#gadzooks it be a text post

[grandgillygaupus]

It’s been days and I’m still thinking about the season 5 finale of Puppet History.

Okay so there’s this show called Gilligan’s Island.

(I promise this’ll loop back around to Puppet History eventually, hear me out)

It aired between 1964 and 1967, and then ran in syndication for a decade or three, so it’s one of those shows that a lot of people remember watching when they were younger, but it’s not recent enough that its premise is anything more than a vague mishmash of concepts to most people. And that’s all well and good, that’s just what happens to TV shows after a while even when they’re incredibly popular.

I’d like to preface this with the disclaimer that I’m talking about a show made in the 1960s. There’s some not-great stuff in there, and I’m not here to condone the racism, sexism, transphobia, fatphobia, etc. that happens in this show. There are parts that are uncomfortable to watch and it’s not something I’d recommend to my friends to show their kids unless they’re willing to watch it with them and have some necessary conversations about the content.

I say all of this because I love Gilligan’s Island very much, and I want it known that this does NOT mean I love everything about it.

What I do love about it, however, is that it’s got a banger of a theme song that explains the premise, and it’s a situational comedy, which means it wears the inspiration for each week’s plot like a very loud and egregious t-shirt. Every week the castaways either try to get off the island and fail, or they spend the episode interacting with someone (or something) that has arrived on the island.

So what’s the plot device of the week going to be?

Well, what was cool with the young folks in the 60s? Rock music - we’ll do an episode about The Beatles, call them The Mosquitos, and get the Wellingtons to play them.

What are some major events going on in the world right now?

Oh yeah, the cold war.

As with most shows, Gilligan’s Island is best viewed with the context in which it was aired in mind. Learning a little bit about the social and political environment of the time and place in which a show was on the air is a great way to better understand where that show was coming from and what it was trying to do with its premise. Easy enough with the stuff that’s currently on TV, we’re living it, but let’s back up to 1963 for a bit. The history of television’s development as a medium is wild and messy and steeped in politics, but the important part is that even in 1963, broadcast television was a relatively new and emerging technology. That year, the pilot episode of Gilligan’s Island was filmed. The episode wouldn’t air until well after the show was cancelled, but it was as they were wrapping up the filming of this pilot that the cast and crew learned of JFK’s assassination.

Basically, Gilligan’s Island is a show that was developed while folks were still dealing with the emotional, social, and political fallout of World War 2, the threat of nuclear annihilation was hanging over everyone’s head, and the president had just been assassinated. So, why does the context matter?

Well, show creator Sherwood Schwartz has never been shy about calling Gilligan’s Island a “social microcosm”, or an allegory about the nations of the world learning to live with and understand each other.

Skipper’s a WW2 veteran.

Gilligan was in the Navy. He saved Skipper from being crushed by a depth charge that came loose from its moorings.

There’s an episode that revolves around a WW2 underwater contact mine washing ashore.

There’s an episode dedicated to Skipper’s depression and how he blames himself for stranding the castaways on the island.

There are several episodes themed around espionage and distrust in the people closest to you.

This is a comedy.

A lot of this stuff wasn’t treated with any sort of gravity, but it wasn’t necessarily trivialized, either. This was just the characters’ reality.

(I could go on about how comedy is one of the most effective ways to get an emotional response out of your audience but that’s a topic for another day)

In any case, the number of times the castaways’ lives are threatened is frankly ridiculous, but every single time, one thing remains the same: they care SO MUCH about each other. And ultimately, that’s the point of the show. It’s about a group of people that come from different backgrounds who not only learn to live with each other, but love each other. This is a found family story.

So I’d like to highlight a relevant episode that kind of brings all of this together.

The eighteenth episode of the first season, “X Marks the Spot”, deals very directly with the fear of nuclear annihilation. The castaways hear on the radio that a California air force base is going to test a new warhead the next day, and Skipper determines, based on the given coordinates, that their island is where the missile will land. Now, because this is a comedy, we - the audience - are informed that the explosives in the warhead have been removed due to a technical issue, but they’re going to launch the missile anyway to test the guidance systems. They don’t broadcast this on the radio, so our castaways have no idea they’re safe. They spend the time seeking each other out, discussing their lives, their regrets, and they make a point of being kind to one another.

They do everything in their power to catch the attention of the scout plane as a last-ditch attempt at rescue, but when this fails, that’s it. What do you do when there’s nothing you can do?

They watch the missile come down, and they be with each other.

Of course, this isn’t the end of the episode. The missile doesn’t explode, they try to disarm it anyway because they don’t know any better, and they think Gilligan’s been lost at sea inside the missile for about five seconds before he reappears soaking wet but otherwise fine.

But this episode always stuck with me. It speaks to a very real fear, a fear that manifested in comedy as a coping mechanism on a national scale because, well, no one was safe. No one felt safe. Yet it ends with an assurance that our castaways are okay, they’re going to be okay, and you get a good hearty laugh out of the deal. And you know what reminded me of this episode? The Puppet History season 5 finale (YEAH BRINGING IT BACK AROUND, BABY)

‘Cause you know that bit where Ryan thinks the Professor’s lost forever for about five seconds before he suddenly appears a little bigger than expected but otherwise fine? Yeah, that’s a good bit. And then that part where his parents are okay, and they’re all going to be okay, and we get a good laugh out of it? Chef’s kiss.

Anyway, I don’t know if I had a point to make. There’s a lot of horrible things happening right now, everywhere you look is more death and bad news. Will the world as I know it still be around next year? I’ve always been excited to grow old and grey, because it would mean I made it that far. Will I get that opportunity?

Is this what it felt like? Back in the 60s.

And it’s not the same, the circumstances are different. But the immense amount of catharsis wrought from that final song and the meteor’s monologue made me remember what’s important, and that was probably the point. “Tell the critters that you love that you love them, that’s enough.” We’re not alone, we’ve never been, and we’ve done this before.

What do you do when there’s nothing you can do? You watch the meteor come down, and you be with each other.

And in the meantime, you make some damn good comedy out of it.

Thanks Shane.

(No seriously, thanks for giving us the Professor’s parents after tearing our hearts out. King shit.)

[lemondemonpickuplines]

you, yes YOU could become the next greatest LD pickup artist! that is, if you have a couple free minutes and are a fucking loser. just like me! submit your pickup lines today!

to jumpstart your beautiful and creative minds, I've made a list of songs that are yet to have a line under the cutoff. Remember, though, we're only Lemon Demon in name - you're also welcome to post about a Mouth song, a YouTube video, or anything else that speaks to you and that Neil Cicierega is a part of. GOOD LUCK!

Error

Bowling Alley

Wrong

Hazel's Modus Operandi

Idiot Control Now

Pepper and Salt

Holy Bison Beaks

Fire Motif

Elsewhere

Hydroelectric Viking

The Saga of You

Mr Wolfgang

Destructo

Fly Straight

Oz Explodes

Booja Jabooja

Chu Chu Rocket

Switzerland**

Birdhouse In Your Soul

Mold en Mono

What's In The Toaster

Sunbeam Light Show Flower Seed

Musical Chairs

Matches and Nails**

Relativity

Fancy Pants Manifesto

Go To Hollywood

Sick Puppy**

Almond

Bad Idea

Behold the FUTURE

Not Applicable

Roman Robot Statues

Run, Harry, Run

Take a Picture

There's a Robot in My Head

Dead Sea Monkeys

What Will Happen Will Happen

Subtle Oddities

Gonna Dig up Alec Guinness**

Smell Like a Cookie All Day

Eventuality

March of the Living Figments

Lollipops

Bicycle Race

Fuzzy

Bottom Line

Sky Blue Up

I Want to Wake Up

Stampy

Zero Gravity

Mothers All Over the World

Pirate in a Box

How To Poop

Neil.soul

Dinosaurchestra Part One

Archaeopteryx**

This Hyper World

The Too Much Song

Stick Stickly

Princess Unicorn Bunny Kitten Angel

Abraham Lincoln's Head

Funniest

Snakes On a Plane

Turkeys

Kaleidoskull

Gadzooks**

The Afternoon**

Nightmare Fuel

The Wiggles Hate Each Other In Real Life

You Got a Toothache

320x200

Strangelet

Today's Secret Word

While My Keytar Gently Weeps

Treasure Map

Creepy

Super Hey Ya

Prelude to Presents

Spiral of Ants

Geocities

Angelfire

Gravitron

Moon's Request

Cat Hacks

Kubrick and the Beast

WIERDNESS

Everybody Likes You

Christmas Dog

Clark Kent

Degrassi

eBaum's World Dot Com

Fly Away

Happiest Shit Ever

Sorry For the Text Posts

Experiments in VOPM

Happy Songs

Hydoelectric Viking Funeral

It's Gonna Get Weird

Illemonama Polkarama

Magic Dance

MyNewSong

Pokerap

Prince Ali

Robo

Vanilla

Wiry Song

Wolfden Radio

Yellowfish

Zip-up Rap

**the songs with asterisks may or may not already have lines. my blog is old enough now that I struggle to comb through the whole thing, and tagging isn't always perfect. don't worry about re-using a song, though; as long as it's not an egregious duplication of an existing post, you're alright.

also, I only post every few days, so forgive me if it takes a while to get to your submission. sometimes I don't post lines until months after they've been sent in, so if you've submitted and I haven't posted, it may just be lost in my ass-long queue. or i just don't think it's very good. but you have no way of knowing, do you.

[sweet-broken-fairytale]

Your previous experiment with the seal have given you some clues as to what the seal may be about. So with some ideas being tossed around… What is it you wish to do?

Important: Remember that you as the askers have the ability to interact with your surroundings. However, you aren't invulnerable and your actions have consequences. Sometimes posts like these will pop up featuring just the Askers, to showcase what ideas and the like are thrown around.

This will allow you as the Askers to have more control over what happens, by either discouraging or encouraging certain ideas. Or even adding new ideas to the board.

Just keep in mind: While many times the majority may win, sometimes there is a very loud minority... So things may not always go as you'd like it to.

Askers: @ask-gadzooks @hyperburn3r @ask-summer-epos

This blog updates Fridays at 10 PM (GMT+1)

Ask Texts Below the Cut

ask-gadzooks asked: Okay, this barrier seems very dangerous, but hear me out... ...It could also be a lot of fun.

hyperburn3r asked: dang, that seal means business, huh? ...so, are we throwing more rocks at it?

ask-summer-epos asked: This force field seems quite dangerous, it completely destroyed a pellet, but what if interest I aim a rock at the base of the pillar so it can break the rock, and get the Jem free, us fairies could carry you out of here, here goes nothing!! *throws rock straight downwards*

Note: In some cases parts of an ask may be voided.

[sydmarch]

it's about time i write at least some semblance of a review for gadzooks volume 2 rather than continuing to throw out vaguely incomprehensible text posts about it so. here goes

SO it feels weird to say that ANYTHING is better than volume 1 bcus I have such a deep deep love for that album it almost feels like a betrayal. but objectively 2 IS better it takes everything from 1 and builds on it. every single thing caleb releases manages to be better than the last even when the last one has had you for months like "this is the best album in the world". like it absolutely has the same vibes as 1 and feels like how a volume 2 of something should feel yknow but it also feels like. tighter & slightly more cohesive without losing that experimental wandering feeling that 1 had. & I feel like 1 was such a departure from the mother stone and then 2 kind of brings some elements from tms back around like it had those moments that feel dark and sweeping in the way that only tms does.

yknow how people do those web weaving posts collecting artwork or quotes I am mentally doing that w music all the time & it's like this album takes the best of both the previous albums like. touchdown yolk is in between a venn diagram of you're so wonderful and this won't come back. obviously not like its just a mix of them both but like i fewl elements of each in it & like. those are mt absolute big favorites on both albums so of course thay ends up my favorite on this ine. near the end of the album it's like you get the vibes from little planet pig but also for a short time. love how opening with croc killers 2 followed by little lion kind of mirrors the never wet + yesterday will come combo as opening up volume 1. & I've always felt like one of the strongest & most interesting things in his songwriting is the way a song will like go in and out of different parts then bring another part back & loop around and you'll almost forget how the beginning started but then the same elements come back around & thinking about that interview where he says it comes from writing songs mentally while on set so he's not recording or writing them down really just keeping them in his brain for months where they grow and warp & blend and how obstacles and challenges are where creativity really shines through. & I feel like the shanty shine achieves this more strongly than anything since you're so wonderful. (WAIT california also does this extremely well to a smaller extent) but THEN just a few songs later slink on fido does it just as well.

i also love the way vocals are used so many songs out there feel like it's just about the vocals & the music is just there to support it but with a lot of Caleb's stuff it feels more like the voice is just another instrument that weaves in and out, sometimes it gets more focus but sometimes not there will be times where it feels more like strings or drums are the star of the show and I love love love that. makes all of his songs feel so thought out and cohesive and more like the vocals are PART of a song & other things aren't sacrificed for the sake of vocals. so much stuff I'll listen to an instrumental version & be like wait you can't even hear that sound, you never even notice that in the version with vocals, wtf, & wish there was more balance between the two. I feel like his stuff does that balancing act extremely well. 

& ik I had previously said idk if croc killers 1 is as strong of a closer as this won't come back but at that time I hadn't realized that the entire last 8 mins of the album was all that song so I'm going to amend that statement. when comparing just the VERY end like final minute of each song's ending twcb will always win out over anything that final minute is like The Finale To End All Finales. to me. I've already talked to death about that so I won't go on but otherwise. yeah croc killers 1 is just as strong an ending if im being objective & putting aside twcb being so special to me personally. OH & I didn't even touch on the more abstract synesthesia stuff like I meant to but yeah it goes back to 2 feeling a bit tighter & more cohesive just looking at what colors tend to pop up like 1 goes through such a journey from skies and grass & light colors to reds & pinks & blacks then to a mix of both & back & forth while 2 feels much more consistently jewel toned. crimsons at the start & orange and green & mostly darker throughout the later songs. while I feel like it absolutely sounds much more like 1 with some of the elements of tms brought back in my minds eye it's colors are much closer to tms than vol 1 which is inch resting. anyway. I didn't even get into lyrics bcus I still feel like I haven't spent enough time with the album in isolation to dive into looking them all up & figuring them out for sure yet. 

[macklives]

session 78 end

yeah no thats for another time and i may probably skim it instead because i cant be bothered to do another day-worthy notes on a recap from a story im kinda understanding so far, you know????

most likely no long post, benefits both you and me honestly

so uhhh, what happened:

rose basically said fuck the game and destroyed her gate, which preemptively means she wont be able to reach further into the game itself, and i dont know what that means for everybody else?? but the gods situation is kinda creepy not gonna lie. i hope shes okay and i have a bad feeling about it idk, its spoooky. and its not october anymore, andrew wyd?

and we have a fighting robot bunny and a new character who probably gave john that bunny considering jade talked to him about john?????? thats like the only thing right now that im confused by but probably because i dont have enough information yet. green text penpal seems nice either way. he wants to wrestle john, which could explain the fighting bunny, but still nice lad. uses fun words like gadzooks and fisticuffs. at least the bunny scared away jack, bc jack is a COWARD. and is probably gonna fight his ex bf bro strider or something. i hope we get an explanation to that. well. not the ex bf business but the uhh reason why they fought?? why he stuck the sword in the ground?? idk

we basically saw how WV, AR, PM and WQ all came to earth after the war and how on earth, there’s lots of civilians and i hope they all reunite and form a bigger can town. thats just precious. its connecting guys. all these plot points.

mom and dad????? VERY CUTE?? theyre having a honeymoon or something, i dont know what theyre trying to do really. maybe find their kids? but either way, cute uwu. and grandpa found dead dream jade, and now dead dream jade is stuffed and grandpa is mourning

wow

and now just one more thing. WV has the ring which was in possession of john, so im going to assume we’ll figure that out later????? john saw it in the clouds, so its his next mission im guessing. a mission alongside con air metal sword bunny. damn. iconic duo.

wait oh shit PM is a badass. just gotta put that in here before i end this note.

yeah

until then, im going to make some can town adventures in my head to repress the word “recap” that i am seeing in front of me

[earthcsurvivors-blog]

Gadzooks!

GT: Well would you look at this fine bundle of sassafrass!

GT: I must admit this little loophile web you've found has got the be one of the most riveting soon-to-be adventures yet

GT: Although I'd say by just reblogging like that we'd be making quite the mess of everyone elses little private space

GT: Perhaps instead of reblogging we can simply edit our answers into the post after the fact?

GT: What do you guys ponder?

--

TT: I'd say that would be wiser then messing around with people.

TT: on another thought that just crossed my mind, Rose one of us needs to change.

TT: its like we both entered into a fancy restaurant wearing the same dress. One of us clearly has to change. And while i would gladly slip into a sparkily orange number, the huge downside to this is there is no option for colored text.

TT: Also Jake, i might as well remind you about that thing you wanted me to remind you about.

~~

GT: Oh right! Thanks for the reminder, bud!

GT: I'd better go get ready for that. You as well in fact.

--

TT: shit you right.

[xseedgames]

Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection - Localization Blog #3

Gadzooks, true believers! You don’t need to whip out your decoder rings to figure out that, in mere days, we’ll officially be in the autumn season. And I know what you’re thinking: “But Nick, you said Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection was coming this summer, and as of right now, you’re just about out of summer!”

Alas, it’s true. You’re not going to see Zwei pop up on Steam without warning – both because there’s more I want to share before the game finally comes out, and because...well, letting you know in advance so you can plan/budget/spend accordingly is good policy. But most importantly, you’re not going to see it pop up because it’s not ready for release yet.

I’m not great at math and even I can tell there’s something iffy about those fractions.

At this moment, Zwei: II is in the middle of QA testing. We’ve got the game up and running: internally, Danielle, Nate, and I have played it through from beginning to end, and I’ve been busily making many tweaks and edits to the first-pass localization thanks to the helpful ability to see lines appearing in context. So on the “overall progress” front, we’re looking pretty good, actually.

And yet, to put it simply, there are some issues remaining that we wouldn’t feel comfortable releasing the game with and just patching later. Let me run down a couple of these with you to give you an idea of what I’m talking about.

1. If you watched our XSEED Livestream where I played Zwei, you might remember the unfortunate instance where I crashed out of the game because I got poisoned. Back then, we thought we’d gotten that one fixed, but it reared its head then, and is still crashing our games now. I found that this can be prevented by keeping the anti-poison accessory equipped whenever you’re in an area where there’s the possibility of being poisoned, but...you shouldn’t have to do that. It’s not supposed to be an anti-crashing accessory.

2. My top bugbear is that, within the game, there are places where the Japanese text for a line will display instead of the English. The first time I played through our English build, it happened almost never, but has since cropped up in other places – even in areas where I knew that text had been localized and easily located it in the files. We eventually had Sara do a game rip for the full text and Tom converted that to a file format similar to what I’d been working on all this time and inserting my localization back into it. In doing this, we found that some of the content – the bonus material in the “Zwei 2 Plus” Japanese release – wasn’t in our original script. That’s all been translated and localized now, and hopefully the new, easier-to-work-with file format will be a blanket fix for the Japanese text that was appearing. 

3. Since the game is releasing on Steam, I made achievements for it, because that’s something you do on Steam. It wasn’t originally designed with achievements in mind, though (it has its own internal “achievement system” in the form of gaining ranks in the Hunter’s Guild), so testing and making sure the achievements work as per their description is important, and also very time-consuming.

Because this is the first time I’ve actually had to create achievements from scratch (rather than just localize the Japanese achievements, as I did for the Trails of Cold Steel games), let me pause for a moment to expound on achievement design philosophy. In deciding what I wanted as achievements in Zwei: II, I wanted to cover a couple bases. I wanted several achievements that charted story progress, since the game is story-centric and people finishing the games they start is not a foregone conclusion and should be encouraged. Secondly, I wanted some achievements for collecting things, which involves more active exploration – like getting all the pets, or collecting every accessory. Third, I wanted a couple that were “hard,” in the sense that you had to do optional post-game stuff to get them, or that would be the result of more than one playthrough.

Feast your eyes on this cute achievement icon!

The tricky part here is that in this game, most of the things in a category will be fairly straightforward to obtain via progress, exploration, or money, but capstone things like the last pet, the very strongest armors (which also change Ragna and Alwen’s looks!), and the final Arcanum combo skill are gated behind doing optional content that’s a solid step up in difficulty from the base game. So what would ordinarily be a fun, reachable achievement like “Collect all the armors for Alwen” just becomes “do the optional dungeon” if we include those last “costume” armors, because you’ll get them as rewards for clearing different branches of that dungeon. And it’s redundant, too, because we already have an achievement for clearing all the branches of the bonus dungeon.

So the question is: do we treat those armors from the optional dungeon as...well, optional and make them not count for the purpose of the achievement? It’s a tough call, though I lean toward “yes, treat that stuff as optional” because there are already a couple achievements designed intentionally for players who want to be very thorough in their coverage and mastery of the game.

For a while, this floor just...wouldn’t load. You could jump off and you’d get stuck in an infinite loop of falling, taking damage each time your position “reset,” until you died and had to load from a save. Thankfully, we got the ground back under our feet.

But, to get back to the point, testing achievements is something we have to do for every game that has them, and adding them to a game that didn’t already have them adds an additional layer of complication to that. For example, let’s consider the game’s big bonus dungeon, the Illusory Labyrinth. It has four “branches,” each 20 floors long (but unconnected to the other branches), and there’s an achievement for clearing all branches. But when I cleared floor 20 of the first branch I ventured into, the achievement popped. So now, what we need to have the achievement do is clear, but then Sara, our programmer, has to decide whether it’s easier to have the achievement trigger off the completion of each floor, check your enemy log for the profiles of all the floor 20 bosses (probably the way I’d lean), or proc it based off the collection of all the final-floor rewards.

The good news is that we know what problems remain and, for the most part, they’re the kind of normal QA issues one would expect. The bad news is that we’re pushing Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection’s release back into fall.

Summer just doesn’t seem to have worked out for us, does it?

Believe me, we’re not fond of game delays any more than you are. They’re disappointing, they let you down, and they’re awkward to announce. But, speaking personally, I’d rather wait for a game and have it work well from the get-go than play a game in a state where my immersion is interrupted by weird graphical or textual hiccups, or achievements popping at the wrong times. So that’s what we’re doing our best to deliver. Remember, every cake is gonna taste funny if it wasn’t baked long enough.

So...yeah. Kick back as the summer heat abates, grab yourself a pumpkin spice beverage, and wait warmly as we prepare for you a mighty fine video game that I think will prove worth the (additional) wait.

[nyc-uws]

Why Do People Say "Jesus H. Christ," and Where Did the "H" Come From?

Spencer Alexander McDaniel:

Well, first, let us talk about where the name "Jesus Christ" comes from. The name Jesus is an Anglicized form of the Latin name Iesus, which is in turn a Latinized form of the ancient Greek name Ἰησοῦς (Iēsoũs), which is, in turn, a Hellenized form of Jesus's original name in ancient Palestinian Aramaic, which was יֵשׁוּעַ (yēšūă‘), a shortened form of the earlier Hebrew name יְהוֹשֻׁעַ (y'hoshuaʿ), which means "Yahweh is Salvation."

y'hoshuaʿ is the original Hebrew name of the hero Joshua, the central figure in the Book of Joshua in the Old Testament. Consequently, yēšūă‘ was one of the most common male given names in Judaea and Galilee during the early part of the first century CE when Jesus was alive. There are even multiple other people with the exact same name mentioned in the New Testament, including Jesus Barabbas in the Gospel of Mark and Jesus Justus, an apostle mentioned in the Book of Acts and in the Pauline Epistles.

Although people today often treat the word Christ as though it is Jesus's last name, it is actually not a name at all, but rather an epithet (i.e. a descriptive title). The English word Christ is an Anglicized form of the Latin word Christus, which is, in turn, a Latinized form of the ancient Greek word Χριστός (Christós), meaning "anointed one." The word Χριστός is used in the New Testament as a Greek translation of the Hebrew title מָשִׁיחַ (māšîaḥ), which has roughly the same meaning.

In antiquity, the title of māšîaḥ was not exclusively specific to any one particular person; instead, it was a generic title that could be applied to anyone who was regarded as fulfilling the role of God's anointed. For instance, in Isaiah 45:1, the title is applied to Cyrus the Great, the shah-in-shah of the Achaemenid Empire, who freed the Jews from captivity in Babylon after he captured the city in 539 BCE and allowed them to return home to rebuild their Temple in Jerusalem.

Now that we have that covered, we can proceed to explain where the phrase "Jesus H. Christ" most likely comes from. Most Christians are familiar with the Chi Rho monogram. If you are not familiar with it, here it is:

It is composed of the capital forms of the Greek letters chi ⟨Χ⟩ and rho ⟨Ρ⟩, the first two letters of the Greek word Χριστός, superimposed over each other. It is a sort of clever abbreviation that was used by early Christians to signify "Jesus" without having to write out his full name.

There is, however, another monogram used to represent Jesus that many people are less familiar with: the IHϹ monogram. Here is one form of it:

While the Chi Rho monogram is composed of the capital forms of the first two letters of the Greek word Χριστός, the IHϹ monogram is composed of the first three letters of Ἰησοῦς, which, if you recall, is the Greek spelling of the name Jesus.

The first letter is the Greek letter iota ⟨I ι⟩, which looks like the Latin letter ⟨I⟩ and makes the [i] sound as in the word machine, or sometimes the consonantal [j] sound as in the word yellow. The second letter is the Greek letter eta, which makes the long E sound, but which looks like the Latin letter H ⟨H η⟩. The third and final letter is the lunate sigma ⟨Ϲ ϲ⟩, a form of the Greek letter sigma which looks extremely similar to the Latin letter ⟨C⟩ and makes the [s] sound as in the word soft.

These are the first three letters of the name Ἰησοῦς, the Greek spelling of the name Jesus used in the original Greek text of the New Testament. At some point, however, presumably sometime in the early 19th century, ignorant Americans who were accustomed to the Latin alphabet and who knew nothing of the Greek alphabet mistook the letters of the IHϹ monogram for the Latin letters J, H, and C. They concluded that the J must stand for "Jesus" and the C must stand for "Christ," but then no one could figure out what the H stood for. Apparently, some people just concluded, "Hey, I guess H must be his middle initial!"

Eventually, the phrase "Jesus H. Christ" became something of a joke and it began to be used as a mild expletive. In his autobiography, the American author Mark Twain (a.k.a. Samuel Langhorne Clemens; lived 1835–1910) observed that the phrase was already in common use when he was still a young lad. Twain tells a humorous anecdote of how, in around 1847, when he was apprenticed to a printer, the evangelical preacher Alexander Campbell, the leader of the "Restoration Movement," ordered the printer to whom the young Samuel Clemens was apprenticed to print some pamphlets for one of his sermons.

Unfortunately, the printer accidentally dropped a few words and, in order to avoid having to reset three whole pages of text, made space to fill in the missing words by abbreviating the name "Jesus Christ" to simply "J. C." at one point in the text. The pious Reverend Campbell, however, insisted that the printer must not "diminish" the name of the Lord; he insisted that he needed to include the full name, even if it meant resetting three whole pages of already set text. The printer reset the text, but, because he was annoyed by the reverend, instead of changing the text of the pamphlet to say simply "Jesus Christ," he changed it to say "Jesus H. Christ."

It is important to note that Mark Twain's story is not the origin of the phrase, but it is an early piece of evidence of the phrase being used.

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Here are the origins of some other humorous oaths:

“By Jove!” Jove was a name for the Roman god Jupiter. This oath substitutes the name of a pagan god for the Christian one, the implication being that it was considered less offensive to swear by a deity perceived as being false than a deity perceived as being true.

“For Pete’s sake!” The ��Pete” that this oath refers to is Saint Simon Peter the Apostle. The oath substitutes Peter’s name for Christ’s to make it a lesser oath.

“Gadsbud!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is most likely a contraction of either “God’s body” or “God’s blood,” referring to the body or blood of Christ respectively.

“Gadzooks!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is actually a corruption of “God’s hooks,” referring to the nails used to pin Jesus to the cross during his crucifixion.

“Holy mackerel!” This oath is of uncertain origin, but it may be a substitute for “Holy Mary,” referring to Mary, the mother of Jesus.

“Zounds!” This seemingly nonsense phrase is actually a corruption of “God’s wounds,” referring to the wounds Jesus suffered during his crucifixion.

POSTCRIPT ADDED ON 15 AUGUST 2019

Since I originally published this article several months ago, several other articles have popped up on various websites, like this one

, falsely claiming that the explanation I have presented here is some kind of “new theory” of my own. It is not, nor did I ever claim it was such a thing. This explanation is not “new,” nor is it rightfully mine; I read it in a book somewhere years ago. You can find plenty of older answers to this question that give basically the exact same answer I have just given. All I have done here is present the explanation in my own words.

https://www.quora.com/When-people-use-the-expression-Jesus-H-Christ-what-does-the-H-stand-for/answer/Spencer-Alexander-McDaniel

BY Quora .com  June 26, 2019