Atheist billboard kills business for popular restaurant
This billboard appeared like a thief in the night, and a popular seafood restaurant that usually advertised in this spot saw its business drop by two-thirds.
More on Gawker.
May 01, 2008
March 10, 2008
Paradise Found by Betony Vernon
‘‘My work is a response to all things plastic, black, evil and cheap that don’t give people the chance to explore the power of the body.’’ That tantalizing quote appeared in last Sunday's New York Times feature on Betony Vernon. The article may highlight the "titillating" aspects of Vernon's "erotic ceremonies," but as the writer also notes there's more to the sex than just sex. Her Paradise Found website explains:
"Ritual," "mission," "education," "mystery"--the language of transformation pervades Vernon's work. And it's not just talk: check out the following iconic design, which links the flight of the spirit to bone and flesh:
Besides offering a jewelry line, Paradise Found also doubles as a postmodern mystery faith, with a secret gathering place and rites known only to invited initiates--one more sign that we are living in the midst of a new Renaissance, where art, spirituality and commerce blend into one.
February 15, 2008
Trash mandala
BLDGBLOG has the scoop on this innovative project: "Jeffrey Inaba and C-LAB have created this mandala of consumption, refuse, and plastic waste, with one side dedicated to the "hydration compulsion" that helps puts millions of one-use bottles in places bottles aren't meant to be."
February 05, 2008
Wal-Mart Golgotha
Via Consumerist
January 31, 2008
Nuns' nudes crude say prudes
"Banned in Boston" used to mean something back in the day; now, the most Catholics in the Bay State can do is issue press releases taking offense.
Above: an Equinox fitness center ad I never would have heard about had not Boston's Catholic coalition been so vocal in protesting it.
Equinox' response:
Our ad campaigns are based on personal motivation and fantasy, and throughout history, the body has been considered a form of art.
I think mine's somewhere between cubism and the surreal.
January 12, 2008
Bolivian holy sand
My favorite bit from this story: the argument that being a priest exempts you from airport security searches. Were that the case, I'd be tempted to sign up.
A man dressed as a priest caught at Amsterdam's airport with three kilos of cocaine under his vestments claimed to police that his packages contained "holy sand", Dutch police said.
Police stopped the man at Amsterdam's Schiphol airport as he was transiting on a flight from South America, Robert Van Aapel, a spokesman for the Dutch Royal Military Police told CNN by phone Saturday.
"He refused to be searched saying that he was a religious person and it was not allowed," Van Aapel said.
"However, this is normal procedure so our officers insisted. They asked him again and after the second time they carried out the search and discovered the man had packs strapped to his legs below his priest's clothes. He told us they contained holy sand," he said.
He said the man, who is aged around 40 and a Bolivian national, was arrested Thursday after arriving in to the airport on a flight from Lima, Peru. He was attempting to transit on a flight to Milan when he was apprehended with the cocaine, worth around €105,000 ($155,000).
The Bolivian appeared in court Friday on charges of drug smuggling, Van Aapel said.
Dutch police are trying to establish if the man is a real priest after he claimed to be a senior member of the clergy in the Bolivian capital La Paz, he added.
January 02, 2008
Christvertising
Blue shirt, khakis, flip chart--Christvertising is a pitch-perfect parody of clueless ad salesmanship and evangelical culture. The immediate target: marketing proposals with so little basis in reality that their only hope of success would seem to be divine intervention. Still, it says something about how thoroughly Christians have internalized market-speak that people aren't sure this is a joke.
May 04, 2006
Faith-onomics
The following are a few recent articles illustrating how people integrate their spiritual outlook with the business of selling jewelry and other accessories:
- Magick stores dispel stereotypes in Tempe and New Hampshire
March 14, 2006
Googleplexed
Believers the world over seem to have relatively little trouble discerning the mind of God. Google's Adsense, however, exists on a noumenal plane that seems to defy the dictates of pure reason. Below is screenshot of a Christian youth minister's blog to which Google helpfully appends ads for Wiccan jewelry.
Must have been the keywords "Blessed be"!
The Value of Meaning
According to this article in the latest National Jeweler, people buying jewelry today are looking less to signal status than to find personal meaning. Shops that tell a story have an edge.
February 14, 2006
Will a Blingshot slay Goliath?
Of the making of Christian books against evolution there may be no end, but adaptation and natural selection are everyday realities in the world of Christian booksellers. As this article notes, one of the themes emerging from the annual convention of the Christian Booksellers Association is the need to adapt to Walmart and big box stores, who are taking away a sizable portion of the Christian book trade.
What is keeping the booksellers in the black? Yes, they are beginning to emphasize their more informed selection & ties to local churches, but statistics tell the real tale: "Books now account for only 40 percent of sales in Christian retail stores."
Jewelry, tchotchkes, gifts--that's where the profit center now lies in the Christian market. But if mainstream merchants continue to expand their range of Christian and other religious products, look for more traditional Christian bookstores to go the way of all flesh.