Bone In The Fan

There’s a church by our house that always has one of those light-up boards in front of it with pithy little pro-church sayings on it. It’s like a tiny little theater marquee, except it’s on the ground and doesn’t actually advertise anything fun.

Tonight they premiered a new slogan:

The best vitamin for a Christian is B1

Get it?  Like BE ONE.  Be a Christian, see?  But that makes no sense at all, because telling someone who already is a Christian to B1 is just redundant. Unless they mean it literally, and it’s just a coincidence that it can be read as “be one.”  So I looked up vitamin B1 on Wikipedia.  Turns out it’s thiamin, and I know you’re all going to say, “yeah, I knew that,” but you’re full of shit; just like when you’re watching Jeopardy and wait until the person just starts to give the answer (in a form of a question) and you blurt it out like you were going to anyway.  I know you do that.  And it sucks when you’re both wrong, doesn’t it?

Beriberi looks pretty bad. I'm fairly sure Brooke Shields did not have it.

Anyway, a shortage of thiamin can cause beriberi, which sounds like something that Brooke Shields could have caught when she was making The Blue Lagoon but actually isn’t.  By the way, I went to high school briefly with Brooke Shields, but she was 2 years younger than me and I didn’t know her or anything.  I did ride in an elevator with her a few times though and she seemed just fine.

I’ve heard nothing about a beriberi outbreak among Christians. I suppose it’s possible that they’re just taking the marquee very seriously and it’s working, but there’s always the possibility that rather than preventing a shortage of thiamin they’re bulking up on it. That would make a bit more sense in the short-term since it’s been reported (though not proven) that 25-50mg of thiamin taken three times a day may repel mosquitoes (which we have in abundance in Florida.) And while I don’t understand why this is a particularly Christian problem to deal with (do they suffer a disproportionate number of mosquito bites?) I do at least understand the goal.  Long-term though, I think the church may be facing some problems as it appears that 50mg of thiamin may increase mental acuity, which could easily lead to a little free-lance biblical fact-checking.  That never goes well for the collection plate.

This same church did have one other notable slogan once:

If god had a wallet, would your picture be in it?

First of all, I reject the entire premise. Why would god need a wallet anyway? If cops get free donuts and coffee, I’m thinking god pretty much scores whatever he wants, whenever he wants. Do you want to be the Heaven-11 clerk that stops him from walking out with a six pack of PBR and some smokes while he’s got some hot chick sitting in his convertible GTO and listening to Kansas, waiting for him to hurry his ass up with the brewskis so they can hit makeout point?  Not unless you want to move to a nice apartment overlooking the water on the wrong side of the river Styx, I don’t think you do (do they play Styx on the river Styx? Through big outdoor speakers all up and down the coast? Maybe a nice Kenny G version of “Come Sail Away”?)

Let him take the beer. This view sucks.

And even if god did have a wallet, I don’t want my picture crammed in there with everyone else’s so that when he gets in the car to go to the store he crushes it with his big god-ass. Thanks, no. I’ll take my chances with a group portrait in the foyer, or maybe a tasteful 8×10 in a lucite frame on his piano.

Bookmark and Share