Nepotism and age: Bad PR.

Lately I’ve noticed a lot of businesses promoting themselves as family-run companies. (SC Johnson and Coors come to mind; and this morning I read about a local family-run fruit-packing company in the newspaper.) I’m sure they’re trying to project some sort of family-friendly image to the public; but to me, when I think of family-run companies, I think of nepotism.

I don’t approve of nepotism. I admit, I got a job or two because of it. I’d like to think I was well-qualified to do those jobs regardless of family connections, but I can never entirely be sure. I also lost a job or two because of it; the bosses preferred to hire family over someone who, while well-qualified, wasn’t family. Some of the worst pastors I have ever experienced were the result of hiring family (and some were the result of hiring someone with anointing instead of training; you need both, people!—but that’s another rant). The theory is that you’re hiring someone with an inherited knack for the family business. But for every instance of that being true, you have three instances of some inept idiot, who is forgiven for his petty mistakes (or grand larcenies) when anyone else would be fired, whose company’s success is more often because a CEO or board of directors really runs it.

I don’t care if a company is run by a family. I care more about whether the families who work for the company are taken care of. But you seldom see that in the advertising.

…And since I’m at it, I also don’t care about how old a company is. Disneyland is celebrating its 50th anniversary. Big deal. If anything, that’s not a good thing to promote; it implies the rides’ machinery is 50 years old, and after that roller coaster accident at Disney’s California Adventure, that’s not an idea you want to evoke.

To bring up Coors again: What strikes me as odd about breweries reminding us how old they are is that one has to wonder what on earth they were busy doing during Prohibition. Remember, laws against selling alcohol were written into the Constitution, so it seemed really unlikely that the law was going to change back. Yet breweries like Busch and Coors and Miller were ready to go as soon as the amendment was repealed. What’s up with that?

(I know what their “official” stories are; but don’t tell me they were perfectly happy to “get by” making malted milk products, rubbing alcohol, and near beer. It reminds me of all those rich “farmers” in Columbia that say they’re only growing “coffee.”)

A sabbath day’s rest.

Ah, rest.

I agree with the Seventh-Day Adventists in that Saturday is the sabbath, not Sunday. I know, centuries of Christian tradition has made Sunday our sabbath; but I don’t see any scriptural evidence for making such a switch. Likewise, there’s no evidence for the idea that Christians should meet on Sunday—Christians should meet daily perhaps, or several times a week, not just Sunday.

(In fact, I once got into a rather silly argument with an Adventist over it. “You’re right,” I told him, “we should rest on the Sabbath. But you don’t rest; you go to church and worship. Worship is work.” He really didn’t like that interpretation.)

The point behind Sabbath rest, of course, is rest. It has little to do with following the command. I look at the command in this way: God gave it for our good. Humans aren’t meant to work nonstop. It isn’t so much that we’re to spend the day meditating on God—we’re to spend every day meditating on God—or depriving ourselves of fun. It’s to rest. It’s to stop working ourselves to death.

The hard part is determining what “rest” means. The Hebrew term shabbat has an original meaning of stop; God created the universe in six days, then stopped. The connection between stopping and rest comes from the Ten Commandments; but stop is probably the best guideline. So what does that mean? Well, as I understand it: Whatever you normally do throughout the week, stop. Step back from it. Rest from it.

Since I use my computers pretty much every bloody day, I decided I need to include the computers in my rest. Even though I use them for fun, they’re really too connected to separate. So, off they go. I even shut them down yesterday instead of putting them to sleep.

I felt a lot more rested.

Malfunctioning computers.

When you leave it on for two months, it gets a bit wonky.

I have Macintoshes.

The unfortunate side effect of owning Mac computers is that many people become Mac evangelists. They have to get everyone to use Macs, they have to make fun of Windows whenever possible, they have to hate Bill Gates (even though lots of them use and love Microsoft Word), and they gloss over any problems that the Mac might possibly have. In other words, they become fundamentalist Mac evangelists.

My attitude, of course, is: Whatever computer works for you, use it. So I guess I’d be a liberal Mac evangelist… most of the time. Every once in a while someone’s computer will break down or get a virus or otherwise malfunction and I’ll joke, “Shoulda bought a Mac.” (Hey, it’s a hilarious punchline. Mac users know what I’m talking about.)

The dopey part is that there are such things as Mac evangelists. Granted, it’s a great computer; true, I spend a ridiculous amount of time using my computer; but it’s just a computer. It’s a tool. It’s an intelligent typewriter that plays MP3s and solitaire.

It is horribly frustrating when they don’t do what you want them to, though. My case in point is the microphone plug on my computer. It was working. For some reason, it wasn’t working this past month. So I decided to finally turn off the computer, which had been n on since May, and turned it back on, and it began working again. Why? I dunno. I don’t know squat about how the programs work; I just know what I can do with them.

So that’s working. Which is good, ’cause I was getting tired of recording audio through the built-in microphone in my computer (the computer’s fan made too much noise) or my Pocket PC (which took two minutes to save for every minute I recorded) or through my video input cable (which means I have to have the VCR on). Annoying, when one considers that the computer should do everything it did when it came from the factory.

Stupid Internet Survey: Model of the church.

What is your model of the church?

You scored as Mystical Communion Model.

Your model of the church is Mystical Communion, which includes both People of God and Body of Christ. The church is essentially people in union with Christ and the Father through the Holy Spirit. Both lay people and clergy are drawn together in a family of faith. This model can exalt the church beyond what is appropriate, but can be supplemented with other models.

Mystical Communion Model	72%
Servant Model	72%
Sacrament Model	72%
Herald Model	67%
Institutional Model	22%

What is your model of the church? [Dulles]
created with QuizFarm.com.

It’s an odd thing when I take a quiz, score the very same percentage on three items, and yet I’m supposedly one more than the others because of what I picked as a priority in the tiebreaker question.

I suspect I scored a 72 percent because the quiz used hymns to determine theology. The churches I attend don’t sing hymns very often, so it’s not accurate to say my church would sing one hymn more often than another. Besides, we all know that worship music is usually picked for the catchy tunes, riffs, and hooks rather than the theology.

If I were to pick a model for myself I would probably choose the Complex Organism Model. The church is the people of God and body of Christ; it is also servant to the world, evangelist to the world, dispenser of the sacraments and grace, and herald of the good news. It’s all these things. It doesn’t matter if I agree with one more than the other, or like one form of ministry most.

I suppose I scored low on the Institutional Model because I believe there should be no such thing as laity within the church; we’re all clergy.

“Lies that go unchallenged.”

Our culture’s lies contain some truth, otherwise they’d be lousy lies. So what are those truths?

I get the Christianity Today newsletter emailed to me weekdays. It’s one way of keeping up on items of Christian interest that I might miss otherwise.

They sell downloadable bible studies. If you don’t feel confident enough to put together your own bible study curriculum, you can go through theirs. This provokes two side-rants, which I’ll summarize:

1. Most of these are not bible studies per se. They are attempts to analyze one’s life or one’s surroundings with a “Christian” perspective. This presumes that the people in your study group have a Christian perspective, and they’re hardly going to develop one unless they study the bible, dammit.
2. That being the case, I strongly disapprove of making money off the stupid or ignorant.

This one, which you can download free, is adapted from Charles Colson’s BreakPoint radio commentaries. (That’s right, another one of Colson’s ghostwriters strikes again.) Again, it’s not a bible study; it’s a worldview study, and stacks the deck in favor of Colson’s worldview by listing seven “lies” that go unchallenged.

I’m not saying they aren’t lies; but I think it would be better if such a study began by first asking people whether they thought these statements were true. If lies are going to be effective, there has to be some truth in them, and perhaps it would be a good thing to extract the truth first instead of rejecting everything in the statement.

For fun, here are the statements. For my fun, they’re followed by my comments.

The bric-a-brac of late July.

My current events.

Mom’s trying to figure a trip to Disneyland for the family next week. Logistics are always a tricky thing: fly or drive, which hotel, visit relatives or not, accommodating Tim, the cost, the temperature, etc. I’m not particular. It’s been eleven years since I was last at Disneyland and I want another Goofy hat.

Been pounding out the last of the philosophy papers, but I took some time off between 11 and 4 (that’s p.m. and a.m.) to finally write, produce, upload, and post my current podcast. I was tempted to jabber about postmodernism again, but I decided I’d had enough of the subject (since I’ve had to write so much about it for the philosophy class) so I decided to go through the Things that Annoy Me About Living on Campus. I haven’t added to the list since February, and I don’t plan to; but here you can listen to me in full sarcasm mode. Website here. Podcast here. Or try iTunes; but make sure you have a solid internet connection because if you get cut off for any reason, you can’t fix the broken downloads.

I started subscribing to Blockbuster’s DVDs-by-mail service and have attempted this July to get more than my money’s worth by going through 30 movies in a month. I haven’t been successful; their system is a little too slow for me. It takes two to three days for the distribution center to receive my old movie and send a new one. But I can get 25 movies out of them per month, which puts the cost of the service at 60¢ per movie. So there’s that.

One of my cousins is frantically calling the rest of the family members. Someone claiming to be him has sent an email to everyone, “confessing” that he’s been having internet sex with 13-year-olds. Since he wants to be a P.E. coach, this is not the sort of thing one wants to become known for. Just a reminder: Don’t let evil bastards borrow your computer. But on the up side, if my cousin wants to sue this guy for libel, he’s got a fantastic case.

Another hot day today. I may have to hit the air-conditioned coffee shop. It’s a beautiful thing when the air conditioning is so good, you can order a hot coffee and comfortably drink it. I did that Monday. I may have to do it again today. We’ll see.

Stupid Internet Survey: Eucharistic theology.

Your eucharistic theology.

You scored as Martin Luther.

You’ll stick with the words of Scripture, and defend this with earthy expressions. You believe in an orthodox Christology. You believe that the bread and wine are the Body and Blood of Christ, but aren’t too sure about where he goes after the meal, and so you don’t accept reservation of the Blessed Sacrament or Eucharistic devotions.

Luther	100%
Catholic	75%
Zwingli	50%
Calvin	50%
Unitarian	0%

Eucharistic theology
created with QuizFarm.com.

Everyone makes a big deal about how Martin Luther was a sola scriptura kind of guy, but they forget his most famous statement:

Unless I am convinced by scripture and plain reason (I do not accept the authority of the popes and councils, for they have contradicted each other) my conscience is captive to the Word of God. I cannot and I will not recant anything for to go against conscience is neither right nor safe. God help me. Amen.

In that statement from the Diet of Worms, Luther gave three sources of his theology:

1. Scripture.
2. Plain reason.
3. Conscience.

He might have coined the term “sola scriptura,” and he might even have believed that his reason and conscience had fully conformed to it. In that, he was fooling himself. No one’s theology comes from scripture alone. If that were true, we wouldn’t have so many contradictory theologies—Luther’s main complaint against the church. In fact we’d have no theologies. We couldn’t use reason to determine which of the things in the scriptures must be applied to our lives; we couldn’t use conscience to recognize the difference between truly applying the scriptures and manipulating the text to fit our selfish lives.

As I remind people all the time, postmodernism isn’t a recent worldview. It was always there, if repressed.

Yes I know the result is Luther, not Luthor. Laugh with me!

Fiddling about with fake age.

The title is, of course, not referring to the Who song “Fiddle About.”

Whenever I have a half-hour of spare time on my hands—enough time to do something small, but not enough time to begin a major project—I tend to fiddle with things on my computer. I sort files and throw away useless ones. I get on the blog or the website and tweak the layout. Nothing huge or time-consuming; nothing significantly creative. Just something that’ll kill a brief bit of time.

I’m sitting in the wonderfully air-conditioned Mocha House in Vacaville, looking out the window at the shopping center’s equivalent of fiddling with things. For some reason that never makes any bloody sense to me, they’ve decided to take certain little portions of the street, rip out the asphalt, and replace it with bricks.

Most of the cities in Solano County, California have decided to renovate their downtown areas. The current fad is to make them look old-fashioned… but not really. Y’see, in California in the 1890s they looked a lot like old Western movies. I’ve seen the photos: Dirt roads, wooden sidewalks, wood and brick buildings (back then they didn’t know how to build earthquake-proof buildings like they do now), and dust, mud, and horse feces everywhere. Any automobiles were given a speed limit of 10 miles an hour because of all the dust they generated. Any towns that have an Old West downtown look like novelty tourist spots, like Old Sacramento. So the only towns that do this are tiny, near-extinct Gold Rush towns that can’t attract any business otherwise.

The rest of them, like Vacaville, have created this kind of faux old-fashioned feel to them. The buildings are renovated with enough old-fashioned touches to resemble something that’s indistinctly old; from sometime in the past, but no actual historical period. Lots of decoration, but no obnoxious Victorian gaudiness; lots of bronze and brickwork; and for some reason, red concrete sidewalks and those stupid bricks at every crosswalk.

Don’t they realize that bricks break? Don’t they realize they’ll be replacing those bloody things every decade? Don’t they further realize that nobody has ever paved their streets with bricks before the late 20th century? Bricks cost too much. Before asphalt, there were cobblestones, gravel, concrete, and in some parts of the U.S., boards.

It’s not really about authenticity anyway. It’s about the illusion of age. Actual age is inconvenient; like I said, those old buildings weren’t earthquake-proof and are constantly in need of repair. Fake age is the thing today, much like fake youth is so popular among socialites.

So the shopping center, which is less than a decade old, is adding some fake age to its environment.

…Or maybe, ironically, the developers are recognizing a new trend of putting bricks in the driveways and is getting on board with the fad. I can never tell anymore.

Not missing people, nor being missed.

My Xanga fans didn’t follow me here. Good.

Dad had this annoying habit while I was growing up: The Air Force would send him off someplace for a week or two, then he’d come back and one of the first things he’d ask us kids was “Did you miss me?”

To you, this may not sound like an annoying habit, but you’d have to understand the circumstances. Dad is a lousy parent, and not having him around was one of the all-too-infrequent joys of childhood. Whenever Dad was around, we kids were either annoyances or projects. “Annoyances” meant that we made too much noise; that we played too roughly; that we lacked proper decorum in front of Dad’s friends; that I hadn’t brushed my teeth 10 times that day like I was supposed to (a little obsession with cleanliness on Dad’s part); and so forth. “Projects” meant that Dad wanted to put in some “quality parenting time,” so he’d play ball with us, or teach us something, and it inevitably ended in misery because whatever we were doing, we weren’t doing it right.

You know how nostalgia works? The brain has a tendency to remember the good stuff and, as a defense mechanism, blot out the bad stuff. That’s why, even though high school sucked, people attend high school reunions. (That, or to show off their worldly improvements, both real and imagined.) So most people remember only the good parts of childhood. But—sad to say—I have no good memories of Dad from childhood. None. The only good memories of him that I have came after I grew up and moved out of the house.

So when he said, “Did you miss me?” what on earth was I supposed to tell him? I didn’t miss him. Half the time I prayed that the Air Force would make his trips longer.

I don’t really miss him now, but it’s different. I expect that if I hung around him all the time I would be very annoyed with him. Brief visits keep things reasonable.

I bring this up because Kerry has lately developed the annoying habit of going someplace briefly, then returning to ask me, “Did you miss me?”

She didn’t grow up with Dad, so she doesn’t understand how loaded a question that is for me. (In part, she does. Dad still asks that question.)

Comparing news shows.

It’s interesting to watch BBC World News, then flip over to ABC’s World News Tonight and compare the stories. (KVIE shows the BBC news nightly at 5 p.m.) It was especially interesting after the July 7 bombings in London. I could watch the full BBC version, then watch the summarized ABC version. ABC is pretty good at summarizing (and at infographics) and I discovered that they borrow a lot of video from the BBC. Obviously ABC’s producers watch BBC World News too.

Knowing this, I find it disturbing lately that ABC News—and, for that matter, the other American news—have left the famine in Niger completely unreported.

Back in October 2004, Niger had a plague of locusts. That’s right, a plague of locusts. It doesn’t just happen in biblical history. Bearing in mind that Niger is a desert country, and you can’t grow squat there (which always reminds me of that old Sam Kinison stand-up routine: “See this, people? This is sand. Nothing grows in sand. Move to where the food is!”) the people are now starving.

It has nothing to do with bad government, food-stealing warlords, or civil war (not that those things are any excuse for the world to ignore suffering); it’s entirely natural causes. Like the tsunami. Yet while people responded immediately to the tsunami disaster, the world has been sitting on this famine for nine months—and now that children are starting to die, the U.N. and Oxfam and other agencies are finally getting off their collective asses and shipping them food. And I don’t blame you for knowing nothing about it; I knew nothing about it until Monday, when the BBC decided to get off its ass and start reporting on it.

Anyway, donate to Oxfam here.

Fake blind people on TV.

Two sheriff's deputies died last Wednesday in a helicopter crash, so all my usual morning news has been pre-empted by their funeral Mass. I didn't want to listen to the overly long hymn (what is it with how Catholic choirs feel they need to sing every single verse?) so I switched the TV to a rerun of Little House on the Prairie.

It's the episode where Mary goes blind. She depicts blindness by fixing her eyes on a point in space, and talking to it instead of the person whom she's talking to. No actual blind person does this; all of them can hear where you are, and face you when they talk to you. (It's rude otherwise.) But for some stupid reason that I've never understood, actors do this and somehow it's the audience's cue that they're playing a blind person.

Give you another example—have you ever seen The Miracle Worker with Anne Bancroft and Patty Duke? Patty Duke, who plays Helen Keller, not only does this; she keeps her head pointed at that point in space, even though nothing she does has anything to do with it. And she got a freakin' Oscar for this. Good Lord.

Intellectual conversions—no such thing.

Decision-making is almost always emotional, and this is especially true with people who choose to follow Jesus.

When people make decisions, most of the time they make emotional decisions. They only make purely intellectual decisions under these circumstances:

• In the past, emotional decision-making has had horrible results, so they try to eliminate emotions from their decision-making process.
• They honestly don’t care which choice they make, so an intellectual choice will do.

And then there’s the self-delusional fun we can have with the emotional choice that appears to be an intellectual one—the emotional choice that’s backed up with a lot of intellectual reasons, but deep down is based on emotions. You’ve seen it before, especially in politics. “I chose that candidate because she’s a very moral person, and she wants what’s best for her community. So she was the only logical choice.” Never mind the fact that morals are emotional factors; after all, immoral people (no matter your standard of morals) are evil. And no one is morally ambiguous towards evil.

Good grief, I’ve just talked about my politics.

Your Political Profile

Overall:	40% Conservative 60% Liberal
Social Issues:	0% Conservative 100% Liberal
Personal Responsibility:	25% Conservative 75% Liberal
Fiscal Issues:	75% Conservative 25% Liberal
Ethics:	50% Conservative 50% Liberal
Defense and Crime:	50% Conservative 50% Liberal

How Liberal/Conservative Are You?
created with Blogthings.

Another stupid internet quiz… and it wound up provoking a much larger rant in which I actually talk about my politics. What was I thinking? Oh well, screw it; you’ve probably guessed what most of those beliefs are already.

According to this quiz I’m a moderate. I could’ve told you that. As I’ve said before, my politics are based on how I understand scripture and Christianity, not conservatism or liberalism. But the quiz results came from 20 questions that only superficially go over my politics. I’d rather comment. Judge my answers for yourself.

1. Protecting the environment is a primary social responsibility we have, regardless of how it effects businesses.

Not exactly.

True.

Duh. If you destroy your environment, you can’t do business there.

 

2. Immigration policies…

Should be less strict. Immigrants enhance this country.

Should be more strict. Too many people enter illegally.

Illegal immigrants take jobs no American would take, use few to no government services because they’re illegal and afraid of getting caught and deported, and make a convenient scapegoat for politicians. I say if they come here to work, let ’em work and give ’em green cards. We need more people in this country who are willing to work, not less.

“Lying in Church” with the worship music.

Is your worship music leading you to lie?

Here’s a fun post called “Lying in Church” by S.M. Hutchens on how Sunday morning worship isn’t always consistent with many Christians’ point of view. I can’t say I entirely agree with it, but I’ll rant about the parts where I do agree.

My problem with worship leaders has always been that they worship more than they lead. (Refer to that rant as necessary.) But I’ve since come to another realization—and gripe—about them.

As I said in that previous rant, worship leaders are, like it or not, the church’s primary theology teachers. The music gets them to memorize the lyrics and unconsciously add those faith-statements to their theology; and because they don’t read scripture, much of their knowledge about God comes from their music. Therefore it is imperative that a worship leader be solidly grounded in theology; but most of the time they’re selected because they are skillful musicians. This need for solid theology is made all the more clear when you think about how often worship leaders interrupt the music so that they can make comments about the songs, or pray, or sing in the Spirit, or give mini-sermons, or do other things to instruct the worshippers. So we can’t have an ignorant person leading the worship!

Now, this isn’t to say there aren’t many people who are great worship leaders, who know what they’re doing when they select songs and lead worship. But I can’t think of any more than two right now. I’m not including Bethany students; they’re still learning. Some of them are great. Others need to learn that anointing and talent are not the same thing, and shut up. Feel free to guess who fits into which category. Humility versus pride should tip you off.

Unfortunately, emotion, not theology, has a lot to do with the song choices. Most of the complaints about worship music (including Hutchens’s complaint) come from the sloppy theology. The rest come from objections to the style of music, which is stupid.

Fr’instance, I used to complain about the song “Enemy’s Camp” all the time; I felt the theology sucked.

♫ Well I went to the enemy’s camp and I

♫ Took back what he stole from me

♫ Took back what he stole from me

♫ Took back what he stole from me

♫ I went to the enemy’s camp and I

♫ Took back what he stole from me

♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet

♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet

♫ He’s under my feet, he’s under my feet

♫ Satan is under my feet

Then repeat, faster, until everyone’s whipped into a minor Holy Ghost frenzy.

Like I said, the theology sucked. I went to no enemy’s camp; I took back nothing; He’s not under my feet. To claim such victory is inconsistent with scripture. I said as much to worship leaders. They said, “Yeah, that’s true man, you’re so right.” But then, three or four weeks later, it would be back in the worship rotation because people like a song you can jump around to. As I said, emotion, not theology, regularly determines our music.

Picking Supreme Court justices.

Now that Justice O'Connor is stepping down, someone asked me if I thought President Bush should appoint a woman to take her place. And of course he should. In fact, he and all future presidents need to keep on appointing women until the Supreme Court is half women, and reflects both society and the current population of the judicial system.

Unfortunately, he's likely to pick someone who reflects his social agenda, rather than someone who will simply say—when faced with the current batch of social-agenda issues before the Court—“The Constitution says nothing about that one way or the other. Talk to the Congress about passing a law on that.”

But that's not the way the conservatives or the liberals are swinging. The conservatives want someone to overturn Roe v. Wade; the liberals want someone to declare that gay marriage is legally binding throughout the U.S.; and I just want a justice who stops treating the Constitution as if it changes with the times. The Constitution was meant to be changed by amendment, not by the loose interpretations of the Supreme Court justices.

Amusing bumper sticker of the day: “Forget Roe v. Wade; overturn Bush v. Gore.”

I’m on iTunes, baby!

Update, 11/21/2024: Well, not anymore I’m not.

Once I got the podcast going, I decided to list it on Apple’s iTunes. It took ’em a few days; I think they had to check it for copyright infringement and profanity and the like. Well, it’s up there now, so I must’ve got away with it.

It’s the freakiest thing to get onto iTunes, look up your own name, and find your stuff there. Now I know how musicians feel; but I’m sure the novelty will wear off as everyone and their evil twin will wind up posting their own podcasts there.

So, if you have iTunes 4.9 (the one with the built-in Podcasts feature) and you want to subscribe to the podcast, here’s how to do that:

1. Go to Music Store.
2. On the left-side menu, select Podcasts.
3. Type “Leslie” into the search feature and it’ll pop up.

The slightly harder way would be to search under Audio Blogs. I am actually in there, but you have to scroll around a lot, and iTunes has to load the 1,000+ other podcasts that are tossed in there as well.

Time to work on the next one.

Climbing off Xanga.

My very last Xanga post.

Nothing against Xanga. It’s a fun place to host your blog. But it doesn’t do everything I want it to; and while it’s easy to leave posts and visit blogrings and such, it’s too full of people who really don’t have anything to say. When it gets right down to it, what on earth is the point of e-props? Personal gratification because someone saw your site and decided to leave their mark on it? Sad. Count me out.

No; I don’t need such features. I need solid, practical features. So I decided to update my Blogger site into something that I can actually work with on a regular basis. Xanga users will, once they access my page, find themselves automatically jumping to this page. Everybody else… well, they’ll just see this page as usual. And there you are. (Or, I should say, here you are.)

Stupid fake reviews.

It’s 107°F (42°C) in Vacaville. No breeze. The family is thinking of retreating to the movie theater. See, this is what’ll get the movies out of their “slump” (so they call it; they’re still making billions). It’s not that people actually want to watch the crap they produce; it’s that the theaters have dark rooms and air conditioning.

My family watches a ridiculous amount of TV (really, it just runs in the background) and I’ve seen way too many commercials for Wedding Crashers, which is out today. I don’t care to see it.

I’ve noticed most of the critics’ comments they run in that commercial could easily have been lifted from the one positive thing in the review. “Wilson and Vaughn have great chemistry” could easily be the sole positive comment a reviewer made right after stating, “I would rather have had my eyes pecked out by a caffeine-addled rooster.”

Or they were taken from things that weren’t reviews, or from people who aren’t reviewers. Every once in a while a commercial comments, “Larry King says, ‘It’s great!’ ” Larry King?

Or, less obviously… There’s an entertainment reporter in Sacramento, Mark S. Allen, who’s always part of the press junkets whenever a movie is released and someone has to interview the actors. He (and every other local TV reporter) gets about 5 minutes with each actor to ask them the same questions that every other TV reporter has to ask (and of course the actor is sitting in front of a giant studio-produced poster of the movie) and after the questions are done, they go back to the TV studio, where he adds a few more comments like, “Yeah, that actor was a really nice guy… and the movie looks like it’s gonna be a big summer blockbuster.” That’s not a review. But I have occasionally seen Allen’s statements in national ads to plug movies anyway.

Kerry has expressed an interest in Bewitched, for which you might have to get me that rooster. But we might watch the DVD of The Merchant of Venice (for me, again) first.

Prayer in schools.

I’m totally in favor of prayer. Just not when teachers and hypocrites lead it.

Kerry got some email about a petition—some idiots want to reinstate prayer in public schools. I say “idiots” for the following reasons:

1. It’s already legal to pray in public schools! They do it all the time, especially during those “see you at the pole” functions where the Christian students come out of the woodwork and join hands around the flagpole and pray. Students also pray before tests, parent-teacher conferences, beatings (if they’re the one getting beaten), and athletic competitions (even though God doesn’t take sides in these things).
2. However, it’s not legal for teachers to lead prayer. If you think about it, this is a good thing. In order to avoid offending anyone, teachers would more than likely pick a nice non-sectarian prayer that addresses nobody. You may have seen such prayers before—prayers that say “We pray for this, that, and the other things” but it’s never stated who the prayer goes to. Or worse—it addresses “the Universe” as if it’s sentient. Or you’ll get some really obnoxious fundamentalist Christians, Muslims, Buddhists, or whatever, who take that time to inflict their religions on the kids.
3. Some of these idiots point to growing rates of student violence and crime and claim it statistically relates to the point when the Supreme Court proclaimed that teacher-led prayer was unconstitutional. I don’t know where they get these stats from; likely from the same place that’s sending around a fabricated email about the top 10 school problems in the ’50s. According to that email, in the ’50s teachers complained about chewing gum and talking back, compared with guns, drugs, and teen pregnancy today. This was obviously written by someone who never grew up in the ’50s. (I’m not that old, but my parents are.) Or even the ’30s. I was talking with my grandmother’s boyfriend some months ago about his growing up in Harlem; and the gangs, drugs, and violence were so commonplace that most kids just dropped out of school. And they had school prayer. So don’t give me that crap about how “things were better back then.” The only people that say this are the people that don’t know history. Things are much better now. (But obviously, we have further to go.)

I also object to school prayer for the same reason I always object to obligatory religion: the hypocrisy. I don’t want prayer led by people who have no relationship with God. Jesus doesn’t want it either. Sure, we could always use more prayer in school; sure, the Christians need to pray for the public schools more instead of abandoning them for the private schools. But if you want an example for how prayer in schools isn’t doing anything for the nation, look at the United States in the early 1900s. Or Saudi Arabia now.

My first podcast.

Introducing the AudioRANTS podcast.

Just a tip: When you make an 11MB podcast, do not upload it to the server using dial-up. Trust me.

I had flashbacks to when I was editor of Countryside Post in Grass Valley, and we experimented with uploading our files to the printer. This was back in 1999, when DSL wasn’t anywhere yet, much less in Grass Valley. So this was all done through dial-up. Try to imagine sending between 100MB and 150MB of data (even after it was compressed) over a telephone line. Took hours. And if anything happened to stop the upload, we had to start over. In the end, we decided it was less time-consuming to drive to the print shop in Sacramento (about 65 minutes away) and back.

Anyway, enough ranting about uploading the podcast; let me tell you about the podcast itself.

Podcasting, for those of you who don’t know, is making a “show” and converting it to MP3 so that you can easily listen to it on your iPod—or for those of you who don’t have an iPod, your computer. There are lots of podcasts on the internet already; if you have Apple’s iTunes (which is free) it includes a directory of podcasts for your listening pleasure. Podcasts, by the way, are also free to download, though some take a while, especially if you have dial-up.

Out of the pure novelty of it all, I decided to rant into my computer for about 20 minutes, then turn that into a podcast. And then, because for some stupid reason I went all anal about it, I decided to write scripts for the show, edit in some background and bumper music, and create a website to host the stuff on.

Why? Because it’s summer and I have too much free time on my hands. Of course, this is stupid; if I’m going to make a weekly show it had better become easy to do or I’ll frustrate myself with the obligation. But I figure the first one is the hardest, so here it is.

And the first one is probably the most boring. I realized this after listening to it later. I sound a little canned. Likely it’s because of the scripts. So, in future podcasts, I’ll rant off the top of my head; I’ll probably get into more trouble because of it, but it’ll sound more natural.

Anyway, give it a listen; enjoy it; feel free to tell me how much you think it sucks and that you’ve farted more interesting things than that.

Update, 11/20/2024. Of course, I stopped making this podcast as soon as the novelty wore off. The website doesn’t exist anymore either. But the shows are still on Internet Archive, and I linked to all of them here.

Fiddling with the podcast.

Those of you who have read my blog have noticed that I’ve been listening to a lot of different podcasts lately. I’m currently fiddling with the idea of making my own… not just so I can add to the glut of them already on the internet, but because I’m not yet finding a podcast that I’m really jazzed about.

So I decided to make one. I have the software; just about anyone with a Macintosh does. All you need is GarageBand and iTunes. Making it is the easy part; making it sound good is a little trickier; and finding a webhost who doesn’t mind the bandwidth is even harder. Good thing I’m not planning to do this on a daily basis.

More details on that when I get to it. Then you can all get on my site and tell me how much it sucks.

Summer cleaning and London bombing.

When I moved to Vacaville for summer, I moved to Mom’s house, which means I had to take all my stuff from my dorm room, drag some of my storage bins out of the garage, and take over Chad’s old room. (It actually used to be my old room, back in high school. I haven’t lived in it since ’97.) The process demands, to some degree, that I put some order into my life, so I’ve been going through old clothes, determining what should be donated to the Salvation Army, what should be thrown out, and what should be kept.

Likewise I have to figure out what books are going on the bookshelves; and I’m organizing my MP3 collection, which is in a mess but needs to be backed up onto DVDs (yes, I have that many) and stuffed onto the iPod. The really obnoxious thing about MP3s is that you have to keep the original CDs you ripped them from in order for them to be legal. This equates to two bins in the garage. I could make a nice little bundle selling them; but for all the preaching I do against piracy, I would be a hypocrite. Integrity is expensive.

My process is not fast enough for Mom, who has been organizing the garage, watering the yard, and doing a million other little projects that keep her occupied.

Occasionally she does this while watching what I call “white trash TV”—courtroom shows, talk shows, dating shows, etc. Man, do they do a lot of paternity tests. I keep wondering how on earth they get people to be on these shows. You know nothing good will come of it when your ex-girlfriend tells you, “Honey, would you go with me on the Jerry Springer show?” There’s got to be a large subclass of people who are willing to go through any freakish insanity so long that they get a chance to be on TV. Anyway, I don’t bother to watch it; I catch snippets of it whenever I pass the family room.

Of course, I wanted to see the latest on what was happening in London. I didn’t hear of it until after noon; and since there’s no cable TV and Kerry was hogging the internet, I was just going to have to wait until the BBC News came on at 5 p.m.

Fourth of July fun.

Happy Fourth. Careful how you treat that flag.

We had a family barbecue for Independence Day; Kerry couldn’t be there but the rest of us ate a lot of food, watched the kids splash around in the kiddy pool, watched Coach Carter, then went to see the fireworks. Typical American behavior.

Other typical American behavior: To watch the fireworks (because, in Vacaville, if you sit in the right place, you can see both the fireworks over downtown and the fireworks over the baseball park) we picked an empty lot next to the Valero gas station; a lot filled with dry grass and weeds. Some dumbasses sitting near us decided that this would be the perfect spot to light sparklers and small fireworks; never mind that fireworks are illegal in this county (and to get an exemption, you need to have the fire department at your event). It would have been very cool if their fireworks had started a small grass fire that consumed their car, just for the personal lesson; but I suppose such a fire would have consumed the gas station and three fast food restaurants and wouldn’t have been worth it.

Okay, I think I’ll talk about sex now.

My aunt is getting married, and according to Mom she’s having the darndest time finding a pastor to officiate. Seems she and her fiance are “living in sin,” and the pastors don’t approve, so they won’t officiate because they disapprove of premarital sex.

Every time I bring this up, I get in trouble, but it’s a biblical idea, so here goes… There’s no such thing as premarital sex. All sex is marital. Scripture is quite clear that whenever people have sex, they’re considered married; all the consequences they suffer have to do with formalizing the union. In the case of adultery (which is prohibited for that very reason) the consequences deal with the dissolution of the previous marriage, and the formalization of the new one.

Western culture—heck, all culture—has argued that there should be a distinction between sex and marriage, and have tried to structure their societies that way. Thus the idea, and acceptance of the idea, of premarital sex. But it’s not an idea found in the bible. Pastors and parents, largely unaware of this, rightly say that sex should be confined to marital relationships, but never deal with the fact that scripture says nothing for or against premarital sex because there is no such thing.

The bit I still don’t understand is this: We have these two people “living in sin,” and they want to rectify the situation… and the pastors tell them no, leaving them to continue in “sin”? It’s as if we had two drug addicts, and they can’t enter a treatment program because they failed a urine test. This doesn’t sound logical… nor does it sound like the sort of grace that the church should be offering people.

Continuing towards the abolition of silence…

Finally got myself an iPod. Instant gratification.

I have been looking for an iPod since last Christmas. (I knew my family wasn’t getting me one for Christmas; they tend to be cheap about such things.) I’ve mainly been poking around eBay for one.

Shopping on eBay is an interesting experience. There’s the odd psychological reaction to “winning” (though you’ve won nothing other than the right to buy something); there’s the huge number of companies that are selling new stuff under the guise of “deals” while they’re actually gouging you through shipping (imagine a $10 cable that’s available for $4, but with shipping it totals $12—to ship a 5-ounce cable); there’s the foreign companies posing as domestic ones (but you wouldn’t know it unless you noticed the “Shipped from Hong Kong” in tiny print somewhere on the page); and there’s the fact that no sellers give positive feedback until you’ve sent your own positive feedback.

Typically I’d find iPod minis—the little 5GB versions—for $200, marked down from the usual $250; but after shipping they’d be $260, and for that $60 shipping fee you’d get a box full of air with an iPod in it; shipping actually cost $5, so they’ve sold you an iPod for $5 above retail. Bastards! I wasn’t falling for that scam, so I kept waiting… and waiting and waiting. Christmas came and went.

It wasn’t until last week that I found something… an older model 15GB iPod that, after shipping, was $103. Score! So I got it Saturday, and spent that evening and this morning loading 2,912 songs into it. It’s still not yet half full, but I have virtually every CD I own in it. It’s a beautiful thing.

Mom didn’t get it. “I don’t listen to that much music,” she pointed out.

“Well, you wouldn’t if you’re only listening to one CD at a time,” I explained. “If they were all ripped to your computer, you could call up any song you wanted whenever you wanted. If you put them in an iPod you wouldn’t need to be near your computer. Instant gratification.”

“Well, it’s your toy,” she shrugged.

Damn right it is.

Dial-up sucks.

Back to Vacaville. Back to dial-up.

I spent the morning poking around the internet—slowly—for all the local Wi-Fi spots. Thank God, most of them are coffeehouses, and one of them is within walking distance. Unfortunately, at home, we have dial-up (specifically, Juno) and it just sputters along at modem speed. Kerry upgraded it to an accelerated service, but that service only works on her PC and the rest of us have Macs. Forget that; we need DSL.

More specifically, I need DSL. I have uploads and downloads that take hours without high-speed internet. (I have been so spoiled by my year at Bethany.) When I first started downloading music off iTunes, I had to put up with dial-up’s usual 15 minutes’ download per song. So I’d set it to download and go to bed. If anything disconnected the phone overnight, I had to start over again the next night. That’s just obnoxious.

In the meanwhile, Mom is pestering me about moving my stuff from one room to another, so I’m getting back to that while the temperatures are still tolerable.