A Pastoral Rant in Five Bounce-Filled Movements
The world is on fire, and someone showed up dressed like a giant inflatable penis.
Good.
Not because it’s funny (though it is, deeply). Because when oppression becomes a theater of cruelty, resistance must become a circus of the surreal. When the powers-that-be put on pageants of brutality, we respond with polyester pageantry. Enter: the sacred art of the inflatable uprising.
This is not a punchline. This is strategy. A theology of the absurd. A battery-powered exorcism of despair. And for every shark suit that bit injustice in the face, every banana that boogied beneath a drone, every phallus that flipped off fascism while fully air-swaddled—we offer our reverent thanks.
Thank you, Inflatable Nation.
You remind us that even in the ruins, we can still show up weird, joyful, and loud. That even when the narrative demands solemnity, we can rewrite the script with squeaky shoes and duct-taped joy.
When Outrage Fails, Delight Fights Back
How many times can you scream into the void before your throat gives out or your soul grows callouses?
Rage is real—but it’s got limits. Delight, on the other hand, is a renewable resource.
That’s why the inflatable frog dancing in front of ICE mattered. That’s why shark suits and unicorn heads and big wobbly dino legs matter. In Portland, when protesters in blow-up costumes twirled defiantly under federal floodlights, they weren’t undermining the seriousness—they were refusing to be consumed by it. The spectacle was the sermon. The joy was the weapon. And it went viral not just because it was funny—but because it felt like freedom.
The No Kings protests ballooned (literally) into a nationwide phenomenon. Suddenly, absurdity wasn’t a distraction—it was a contagion. It gave people permission to grieve sideways. To laugh at the tyrant. To remember that grief doesn’t have to wear black. Sometimes it shows up in a duck costume with righteous rage under the zipper.
Because absurdity isn’t frivolous—it’s revolutionary.
The Power of Looking Ridiculous on Purpose
Nothing freaks out authoritarianism like a well-placed fart joke in a moral argument.
When a protest march is led by a woman in a full-body phallus suit smirking through handcuffs, something shifts. Not just the optics, but the soul of the spectacle. It’s not about undermining the cause—it’s about revealing the emperor’s lack of clothing by wearing something more ridiculous on purpose.
Joy that doesn’t ask permission is radical. Silliness, when wielded like a sword, becomes satire that slices through sanctimony. And mocking power is never just comedy—it’s a refusal to kneel.
Because dignity doesn’t only live in solemn silence. It lives in the bounce. In the absurd. In the refusal to be shamed into seriousness. In the choice to be loud, ludicrous, and alive.
This Is Not Frivolous. This Is War in Polyester.
These suits are more than air and costume. They are grief in drag. Mourning in motion. Rage with googly eyes and a fan motor.
To wear one is not to escape the world—but to interrupt it. To declare that even the apocalypse must be reckoned with on our terms. That resistance can be righteous and ridiculous at once. That the medium can be surreal while the message lands sharp as a sermon.
This isn’t cosplay. It’s communion.
Here’s to the Ones in Tiny Fan Armor
To the saints of spandex and sarcasm, the prophets in pool float wings:
You gave despair a whoopee cushion.
You looked grief in the face and gave it jazz hands.
You showed up in spaces you were never invited to—and refused to shrink.
And though they called you silly, costumed, irrelevant—you weren’t performing for them. You were performing for the kids watching. The burned-out activists who needed one good belly laugh to make it through the month. The scared ones who forgot joy was still legal.
Because over 2,000 cities joined in. Because the frog suit went viral. Because the streets were full of people who said “No King” in every dialect of defiance—including inflatable.
Thank You
To every person who picked polyester over paralysis.
To every sacred fool who chose to dance when collapsing felt easier.
To every shark bite, banana bop, unicorn swirl, frog bounce, and weaponized giggle:
You reminded us that hope doesn’t have to be polite. That dignity can look like joyful defiance. That sometimes, salvation comes with a zipper up the back and batteries that run too hot.
You gave us back something they keep trying to steal:
Not just hope.
But agency.
Loud. Inflated. Unapologetic.
And for that—truly—thank you.
