all Islamists. http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2013/01/02/thats-not-rape-its-intercourse-marriage/

9. Darwin Harmless says:

   January 3, 2013 at 2:31 am

   Yes, hilarious. Irony is totally lost on some people.

10. jerry w says:

    January 3, 2013 at 5:42 am

    The attraction of the afterlife loses it’s glow a bit if you consider that if the 72 virgins weren’t good enough for their brothers, how attractive could they be?

11. Mike N says:

    January 3, 2013 at 7:33 am

    I like Walter’s (Jeff Dunham) comment:- “72 virgins? Hah, I’d prefer one slutty broad who knows what the hell she’s doing.”

12. The James Christ Story says:

    January 3, 2013 at 7:38 am

    Lovin the subtle product placement. Guinness, the drink of Prophets.
    In a Pub environment, would Pork Scratchings replace bread as J’s body or would scampy fries be more appropriate as he was the fisher of men? – whatever that means…

13. xxxFred says:

    January 3, 2013 at 9:41 am

    @ Mike N. Billy Connolly has a great take on this too: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IwooM4yhiiY&feature=player_embedded

14. eddy says:

    January 3, 2013 at 1:30 pm

    I wonder if they’ll get to eat pork in heaven. Maybe something that tastes exactly like it.

15. oldebabe says:

    January 3, 2013 at 5:54 pm

    Too funny. I howled.

16. Dan says:

    January 3, 2013 at 9:40 pm

    Those shallow temporary pleasures never sounded so appealing.

17. hotrats says:

    January 3, 2013 at 10:57 pm

    For some reason, Nassar ben Houdja is slow off the mark this week – he usually responds within hours. I do hope it’s due to extra effort over his rhymes and scansion, and nothing more serious. Oddly enough, although I don’t exactly look forward to his, shall we say highly idiosyncratic contributions, I do miss them when they’re not there.

18. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 4, 2013 at 12:30 am

    A flying start to the year, Author. Anybody else but you and I’d be worrying that the cartoonist had peaked far too soon.

    An old point I know, but an eternity of anything* would become unbearably tedious given long enough, with the possible exception of having very limited memory retention. Well, either that or an eternity of oblivion, since by its very definition we wouldn’t have to endure it (and is pretty much exactly what we’re all destined for anyway).
    Would it be greedy of me to want both eternity to play around in and the freedom to enter oblivion at my own leisure? Maybe with the option to come back if something comes along that’s so spectacular I’d just die if I missed it.

    *I was pondering whether an infinite number of universes to explore would keep me entertained for eternity, or whether the thrill of discovering new delights would itself become too dull to bear after long enough. I suppose a lot would depend on just how different each universe could possibly be.

    Hotrats, calm down, he’ll be here
    You’ll get your poem soon, m’dear.
    He needs a little time, you see
    To decide which Nassar he’s gonna be.

19. Jobrag says:

    January 4, 2013 at 11:44 am

    I must say the muslim paradise sounds a lot more fun than the Christian one, just praising The Lord throughout eternity, (unless anyone can point to some more fleshy delights enjoyed by the saved). Does Islam do deathbed conversion?

20. Tallgrass05 says:

    January 4, 2013 at 2:58 pm

    Zing!

21. Brother Daniel says:

    January 4, 2013 at 3:00 pm

    In the NT, there’s a story in which someone asks Jesus about a case of a woman who was (serially) married to 7 men, each of whom died. The question was: To which man will she be married in the afterlife? Jesus’s answer (“to none of them; marriage doesn’t happen there”) is somewhat ambiguous. While it has been traditionally interpreted as an indication that the afterlife is sexless, it could just as easily be interpreted as an indication that “free love” (if I may use the hippies’ euphemism) is a feature of the afterlife.

22. Suffolk Blue says:

    January 4, 2013 at 3:12 pm

    I have to confess that nowadays I always skip over the poetic contributions of NBH. It seems to me that his standpoint seems to waver as much as his rhyme and his scansion – or is that just me.

23. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 4, 2013 at 3:43 pm

    It’s not just you, Suffolk Blue. Nassar is an inveterate fence-sitter with a decidedly dodgy sense of balance, but that’s an improvement in itself as his earliest contributions – before he became J&M’s self-appointed poet-in-residence – were very strongly pro-Islam and we were the infidel enemy.
    His compositions may indeed be hit and miss, but he’s become as much a part of our little family here as anyone, and the comments would not be the same without him and his often torturous prose.

24. Andrea says:

    January 4, 2013 at 4:52 pm

    god jesus was a bit thick wasn’t he. The woman was married 7 times and they all died? Sounds to me like she was having none of that afterlife bollocks and helping herself to some heaven on earth. It doesn’t say if she had a big house and many camels does it? I bet she did

25. Jobrag says:

    January 5, 2013 at 3:06 am

    “and many camels does it?”
    At first glance I read that as camel toes, just the one I think.

26. Mahatma Coat says:

    January 5, 2013 at 9:38 am

    Boy Jobrag, are you going to cop it from Rebecca Watson!

27. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 5, 2013 at 2:01 pm

    Mahatma Coat, I can’t see Rebecca getting the hump over a camel joke.

    I’ll, er, get me coat. TAXI!

28. flippertie says:

    January 6, 2013 at 8:24 am

    Gets her goat, then gets his coat,
    ‘es a poet and dosen’t know it …..

29. hotrats says:

    January 6, 2013 at 11:32 am

    AoS:
    # the comments would not be the same without him and his often torturous prose. #

    Tortuous it may well be, but just because in all conscience you can’t call it poetry, doesn’t mean you can call it prose, which by definition has no metre. NBH’s metres are hopelessly faulty, but metre is his evident aim. His contributions are verse, no less than Ogden Nash or William McGonnagal. If you wanted to be critical, you could accurately call it doggerel, but prose is a slur too far.

30. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 6, 2013 at 4:48 pm

    Hotrats, mentioning Nassar and McGonnagal in the same sentence is surely insulting one of them. I’ll be damned if I can decide which one though!

    In other news, I see the CofE is continuing to do its bit for equality in the workplace. Gay men will now be allowed to be ordained into the bishopric, and one imagines that gay clergymen must be delighted that they can now aim for higher things in their careers.
    That thunerous rumble you might be hearing is a whole lot of closet doors being being thrown open.
    So, despite their glitch over women bishops, respect must be due to the newly enlightened, modern-thinking CofE, right?
    Er, wrong. Only celibate gay men need apply, suggesting that someone on high looked to the Church of Rome for a loophole and thought their celibacy clause an excellent compromise. After all, the Catholic priesthood’s tried and tested policy of enforced sexual repression never hurt anyone, did it?
    That noise like a thousand bomb blasts you might now be hearing is those same closet doors slamming shut again, as realisation hits that if they’re gay and sexually active, but also want to be (or remain being) bishops, CofE clergymen still have to be liars, either actively or by omission.
    The paradoxical CofE, where high-camp and homophobia go hand-in-hand. But only metaphorically, of course.

31. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 6, 2013 at 4:49 pm

    Whoops, that’s a very bold statement!

32. UncoBob says:

    January 7, 2013 at 10:45 pm

    Been away without a computer for a couple of weeks, so a pleasure to return to the current offering – for me the best for quite a while.

    Just one thing struck me in the last two strips: Mo thanks God in this episode, and in the last, Jesus says ‘For God’s sake…’. Doesn’t that defy some commandment or other, and shouldn’t they head off and stone themselves or burn each other at the stake or something?

33. hotrats says:

    January 7, 2013 at 11:21 pm

    Given that the average episcopal age in the CofE is 60, one wonders just how sexually active putative gay bishops would expect to be (but not too hard, because such mental images tend to linger unpleasantly in the psyche).

    I am reminded of Churchill’s response to a pompous speech on sexual restraint from the flabby, pear-shaped Lord Hailsham, during a Commons debate on the Profumo scandal:
    “When a life of self-indulgence has reduced a man to the shape of Lord Hailsham, then sexual continence requires only a sense of the ridiculous”.

34. hotrats says:

    January 7, 2013 at 11:51 pm

    The Synod are now being the killjoys
    To the hoping-to-be-bishops ladyboys
    For whom to remain celibate
    Means only solo to masterbate
    With lots of whipped cream and vibraty toys.

    Nassar ben Hotrats (well someone had to do it…)

35. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 8, 2013 at 12:37 am

    “hotrats says:
    Given that the average episcopal age in the CofE is 60, one wonders just how sexually active putative gay bishops would expect to be”

    Thanks for that, hotrats. Shall I send the bill for my out-of-hours emergency psychotherapy session directly to your accountant?
    Aside from the horrific mental images, that reminded me of two things. One was the ancient joke involving pensioners and spray starch with the punchline “The I lay on top, pop it in, and we pray for an earthquake”, and the other was the old Irish saying “May you live for as long as you’d like to, and like to for as long as you live”.
    Oh, and your rhyme? It seems that there is an art to bad poetry after all. Come back soon Nassar, and show NbHotrats how it’s really done 😉

36. Suffolk Blue says:

    January 8, 2013 at 11:25 am

    It seems a shame to delve too deeply into the Gay Bishops debate, as I’m sure that the Author will delight us with a Toon at a later date.

    However, I was just wondering if it’s something about having sex with men that God disapproves of and that’s why neither sexually active gay men nor straight women are bish material.

37. Suffolk Blue says:

    January 8, 2013 at 11:27 am

    Truly abysmal verse, hotrats, top work! Shame you couldn’t squeeze in a line about bashing the bishop.

38. Darwin Harmless says:

    January 8, 2013 at 12:31 pm

    Bashing a bishop is simply not done
    Not even in fun
    But two bishops bashing, that’s something else
    My head hurts, I think I must run.

    I never thought I’d say it, but NBH, I miss you.

39. yhwh says:

    January 8, 2013 at 12:48 pm

    AoS, my mind always boggles when the CoE makes announcements about what gay priests may and may not now do.

    I studied (a scientific discipline) at a university college which trains a substantial portion of all CoE ordinands. A remarkable number of them were, and have always been gay. Even the straight ones used to camp it up for a joke and, when one of the deans retired, a notice appeared on the faculty notice board reading “retired priest seeks small cottage in the country”. One of the ordinands explained this to me, in my naivety.

    Everyone in the CoE who is not in active denial knows the situation. The ladies of the parish may have been baffled why such a truly nice man as Father Jeremy never found a good woman, but his bishop was never under any such illusions.

    “CoE admits 25% of bishops are gay already”. Now that would be a headline. The church probably needs a truth and reconciliation committee rather than another synod.

40. Acolyte of Sagan says:

    January 8, 2013 at 5:28 pm

    yhwh, re “Everyone in the CoE who is not in active denial knows the situation”
    There are none so blind, and all that.
    “The church probably needs a truth and reconciliation committee rather than another synod”
    Or to be dragged kicking and screaming out of the 17th Century.

41. IanB says:

    January 8, 2013 at 6:28 pm

    hotrats says: “I am reminded of Churchill’s response to a pompous speech on sexual restraint from the flabby, pear-shaped Lord Hailsham, during a Commons debate on the Profumo scandal:
    “When a life of self-indulgence has reduced a man to the shape of Lord Hailsham, then sexual continence requires only a sense of the ridiculous”.

    Whilst sounding like a Churchillian quote it would appear to be from this chap http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reginald_Paget,_Baron_Paget_of_Northampton according to Hansard

42. hotrats says:

    January 9, 2013 at 8:46 am

    Thanks IanB, I stand corrected – on the net the quote is variously atributed to Churchill and Lord Balfour (who repeated Paget’s remarks on television) but Hansard confirms the source as Paget:
    http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/commons/1963/jun/17/security-mr-profumos-resignation

43. Mohamed Amir Ayari says:

    February 12, 2013 at 3:10 pm

    it’s not funny , it’s not true .. it’s ridiculous !