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August 24th, 2022
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Jesus & Mo (the characters) are absurd, blinkered, and oddly very sweet. J&M (the cartoon) is brilliant: sharp, delicious, irresistible.
Salman Rushdie
Jesus and Mo cartoons are wonderfully funny and true.
Richard Dawkins
Jesus and Mo make the world a better place, bless their little hearts.
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In a world defined by outrage and offence and liberal spinelessness, Jesus and Mo is a treasure, whose value we should never fail to recognize. Read them. Laugh. And think.
Kenan Malik
...a philosophical confrère.
Jerry Coyne
The brilliant, celebrated, freaking hilarious atheist comic strip ...
Greta Christina
...rays of sanity in a befuddled world.
Keri Hulme
The liveliest depictions of Muhammad currently available...
Malise Ruthven
J & Mo is the funniest and most consistently thought-provoking cartoon strip on the Net. In a saner world, it would run in a major newspaper.
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Consistently amusing, frequently thought-provoking and often heart-warming.
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Jesus & Mo is one of the most wonderful things on the internet..
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Wittily captures much of the absurdity of religious apologetics.
Mano Singham
...wonderfully brilliant and witty.
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Too good for words.
Maryam Namazie
The Eric and Ernie of monotheism.
Tom Holland
The most impious double act since Sodom and Gomorrah.
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Often hilarious, frequently wry, these cartoons do what all the best cartoons do: they tell the truth through humour.
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...a wonderfully acid British cartoonist...
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I love the scrappy mockery of Jesus and Mo. Freedom of speech includes the freedom to mock any person, any thing, any activity, and any belief -- and J&M stands up for this unflinchingly
Richard Stallman
...empowering, important and deeply progressive, not to mention hilarious...
Council of Ex-Muslims
Jesus & Mo is my go to example of how to do tasteful, beautiful religious satire.
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...humor is humor and this cartoonist doesn't have it. Karl Giberson
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One positive aspect of Christianity is that it doesn’t make weird physical demands on its believers. Within the bounds of local custom, they can wear what they like, cut their hair as they like, and pray silently without the need for acrobatics. This makes it easy for them to blend in with and pass as non-believers if they so choose … which makes it easier to unobtrusively slide into unbelief if they so choose. (Well, this is a positive thing from my point of view anyway. From the POV of the Defenders of the Faith maybe not so much).
Yeah, just as long as they don’y proselytize on the pavement of course….
“Heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie!
Heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie!
Heads-down, no-nonsense, mindless boogie!
Bang your head on the floor!”
– thanks to Alberto y los Trios Paranoais
Ahh.. so that’s the reason for the headgear – shock absorber…
JB. Whatabout Nuns and Monks?
What about Mormons? They surely consider themselves Christians, even if most other Christians don’t agree. And I have a vague memory that they are expected to wear funny undergarments.
In Texas, a preacher says that women wearing trousers constitutes cross dressing. He says women should burn their trousers. (Pants in US usage…. No giggling. 🙂) He wants men to throw away their wives’ pants. He also wants gays to be executed.
https://boingboing.net/2022/08/24/christian-women-must-now-burn-their-pants-says-texas-preacher-video.html
Christians can become nuns or monks if they want to, but it isn’t required. Mormons are sort of, well, Christian adjacent. There may be particular Christian sects that have requirements of some sort, but that would be unusual enough that none come to mind.
Christopher Hitchens was asked if he had ever prayed. He said, “Yes. For a hard on.”
Hitchens was a heavy smoker, so i’m not suprised he suffered impotence. I have never smoked and noticed that the fitter you get the harder your totem pole gets…thats why professional footballers can’t keep it in their pants….good quote though…made me laugh…
Jb, strict catholics can’t eat meat on fridays…that why fish and chip shops are busy, sort of a tradition, friday night is chippy night here in sunny Swinton…
M27Holts: Friday night is chipper night here in Aberdeen as well, and I think pretty well everywhere in the UK. I don’t think they have our kind of chippers in USA or Canada. As the good doctor may remind us, the Netherlands are the birthplace of chips (or was it Belgium?!), although they don’t have the fish & chips tradition – they prefer mayonnaise or peanut sauce with their chips, if I remember correctly. Of course, our transatlantic cousins call them “French” Fries!
SoG, or ‘freedom fries’ when they are peed off with the cheese-eating surrender monkeys. Chips to the colonials are what we call crisps, although I did once have fish n chips in DC and they weren’t at all bad. Sadly the essential mushy peas are a largely undiscovered delicacy. I’ve had the complete English dish in Qatar and they were excellent although the equivalent in Mysore with a dull grey river fish and besan batter really is best forgotten!
I’ve found that when restaurants in the US and Canada have fish and chips on the menu, they do call it “fish and chips”, perhaps also describing it as battered fried fish and French fries. For example, this common restaurant chain:
https://www.applebees.com/en/menu/seafood/hand-battered-fish-and-chips
More examples: https://kevsbest.com/best-fish-and-chips-in-tampa-fl/amp/
The fish is likely to be any mild white fish, not necessarily cod.
That’s only context in which we use chips instead of fries, probably due to the dish being well known.
In the last couple of decades, fish and chips have become popular in brew pubs especially, and in pubs in general.
The term ‘colonials’ involves quite a bit of unappreciated irony, considering how much British culture is foreign in origin. (That’s actually a good thing, as it shows an openness to advance and change, unlike some cultures.)
About mushy peas:
I’ve had mushy peas once in Tampa and once in Yeovil in the UK. You can keep them. I actually do like peas very lightly cooked, but mushy peas seem to have been run through a de-flavorizer.
I’ve heard of mushy peas but never encountered them, and respondents are not very clear on what exactly it is. Peas can of course be obtained fresh or dried. The dried variety is typically used for soup, and it could be reduced to a mash – as “refried” beans from bean soup, in Mexican cuisine – but some respondents were under the impression it’s made from fresh peas.
Fish and chips is a well known menu item in the US, but possibly for many years mainly in establishments that specialized in it. A local restauranteur and notable personality in my city started his first fish and chips place in 1938. Cod is the usual, but some places may use halibut or ling cod.
Anyone who thinks mushy peas are flavourless either has compromised taste buds or has been sold a pup. I have been given squashed garden peas which were advertised as mushy peas in the Cotswolds in this country but it is an area where a snobbish attitude could well consider the real thing rather infra dig.
Mushy peas have to be made with the marrowfat variety which are steeped in a bicarb solution and simmered to a consistency approaching what would be familiar in pea and ham soup. They are probably the most flavoursome variety and the perfect accompaniment to proper fish and chips, which should be either cod or haddock.
Well it is said “There is no PEAS for the wicked”….haha
Proper mushy peas being a northern English delicacy and with proper gravy on your chips….puts hair on your chest…or so my old granny espoused…
Gravy? With fish? No.
No. I have curry sauce on my fish and chips….tiz gravy with a babbies-yead or meat-growler and chips….
When you read what people read about mushy peas, even Brits writing from the UK, it seems they’re pretty equally divided an the subject of mushy peas. The ones that like it mostly say they just be prepared in just such a fashion. They mostly link the enjoyment of the food with a childhood memory.
What I almost never read is someone who says something like “I just had mushy peas for the first time yesterday and they were fantastic”. That tells me that the strongest element of enjoyment in that food is about nostalgia.
I have some foods like that, several in fast. But not mushy peas.
Aquired tastes are usually most enjoyable, took me six months to appreciate the fresh-sick aroma of holts bitter, like blue-cheeses anything with live bacteria and strong earthy or bitter tastes are usually enjoyed when older and wiser…
And with most lager drinkers, anything that isn’t ice cold and tasteless is (to them) undrinkable. Trying to re-educate those who quaff icy alcoholic water is a harder task than converting the religious knobs…
A bit of a sweeping statement about childhood food. For a good deal of my childhood I subsisted on bread and jam and cornflakes, entirely by my own choice as I was what is known here as ‘faddy’. I wouldn’t have been in the same room as anything savoury (sic) even cooking, including mushy peas, and lots of foods which I now love like mushrooms and cabbage would have had me running for the door.
Of course they are ‘prepared in such a fashion’ or they would not be mushy peas. You can buy packets of dried marrowfat peas including the soaking tablets and clear instructions in any supermarket here, which I, and thousands others, do.
A 70p packet will make about seven pounds worth at the chippy prices and it’s a standing joke in my family that I seem to invoke this remarkable mark up more than is strictly necessary.
As to their popularity i reckon the general vote would be in favour, given the usual caveats of simple taste and it’s not unusual for a chippy to sell out.
Aye. I worked with a geezer who only ate mcdonalds fries and cheese and tomato pizza and only drank coke from the age of five. Needless to state that he also had to take specific food supplement powders that he added to coke…I think that food fads based on how food feels in the mouth have become pandemic in children. Food consistency in my gob has never been a consideration to me. Once its in my mouth its heading for the stomach…
OK, I see that mushy peas actually begins as a genetically distinct variety of pea that’s grown for that purpose only – neither the field pea that I use to make split pea soup, nor the common vegetable garden pea. (And there are some other pea varieties there, that are apparently unknown to us here in the US.) So any attempt to introduce this item on the menu in the US would have to start with importing that ingredient.
We do not put gravy or sauce on the french fries that constitute the “chips” in this dish, but we do conventionally dip them in tartar sauce (no trailing “e”, as we’re farther from our French heritage), again in this particular context – I don’t think you’d get tartar sauce with french fries that come with a sandwich or something, only with seafood. The Canadians have their own thing which I will not attempt to describe.
Chips n proper thick gravy is a northern England delicacy….The gravy can be traditional or the chinese chippy variety which has a more funky taste…both are great beer soaking comfort foods…
Though I am also a big fan of the donner kebab on a nan bread with salad and both hot chilli sauce and yoghurt sauce….very tasty but at 1800 calories it comes in at a cost if you eat them too regularly….
Very few people here would put gravy on fish and chips but would on chips alone. Marrowfat peas are not grown purely for mushy peas but can be used as an accompaniment in the same way as garden peas. They are plumper, with a more robust flavour (sic) and are the variety most likely to be used for pea or pea and ham soup.
Tartar sauce is the traditional accompaniment for fish here as everywhere but in a chip shop the usual would be salt and vinegar ( or non brewed condiment – another story).
Claims to be farther from a French heritage will struggle to stand with the pronunciations ‘erb’ and ‘ fillay’ persisting across the pond long after being abandoned here.
Link to the Hitchens debate where asked “Christopher, do you ever pray?” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xjqi63Xi9C8
Of course we use field peas (split peas) for soup, which are also round when dry (a.k.a. “plump”), because they’re already solid when mature.
Have been spending some time in Portugal of late, and there, it seems to me that the equivalent of fish and chips uses cuttlefish – a sort of squid with a large mantle, which is cut into strips and battered. I’m not saying it’s exactly a mainstay of the diet, but particularly in the Setúbal area south of Lisbon and increasingly elsewhere, give it a try – choco frito.
M27Holts, how foods feel in your mouth accounts for most of the popularity of potato chips ( UK aka crisps). In the UK word… the importance of texture makes itself evident. If the crunch didn’t matter, then heavily salted mashed potatoes would be an equivalent snack.
Imagine, if you can, a bite of roast beef that has the texture of baby food. Or pâté that’s like pancakes.
Mouthfeel is important.
Crisps are so-called because being thin sliced and fried makes them crisp. Chips are so-called because they are chipped from potatoes as wood chips from a log.
Texture is obviously an attraction but given the proliferation of flavours, from salt and vinegar through cheese and onion to prawn cocktail, hardly the dominant one.
Crisps are an obviously easily produced and packaged snack. Mashed potatoes are a popular dish but I’m not sure how they could be an ‘equivalent snack’ with blokes in the pub opening a bag of them to accompany their pint.
[glass empty]
“Pray, Barmaid, can I have another?”
[glass full]
🙂 it works 🙂
Aye. But not eating foods because of their consistency and texture has become very common in children , but was unheard of when I was at school?
@Laripu – if you don’t like mushy peas, and you’ve only had them in Tampa and Yeovil, then that’s really like complaining that you don’t like English tea when you’ve only had it in Tampa or Paris.
And, btw – even if you’re a Southerner in the UK, it’s still pronounced mooshy peas – it’s never muhshy peas.
I had a look at the dictionary on my computer, which I believe may be derived from OED and uses the same more or less IPA pronunciation scheme. “mushy” = /ˈməʃi/. I imagine that applies whatever the described substance.
As for texture — as a child, many decades ago, I had a real horror of stewed tomatoes, from the can or tin as you would say, because of the sort of gristly knot at the stem end. Peas were not well liked either, due to grainy texture; bought frozen, probably harvested a bit late when you can get them with a harvester combine without much damage.
I believe children are about the same, and not enormously different from adults – texture is very important. You don’t have to compare “crisps” to mashed potatoes – even a slight variation in thickness or exposure to humidity will serve to demonstrate the importance.
Here in Aberdeen we can get by OK without mushy peas, but in addition to haddock and chips, known as a fish supper, the chippers do usually have a selection of black puddings, white puddings, haggis puddings, fritters, burgers, chicken wings etc, all deep-fried in batter of course! You can even get a Mars Bar deep-fried in batter, (originated in nearby Stonehaven) although I don’t recommend it!
The phonetic spelling of mushy only helps if you are familiar with the sound of the symbol which most people aren’t. The pronunciation is certainly not the same everywhere.
To southerners the pronunciation by northerners sounds like ‘mooshy’, the ‘oo’ being pretty close to the sound in ‘look’ ( apart from places in the north where that is pronounced as ‘luke’ – nothing simple here!)
To northerners the pronunciation by southerners sounds nearer to ‘ mashy’. It’s hard to come up with an actual comparison from another word as the pronunciation will be what the reader instinctively hears.
It’s likely that the phonetic symbol given by Donn assumes the southern sound as the OED is influenced largely by RP ( Received Pronunciation) or Oxford English as it is often called. In any case it’s highly unlikely that you’ll hear anyone born within the sound of Bow Bells referring to anything as ‘mooshy’
Aye. I was deliberately using northern colloquisms (sp?) I.e. babbies yead (steak pudding) and meat growler (meat pie) . Southern chippies don’t do puddings nor gravy or even meat pies in some places…but pasties instead….