Who Is This Man?

On a lazy Sunday morning when I can’t be arsed to leave the house, it seems the anecdotes come to me instead…

My sleep was regularly interrupted by many buzzings at the front door this morning. My flatmate Andrea sometimes has students round; she teaches German, so I assumed that’s what it was. Her students are mainly people who have recently engaged in a romantic relationship with a German and are trying to do their bit by learning some of the language, so her lessons focus on the words and phrases required for this, such as “a bit lower please”, “OK now try it the other way round” and “maybe if you think about Angela Merkel you can last longer than five minutes this time”.

This morning as she expected a new student she was greeted by a young black gentleman at the door. She immediately dashed to the spare room to light some candles and put some Barry White music on, but was disappointed to learn that he was not here to learn German, or indeed any other new skills, from Andrea. He was conducting an intriguing door-to-door missing person search.

He produced this flyer:

Never seen him before in my life mate, but he looks like the kind of guy who should be advertising organic farming. When Andrea showed me this flyer I was immediately struck by how happy everyone else in picture seems to be about the fact he’s missing. They look like they’re having the time of their life.

It turns out the nice man had not visited to spice up Andrea’s quiet Sunday morning, but was in fact a Jehova’s Witness. Now, I know nothing of these people except the fact as a kid we used to have to hide behind the curtains when they knocked on the door. So I had always assumed they were affiliated with the TV Licence people.

I looked them up, and you will NOT believe this, but the guy in that picture is meant to be Jesus. Jesus Christ! I know, that’s exactly what I said. Firstly, he’s had a serious haircut and a beard trim – maybe specifically for this photo shoot, guess that’s understandable. And he appears to be white, which was the one thing about Jesus I never really understood. And where is his Jew nose? This man had some serious work done before that picture was taken, maybe he got discounts at the barber and the rhinoplasty for being famous, I don’t know. Maybe he swapped it for a deal to do some modelling work. Next thing they’ll be telling us he sewed his foreskin back on…

Speaking of Jew things, where’s his sitcom? All Jewish people have written sitcoms, that’s what Jews do!

It also turns out, these people in the picture aren’t happy because he’s missing. Not at all. They’re apparently happy because he’s dead.

OK so now we know who he is, but there are so many questions on this flyer. “How does his death help us?” Well, I don’t want to seem cold, but ‘more food to go around’ was the first thing that came to my mind. “Why is it important that we remember him?” Well, I don’t know the answer to that yet as I haven’t turned round the flyer for the answers to the quiz, but I’d suggest that if you want people to remember him, maybe you should stop changing the way he looks. I mean, Jesus is like famous these days, I should have been able to recognise him from your marketing photo.

There seems to be a subtext about beards in this image also. Note all the hordes of happy people, carefully gathered from various ethnicities, at the bottom. Not one of them has a beard. All the bearded guys are in black and white up in the corner. What’s he trying to say, trimming his beard and then relegating all the beardy men into black and white and shoving them to the back. Is he foretelling the End of Beards?

It was with a great sense of foreboding that I turned over for the answers to the quiz:

Ah, there’s the Jew nose! Actually looking at the shadow in the first picture, you can see it, should have noticed that.

OK so in answer to the question “who is this man”:

Jesus Christ is widely recognized as the greatest man who ever lived.

You know what, I might actually agree with that, even though they’ve spelt “recognised” wrong and not cited any statistical sources; that statement would not be allowed on Wikipedia without some kind of backing up. A lot of people say Muhammad Ali but I think he’s overrated – he was very good at punching and not being punched though I’ll give him that. Fun fact – Cassius Clay changed his name after converting to Sunni Islam in 1975. Fun tip – if you market something as “Sunni Islam” you’re going to get a lot of people interested.

That’s why so many people get recruited into religious FUNdamentalism.

Yet, he surrendered his life for us 1,980 years ago.

Ah 1980 now that was a year. That’s when 9 to 5 came out. “Workin’ 9 to 5, what a way to make a livin’, gettin’ cru-ci-fied, it’s all takin’ and no givin’….”

Why do we need cleansing?

We get a lot of flyers through the door for Polish cleaners, that’s a very competitive market you’re getting into there and I would be very surprised if you can compete with their rates or work ethic.

OK so there’s two events we can go to to learn more about all this stuff. One is being held in Tooting Leisure Centre and the other in the Kingdom Hall. Clearly they will see the effect of the “Sunni Islam” and “fun-damentalism” point I made earlier, I know which one I’d go to. Plus I’d rather not talk about Jesus in the same place I go swimming, I don’t think those things go together, although that picture on the back of the flyer does look like it’s been papped in the changing room.

Apparently the Bible talk in the Kingdom Hall is entitled “Does Death End It All”. I imagine afterwards I’d be thinking, I fucking hope so…