Sunday, November 22, 2009

Fox's New Commercial Strategy for a Venegful God

I'm not sure how long this has been going on, and I'm not sure how many other networks are doing this, but I've noticed that Fox has a new sequence for their commercial breaks. They used to open with the credits, then go to a commercial break, followed by evenly-spaced breaks of equal length. Clearly they've picked up on the fact that people today have very short attention spans and will change channels pretty quickly during a commercial break if they aren't hooked on the show. And with so many channels available to us now, you know you can find something good to watch somewhere else. Not all of their shows do it, but it's very obvious if you watch "Fringe". No commercials after the opening credits, and the breaks start off quite short and get longer as the shows goes on. So as you get more and more hooked in the show, they know that you'll hang in longer and longer during the commercials. Very smart; but annoying when you have to wait longer and longer when you're hooked on the episode and don't want to wait.

And now for this blog's more serious thinking.
Anyone that's involved in the various Christian religions has been well versed in the notion that God doesn't punish you on Earth for any of your various sins. Naturally most of us that are also superstitious can think of many instances where that doesn't seem to be true. So that got me thinking about it. No one has every really talked to God. So all we have to go on is the bible. Which is a collection of letters and recountings that was edited by the Vatican and put into convenient book form. Are there letters in there from an apostle that talk about how God will punish you in short fashion for sinning? Could be! I mean, who knows how many things were edited out to make sure the story is being told correctly. If you've ever taken the time to read the entire new testament you'll have noticed how the story really breaks down in Revelations. Breaks down in disturbing fashion. Speculation is that it was a coded message about the current Roman rulers. If that's possible then it's totally reasonable to assume that the bible has been edited to tell the "God doesn't punish ye" story. Hard to say either way. And I'm not going to try to say. I'm just here to create discussion and get people thinking.
And now, just the way I planned this, the Bears - Eagles game is about to start. Just to make things interesting, if the Bears successfully hurt McNabb during the game I'll give anyone who shows up to Party T-Day and mentions this blog a dollar. (Hurt qualifies as missing a significant portion of the game due to something the Bears did to him.)
Done and done.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

I don't think the Bible says you won't see temporal punishment for your sins. David's firstborn of Bathsheeba--I believe, as a result of his adultry. Also, the Bible refers tells us that God disciplines us as sons (Hebrews 12:7).

I believe the message of the Bible is not about how God's going to punish you. It's about how we deserve to be punished, but God's Son bore that punishment for us.

I agree that Revelation (don't put an "s" at the end of it--Alex Trebek won't give you credit if you do) is hard to understand, but it's John recording a vision he saw, not recording an historical log of events. It may be hard to understand, but I don't think that diminishes from the central message of the Bible.

Javy