Published June 27, 2007 by

Sale

consumer.jpgToday I wound up at consumer world and Christian consumer world ie. Forest Hill Chase (Shopping Centre/Mall) and Koorong (Christian bookstore). Sales were everywhere.

I kind of sometimes don’t see the relevance of a Sale. Nor the relevance of ‘special offers’ I am very, very inclined to be suspicious.

Although bought up to be somewhat of a, ‘go the extra mile for the better value/cost’, it has kind of come hand in hand with (on one end) – if it’s cheap it’s worth getting. My very Dutch-Aussie stinginess counteracts this most of the time, along with my general critical attitude towards admitting that advertising sometimes actually affects me, but there’s often the thought there.

I am – to give you some context – reading No Logo by Naomi Klein at the moment and it is fairly engrossing (might I add utterly fascinating) as well as fairly direct. I shall definitely share more when I plough beyond the first chapter.

The other thing, ‘for sale’ that I/We’ve been looking at the moment are houses. That saying, we aren’t after buying just yet, we are going to rent (Geoff and I when we get married). Rent money is dead money? Yay, nay. We’re not 100% sure we want to spend the rest of our life in the Eastern suburbs and so don’t intend to commit that fully nor want the hassle of later having to sell.

The real-estate institution amuses me no end. It is almost advertising at it’s lying worst. That is perhaps a fraction harsh, however if I could have things my way every advertisement would have the price and a detailed visual (non doctored photos) of every room in the house.

I have no idea what this has to do with sales. I think it is my slightly sleepy brain trying to make an intersection or a road smash between two things in my day.

Meanwhile, lets keep the rain coming down (along with the tree’s in Lilydale) and mosey off into the land of sleep where sales are irrelevant and the world is your oyster and not the house you rent.

But If I was to go off and think more about things I would follow this path:

  • What is value, why do we put value on things, how relevant is value? What is value in it’s proper place and perspective?
  • How much does ‘long term’ play into what we do with money? How often do we follow trends and what is traditionally appropriate?
  • Why don’t I go and treat myself/others more? What is holding me back from spluging now and then in a good and appropriate way and not in a consumeristic loser way?

image credit fotosearch

Culture Life

Published June 26, 2007 by

Ranges

Christianity Church

Published June 26, 2007 by

Cadavers and the Bodily Ressurection

I always thought ressurection was a funny word. I split it up in my head. Re-Surrection…

Last night I caught up with some of the Yits crew. We somehow fell into a fairly animated discussion about cadvers of all things. A crude definition of a cadaver for those who don’t know, is a dead body particularly referred to this way if it is being ‘cut up’ for science.

So our arguments chased down lines of the bodily resurrection, keeping the body holy, spirit, soul and at what point someone officiallydies. What about those who are bought back to life? What about cremation? Decomposition? Respect for the dead? Horror stories of erm, arms being waved out medical students windows…

I stand (without an excessive amount of thought) that when you’re dead and really dead, that the whole ‘the body is holy’ thing kind of dissipates. Sure I don’t think we need to be throwing heads around but that’s it. It doesn’t matter any more. It’s a shell. It’s not you, it’s not a person. I don’t have any problem with the idea of cremation.

As said. I haven’t explored much about, ‘bodily resurrection’. I am of the understanding we’ll have new bodies eventually… but there you go. My mind has been expanded that some Christians actually think quite differently about this stuff – even the opposition to cremation was kind of out of left field for me.

We didn’t get around to talking about organ donation. My housemate signed up the other day and I’ve been meaning too do so for a long time. Perhaps I’ve just read to many freakish John Grishams’.

Life

Published June 26, 2007 by

Progeria

fawn1.jpgLike Analise last night I happened to catch the 60-minutes segment on Progeria. I wasn’t paying much attention at all to the game of Scrabble I was meant to be playing. I have seen similar programs before with the same girl being interviewed. I find medical stories like those of Progeria utterly fascinating, and it (Above so much else – perhaps disproportionately, perhaps not) pushes hard on the compassion buttons, while at the same time really inspiring me.

It is things like this that make me wish I’d had the determination to follow through with that half inspiration of becoming a doctor… whenever that was, once upon a time.

To find out more and to donate, Go Here.

There is no cure yet but they have a genetic lead – and are only waiting on the funding to follow through with that.

Tag to Rodney Olsen, to talk about Progeria (If I can do that?)

image credit to Creative Thursday Daily

Life Social Justice

Published June 25, 2007 by

Vector Games

smalllogo1.jpgThe seal to the left is how I’ve spent lots of my day (After a gloriously long sleep-in). A girl at work is getting married in November and she sent of a brief to a graphic designer who returned something less than adequate (Like really not good at all) and out of the generosity of my heart or stupidity of my impulsion, I offed to have a stab at doing better.

Basically what she is after is a seal with a crane and a bull, this reflects her and her fiance’s surnames – the rope which I originally dumped there as a ‘circular thing of vague interest’ now has to stay there as she is passionate about sailing and decided she wanted to keep it.

So my very vague crappy raster file version scored me the necessity of producing a vector edition. As much as I like live-trace in Illustrator, it really is inadequate most of the time which means everything by hand is SLOW. I have had very limited experience with Adobe Illustrator and the creation of vector files so it was good to have a crack at something that has a useful end result.

Text paths around curves are strange and although the top-right-left text are on the same path, the bottom one couldn’t be (due to vertical orientation of the text) and I’m still not 100% if it’s quite in the right spot.

Anyhoo, that’s what I came up with. It may not be fantastic big – it looks alright small (which is what she’ll potentially be using it for). I’m not getting paid for it, but I might get some paid ‘laying-out’ work from her for the rest of the invitation and if she uses it, I will get full copies of the invites for my folio. Inroads are good and I learnt a few things!

Design