Skip to main content

Judy - No Pictures Available

By Carl S ~

One of my better reference book acquisitions is “The Calvin and Hobbes Tenth Anniversary Book,” by Bill Watterson. For this application, I'm citing his chapter on “licensing.” The cartoonist shows himself to be a man of high integrity by not selling out his characters, strip, and ongoing story lines for profit, thus avoiding “the corruption of a strip's integrity.” Watterson has never allowed images of Calvin and Hobbes outside of their world in the strip. He tells us, “My strip is about private realities, the magic of imagination, and the specialness of certain friendships.” And although he does not say so directly, there is no way Hobbes could be depicted as a stuffed toy or statuette (as Charles Schulz’s Snoopy is), because Hobbes as we know him exists solely in Calvin's imagination.

Many years ago, my wife asked me how long Judy was in my life before I met her. You see, Judy was sitting on the back seat of my car the first time my wife and I dated. “Less than a year,” I said. Of course she wanted to know the circumstances under which Judy and I met, etc. Now this was 23 years ago, and she's been a part of our lives together ever since. Each day, Judy has a “Word for Today,” and ongoing comments about people, situations, and politics. On the last subject, the words “catastrophic” and avalanche,” have been duly noted. (In private, she told me my wife's church services are “only live theater.”) To extend her vocabulary, she keeps pestering us for a thesaurus. Often our conversations begin with, “Judy says this,” or “Judy said that...” As you can infer, she's quite an interesting character.

As I explained to my beloved, Judy had a “history” before we met at the Goodwill store, where she was found dumped in the donation bin. Judy used to be an unwilling member of a tough biker gang, and saw some hard times at their hands. Naturally, she picked up some foul language, habits, and attitudes. Rarely, these experiences do come to the fore, since you can't keep those thrilling days of yore out of her genes forever, like riding in Harley saddle bags at 60+ mph, etc.

Since marrying Raif though, Judy's softened up considerably and has been much less judgmental under his influence. He's gentle, sympathetic, and takes a leisurely attitude about everything. Raif is, (according to him), the re-incarnation of the British composer Ralph Vaughn Williams, so he's usually found concentrating on compositions, some of which are written for, or dedicated to Judy, which is, according to her, only fitting. Unlike Judy's, his life is not intertwined with ours. She likes it just like that; likes being the center of attention at times.

So by now, you're getting the picture. Judy is quite an interesting person whose experiences and naive but charming takes on life we find amusing and “enlightening.” Judy tells us about ourselves, our thoughts and feelings. She is our spokesperson.

What you don't know is that Judy is a pink stuffed rabbit with floppy ears who, if she were standing (and she can't, she sits), would be only 12 inches tall. Her husband Raif is a gray stuffed rabbit, though a little “taller,” but he too sits, and is so boneless you might be tempted to tie him in a knot. Raif was found by my wife at a thrift store, and he and Judy soon fell in rabbit love. Until now, only we and another couple know about Judy. Her history, her thoughts and personality, etc., all exist in our fantasy imaginations. We can say the same thing about Jesus and God in the imaginations of mystics, theologians and believers. (fyi: Images of the cartoon characters Calvin and Hobbes and Judy and Raif are not available for commercial profiting for millions of dollars, which is more than we can say for the pictures of Jesus and God.)

Don't tell me what Jesus said. That's hearsay.Let me tell you something Judy said a few days ago. But first of all I must tell you: she's a fan of, no surprise, Judge Judy, and pays close attention to her court cases. Judy asked a moral question, and I told her, “Well, you know what Jesus said...” She stopped me right there. Later, I told my wife what her response was: “Don't tell me what Jesus said. That's hearsay.” My wife didn't get it! Now, every time I read a letter to the editor, hear a politician tell us what God wants, I want to respond, “That's hearsay; bring on the God to confirm what you say he said, since he's in the neighborhood, or shut up! Everything we’ve been told “Jesus and God” said IS hearsay, since “they” didn't write anything down, and appear on no video or audio recordings. At least Judy is visible! In any court on earth, “they” or “what they said” is NOT EVIDENCE. What has been taught for two thousand years to be error-free truth is, like Judy herself and her observations, fabricated and embellished for centuries, and has infiltrated social reality, whether we like it or not.

Judy is sarcastic, yes, and sometimes nasty when she doesn't get her way, but at heart, she's well-meaning and always benign. This is more than you can say for the hearsay words of Jesus and God, which are used to discriminate and deny rights to others, often to persecute and kill them. Sure, the “words Jesus and God said” are quoted to encourage doing good, but what the hell! You don't need gods for that.

Judy is with us. She's real and ongoing. If you're interested, I'll try to keep you updated on the latest from her. I think you'll find she's more interesting than what you've heard about Jesus and God and all those other “holy” fabrications. Those are only hearsay.

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Are You an Atheist Success Story?

By Avangelism Project ~ F acts don’t spread. Stories do. It’s how (good) marketing works, it’s how elections (unfortunately) are won and lost, and it’s how (all) religion spreads. Proselytization isn’t accomplished with better arguments. It’s accomplished with better stories and it’s time we atheists catch up. It’s not like atheists don’t love a good story. Head over to the atheist reddit and take a look if you don’t believe me. We’re all over stories painting religion in a bad light. Nothing wrong with that, but we ignore the value of a story or a testimonial when we’re dealing with Christians. We can’t be so proud to argue the semantics of whether atheism is a belief or deconversion is actually proselytization. When we become more interested in defining our terms than in affecting people, we’ve relegated ourselves to irrelevance preferring to be smug in our minority, but semantically correct, nonbelief. Results Determine Reality The thing is when we opt to bury our

So Just How Dumb Were Jesus’ Disciples? The Resurrection, Part VII.

By Robert Conner ~ T he first mention of Jesus’ resurrection comes from a letter written by Paul of Tarsus. Paul appears to have had no interest whatsoever in the “historical” Jesus: “even though we have known Christ according to the flesh, we know him so no longer.” ( 2 Corinthians 5:16 ) Paul’s surviving letters never once mention any of Jesus’ many exorcisms and healings, the raising of Lazarus, or Jesus’ virgin birth, and barely allude to Jesus’ teaching. For Paul, Jesus only gets interesting after he’s dead, but even here Paul’s attention to detail is sketchy at best. For instance, Paul says Jesus “was raised on the third day according to the Scriptures” ( 1 Corinthians 15:4 ), but there are no scriptures that foretell the Jewish Messiah would at long last appear only to die at the hands of Gentiles, much less that the Messiah would then be raised from the dead after three days. After his miraculous conversion on the road to Damascus—an event Paul never mentions in his lette

Christian TV presenter reads out Star Wars plot as story of salvation

An email prankster tricked the host of a Christian TV show into reading out the plots of The Fresh Prince of Bel Air and Star Wars in the belief they were stories of personal salvation. The unsuspecting host read out most of the opening rap to The Fresh Prince, a 1990s US sitcom starring Will Smith , apparently unaware that it was not a genuine testimony of faith. The prankster had slightly adapted the lyrics but the references to a misspent youth playing basketball in West Philadelphia would have been instantly familiar to most viewers. The lines read out by the DJ included: "One day a couple of guys who were up to no good starting making trouble in my living area. I ended up getting into a fight, which terrified my mother." The presenter on Genesis TV , a British Christian channel, eventually realised that he was being pranked and cut the story short – only to move on to another spoof email based on the plot of the Star Wars films. It began: &quo

ACTS OF GOD

By David Andrew Dugle ~   S ettle down now children, here's the story from the Book of David called The Parable of the Bent Cross. In the land Southeast of Eden –  Eden, Minnesota that is – between two rivers called the Big Miami and the Little Miami, in the name of Saint Gertrude there was once built a church. Here next to it was also built a fine parochial school. The congregation thrived and after a multitude of years, a new, bigger church was erected, well made with clean straight lines and a high steeple topped with a tall, thin cross of gold. The faithful felt proud, but now very low was their money. Their Sunday offerings and school fees did not suffice. Anon, they decided to raise money in an unclean way. One fine summer day the faithful erected tents in the chariot lot between the two buildings. In the tents they set up all manner of games – ring toss, bingo, little mechanical racing horses and roulette wheels – then all who lived in the land between the two rivers we

Morality is not a Good Argument for Christianity

By austinrohm ~ I wrote this article as I was deconverting in my own head: I never talked with anyone about it, but it was a letter I wrote as if I was writing to all the Christians in my life who constantly brought up how morality was the best argument for Christianity. No Christian has read this so far, but it is written from the point of view of a frustrated closeted atheist whose only outlet was organizing his thoughts on the keyboard. A common phrase used with non-Christians is: “Well without God, there isn’t a foundation of morality. If God is not real, then you could go around killing and raping.” There are a few things which must be addressed. 1. Show me objective morality. Define it and show me an example. Different Christians have different moral standards depending on how they interpret the Bible. Often times, they will just find what they believe, then go back into scripture and find a way to validate it. Conversely, many feel a particular action is not

Why I left the Canadian Reformed Church

By Chuck Eelhart ~ I was born into a believing family. The denomination is called Canadian Reformed Church . It is a Dutch Calvinistic Christian Church. My parents were Dutch immigrants to Canada in 1951. They had come from two slightly differing factions of the same Reformed faith in the Netherlands . Arriving unmarried in Canada they joined the slightly more conservative of the factions. It was a small group at first. Being far from Holland and strangers in a new country these young families found a strong bonding point in their church. Deutsch: Heidelberger Katechismus, Druck 1563 (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) I was born in 1955 the third of eventually 9 children. We lived in a small southern Ontario farming community of Fergus. Being young conservative and industrious the community of immigrants prospered. While they did mix and work in the community almost all of the social bonding was within the church group. Being of the first generation born here we had a foot in two