Buyer's remorse.

Kerry’s getting married!

I say this because my sister Kerry likes to greet people by saying, “I’m getting married!” which she won’t be able to say anymore in a month or so, which will mean she’ll have to come up with a new saying. Probably “I got married!” or something like that.

Thank God, for her wedding I don’t have to wear another stupid tuxedo. But I figured I should wear something nice, and since all the suits I have in my closet are secondhand junk, I decided it was time for me to finally buy some decent threads. “Decent” means “not another polyester monstrosity from the Salvation Army that I can wash in the regular cycle.” I wanted something lightweight, made of wool and silk, custom-fitted, and no more than $500 including tax and alterations.

My budget, by the way, is not based on what I can afford. I can afford better. My budget is based on what I want to pay for something. If I can’t find something for the price I want, I don’t buy it. This is why I don’t yet have a video iPod; I’m not paying more than $200 for it, and I’m not getting one until I can find it for that amount. Some call it cheap. I call it setting my own value on something.

My budget put me at the Men’s Wearhouse in Capitola on Saturday. They frequently advertise suits at $200, which is an old marketing strategy to get you into the store to get the cheap suit, and then you wind up finding a nicer one for “only” $300, and talk yourself into spending the extra $100 because the nicer suit is so much nicer. My chances were good at staying within my budget.

The Men’s Wearhouse also has another strategy. They try to sell you an ensemble, not just a suit. Yes, you’ll have a suit, but what shirt will you wear with it? What tie? How about shoes? And it makes sense. Why buy a custom-fitted suit, then wear your lousy $10 Walmart sneakers and your $4 thrift-store collared shirt under it? So they sold me on the shoes, some dress socks, two shirts, two ties to go with the shirts… and I went $350 over my budget, but I figured I could afford it, and I'd look good.

It was on the bus ride home that this started to annoy me.

I had a budget of $500. I spent, instead, more than $800. For what? Two shirts, two ties, socks, and shoes. Good quality clothing, but have I ever spent that much on those individual items? I looked my receipt over. Have I ever spent more than $30 on a pair of shoes? No. What, then, was I doing spending $135 on a pair of shoes? Did I like them? Well, I liked them better than the other shoes in the store, but they weren’t particularly comfortable, and felt a little loose in the toe and heel, and stiff otherwise. I wear sandals 90 percent of the time anyway; all shoes feel uncomfortable to me, but the last thing I need at a wedding is to be constantly agitated by uncomfortable shoes. And it was already an uncomfortable price.

“All right,” I figured, “when I go back to pick the suit after it had been altered, I’m returning the shoes.” I looked again at the receipt. “And the socks. I’m not spending $20 for socks.”

Saturday night, as I was going to bed, I decided to look at that receipt again.

The shirts were $55 apiece. They’re nice shirts, and it’s really difficult to find shirts in my neck size. I have a size 19 neck. (Go ahead and make your wisecracks about it.) Most shirts made for a size 19 neck are 2XL or 3XL, which means I look like I’m wearing a small pup tent, especially with all the extra fabric on the sleeves. But in my mind, shirts should be no more than $30. So, back they’d go. The ties—one was $20 and one was $30. Those are normal prices for silk ties. But I have ties, and like them better. Back they’d go.

And Sunday morning, I decided I wasn’t going to wait until next week to return everything; I was doing it today.

The salesman didn’t look too pleased when I returned all my merchandise. “You’re still getting the suit?” he asked, and of course I said yes. If I like how the alterations come out, I’ll likely get many more suits from them. The prices are good. But I couldn’t justify the extra expense to myself.

Besides, I have yet to buy wedding presents.

Amusing comic strip: Hong Kong Jesus.

Sinfest by Tatsuya Ishida, 5/22/2006

Saw the new 𝘟-𝘔𝘦𝘯 movie.

Yesterday, while walking home from the library, a bird tried to land on my head. Three times. It was like a scene out of The Birds, only with just one of them. What the heck was that about?

Tonight I saw X-Men 3, which didn’t suck as much as the internet reviews made it out to. I think professional movie reviewers forget that your average movie-watcher will be perfectly happy with a decent plot that noticeably advances, believable enough acting without over-emoting, special effects that don’t look like the computer animation from VeggieTales, and humor that doesn’t confuse socially offensive with funny.

…Actually, your average movie-watcher would put up with a movie that didn’t have any of those things so long as someone attractive flashed a boob. In my case, however, I want all those things in the movies I watch, and am happy when they’re in there and annoyed when they’re not. In the case of X-Men 3 the plot was decent, the acting was decent, the special effects were entertaining, and the producers are retarded if they don’t make another sequel. And don’t worry about killing off more characters; there are plenty of mutants to replace ’em with.

That’s what the X-Men comic books are all about: Replacements. You write a bunch of comic book superheros, each with a superpower or two to keep ’em interesting, put them in a book and let them percolate among the fans. The more popular ones get their own books and leave—to be replaced by more new mutants. The less popular ones turn evil (and thus become more interesting) or get killed off or disappear or something. Once the popular ones become boring, rotate in the new mutants. The fans keep reading, the money keeps pouring in, and everyone’s happy.

Tomorrow I have to buy clothes. I hate shopping for clothes. It’s gotta be done, though. Hope no more birds attack.

𝘌𝘯𝘳𝘰𝘯: 𝘛𝘩𝘦 𝘚𝘮𝘢𝘳𝘵𝘦𝘴𝘵 𝘎𝘶𝘺𝘴 𝘪𝘯 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘙𝘰𝘰𝘮.

Kent’s Recommended Watch:
Alex Gibney:
Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room

Enron executives Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted today of fraud and conspiracy in their attempts to hide Enron’s losses from investors. Read the FoxNews article.

Coincidentally, I finally got this documentary, Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room from Blockbuster, after waiting six weeks to see it. I watched it Tuesday. It’s pretty fascinating; it’s another cautionary tale of good old fashioned greed taking over good old fashioned capitalism.

The folks who ran Enron really just wanted to make lots of money, didn’t care how they did it so long as they could get away with it, and did… with help from the SEC, several prominent investment banks, the Arthur Andersen accounting firm, and every shareholder who only looked at Enron’s soaring stock prices and never asked what the basis was for this continuing upward climb. It was also entertaining to watch Enron’s energy traders mess with California during our recent energy crisis. (The documentary claims they created the problem; I think we created our own problem by botching energy deregulation, allowing Enron to easily take advantage.)

One of the people I watched this with was stunned at how much Enron got away with—and how much complicity went on in order to enable Enron to get away with it. But human evil never surprises me anymore. One learns to expect it, especially when humans are tempted with tremendous sums of money or power. The amazing thing is when they aren’t corrupted by it. The amazing thing is when people voluntarily give up power. That’s what we find so unbelievable; I have no trouble with the idea of people trying to seize more and more until it becomes their undoing.

I should warn you though. Parts of this video should be renamed Enron: The Most Gratuitous Nudity Ever Seen in a Documentary. There’s a bit in the middle about a Enron executive named Lou Pei who had a thing for strippers, and the documentarians decided some good images to show in the background might be that of topless strippers. So think twice before using this documentary in a classroom.

Christian meditation.

One of the bigger problems that the western church has suffered in the past 40 or so years is it doesn’t encourage meditation anymore.

Meditation, which we read about in the Psalms, is quite simply taking a passage of scripture and turning it over in your head. It doesn’t necessarily have to be scripture; it could be a prayer to God, or something God told you, or anything like that. You just have to eliminate all the other distractions around you that could get your mind to wander—obnoxious music, noise from the TV, ringing telephones, and so forth—and just concentrate on the words God has given you, and ask for the Holy Spirit to enlighten you. And see if you don't hear him talking to you quite clearly.

The problem is this sounds much too much like eastern meditation. And of course it would. Both are forms of meditation. Eastern meditation is different in that you clear your mind. Middle eastern meditation requires you to fill your mind—with the word of God.

Unfortunately, there are some idiots who are so convinced that any meditation is evil—that any resemblance to eastern meditation means it’s a devilish scheme to corrupt Christianity—that they’re trying to anathematize Christians who do this. They can’t believe it’s God speaking to the people who meditate on his word; it must be a temptation from the devil. Dispensationalists in particular believe God doesn’t talk to his people any more; he stopped talking once scripture was written, because he supposedly said everything he needed to say. Seems to me any teaching that shuts off God from speaking to his people would be devilish, and any teaching that discourages meditation on God’s word would make a person the least in the kingdom of heaven.

To be fair, if you’ve been wrapped up in eastern meditation, it takes a while to snap out of the mindless nonsense and meditate properly. But to chuck all forms of meditation just because you’ve been doing it wrong—well, it’s as if you said, “Up to this point I have been eating nothing but junk food. I must reform. So I will stop eating altogether.” Or it’s as if you decided that because you were wrongly praying to Krishna, prayer is wrong and you shouldn’t pray to YHWH either.

It’s just dumb. And it encourages the worst kind of stupidity. People who don’t meditate will never get beyond a certain point in their Christian walk. They’ll be too busy looking out for heresy and compromise to ever get any deeper in their relationship with God.

They won’t ingrain any Scriptures in their heart. They might think they have, ’cause they’ve memorized some favorite verses. ’Tain’t the same thing. I’ve memorized lots of verses, but I never did anything with them—and they never did anything to me—until I meditated on them. If I never meditated on them, I’d be reciting them whenever I wanted to prove a point, but they wouldn’t have changed my life; they’d simply be another tool in an arsenal I could use to knock other Christians around with my brilliance.

And if these people never hear God talk—and they’re convinced he simply doesn't do that any more—we can obviously see why.

Devotional’s back up.

I hadn’t been blogging devotional entries for a while. It’s mainly because I lost a little focus on the point behind a devotional.

See, I’ve been doing my personal devotions, but I haven’t been posting them. It’s because I started working my way through the gospel of Mark on the devotional blog. In my personal devotions, I’ve been leaping from passage to passage, and since none of them were from Mark, I didn’t post them. Which is dumb. I wasn’t writing a commentary; I was writing a devotional.

So I hopped on the blog and pulled down all the Mark entries. I’ll likely post them again eventually; I’ve already re-posted one of them. But now it’s going to bounce around with my normal devotional life, and if you were wondering what happened next in Mark, go read it yourself.

Immigration and English and fearful whites.

I’d like the United States to institute a policy where for every immigrant we get from Mexico, we have to deport a lazy American.

Seriously. Mexican immigrants are, in my experience, some of the hardest workers I have ever met, and our country would do well to have more of them come to this country, become Americans, and stay here. The only reason they sneak across our border is because we don’t let them in. We should let them in. It should be as easy for Mexicans to come to the States as it is for Americans to visit Mexico. But it isn’t, and I can’t see any good reason why this should be the case.

The reason why the United States has immigration quotas is pure and simply racism. We wanted to stop the influx of Asians during the Gold Rush. Currently, we want to stop the influx of brown people from Mexico. And if they do come here, we want them to jump through some hoops that we nationals never had to jump through. They have to take an English exam and a history exam. If they pass, they’ll know more about the rules of English and our government and history than most Americans. Every American should be required to take those tests before they can get the benefits of citizenship. But if that were the case, a lot of Americans would quickly become non-voters. (I say big deal. They don’t vote anyway.)

Why this fear of other races? It isn’t the other races per se. Talk to your average fearful whites and they’ll tell you they have no problem with Asians or Mexicans or blacks or anyone else—but if they come to this country, they have to assimilate. They have to speak English. They have to “take on American customs.”

That’s what assimilation means in this country. It means to stop acting “ethnic” and start acting “like an American.” Give your kids American names. Wear American clothes. Speak an American language. …Okay, now replace “American” in those sentences with “American Indian.” Does it work? No? How about “white”? Ah, there we are.

Fearful whites don't mind a massive influx of Mexicans so long as the Mexicans come to this country and start acting white. If they came here and immediately began speaking accent-free English, ate at McDonalds, joined a Protestant church, and started shopping at the Gap, there would be no controversy. Instead, they come here and insist on retaining their culture… like every other immigrant in American history.

The result that I find the most interesting is that America has managed to develop a rather large and significant Spanish-speaking subculture. They’re American, same as the whites; they just don’t speak White. (I mean English.) And when the White-speakers talk about sealing our Mexican border, the Spanish-speakers rightly and vocally call it racism.

I can’t see this latest Senate vote—to make English the official (or “common and unifying”) language as anything but a backlash against them. It’s entirely unnecessary. It’s especially unnecessary considering the large number of Spanish-speakers in this country who will immediately find themselves shut out as a result of it. It’s as if the United States has decided to pass a national Jim Crow law. This is not a ban on Spanish, but it will in effect be a ban on the government speaking Spanish to its constituents.

My attitude has always been that Americans should be required to learn to speak a second language. Preferably Spanish. If everyone spoke Spanish, most of the nervousness about Mexican immigrants would disappear; racism is usually based on willful ignorance, and forcing much of that ignorance away would do a lot of good. Congress should pass a law, instead, requiring that schools teach Spanish. But will they? No; their campaign contributors are fearful whites, who are taking advantage of the white majority in Congress and getting them to slap down another race and make it look like patriotism.