Hey, remember when I wrote about that odd little half-remembered Christian cartoon from my childhood called Jot? Well, apparently "Jot" means something really filthy in parts of the Indian subcontinent, because my innocent little post attracted a total of 63 comments from spambots hawking Bangalore escorts, Mumbai prostitutes, and the like. Yeah, I know. Third world spammers saw my musings on a wholesome children's show about an animated ping-pong ball learning lessons about Jesus and thought THAT was an appropriate venue to peddle their prostitution whores? 

SINNERS! You defile Jot, you defile Jesus, and now God is pissed. 

"You're going to hell, you blasphemous dickbags!"

Good thing I didn't write about Davey and Goliath. Who knows what sort of  unholy smut that would attract? 

Oh the humanity!

FUN FACT! Did you know that Davey and Goliath was made by Art Clokey, the same dude who created Gumby? Personally I always found D+G a bit creepy, but Gumby? Shit, Gumby rules! I love me some Gumby!

via GIPHY

An original from my own collection: 

Don't judge! Bendable figurines have needs just like the rest of us.

#sexpositive

Anyhoo, what really cheesed me off about all the spam that Jot post attracted was the time I had to spend going and deleting every comment individually. The bright side was, I did come across some comments that were amusing enough to use for blog fodder. Here are a few (BTW I removed all the hyperlinks, so your computer won't catch herpes): 

Y'ALL READY FOR THIS?

• My name is Nayra, I am a young Escort from Kanpur. I am tall, slender, and dress fashionably. I really love men. I don‘t care how yo look like or how old you are. If you are a real gentleman and you are polite, courteous and have very clean cleanliness I will give you the best time of your life.

Pictured: Nayra. Tall, slender, dress fashionably, and really loves men? 

Technically true, I suppose. Except for the "dress fashionably" bit. 

• I am a final graduate, i am having one week of holiday so i came here to Singapore. I have just arrived to Singapore this morning. I am now staying in a hotel in the central, i am looking forward to meet up with you all and have some good wild sex together.

Incidentally, the posting above had links advertising "Nagpur Escorts." Nagpur is not Singapore. 

Pictured: Not Singapore.

Like Miss Vanessa Williams, I went and saved the best for last:

• Our independent bangalore escorts are fully taught and perfect define entertainers. They are so beautiful and gracious than any other woman you have square with. How many men have bravery to deal all these things in this busy daily life? Now a day 19s woman always cheats their partner and treats them weakly. And these all are reason of a divide. Many of man who was dating with this kind of woman can tell you the story of tears, cry and sadness.

Wait a minute.

Am I crazy, or are those last two sentences sort of.....poetic?

And these all 

are reason 

of a divide. 

Many of man 

who was dating  

with this kind of woman

 can tell you 

the story. 

Of tears, 

cry 

and sadness.

via GIPHY

Whew, well at least I was able to make some art out of that annoying spam.

JOT

So then there's this little bit of 1960's weirdness, a religious cartoon that they used to toss in among secular cartoons when I was a kid. The five-minute animated shorts centered around the adventures of a little white blob called "Jot." He'd do something evil like break a toy or not wash his hands before Sunday school and then some off-screen authority figure would make him answer for his sins and wrap it all up with a Bible verse at the end. There was also--weirdly enough--some very flower child psychedelia thrown in with his escapades, like in this short where he lies to his mother about stealing a cupcake and then has some sort of trippy freakout when his conscience gets the best of him. 

Due to his meltdown, Jot never gets around to eating the cupcake. Personally, I think it would have awesome if they had the little guy eat the cupcake and then start tripping balls. That would send a fun message: "Kids, don't steal sweets from authority figures because they'll put hallucinogens in the ingredients to catch you out, you thieving little bastards."

I'm pretty sure I hated Jot, probably because I resented having preachy morality lessons crammed in between secular weekday cartoons. It would have been one thing if they'd confined it to the Christian channel, but having to endure creepy religious crap when you just wanted to watch Caspar the Friendly Ghost really sucked.   

My most significant Jot-related memory was playing ping-pong with my friend Heather, age 8 or 9, in the basement of my neighbor's house (our elderly neighbors across the street regularly invited us kids in for snacks and games; if I remember correctly their grandchildren lived out of town, so us neighborhood urchins were sort of their grandkid surrogates). Heather and I would take turns slamming the ping pong ball across the table as hard as we could, pretending it was Jot the Biblical dot-goblin.

Well, what do you want? We didn't have violent video games back then. We had to use our imaginations. 

I'd still probably wear this t-shirt, though. For kitsch value.