Today's Topics:
Bible cards - swap 'em, trade 'em
nuke the whales
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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 91 09:11:37 -0400
From: Eric Haines <erich@eye.com>
Message-Id: <9110161311.AA23902@juniper>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: Bible cards - swap 'em, trade 'em
Bible cards - swap 'em, trade 'em
by Adam Tanner
Gannett News Service
Move over Mickey Mantle, Willie Mays and other stars of the baseball card
world, Bible cards are coming.
Jesus, Augustus, John the Baptist and 161 other figures from the New Testament
will adorn baseball-sized cards soon, complete with biographical information on
the back, thanks to entrepreneurs Lloyd and Betty June Link of Kingston
Springs, Tenn.
"I had a vision. I truly believe this was a vision from God to do this," says
Betty June Link. "We hope this will be used by people of all ages to study the
Bible."
Betty June Link's vision in July inspired her husband to scrap his faltering
real estate business in this scenic hamlet (population 1,387) 22 miles from
Nashville.
Annual sales had plummeted tenfold over the past year to $250,000, Lloyd Link
says.
"We were waiting to get out of the real estate business - it stinks," Lloyd
Link, 57, says. "When you have beeert [sic] to create original color sketches
of the figures, and their son Dean scanned a computer version of the New
Testament to write biographical data for the card backs.
The cards give name, profession, home, personality profile, comments and Bible
references.
For example, a card for Bartholomew, one of Jesus' 12 apostles, tells readers
that according to tradition "he was crucified upside down after being flayed
alive."
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Imagine all the happy, fun hours of family study of the various violent deaths
of the martyrs. If anyone finds the address of these guys, please pass it on,
as I'd love to order some cards. Hmmm, I wonder if an interesting Tarot deck
could be made with them...
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Date: Wed, 16 Oct 91 11:33:07 -0400
From: Eric Haines <erich@eye.com>
Message-Id: <9110161533.AA24945@juniper>
To: subgenius@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Subject: nuke the whales
Just passing this on...
This is from harold zatz, who got it from a friend at caltech.
>From Tom Tucker
I am absolutely not making this incident up; in fact I have it all on
videotape, which I obtained from the alert father-son team of Dean and
Kurt Smith. The tape is from a local TV news show in Oregon,
which sent a reporter out to cover the removal of a 45-foot,
eight-ton dead whale that washed up on the beach. The responsibility
for getting rid of the carcass was placed upon the Oregon State
Highway Division, apparently on the theory that highways and whales
are very similar in the sense of being large objects.
So anyway, the highway engineers hit upon the plan -- remember, I am not
making this up -- of blowing up the whale with dynamite. The thinking
here was that the whale would be blown into small pieces, which would be
eaten by sea gulls, and that would be that. A textbook whale removal.
So they moved the spectators back up the beach, put a half-ton of
dynamite next to the whale and set it off. I am probably not guilty of
understatement when I say that what follows, on the videotape, is the
most wonderful event in the history of the universe. First you see
the whale carcass disappear in a huge blast of smoke and flame.
Then you hear the happy spectators shouting "Yayy!" and "Whee!"
Then, suddenly, the crowd's tone changes. You hear a new sound
like "splud." You hear a woman's voice shouting "Here come pieces
of... MY GOD!" Something smears the camera lens.
Later, the reporter explains: "The humor of the entire situation
suddenly gave way to a run for survival as huge chunks of whale
blubber fell everywhere." One piece caved in the roof of a car
parked more than a quarter of a mile away. Remaining on the beach
were several rotting whale sectors the size of condominium units.
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End of Subgenius Digest
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