Sober Minds

Real drama is quiet and sober. This week has brought very dramatic, sober situations and I don't really want to write about them. Such situations do not need my words to disparage their gravity.

I thought today about the verses in the Bible that speak of being of a "sober mind." I've always thought passages such as the mind of the wise being in the house of mourning, referred to being somber, I realized today that is not what those verses mean. During this time of gravity my thoughts have drifted to others, to helping friends and neighbors. My mind has dwelt on the Psalms where wise men declared that God was their fortress, and their salvation. During this time I have been more joyful because the problems and situations I deal with on a daily basis are seen in their true scale, which is small and temporal.

Be of a sober mind, but rejoice in the Lord always. Those are not contradictory statements.

The Lord is my fortress. Rejoice in the Lord always. He is a God who is near.

Bizarro Advertisements

Remember Bizarro the Superman villian from Htrae (earth backwards) where everything is backwards, you hate friends, love enemies, use nudity to sell clothes and cake to sell computers.

If you don't know where I'm going with this the marketing / advertising departments for companies have crossed over into the world of modern art.

Now some would argue that advertisements have always been crazy - as seen here. At least you know what is being advertised though. Billboards are the worst imho. I don't know what 90% of them are trying to sell me. Abercrombie has ads that feature not one piece of clothing. They sell clothes, but their ads feature nothing but nakedness, and worse than that male nakedness (the most hideous kind of nekked there is).

I see dozens of advertisements without any clear indication of what is being sold, and apparently without any real connection to the products they are selling. Is this some sort of weird reverse psychology? They put the male torso with a six pack almost as good as mine up there to remind the less blessed they should wear clothes?

Is this secret genius at work? I think its drugs. Large acid trips are the only explanation for toolishness of this magnitude.

This is the ad that inspired this post and nausea... Picture has been edited because I like you more than Abercrombie likes you.