Tetherd Cow Ahead

Tetherd Cow Ahead Presents: The Baffling Bible
Episode #2: Smitten Knees

I think you need to see the whole passage to get the full impact of this particular piece:

In the same hour came forth fingers of a man’s hand, and wrote over against the candlestick upon the plaister of the wall of the king’s palace: and the king saw the part of the hand that wrote.
 
Then the king’s countenance was changed, and his thoughts troubled him,
so that the joints of his loins were loosed, and his knees smote one against another.

Then was the part of the hand sent from him; and this writing was written.
And this is the writing that was written, MENE, MENE, TEKEL, UPHARSIN.

This is the interpretation of the thing:
MENE; God hath numbered thy kingdom, and finished it.
TEKEL; Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
PERES; Thy kingdom is divided, and given to the Medes and Persians.

For today’s consideration:

•If you were God, and you were going to write a message on a wall, would you use some kind of cryptic gobbledigook that could mean pretty much anything anybody wanted, or would you simply say ‘Belshazzar, you’re toast pal!’?

•Give examples of other times where God has been completely obtuse when He could have just gotten to the point (limit your examples to ten pages).

•What is it with God sending a ‘part’ of a hand to scribble on the wall? Was David playing with the rest of it somewhere?

•Why has Daniel used the word UPHARSIN and then three sentences later completely forgotten what he wrote and pulled another word out of his arse? Do you think he did it to see if anyone was paying attention? Or does the bible need a better proof reader?

•Is there evidence elsewhere in his writings that Daniel was doing a lot of PCP?

•Should God do community service for graffiti-related crimes?

•Would things have turned out differently for Belshazzar if he had used Dulux ‘Wash ‘n’ Wear on his walls? For instance, could he have expected a better finish?*

•If the joints of Belshazzar’s loins were loosened to the point of involuntary knee-smiting, would he be covered by health insurance? Discuss difficulties that Belshazzar might face with loose loin joints on public transport.

•God does quite a bit of smiting elsewhere in the bible – why do you think he chose not to smite Belshazzar’s knees directly, but instead have them smite one another? Do you think he did this because it was funnier?

•This story is the origin of the phrase ‘The writing’s on the wall’. As you now know, the writing on the wall is completely baffling and nonsensical, and thus, the saying makes absolutely no sense at all. Your project for this week is to make up another pithy saying based on a bible quote, that makes as much sense or less, and get it into popular usage.

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*Later that same night Belshazzar was slain by Darius the Mede.

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The Continuing Misfortunes Trepidations of Simple Graphics Man ~

#31: The Alien Abductions.

Recently, while SGM was undergoing some Past Life Therapy, it came to light that he had in fact been abducted on several occasions by aliens. This probably comes as no surprise to anyone.

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A big thanks to Nurse Myra, who found me the great SGM badges on her recent trip to sunny Spain. I think that maybe she’s been hinting recently that I haven’t been prompt enough in bringing SGM’s alien adventures to your attention…

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For quite some years I made a very good living by writing music for advertising. That period of my life is pretty much over now for a number of reasons, and since it’s unlikely that I’m going to ever reclaim my glory days helping to sell shampoo and cars, I figured I might as well start a series based on my exploits in what must rank as one of the most pretentious, overpaid, frustrating, lunatic-filled businesses on the planet. It’s not like it will matter much if I offend anyone anymore. So without further ado:

The Reverend’s Adventures in Advertising, Episode 1.

I thought I’d kick off these reminiscences with a story about a campaign for which I was asked to apply my creative genius to the promotion of a lesser-known, but quality brand of Australian cheese.

My usual procedure for accepting a commission ((For that’s what it was in those days – a commission. Jobs were awarded on merit and talent, and advertising agencies actually sought out creative people based on their reputation. That concept, in Australia at least, has become a thing of the past, and is one of the reasons that I’ve moved on.)) was to ask for a copy of the script, and if I thought I could do anything with the idea, I’d take it on. I turned down a lot of work. This particular spot was not something that was in my usual field of interest, but it did have a certain Monty Pythonesque je ne c’est quoi and I figured it could be amusing, so I agreed to give it a go. This was the pitch, as kooky as it seems:

A farmer is leading his cow off to pasture. We hear bucolic country sounds and pastoral music. Suddenly there is a clap of thunder and the surprised farmer turns to see the clouds parting and the Hand of God reaching down into his barn, from whence it retrieves an enormous block of Brand X Cheese. An angelic choir sings! The farmer watches in awe as we hear a booming voice-over proclaim “Brand X! The Chosen Cheese!” ((I kid you not. I totally swear I’m not making an ounce of this up.)) The angels swell into an uplifting coda.

Kinda cheesy, I’ll agree, but sometimes these nutty ideas, if done with enough aplomb, turn out OK. And besides, the money was pretty good.

Now I need you to understand that this is not just the pitch that went to me, but was also the script that the client (I immediately dubbed him The Big Cheese) had already received and approved (generally, by the time I was called into a job, the ad had been completed except for the sound and music and the final visual effects. This spot was no exception).

A few days later the edited images turned up, and I was relieved to see that they were passable, as far as these things go. After a brief phone discussion with the ad’s Creative ((This has to be one of the most duplicitous job descriptions in existence. In my experience, advertising Creative Directors seldom know their asses from their elbows when it comes to any level of actual creativity. Mostly they are pop-culture sponges who suck ideas out of other, better pieces of work and re-tool them (usually badly) to fit their own agendas.)) Director, Phil, ((For reasons that are obvious, the names of the products and personnel involved in these escapades will remain anonymous. I don’t really care if you infer any of the details, but knowing the litigious tendencies of this business, I don’t aim to get myself sued…)) I set to work whipping up a convincing chorus of angels, shimmering with heavenly harp arpeggios. This sort of work is actually a lot of fun. It’s not like you can be too over the top with a concept like this and !!!B-R-I-I-I-I-I-I-N-N-N-G-G!!!… I’d only been at it for two hours and Phil was already on the phone.

“Um… mate… [everyone in advertising calls everyone else mate]. Mate, looks like we have a tiny bit of a problem”.

“Oh? How so?” I ask, a feeling of dread settling upon me.

“Er, well,” says Phil, “The client is not too happy about the religious connotations of the spot”.

“You what?” I say.

“Yeah, they think it’s a bit Christian“.

Now this is one of those moments in which the universe suddenly ceases to make any sort of sense whatsoever. Personally, I thought the ad might have been straying a little on the Jewish side, with the ‘chosen’ cheese & all, but it’s a joke, right – you’re not meant to think too much about it. But it was the general overall religious aspect that Phil said the Big Cheese was having problems with, as astonishing as that seemed to be at this point in the proceedings.

Now it’s pretty clear to me that when your concept takes on quite this much water, you simply cut your losses, scuttle the ship and head for the lifeboats. But what’s this? Quite unbelievably, Phil was still bailing…

“So what we want to do now is try and make it less religious…”

My brain went into a mode which I imagine is very similar to how Robby the Robot feels when he’s given an order to harm a human.

“But it’s GOD!” I say. “It’s GOD’S HAND reaching from HEAVEN. How the crap do we make that less religious?”

“Well, OK… we’re considering the idea of making the hand a little sooty with a bit of digital work, and with the help of some Wagner-style music, turning it into the hand of Thor, the God of Thunder! How do you think that would work?

Well I thought it would be about as successful as putting fishnet stockings on a pig and attempting to pass it off as Dita Von Teese, but I remained stuck for words. Further, it dawned on me that the the whole sink-or-swim for this spot had somehow been deftly passed right down the line to me. If the ad failed, well then, it would be my fault! And this was not to dwell for even a nanosecond on how the whole shebang had managed to get this far without the Big Cheese making at least some little squeak about his unhappiness with the religious tone of the whole affair. It’s not like they were hiding it from him!

Phil then went on to say that there was no intention, not even the merest suggestion, of altering the tag line ‘The Chosen Cheese’. This was most definitely not to be touched. It had been sold through to the client as the catchphrase for the whole campaign. Are you with me here, as I try to comprehend the inscrutable insecty thought processes of the Advertising Hive Mind?

So, in the next few hours, after a short break taken up mostly by uncontrolled alternate fits of sobbing and laughing, I found myself wheeling out the French horn and crash cymbal samples and vainly attempting to conjure Das Rheingold. It didn’t work terribly well. Now God simply looked like an interloper at a bad Salvation Army Band fundraiser. I considered phoning Phil and suggesting they have the hand take out a giant box of crackers and a plate of lamingtons as well. It certainly couldn’t have made things any worse.

After a few days, the digital image amendments had been completed and Phil, and all the other hangers-on that an advertising campaign seems to involve, turned up to take a look at what I’d done with the music.

“Hey, that’s not too bad!” he exclaims. “It says Thor, the God of Thunder for sure! What do you reckon, mate?”

Now I hate it when advertising people ask for your opinion, because you can be sure that the one thing they never really want to hear is your actual opinion.

“Sure,” I say, crossing my fingers behind my back. “Sure, everyone will think it’s Thor, the God of Thunder. You guys have done amazing things with the digital work. Unmistakeably the Thor of the Norse Pantheon. Only an idiot wouldn’t get that!”

All the while I was imagining the cheque for my fee fluttering like a tired homing pigeon into my bank account, and the numbers clocking up like the meter on a Sydney taxi heading off along the Eyre Highway.

They eventually did put the ad to air, much to my complete amazement. Evidently the Big Cheese had forked out so much money he needed to explain to someone where it all went. A few days later my mother, who knew nothing at all of the above debacle – only that I’d written the music on a Brand X Cheese ad – called to say she had seen ‘my’ ad on air.

“It was really good!” she said, in the way that faithful mums show their undiscriminating devotion, “But there’s one thing I don’t understand – why was God’s hand so dirty?”

I did end up mowing the lawn yesterday (well, you have to fill in your time somehow until the world ends…) About halfway through, in the midst of the hideous racket that is the sound of a petrol-driven set of rotating blades shearing through vegetation, a magpie turned up and settled down on the clothesline, apparently oblivious to all the noise. I was amazed that it didn’t seem at all fearful of what I would have assumed was a pretty confronting spectacle for a bird.

But birds are smart.* This little guy† has evidently learned that the sound of a lawnmower means the opportunity for an easy meal. Sure enough, after I’d finished, he hopped down off his perch and helped himself to the bugs and snails that had been disturbed by the mowing.

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*Some people don’t think so. We can only assume it’s because they feel their intelligence is threatened by superior bird brains.

†Or gal. Bit hard to tell with magpies.

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