Advertising

Of Anwar al-Awlaki and Bold Christian Clothing

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[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]

I am, admittedly, very interested in religion, and Christianity has been the mother-lode for me of the imagery, gestures and profound words that can move heart, soul, mind and imagination into a greater depth.

Advertising, on the other hand… well, let’s just say that the best of it plays on imagination, too, but it is generally more of an intrusion upon via billboards on landscapes, via commercials in movies, or via irritating jingles and catch phrases that subvert my best attempts at quieting the mind than an experience of the kind of depth that religion at its best can offer.

But if you are interested in religion, and click online in enough of the right places, advertising that has “religious” content will be targeted to you.

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And so it is that I went online this morning to check out something about al-Awlaki on Islamic Awakening, an American jihadist forum, and found myself invited to consider, instead, wearing some “bold Christian clothing”.

This was while I was researching al-Awlaki, right? the Muslim jihadist preacher?

at:

a site with its own curious graphics…

And looking closer at that logo, isn’t that some sort of triumphalist armored vehicle I see?

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Well, never averse to a pretty girl, and noticing the one in the Bold Christian ad, I thought I’d taker a look at Bold Christian Clothing to find out what sort of fashion sense was popular among the younger Christian set just now, and found I could obtain t-shirts with such comforting images as these…

— this one’s symbolic of our relatively new century, I guess…

or this:

which I am praeternaturally fond of since my online moniker is hipbone, with its veiled reference to the Valley of the Dry Bones in that very same chapter 37 of Ezekiel…

and then there’s this masterfully supremacist rendering of a part of the Lord’s Prayer:

which I must admit isn’t the image of Thy Kingdom Come that springs to mind when I personally hope and pray for heaven on earth.

What exactly is it, you may ask? According to the manufacturer, it’s

The Lord’s Prayer — “Thy Kingdom Come” with an Angel holding the cross, Horses, skulls under the horses, and palm trees (with Shield and Pacific Oracle cross logo added)

It’s also “the softest, smoothest shirt we sell” … “made from combed cotton for your added comfort” and gives “a flattering and stylish fit to virtually any body type”.

I on the other hand think it looks more like a photoshopped variant of the Quadringa statue in London that celebrates Wellington’s victory over Napoleon at Waterloo:

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In light of all this, I do believe I’ll just wear white although even that could be misinterpreted, I guess.

Signs of the times

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[ cross-posted from Zenpundit ]

"end of the word" warnings from the US and Egypt

A brief fugue on the graphics of coexistence

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A great many people will have seen (or designed) some variant of the “coexist” bumper-sticker / tee-shirt design:

Coexist

— the first of which can be found on acsapple‘s photobucket — and hey, the “aum” sign for “oe” is a brilliant bit of graphic substitution! while I nabbed the second here.

What with a thousand flowers blooming, the importance of preserving memetic variations, peaceful coexistence and all, it’s only natural that some will have different takes on the matter —

coexist variants

— the first of these comes from the blog of a gun-toting political refugee from the People’s Progressive Republic of Massachusetts, while the second is a tee-shirt design by Matt Lussier, and you can get your tee-shirt here…

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As for myself, I have fond memories of India, and was accordingly heartened to see this on an Indian Muslim site…

india calling-religious unity

which is what set me thinking about “coexistence” graphics in the first place.

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Did I ever tell you about the sign I saw over a shop in Delhi, advertising the sale of mythelated spirits?

I frequently feel just a tad mythelated myself.

TV-Ad Random Thoughts

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-I noticed that the ad for “Alteril” sleep aid ran immediately after the one for “5 Hour Energy”. There may be a message here.

-Dear poet.com: We do not owe you our hard-earned “American dollars”, you sanctimonious subsidy whores. Drop your sense of entitlement and make your product competitive if you want us to buy it. Why should American taxpayers pay off a bunch of lazy rent-seekers, driving up grain prices and making life harder for poor people everywhere, when we can buy our BTUs in petroleum form more cheaply. What do you have against people in Dubai, anyway? Unlike you they don’t get the US Congress to pick our pockets. And their hard-working ethos fits American values a lot better than does your sleazy whining PR attempt to guilt us into buying your overpriced fuel.

-Dear Land Rover: Your car looks like the fucking box it came in. Do you think we’re going to buy it just because you run ads with rock music every ten minutes on CNBC?

-The women in the Yoshi Blade ad are really annoying, especially the big blond chick with the onion. Maybe I shouldn’t say “annoying”, I should say “empowered”.

-Where are Carlton Sheets and Don Lapre when you need them? Today’s get-rich-quick infomercials just aren’t what they used to be, though Jeff Paul comes close.

-Dear Comcast: If you invested 10% as much in improving your service as you do in slick commercials to lure new customers you might not need the slick commercials. Everyone knows your service is awful. By running these endless TV ads you are really rubbing it in to your current customers. Great, you can simplify my bill as compared to AT&T. Do you think I care about that, given my certain knowledge that switching to your service would guarantee me repeated frustrating phone conversations with incompetent tech people to fix problems your own system caused? Idiots.