I am a bit of a packaging junkie.  It is one of my favourite things to design.  Therefore I am constantly picking stuff up in the supermarket or around the house and examining it.  Sad huh?  Well anyway, it has come to my attention of late, that whoever writes the copy for some of these things needs to be sacked.  It is easy to write stuff without really thinking.

For example:  In my bathroom is some NIVEA for men shaving foam.  I glanced at the back and noticed that one is instructed to squeeze a “hazelnut sized blob” onto one’s palm.  Blob – a technical term, referring to a quantity of ‘goop’ – another technical term.  A hazelnut….  Not exactly something that pops to the forefront of the mind when making a comparison.  When one has remembered which nut a hazelnut is, one is faced with the inevitable dilemma of whether or not the shell should be present about the nut, which makes a sizeable difference.

Another one which bugs me on bathroom products….  ”Dermatologically tested”.  so… Tested on/for skin.  REALLY??  I am astounded.  Why “dermatologically”?  Sometimes you get the impression that one person uses a buzz phrase and then everyone else does, just for kicks.  It is like writing “Skin cream, suitable for skin as opposed to facial hair – we’ve tried it out”.  I should hope so too!  Silly EU regulations.

The other interesting debate we had last night was pertaining to a verse in John, where it says that just like the snake was lifted up in the desert, people must look to Jesus for everlasting life.  The snake in the desert reference is from Numbers, where the people of Israel are in the desert.  They get fed up with eating the same old food and start to moan.  A load of snakes come along and start to bite them and people begin to die.  They quickly realise that it is not their place to question God’s motives, as he is in the process of redeeming them and sending them to the promised land (therein lies an interesting metaphor for life on earth being tough sometimes but trusting in God as He leads us to heaven, the promised land).  They ask Moses to pray for the snakes to go away, which he duly does.  God instructs Moses to make a large bronze snake and to put it up on a pole.  All who have been bitten can look at the snake and be healed.

There were a few interesting issues here.  Why would God choose to use some kind of graven image for healing?  Why would he choose a snake, the symbol of evil?  Why didn’t he just take the snakes away?

The first point of note, is that there must be an action by the people to reverse their destiny.  They have been bitten and they have to look at the snake to be healed.  In the same way, John says you must look to Jesus (become a Christian) to be saved.  

The snake on a pole has a direct reference as well, to another verse in Galatians which states that “cursed is the one who hangs on a tree”.  Jesus, by dying on the cross took the curse away from us.  In the same way the snake, by being strung up on a pole took the curse of the people (it was old testament and Jesus hadn’t died yet so something else had to stand in place of the people).

The final point of note was that Moses had to lift the snake so that people could see it in order to be saved from sickness.  In the same way, if we know about Jesus, we shouldn’t hide him under a rug otherwise who will be able to see Him in order to be saved from death?  That’s a challenging one.

I might be talking double dutch but just wanted to share a few thoughts.

We had a great discussion at cluster last night led by Jon.  Many interesting things were brought up and I will mention a couple that grabbed me in a couple of posts.

Sarah mentioned the whole concept of “loving Jesus” and how sometimes it can feel a bit weird and intangible. Sometimes in a song, we could feel closer to that sentiment of “loving Jesus” but in every day life it could seem a little false. I could relate to this, because I have always felt that it would have been easier to explain a love for Jesus to others if he was still walking around on earth.  That said, if they knew him and found him to be controversial then maybe it wouldn’t be easier, as many people of the time did find that he broke away from convention.

Carl made a very interesting point.  He said that when we talk about loving Jesus, we somehow always think of it as a romantic feeling, whereas ‘love’ consists of many different things.  When you love someone in  the agape or filia way (the love of God or the love between friends), then the one you love is someone you think about a lot.  It is someone who is there for you.  It is someone who loves you back no matter what.  It is someone who makes you smile.  It is someone who takes your breath away (think of a sunset or the view from a hill).  It is someone you love to spend time with (I need to improve at this one).  It is someone you want to give gifts to.  It is someone you want to go to for advice.  It is someone who listens to you.  It is someone you stick up for.  The list goes on…..  God is all of these things and however good or bad we might be at them, His love for us is all of these things too.  How cool is that?

I have spent the last two days learning how to perfect bind.  It has involved the following:  

-  Printed book pages

-  1 surgical scalpel with new non-sterile blade (both of which I must remember to take out of my handbag!!  Looks a little bit dodgy….)

-  1 hack saw

-  2 bulldog clips

-  1 piece of binding string

-  1 piece of callico

-  PVA glue

-  Spray mount

-  1 cutting matt

-  1 large guillotine

I have not finished yet so I will show you the finished product soon….  It is quite fiddly! 

We have recently started getting a fortnightly veggie box, which means that we get a variety of exciting dirty and mis-shapen vegetables…  Like this poor carrot:

Looks like a pair of legs!

An office furnished entirely from cardboard!!  As featured in Creative Review and Pulp.

Manky Plumbing anyone?  This is why font choice is important.

XPOSED Club – Longstone

A squirrel eating his lunch

The red footprints that lead to the Everyman…. But where do they start??  Genius.

Well it appears that Luke has made his mark, in the form of a blog that he writes called Trafficlightsthatsuck. He appeared this week in the Sun, the Telegraph, the Echo, MSN news, on BBC Radio Glos and various other formats – go LUKE!