The state of Missouri takes its “show-me state” nickname literally, and there is no shortage of places where certain things are shown to the citizens and guests of the state.
Billboards for the adult mega-centers and superstores break the monotony of an average I-70 cross-state drive.
The righteous citizens counteract the best they can. The following billboard is the Holy Grail of billboards. I frequently post on the subject of billboards here, but I don’t think I can ever top this one. To photograph this rare find I took a detour and put myself in danger parking on the side of the highway. What makes this billboard so unique is that until today I always read it as “Jesus saves and forgives pornography”, not having enough time to read the last line driving by at highway speeds. Apparently that’s not the case and that’s a pity, because Jesus would probably double the amount of followers if he did.
There is no better place to educate people about abortion then the side of the highway. That’s where many people do most of their reading.
As an unintended side-effect of my billboard hunting I discovered a creative way to deal with the native omnipresent Missouri front-yard pile of rusted metal. This resident of Concordia, MO can give KCMO artist Stretch some pointers on how to run a welder.
Other flying objects were hidden in the building.
Lastly, consider this your visit to Jonesburg, MO.
The “pride in their heritage” museum is open on Sundays 2 to 4.
This post should be titled “I have a camera too, you know…”. There are people in this town who are really good at taking pictures, and then there is me. I don’t set an aperture and exposure on my camera, I just push the button. That doesn’t make me any less eager to share my photos. Plus I have better captions.
What I miss in the American foreign policy lately is the pizzaz; intricate covert plots; cleverly planned fully deniable coups; propaganda wars; spy-driven assassinations worthy of a Robert Ludlum novel; secret service dirty deals a la Iran Contra; mind-blowing, daring, underhanded activities that we usually expect from our multiple secret operations.
Instead, we see mostly ham-handed, simple-minded, anti-creative, doomed from the start, mindbogglingly expensive, unpopular foreign policies, that, until now, only George W.Bush was capable of producing, approving and implementing. Now, in what can be safely called Bush’s third term, we are bombing Libya while producing the lamest kind of bullshit statements to justify it.
I’d like to point out that I am not a pacifist by any means. I just like our reasons for bombing other countries to be little less obvious. And if you believe that we are “protecting civilians” over there, I have a Red Square for sale.
Every once in a while I get a link to the beautiful color photos of Russia made in the early 20th century by Sergei Mikhailovich Prokudin-Gorskii. For these photos he used a complex technique called digichromatography involving making and then combining three separate shots using red, green and blue filters.
In the 1920’s and 30’s Branson DeCou used a different method – hand-tinted slides to document his trips, including his tour of Russia.
Kremlin. Courtesy, Special Collections, University Library, University of California Santa Cruz.Continue reading →
What makes this billboard so unique is that until today I always read it as “Jesus saves and forgives pornography”, not having enough time to read the last line driving by at highway speeds. Apparently that’s not the case and that’s a pity, because Jesus would probably double the amount of followers if he did.
