Conversation

starting an art project.

Bible Stories without the Whitewash.

we have these *horrid* board books for my baby. "Noah and the Ark". "David and Goliath".

everyone portrayed is like tanned white people and happy. HAPPY.

what.

these people were probably pretty brown and definitely often miserable.

if you're going to have a board book about the ark, do not have 2x2x2 animals. There were 7 pairs of clean, 2 pairs of unclean.

let's talk about sanitation. that ship must have reeked. you have to figure that as Noah is floating out there shovelling poop out on his boat of stinky animals howling and so forth, there are dead bodies floating by bloating in the mideast sun.

now take hannah, samuel's mom. She's being hassled by her husbands other wife. Otherwife gets more food, unloads the snark on her for having no kids. Why aren't there pictures of poly families in board books?

when david smashed goliath's brains out, david was a teenager. beard shadow, most likely. ridiculously tan. cocky, too. He probably looked like a jock. why aren't the brains part of the standard images?

David was a sexual problem after his first wife gave him the cold shoulder. When he was dying, they got a hot young girl to get in his bed to see if that'd get him healthy again (it didn't). Now that's a perverted (to us) way to end the Great Hero's story. But it should be in there too.

Then the bible story books skip over the prophecies. Probably because it's gore, gore, gore, heavy sexual allusions, more gore, more "things gonna get better one day".

new testament, things are gorgeous, yea? nah. you had this huge pig herd and a lunatic. Jesus healed the lunatic but the pigs all ran into the sea and died. More bloating in the sun and Jesus gets the boot for asploding the local economy.

another one. so Jesus was this goody two shoes dude, yeah? let's adjust that in your board book. his first miracle was getting a wedding - a multiday rager of a party in that time - even more drunk by giving them the gooood wine.

the book of Acts in the bible has a lot of torture. Probably needs a lot of blood, piss, and filthy straw in the artistic rendering.

Stephen died in that book. Smashed by rocks. That's not a pretty death surrounded by nasty people and a glowing light. It's raw, ugly, and bloody.

and the book of revelations is calling out to be done up in full heavy metal art style. whole thing is like the ultimate album cover inspiration.

look, if you're gonna roll with the bible, roll with it. The blood on the sword, the stupid sexual antics, the stoning, and the bullheaded perseverence in the torture room.

and don't tell your children any different. it's not a lacy fairy tale.