Store
If Killing the Buddha is a temple, this is where the money-changers lurk. Buying KtB merchandise supports the site, promotes Buddha-killing throughout the world, and will make you look more marvelous than the Queen of Sheba. All purchases go through our friends at CafePress.
For KtB books, including our latest anthology Believer, Beware: First-Person Dispatches from the Margins of Faith, go to the Books page.
*
Trucker Hat – $13.19
You’ve got a long drive ahead. A dark night, proverbially so. There are sure to be all sorts of demons out on the road tonight, looking for none but the likes of you. You’ve already called your psychic and explained the situation, and she told you what you already knew: the spirits of the highway heed the messages on trucker hats. That’s why truckers wear them, of course. But you’ve seen the news. The road ahead is strewn with the wreckage of semis whose drivers wore hats with aircraft carriers, biker gangs, and Confederate flags on them. You know that only one hat can get your through this gauntlet—the hat with the red X on a white, poofy front.
Ceramic Travel Mug – $21.59
Your favorite megachurch has coffee-holders in the chairs. Thank God—yes, in this case, God—for that. But the styrofoam cups they give out with the free Starbucks? Hasn’t anybody heard of “creation care”? When the Lord returns to reign, the last thing He needs to be troubled with is a billion syrofoam cups that will never decompose in His landfills. Not to mention the choice of coffee. You’d much prefer to bring that premium fair-trade organic stuff that your daughter just brought back from her missionary trip in Central America. Now, with the KtB travel mug, kill both Buddhas with one red X.
Magnet – $3.59 (10-pack $16.79)
Your kid has really done it now. With a single second-grade school paper, she managed to offend the religious sensibilities of six teachers and the principal. She didn’t mean it at all, of course—how could she—but you can’t say she’s wrong about the Blessed Virgin. Now you’ve put her to bed and you’re sitting, alone, at the kitchen table with the offending paper before you. You’ve read it over maybe a dozen times. At first, it offended you like it did them, and you asked yourself again and again where she got such noxious ideas. But now something in it compels you. You stand up and walk it over to the refrigerator. You mount it there with the only available magnet equal to the task—the one you ordered from Killing the Buddha. You stand back, look at it, and feel the blessed miracle of an idea too dangerous for the world.
2.25″ Button – $3.59 (10-pack $16.79; 3.5″ Button $4.19)
The year: somewhere in the late ’90s, you’ve lost track of exactly which one. The music: that brief ska revival, heralded by such unforgettables as No Doubt, the Mighty Mighty Bosstones, and the Warped Tour. You’re in high school, practically skanking in your sleep. Evening falls, and you’re suiting up for another gig with your 25-piece pack of marching band drop-outs. You’ve got your trumpet in your hand. You’ve got Vans on your feet, jeans precisely halfway between grunge and punk, and a black hoodie over you-forget-which t-shirt. It is covered in buttons. There’s Black Flag, there’s a checkerboard, there’s random vintage shit. But something is missing. Something remains un-rebelled-against. You remember the book you’re supposed to have read for class tomorrow, Hermann Hesse’s Siddhartha. Fuck it. That’s the button you need: Killing the Buddha.
There’s more merchandise on the way!