And, being a filmmaker, (Super Size Me, 30 Days) Spurlock made a movie about walking away. It’s called What Would Jesus Buy? and it’s available on DVD (or streaming on Netflix if you drive a PC).

“We’ve been convinced that the way to show your love for someone is by what you buy them, by what the price tag is, by what is represented on the receipt. And that’s the wrong message to send out,” Mr. Spurlock told the AP.

The right message for Morgan Spurlock may not go down easy with the pious. A review of his movie, What Would Jesus Buy? in Christianity Today concludes: “Yes, it’s condescending. Yes, it cheapens Christianity. But the whole argument of the film is that our commodity culture has already cheapened Christianity.”

What would Jesus Buy? strikes a chord with some like Adbusters co-founder Kalle Lasn, who champions the annual Buy Nothing Day the Friday after U.S. Thanksgiving (and the next day worldwide):

If you dig a little past the surface you’ll see that this financial meltdown is not about liquidity, toxic derivatives or unregulated markets, it’s really about culture. It’s our culture of excess and meaningless consumption — the glorified spending and borrowing of the past decade that’s at the root of the crisis we now find ourselves in.

Treehugger’s Lloyd Alter isn’t so sure: “My first reaction was ‘nice idea, if you don’t work in a shop.’ We have noted earlier that we like promoting eco-retailers and designers who need customers, not boycotts.”

New York Times columnist Lisa Belkin feels stuck in the middle:

I am saddened and sobered by the troubled economy. I understand that each purchase not made this season threatens the job of someone who would be producing or selling that purchase. And for too many families there was nothing left in the budget to trim, so its not just extra presents that are going, but food and rent and gas.

But as one who will be battening the hatches and pruning back holiday spending this year, there is something about it that feels right, as well. Isn’t this careful and sober place — where we buy what we need, with a small nicety on the side — where we should have been all along?

Morgan Spurlock remains philosophical, telling the AP: “People on both sides of the fence can agree on one thing, and that’s that the holiday’s gotten out of control.” The holiday in question, of course, is the one celebrating the coming of the Son of God to reclaim humankind on behalf of the creator. If that’s not what you think Black Friday is all about then…well, we have figure that out household by household don’t we…

Here’s the trailer for Morgan Spurlock’s buying frenzy spoof, What Would Jesus Buy? Enjoy…

Lessons learned generally run along the lines of don’t assume, be creative, question habits, look for a better way, impossibilities often aren’t. That’s decent advice, but what do you do when your innovation backfires? What did the Japanese do when their creative solution tasted bad? They sold it as art. It blew open the market for designer watermelons.

It turns out that there really is a niche for everything — if you are flexible enough to capitalize on unintended consequences.

Be careful what you wish for; you may have to learn to live with it. Lesson learned for me: when life gives you a square watermelon, roll with it.

For example, there is a new iPhone application called Yes|No that accelerates decision making through an algorithm I have to admit is so far over my head it seems almost magical. One poses ones dilemma in the form of a Should I… query. There’s no need even to write it down. I suspect, though I am far from ready to attempt it myself, that a skilled user could merely think the question — amazing as that may seem. In any event, as long as the question is posed in the correct Should I… form, when one presses the easy to use Yes|No button, one gets an unambiguously binary response in the form of a straightforward Yes or No. Consultants? Advisers? Engineers? Not any more!

We are of course eager to convert this tech (LOL! See what I did there? …convert?) by hacking Yes|No into a proprietary prayer app. The essential rules would be the same, but it would a completely new thing because end users would say the word “God” on the front of their query: God, should I… or perhaps something like, Lord, we just really want to praise You and ask if You would be angry if we… You can see the potential, right? And it all happens at 3G wireless speeds which is so much faster than analog prayers.

So you can imagine how excited we were to learn that Noreen Herzfeld — who holds the unlikely job title, professor of Theology and Computer Science at St. John’s University in Collegeville, Minnesota — found a web service that promises to email 62 loved-ones six days after you are raptured to be with Jesus and they are left behind:

These messages might be used to pass on information, such as bank account numbers and passwords, but the site stresses the opportunity to leave a letter begging those who remain to accept Christ, a last chance with one’s loved ones to “snatch them from the flames.”

But hold on. Herzfeld, writing for Sightings at the University of Chicago Divinity School’s Martin Marty Center, seems disinclined to remit $40/year to youvebeenleftbehind.com. Her inner computer scientist warns against storing sensitive financial information on such a website and makes her wonder whether anyone should count on the web in a post-rapture world (You’ve seen the movies; why would airliners be the only things that crash?).

What’s more, Professor Herzfeld’s inner theologian inclines her to favor flesh and blood dialogue over messages from the ether. She writes, “Cyberspace is, in the end, an ambiguous place:

As philosopher Albert Borgmann points out, “ambiguity is resolved through engagement with an existing reality, with the wilderness we are disagreed about, the urban life we are unsure of, or the people we do not understand.” Computer applications may seem like a simpler alternative, but they are rarely as satisfying as the real thing.

Perhaps you heard the whooshing sound when the professor let the air out of our balloon. But, not to worry. During our postmortem we had to acknowledge the difficulty of migrating such a service to hand-held devices (even enterprise-approved, Outlook-enabled instruments). And it was there that we recognized the bigger problem. Good as it sounds at first, the business is clearly a nonstarter because the only ones who can count on being raptured are us and our kind and — frankly — there just aren’t that many of us.

Here’s a bit of inspirational levity; a change of pace from the over-the-top seriousness of most commencement addresses. Mike Philbrick of ESPN culled through 34 sports movies totaling over 65 hours of viewing time (must have been a slow sports news week, Mike) to grab the quotes to make up this speech, Page 2’s Ultimate Commencement Address.

And I thought that the only sports lines meaningful to graduates was “Show me the money!”

Squidoo launched with the declaration, "Everyone’s an Expert about Something." But Comedy Central’s Stephen Colbert did them one better in the August 2006 issue of Wired by promising you — yes you — can "Be an Expert on Anything."

• Pick a field that can’t be verified. Colbert recommends trying something like string theory or God’s Will: "I speak to God. I’m sorry that you can’t also."
• Get your own entry in an encyclopedia. 15 minutes of fame is old school; "In the Wikipedia age, everyone can be an expert in five minutes. Special bonus: You can edit your own entry to make yourself seem even smarter."
• Use the word zeitgeist as often as possible. Colbert recommends using non-English words that sound familiar but aren’t widely understood. German is good; Latin’s even better. "But avoid paradigm. It’s so 1994."
• Don’t be afraid to make things up. "Never fear being exposed as a fraud. Experts make things up all the time. They’re qualified to."
• Don’t limit yourself to current knowledge. "If you worry too much about being up-to-date, you miss out on vast territories of obsolete knowledge just waiting to be reclaimed."
• Make a habit of name-dropping. "Say things like ‘I was talking to John Hockenberry yesterday for my story in Wired. Have you seen my cover?’ I plan to use this issue of Wired to assert that I now know everything about wires.
• Be famous. It helps. Something every successful expert takes for granted.

For the rest of Mr. Colbert’s expertise on expertise, visit Wired Magazine on the web.

And, if you’ve been thinking about launching that consultancy, there are no excuses left.