Tits and Balls

If you haven’t picked up on this already, we at titsandballs.org have been pretty much inundated with God, Jesus, the Holy Spirit, really, the whole shebang. However, thanks to a pamphlet entitled “STOP: WHO DO YOU THINK I AM?” from our new friends, Scott and Robert, I’ve recently come to the realization that God is everywhere in our secular world. We’ve really just been reading his signs (hahahaha PUN) incorrectly.

“STOP: WHO DO YOU THINK I AM” is essentially the evangelical Christian version of the Driver’s Manual, with the road becoming an extended metaphor for the self, YOURself, life, etc, and road signs, or God’s signs, directing you on the one true way. Oddly enough, I feel like I’m sitting in Tai Chi and chilling with Zhou again. But as I learned today, without the direction of this pamphlet, nice old men like Zhou and Lao Tzu are definitely going to Hell. The entire manual, published by the organization, Grace To You, can be accessed here, but I’ll give you the Sparknotes version for your typical heathen.

JESUS IS GOD

As a seasoned Bible study attendee, I was pretty familiar with the general concept of God and Jesus being two forms of the same being. While the Jews in my party were marveling at this fact, I, on the other hand was perplexed by the pointed exclusion of the Holy Spirit. While this manual uses the split road sign to illustrate the relationship between God and Jesus, I was much more familiar with the three-leaf clover as a symbol of the tripartite relationship between God, Jesus, and the Holy Spirit. Way to cut out my personal favorite of this divine trio. I am now commiserating pretty seriously with the Holy Spirit.

JESUS IS THE SAVIOR

Robert and Scott pointed out exactly the dire nature of our situation, you know, us being sinners and all. Quoting from Jeremiah, “Can the Ethiopian change his skin or the leopard its spots? Neither can you do good who are accustomed to doing evil?” Well guys, this sucks. No good doing by heathens. Ever.

On a much lighter (or perhaps more serious) note, I am noting some hating on the lefties. Why is the “right” the “right” way? Does Jesus prefer the right to the left in the same way he prefers Balls to everyone else? Please Grace To You, end this association of debauchery with the left.

JESUS IS THE ONLY ACCEPTABLE OBJECT OF SAVING FAITH

…aaaaand I’m out of breath

This one is pretty self explanatory. Also, thanks for pointing to the right again. Lefties, rise up in fists.

HOW WILL YOU RESPOND

After our first reading of this pamphlet, we were perplexed by this sign. What? No parking? Is God expelling us from his warm and benevolent bosom of goodness? This misunderstanding can be attributed to our sinner mentality; the ominous ending, “will you repent and believe in Jesus Christ as your Lord and Savior,” is intended to be an inspiration, or maybe just some subtle pressure, to make us all want to continue on this road to the ultimate goal: a life with God.

So friends, here we are, with all the goods. Now it’s time to answer the question that Robert and Scott, quoting Jesus, presented to titsandballs.org on the eve of the Sabbath day: Who do you think I am?

co-written by Tits, Balls, Thanny, and Tiamat Destroyer of Worlds

Earlier this evening Tits, Balls, and friends were walking home from dinner when they were politely approached by two men; one was nondescript while the other had a very interesting hair-do (short and curly on top and a ponytail in back).

The men asked us if we had a few minutes to participate in a survey. We were led to believe that all they wanted from us was some input on the spiritual opinions on campus, so we kindly acquiesced. From the beginning, the survey was a bit unconventional. The few questions they asked about our views on God and the existence of an afterlife were followed by zero documentation on their part. After four basic questions, the conversation progressed to the nondescript man using the watchmaker’s argument tin order to convince us that intelligent design does indeed exist while evolution does not.

From there, their analogies became a bit more unconventional. For example, if you punched your friend in the face, they’d be mad, right? And then you’d have to deal with your friend. Imagine, then, that you punch a judge in the face. The punishment would be worse, probably. So what if you punched the president in the face? Basically, punching your friend in the face is like killing someone, a lesser crime compared to punching the president in the face (not believing in God.) I think. Another convincing argument was this: If you got married, you’d want your husband to love you, right? And pamper you and buy you flowers? Jesus loves you. Jesus is IN LOVE WITH YOU, Balls. (Why did he pick Balls and nobody else? Who knows. Maybe Jesus has a thing for blondes.)

It eventually got to the point, as these arguments often do, where both parties were arguing on different levels. The proselytizers were picking and choosing their Bible arguments (yeah I’m wearing mixed fabrics, but can we please focus on the moral rules in the Bible instead?) and attempting to argue under the assumption that God does exist, while we were trying to get them back to the fundamental question of whether there is a God (or “Creator”, for you ID folks). Eventually we realized nobody was changing their beliefs today, and parted ways amicably. We also received Christian music CD’s and nice little pamphlets entitled “Stop! Who do you think I am?” with a very endearing street signs theme.

Thanny, however, was converted by Robert and Scott. He understood that on the Sermon on the Mount, Jesus really did split a couple fish and some bread and feed a whole bunch of people. From his own experiences, Thanny has realized that people these days eat portions that are way too big. You can really eat much smaller portions and still be full after meals. Jesus was a miracle worker because he spread this message of healthy living to the Israelites back in the day. Also, sometimes after people die, other people can have dreams where they are communicating with those that have recently passed away. This seems to suggest the existence of an afterlife of some sort. With this evidence, plus the miracles of Jesus, it is evident that Jesus was a real cool guy. But, God sucks.

At one point, the tall guy with the interesting hair-do asked if anyone in the group was Jewish while he looked directly at me (Tits). I confirmed his suspicion and then he went on to tell me how his wife is Jewish and that he is in love with Israel. The conversation quickly shifted to him trying to convince me that Jesus is in fact the Messiah since the bible predicted Israel would become a nation state and that is what happened. Apparently, tons of Jews are moving to Israel because they have had dreams and became immediately inspired. Thousands of Orthodox Jews living in New York City are becoming messianic Jews. Additionally, whole villages in Morocco are picking up and moving to Israel. The government is worried. This one-sided conversation soon ended with him saying…”Led Zeppelin was my god. He didn’t change my life. Buddhism and Hinduism didn’t change my life. Heroin didn’t change my life. LSD didn’t change my life. Jesus did. Pick up your bibles and explore this for yourself.”

But, of course very few of us own bibles, and none of us were about to explore their nonsensical ideas for ourselves. So, although they saw this meeting as a “divine appointment,” we saw it as a seemingly never-ending detour which delayed our own “divine appointment” with a delicious chocolate peanut-butter cake.

I have to admit when Balls wrote on her arm “Tits eats garbage,” after the aforementioned potato skin incident and claimed she was jotting down inspiration for our website, I was incredibly worried. But, now, I have to say I am very pleased to see what she has written and that my actions, which at the time seemed disgusting, have made a true impact on the surrounding people. What Balls and most of the other people at the concert don’t know is just how much garbage I collected throughout the course of the event. I was in charge of night-cleanup, thus everynight from 1:00 a.m-3:30 a.m I picked up others peoples trash. I really did not mind this job considering I collected an abundance of treasures including: unopened beers, half a pizza, countless packs of cigarettes, lighters, bubbles, sunglasses…and even more was collected by my more ambitious co-workers. Although I took great joy in these objects, I was still dismayed by the amount of trash and recyclables that littered the field. Considering that the festival’s main population is  constituted of so-called “hippies,” I expected greater regard for one’s waste. I am aware that the combination of substances greatly affected people’s mental awareness and their abilities to focus on their trash and belongings, but nevertheless it is incredibly easy to put trash in one’s pocket or purse to throw out at a more convenient time. Even though the fields were littered with garbage, the trash piles at 10 KLF are a huge improvement on the country music festival that takes place in the same location. Apparently, at the WE festival you cannot even see the grass after a night of partying. So, yes, “hippies” really do make a greater effort than the general population; any time there is a large mass of people, unfortunately and inevitably a large mass of garbage follows. Anyway, on the positive side of the spectrum the festival’s not quite-so ambitious recycling goals were indeed met and those potato skins really were quite delicious.

At the recent 10K Lakes Festival, an event occurred which at first, seemed like a clear-cut case of Tits being kind of gross. Deeper reflection, however, has caused me to rethink my own values and the vaunted ideals of this entire nation. Here is my story.

We placed our blanket a good way back from the stage, in a grassy area generally reserved for the more relaxed fanbase- people were eating, smoking, chatting, a few danced. It was idyllic. A few yards in front of us there was a small pile of trash, presumably left by concert-goers less eco-conscious than Tits (see Environmental Rants/Musings). This pile of trash included some napkins, perhaps an empty beer can or two, and a small paper plate with the crusty remains of someone’s potato skins and two cigarette butts. “What waste!” Tits cried, deeply offended that someone should discard such treasures. “There are plenty of skins left, practically a meal! Who would do such a thing?” (It should be mentioned that Tits may or may not have been high as balls at this point.) “I can’t believe it! Those skins look delicious!” And so on. I could prolong this tale, but there seems no point, and so I will skip to the end: Tits nudged the butts aside and ate the potato dregs. All of them. Offered them to the rest of us, but got no takers. Finished off the entire plate.

Now, the gentle reader may be aghast, nay appalled, by this display. I admit that I myself was vaguely dismayed. But then I thought: If someone who I knew to be starving had eaten the food they found on the ground, I would not have been disgusted, merely a bit sad. But I would not have passed judgment, as I admit I did on Tits, because I know that she can afford first-hand potatoes. Is the implication, then, that we must always live above, not below, our means? And if so, does this not appear to be at the base of many of the issues our nation and world face today? Sure, Tits could have bought new skins, thus creating more paper waste and perhaps not even finishing the generous portion. But when you think about it, what’s so bad about old potato skins? The concert area was cleaned every night, so they couldn’t even have been more than a few hours old. Besides the cigarette butts, which are basically harmless even when ingested, there was no visible contamination. It is practically inconceivable that someone may have baited the skins with poison, a risk so small it’s not worth worrying about. And at a music festival, a place where reasonable people buy dangerous drugs from strangers and sit on shit-smeared toilets, leaning on beer encrusted port-a-potty walls in drunken stupors before stumbling off to have unprotected sex with dirty hippies, someone’s leftover snack seem practically sterile. So maybe Tits was right to do what she did. I don’t know if she was really trying to make a stand against the careless and wasteful nature of most American consumers, as she claimed, or if she just had a bad case of the munchies. Either way, I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again: Maybe the world would be a better place if everyone was a bit more like Tits.