Here’s a picture taken yesterday by a friend travelling in the Southwest: this bizarre conjunction of ads is in Farmington, New Mexico:
He’s not watching that closely
May 17, 2012 • 5:02 am
Why Evolution is True is a blog written by Jerry Coyne, centered on evolution and biology but also dealing with diverse topics like politics, culture, and cats.
Surely this must be indicative of the general mental health of this community.
Porno and guilt. What a combo.
He should get a haircut and shave off that beard – he looks like a hippy! …oops! 😉
Jesus is watching you masturbate.
Jesus ya pervert!
Big Brother
if you’re horny and you know it, it’s a sin 😉
Awesome
If He’s watching, I want Him either arrested or paying for the privilege.
The billboard is there to stop people from entering the adult video store. It’s common in areas of the bible belt for the pious to try to shame porn shops and strip clubs out of business, even if it means standing outside and personally greeting anyone who attempts to enter.
Looks like a job for a restraint of trade lawsuit…
Can anyone photoshop this and replace “you” by “also” ? Perhaps this would be good for business if done “in situ.”
Yeah, I’d get a ladder and make that “Jesus is watching too!”
Ask and thou shalt receive
http://imgur.com/HKbbb
I hope this triggers a Cold War-style arms race…but with billboards.
I was going to say the same thing. I’ve seen this sort of thing pretty much everywhere there’s an adult book store that caters to the long-distance trucking crowd. (IE, where there are multiple billboards announcing the impending exit for said book store).
Then there’s the sign for a motel we once saw (didn’t stop for a pic, unfortunately) someplace in SW Pennsylvania. It featured prominent “fish” symbols next to the motel’s name, so you knew the owners were Born-Again Christians (or at least, trying to attract that demographic). Underneath it said, in large letters, “Free Bus To Casino” — which I guess is an attempt to attract a (supposedly different) demographic.
“free bus to casino”
[SNIGGER]
Every few years, our town gets a small invasion of Septic evangelists. Several times they’ve set up their headquarters in the middle of the town’s red light district (hey, it’s a harbour town ; simply knowing that, you can find the red light district!).
When partaking of spirituous liquors in that part of town (the bars are open later, and the customers more honest than in the discos, night clubs and casinos – they admit to wanting booze and/or sex), one discovers from the working girls that they get a noticeable turn up in business when the god-squaddies are in town.
Which should surprise no-one. Well, it didn’t surprise me.
Next the Septic evangelists arrive to infest us, I’ll have to find out what the working boys experience.
Quoth a friend on hearing the news that the Septics were planning to doorstep every house in the city : “Oh goody, I’ll wear my goat masak and posing pouch!”He didn’t get a visit, and was most disappointed!
He likes to watch, eh?
He is watching all the “normal” sex too, why not spice things up and give him something different once and a while?
I find it quite funny that it’s more than obvious that many priests in the Roman Catholic Church don’t think that this is true at all, not even in their own churches.
and such a nordic Jesus, my oh my.
Oh, snap!
Indeed, I think altar boy vestments should include a small version of this billboard, worn like a necklace.
“nordic Jesus” – if they only realized he looked like the Middle Easterners of today, but darker, probably.
You haven’t been paying attention – he probably didn’t exist, so he might as well look like a singed tortilla.
I have seen a similar juxtaposition in Kentucky: on one side of the freeway a porn shop. On the other side a billboard proclaiming “Hell is real.”
“L’enfer, c’est les autres.” (Sartre)
Other people’s hang-ups are particularly hellish.
now that’s a disturbing thought… having this bearded hippy watching and juding you when you’re watching a porn and masturbating.
I don’t think I understand how this works. Is knowing that Jesus watches me masturbate supposed to make me want to worship him or something?
There’s a trashy “neighborhood” southwest of Fort Worth known as Whiskey Flats. This is a common sight there. I have a photo collection of such somewhere, unfortunately not digital. A billboard or two in the midst of the human female mammary bars. I think their favorite Biblical quote is “Thou God seest me”. I guess that could be taken more than one way, though.
I didn’t realize that Jesus was a voyeur. I am beginning to like the chap. I don’t mind being watched.
—
Does anyone know where Christians get the likeness of Jesus from?
The three-way aureole (instead of the common or garden variety halo) is also seen in some of Albrecht Durer’s woodcuts on religious subjects. I conclude it’s a very old representation.
The nordic Jeebus with neatly brushed shoulder-length locks probably dates back to Victorian times.
There’s possibly an interesting PhD thesis in art or history there, a study of the changing representations of holy personages through the centuries. It might turn out to be a damp squib, however, in that until recent times, holinesses were depicted like contemporaries to the artist.
Seems to me that the billboards themselves are doing more harm to the neighborhood aesthetic than are the establishments they represent. Billboards are litter on a stick.
I totally agree. I could never understand why graffiti-ing billboards was supposed to be an offence when the originals are (mostly) so visually obnoxious.
Oh, and they’re all advertising something, which means they are (almost all) blatant lies.
Of course He’s watching — where else is He going to find his Mary Magdalene today? Maybe making kinky foot-washing fetish films? (See Rule 34.)
There’s a porno shop off the interstate here in Iowa — someone has erected a giant cross near the entrance. I always wanted to nail a sign to that cross saying “If you don’t sin, Jesus died for nothing!”
lol
You win the thread. I almost choked on a piece of apple.
There was a Russian sect that held that unless one sinned, how could one repent?
Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?
Hmmm … isn’t that the point of low-budget, homemade gonzo porn — so the watchers can watch themselves?
RE: Jesus watching.
A friend was the manager of a drinking and accommodation establishment in outback Queensland, and we’d sometimes have barbecue etc around the swimming pool there. Several large Pacific Islanders who worked security happened to belong to one of the non-traditional Xtian sects that missionize in the South Pacific (Adventists, possibly), and on one of these days they had a game of poker and a few spirituous beverages going. On Easter Sunday. Outdoors, so of course Jesus could see them at it – BUT they were all sitting there with extra pieces of clothing draped over their heads, to keep out of sight of Heaven.
No, I don’t want to think about what they wore, where, when they watched cable.
LOL. Are you sure it wasn’t to keep off the sun, what with the ozone hole and all?
Your story reminds of a documentary on the Inquisition that was aired on PBS. During an incident that involved the prolonged torture of a Jewish woman, the torturers were careful enough to throw a veil over a Crucifix on the wall. They did not want Christ to witness the torture.
Why, Jesus doesn’t disapprove of card games of skill (not chance, which would be gambling), does he? Definitely he who turned water into wine doesn’t disapprove of spirituous beverages either.
Only for specific uses.
Proverbs 31:6: Give beer to those who are perishing, wine to those who are in anguish;
I’m always in some sort of anguish, it isn’t hard to find something to be upset about in the world. 😉
There are actually no verses in the bible about gambling.
The Good Book is lousy with stories of people “casting lots,” the ancient version of shooting craps — including the Roman soldiers who rolled the bones during the crucifixion to see who would wind up with that dope robe of Jesus’. (I’ve always thought of that one as the First Century version of a bequest to Goodwill.)
Likely not that uncommon, seeing that religion and use of porn correlates according to statistics. (Most famously, maps of US religiosity vs web porn visits shows a match on a per state level. I believe WEIT has shown that map several times.)
I drove through Farmington last year on US 64 on my way to the Valley of the Monuments. I had just come from Four Corners and Mesa Verde. Is the sign along US 64? I think I would have stopped and taken a picture had I seen it. I stopped and took pictures of Shiprock just west of town but missed the main attraction.
Why simply watch, Lord?
Threesomes for Jesus !!!
From a distance
Three part harmony
And it echoes through the land
And it’s the gropes of dopes
It’s the throb of knobs
In the heart of every gland
God is watching us
God is watching us
God is watching us
From a distance…
+69
This has been there for at least 9 years. I took the same photo in 2003: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ehw/94766731/
This co-existence of the two posters is probably by human design, but I am reminded of the time I walked into a Barnes and Noble in 1998 and saw side by side the contrite autobiography of disgraced evangelist Jim Bakker (entitled “I was wrong”) and Hustler publisher Larry Flynt (which came out at the same time as the movie on his life directed by Milos Forman).
Many have noticed that pornography and puritanism are the head and tail of the same bad penny. One of the better analyses of this is in a book entitled “Fleeing Fundamentalism” by Carlene Cross (which I should warn readers here is very pro-New Age but still says some insightful stuff)
They’re not that close. This picture
http://gamblershouse.files.wordpress.com/2011/06/farmingtonjesusporn.jpg
– shows the adult sign is much bigger and further away. The money is in the porn, it seems.
Well the adult sign is certainly nearer to Heaven, anyway 😉
http://failblog.org/2010/03/07/lease-fail/
Since Rick Santorum told me that Jebus is a Capitalist, the Adult shop probably altered the original billboard message. Since the Adult store is scared of Jesus and his all-loving Capitalists ways, they changed the original billboard that said,
“Jesus is watching youporn.com”
Haha that sort of thing isn’t too uncommon here, got to stop the heathen from looking at…gawd forbid….naked people.
Anyways, we have a truck stop named Jesus Christ is Lord Travel Center….sadly I’ve not see any porn there, but how sweet it would be if the did.
http://www.jesuschristislordtravelcenter.com/
“This is no ordinary truck stop…..
Our main focus at Jesus Christ is Lord Travel Center is to present to the world that
Jesus Christ is Lord… not a swear word.”
Ohmygods. I never thought of that. I suppose it says something about the vocabulary of the average trucker…?
First Gawd is watching us and now Jebus too. This suggests a dearth of fun things to do up there in Heaven. Hope I’m going the other way.
Jesus is watching you – Masturbate. When he should be watching the Priests sexually abusing children!
Okay, if I was passing and I saw that sign (and realised it was intentional), I would at least wander into the pornshop for a couple of minutes. Just to show my response to people who try to tell me what I ought to be doing.
I think it was on Fail Blog where I once saw the reverse situation: a minibus which obviously belonged to a church parked at an adult book store.
Regarding earlier suggestions (Alexander Hellemans #6)… here you go; billboard fixed.
http://tinyurl.com/billboardjwt
Isn’t he the guy from the original illustrated version of The Joy of Sex?