When Dada Blood Flows Through Your Veins

I don't know how much it shows, but Dada blood flows through the Jingo veins. Seriously -- I was in a terrible car accident, arm ripped off (it's OK, it grew back), they checked my blood type in the ER. I'd scratched out "A Positive" on my driver's license and written in "Dada." Luckily they had several quarts of Hans Arp on hand -- burnt umber, my favorite flavor -- and my worthless life was saved.

When Dada blood flows through your veins, oh, what a wacky life you lead! You want to épater les bourgeoises like it's going outta style -- which it is, of course, but never mind.

When Dada blood flows through your veins, you can't help noticing how churches have those minister-configurable signs with the chirpy mots on 'em: "Come on over to my house before the game! -- God" or "Satan subtracts and divides, God adds and multiplies." I'm as surprised as the next Art-Nihilist to find that there's a whole cottage industry dedicated to churning out these little slogans, an occupation that must be akin to working in a fortune-cookie sweatshop but without the free duck sauce.

When Dada blood flows through your veins, it takes the self-denial of Alfred Jarry not to undertake a late-night guerrilla campaign to sneak into the churchyard and rearrange the letters on the signs into something a bit more, shall we say, challenging. In these days of the Anagram Server it's child's play to do; that "Come on over to my house" thigh-slapper quoted above -- taken verbatim from the Hillsboro United Methodist on Charles Town Pike -- might more profitably be rendered:

A HEBE GOD FORGET ME TOO, OR CHEESE ON MY OVUM

or perhaps

OH, A BERET FOGGED ME, YOU OVERCOME TEN HOMOS

or, keeping with the Sunday football theme:

ED BEG A REF: GET HOMO! SO HOMO, YE COUNTERMOVE

When Dada blood flows in your veins, these are the things that tempt you.

But: I am large! I contain multitudes! (Although the Thorazine helps keep the number down.) Another belief I profess, besides the Dada principles of deliberate irrationality, anarchy, cynicism and the rejection of laws of beauty and social organization, is an abiding belief in Karma. This is why I haven't as yet actually blacked up my face, donned the turtleneck sweater and longshoreman's cap of the traditionally garbed cat burglar, and skulked off into the night my mischief to perform.

Which is why I was so overjoyed to find the Church Sign Generator, obliquely referred to by Bobby Lightfoot in this hellfire-guaranteeing post. I immediately sent the link to a friend at work, but she ho-hummed and said she'd seen it eons ago, really (her favorite sign was "God Wants Pie," in case you're curious), so maybe it's not all that fresh, but it's fresh to me, and frankly, chez Jingo, that's what counts.

Here's the before-and-after on our little anagram-prank:





Not long ago I was appalled to see a family walking to St. John Newman in flip-flops and belly shirts. I really don't think a dress code is too much to ask, in these degraded times:



Advice that's good in both the secular and sacred walks of life:



Ah! I like a minister who's hip to what the Sartrean Existentialists are layin' down. This shows some moxie!



Years ago, back when I still wrote checks for stuff (I'm now on the No-Pay Plan), I remember seeing "A canceled check is your receipt" stamped on a check that came back from the bank. The construction suggested the first phrase so strongly that the two have become inextricably entwined:



Officially running out of gas, now:



When Dada blood flows through your veins
You govern your own airspace, man
Yellow ochre on an IV Drip:
A drunk descends a staircase, man!