Bruce Almighty

Driving to work from Randburg to Pretoria everyday is a damn schlep. The roads are poor the people are ugly and the jaloppie i drive (the days of the dodge are long gone) has a pathetic sound system so even playing music on it is no comfort.

It’s not even near month end and I am eating crackers with no butter! Every rand stretched beyond recognition and finally I am losing the baby weight BUT at such an alarming pace my wardrobe by now needs a complete overhaul. I step out of the house looking like a hanger with far too many layers on it in attempt to fill my oversized clothes these days, but who’s complaining. Weight dropping, stomach shrinking, hair growing – happy days.

I have completely stopped smoking, YEAH. Dont know when last I had a spliff but I am told that somewhere over the weekend mary jane might make an appearance and I will pour her a glass of La Motte Merlot, sit on a brightly colored cashmere cloth on the greenest patch of cut grass in my huge back yard. Thank dog for small mercies.

So the drive to work, the schlep, is littered with bill boards, advertising watches, jobs, cars, trailers, electricians, political parties, strip joints and more increasingly God. Normally i try not to pay attention to this invasive advertising tool, there are no more blue sky – only bill boards with blue sky offers! I hate that we are being prescribed to at every turn, they killing us – if the medium is the message then the message is loud and clear. We must be told what to wear, eat, drive, drink, live and NOW who to worship and where at every turn. Go and stand in the street, you cannot turn your head from left to right without some ass trying to sell you something. Cheap, safe abortions, potions to make your dick grow or to win the lotto.

So I personally hate advertising but people gotta eat though right, so I understand the businesses rationale. The thing that pisses me off is the ads for God and some of his churches…so since when has God needed a bill board, air space, airtime, how do you negotiate a rate for God – a God rate card? Since when does God send you a sms, God boards have to fight for your attention between adds for teaser board and trailers for hire boards? What the funk is going on?

I am disgusted by this whole, God – as commodity concept. Since when is this ok?

Long gone are the days of a humble church steeple indicating its quiet unobtrusive anchoring presence in the community, people going because they are compelled within themselves to do so. The church bells loudly reminding you that its Sunday, the leaders of the church active in the community – their lives exemplary and their deeds filling the pews, not effing billboards and ads on TV or sms’s or any of the other typical type of marketing ploy many churches have adopted in recent years, they make movies and music videos, print T Shirts and caps with logo’s all that branding! Sundays Ray Mac reads a bible, the text I never heard when I was a kid, his church looks more like a government department to me, God fills stadiums from here to Nigeria, people offering to sprinkle water that been prayed over on you to dispel bad luck all in the name of God. Sjoe.

Imagine they take your best best friend, he’s your personal friend, you have known him all your life, he speaks to you, but softly, he nudges you, reminds you when you not doing to right thing, he stands by sometimes and watches you do the wrong thing, everything about your friend is gracious, soft, love, forgiving, gentle, tolerant and kind. Then some dude in an ad agency paid for by some other dude who thinks he knows your friend better than you do, decides to put words in your friends mouth, screaming from roof tops those things that whisper gently in your heart, your personal interaction with your friend is bastardized – you realise your friend is just like everyone else, but is he, has he actually been consulted on this form of publicity? If so where is the sign off, you know before bill boards go up the owner of the message must SIGN OFF. Where is God’s sign off? Who is signing on his behalf these days. It’s a dilemma or am I just losing it?

Tracey