Random Ramblings

This weekend, as I went to starbucks before church, I passed Sherwood Ice Arena to a disheartening sight: Harmony Christian Books & Homeschool, a former competitor when I was in Christian retail, is going out of business and liquidating its store. It doesn’t come as a complete shock, though. It’s no surprise that small Christian stores are struggling, in part due to the economy and in part due to inability to compete with big box stores like Best Buy and Borders.

Harmony’s not the first retailer I’ve seen struggling: Shortly after I got out of the game, the Greatest Gift in Wilsonville had shut down, another small, family-run business. Rainbow West in Tigard, to the best of my knowledge, has closed down again (unless they’ve moved, which they have a nasty habit of doing without telling anyone) And the signs advertising space for lease in two locations of Christian Supply stores, one in Tanasbourne and one in Lake Oswego, don’t bode well, either, a clear indication that even the chain stores are feeling the pinch.

Part of it, clearly, is the inability to compete. Let’s face it: When Best Buy can sell Veggietales for 7.99 on release, and Christian Supply has it for 12.99 but gets it the Saturday before the secular market, particularly now, an extra three-days wait is easily accepted for the 5.00 savings. And Best Buy can afford that, as we’d had drilled into us countless times while I was still in Christian retail, they have larger ticket items that allow them to take such hits on their smaller purchases. However, I don’t think that’s entirely it, either. I think, to an extent, Christian retail brought it upon itself.

At this point, I’m sure many of you are kind of shocked at my hypothesis. “Brought it upon itself? How can they be to blame?” I don’t think Christian retail set out to deliberately sabotage itself, but I think by a process of decisions its made over the last couple of decades, it’s gotten into the mess it’s in now.

Christian retail used to be just that – Christian. It catered to an audience of born-again believers, looking for music that was uplifting, books that were inspiring, and Bibles that were… well.. Bibles. And it was good, people could find all of those items together in one place. However, over the years, things changed. Sales didn’t seem to be as good in the Christian markets as they were in the secular markets, and someone, somewhere, began to ask, “Why?”

They began to compare what was selling in the secular markets with what was selling in the Christian markets, and you know what they found out? What was hot in the secular markets didn’t really have a counterpart in the Christian market. Clearly, though, if it was that popular in the secular area, it would also be popular in the Christian area as well. And thus began Christian retail’s struggle to become “relevant” to the changing times.

Before I launch into this too far, a disclaimer: I am not going to get on my soap box and say whether or not certain types of music or books are more Godly than the other. We are, after all each given a different measure of faith, and while some may find certain things okay, others won’t. But I will point out a few different cases in which I saw something that struck me as seriously wrong in the Christian retail markets that I think stemmed from the problem of trying to be everything the secular market is without being the secular market.

That being said, Christian retailers began to bring in more things of what was popular: Christian rock bands that sounded just like the secular artists that were popular on the radio. In some cases, it wound up being a secular band trying to get its break. Take, for instance, Evanesence. Few people will remember, but they started their life as a “Christian” band on Wind-Up records. I remember we had the CDs up for about a whopping two weeks while I worked at Christian Supply just starting out. Then, one day, my manager told me that we had to pull them all. Puzzled, I asked why (the only thing I knew was the girl on the cover scared me). Come to find out, in an interview with Entertainment Weekly, one of the band members had said “We’re really popular in the Christian markets, but we’re not a Christian band. What the [bleep] is up with that?”. There was an apology issued almost immediately from the record label, assuring us all that they would do a better job screening their artists before release. One two different occasions, I had to pull CDs by 12 Stones because of language/inappropriate comments in the CD liners. At the time, they seemed like trivial things, but looking back, they were things that never should have happened in the first place.

Music isn’t the only thing that became popular. An almost constant stream of “self help” books became the next big thing. It amazes me looking back at how many of the “next big things” were, in fact, big until they came out, then no one cared. And the number of ones that came through that had almost no theological foundation was appalling. The vast majority of the books in the “Christian Living” section were books based on pop psychology with scripture thrown in to make it look more spiritual. I remember vividly a book titled “Get a Life! It IS all about you”, which offered almost nothing from a Christian standpoint, but relied heavily on what’s popular in the psychology world. That’s frightening, folks. As Christians, God’s word is supposed to be our source. Not popular psychological theories.

And then Bibles. Let me say, when I was a kid, we had two kinds of bibles: NIV and KJV. (there were probably more, but those were the only two that anyone cared about). Now, there’s a bible in every shape, size, and kind. And some of them are borderline sacrilegious. For instance, the Bible as a Seventeen-style girl’s magazine. Because, clearly, the best way to get girls to read the bible is to make it look like a secular magazine that they’d rather be reading.

Regardless, things still weren’t booming in Christian retail. There were still things that were more popular in the secular market that the Christian markets couldn’t replicate. So, most recently, I’ve noticed a shift from strictly “Christian” items to items that are “Family Friendly”.

“Family Friendly”? Seriously?

It first hit me the day I entered the Lake Oswego Christian supply and found, prominently displayed, Disney movies. Disney movies with no discernable spiritual messages (Well, that is, unless you find one of the many books that specifically tries to draw spiritual themes out of secular movies), no real connection to what Christ came to do on earth. Then, a few weeks later on a trip to Vancouver Mall, I found in Crown Books & Gifts carrying Hannah Montana and High School musical CDs. The clincher, however, was reviewing the Easter sales flyer I recieved from Christian supply that had, in fact, no mention of Jesus Christ’s resurrection. At this point, it occurred to me that Christian retail has lost its collective soul.

Isn’t Christ supposed to be the focus? If we turn “Christian” into a synonym for “Family Friendly”, what has Christ done? Christ died on the cross, but for what? So we can use his name in vain attempts to promote a business that we’re running under man’s power with man’s logic?

Allow me to be counter-intuitive: Christian retail lost its soul and, I believe, is losing business because it fails to differentiate itself from the secular market anymore. If you walk into a Christian retail establishment, odds are you’ll probably get a similar level of service to a Borders or a Best Buy, a lot of the same products, but with higher prices. And since Christian retail’s moved to try not to invoke Christ as often, what’s differentiating them from the competition? Higher prices. It’s sad, but true.

I would love to see a Christian retailer let God build the house for once, live by faith, and see what happens. Stop trying to please the secular markets, but trust that God can provide the business if they try to run a business that’s pleasing to God. Christian retail shouldn’t have to change everytime the secular markets catch onto a trend that’s popular. Christians SHOULDN’T be keeping up with the Joneses, we were called to be set apart from the world, not to try and be like it but still maintain our identity as Christians. We should be seperated, and I just wish one retailer would decide “Okay, that’s the business plan. We’ll see how God can provide.”

Alas, I doubt I’ll see it in my day unless I open it myself… And that’s a market I don’t really want back into.

Tags: Religious, Writing // 3 Comments »

I hate this time of year. This we’ve already established. But now, it’s becoming more because of the media and it’s “The world’s going to end, it’s all the Republican’s fault, vote democrat and you can save us!” mentality.

We all know what I’m referring to, kids. The economy. The fact is this: The majority of media outlets are left-leaning, and won’t outright support a republican candidate. These same media outlets know, for whatever reason, that democrats appear stronger on the economy than republicans, so what do they want to do? Scare everyone by saying “A new depression is coming! We’ll all be living out of cardboard boxes unless the democrats bail us out of our mortatges!”. And we, being the mindless sheep that we are and blindly trusting the established media outlets, go along with it. Every time.

Ladies and gentlemen, I’m going to tell you all something that might come as a surprise to you, but it is true: Barack Obama isn’t going to save the economy. John McCain isn’t going to save the economy. George Bush didn’t cause the economic downturn we’re experiencing right now, and Bill Clinton didn’t cause the economic upturn he got right before he left office. That’s not how it works.

We’ve become so obsessed with the president being some kind of superhero, here to save us from high priced health care, economic troubles, and high gas prices. But let’s face it: They have about as much control in that position as I do writing legislation for Congress. but the politicians promise us all lower gas prices, a fixed economy, and health care for everyone if we’ll just vote for them (nevermind the “affordable health care” involves jacking up our taxes, or “fixing the economy” involves spending 700 billion dollars worth of money we don’t have to bail out wall street’s idiotic greed when it could’ve been fixed a whole lot cheaper… The way the market has been plummeting since the bailout was approved, clearly that plan worked like a charm… :-p)

Dave Ramsey said “If you follow the market day to day, you’ll give yourself an ulcer.” That’s a good point. the fact is, the market fluctuates day to day, but if you look at it for the last 100 years, you’ll be shocked to find out it has made movement in a generally upward direction. There have been hiccups, sure, but nothing we haven’t recovered from. Our economy is resillient, people, stop expecting the politicians to fix it and just let it ride.

If you don’t believe me, check out this graph of the Dow Jones industrial average:

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So ladies and gentlemen, everyone take a big step back and calm down. The world is not going to end, the market has a long way to go before it crashes, and the politicians are NOT going to fix it. The media knows this, it’s about time we as Americans did our homework and paid a little more attention to it, too.

Tags: News, Politics // 1 Comment »

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged, but seeing as the time of year it is, I feel like it’s about time I said something. (Come on, we’re in an election season, you wouldn’t expect me to sit this one out, would you?)

Right now, it’s one of those magical times where we are in the process, as Americans, of selecting who will be next to lead our country. I expect most of you know my views on it (being a gun-toting right wing conservative), but my rant today will not be about who we should elect as our next president. In fact, the main theme I have for today can be summed up in one sentence.

I hate politics.

I will be overjoyed once we are through with this political season (regardless of who wins, ultimately we’re getting who we deserve either way). It used to be (long ago, before I could even vote) that campaigns were run on the issues. Now, it’s become the proverbial three-ring circus, with the media making a spectacle out of everything that doesn’t actually matter (then again, this is from the same news services that somehow think we care about what Britney Spears is doing with her life… If I wanted celebrity gossip, I have the sense to watch a celebrity gossip show, not the evening news…), and the campaigns are throwing out ads at each other that don’t focus a lick on what the issues are, but instead tell you everything that’s wrong with the other guy.

Now before all the partisans start saying the other side’s doing it, shut up. They’re BOTH doing it, and as a nation we’re hanging on their every word, treating everything that comes out of their mouths as honest to goodness truth and not questioning whether that’s even an issue worth worrying about. I’m a big fan of free speech (I am, after all, a blogger), but I am all in favor of cutting off the political campaigns and restricting them to stating their views instead of attacking their opponents. In the months leading up to this election, I feel like I’ve learned less about what each candidate’s platform is than I have what’s wrong with their opponent’s platform from campaign ads. Enough, for the love of crackers, just shut up about the other guy and focus on your platform. I don’t care what you want to twist to make the other guy look bad, we’re never going to have a truly “fact” based campaign if you spend all of your time trying to knock the other guy down. We aren’t even getting an unbiased opinion if you just state what you’re running for, but at LEAST we wouldn’t have to feel like you’re getting into a 3rd grade name-calling contest on the national stage anyone.

And news media, shame on you. We’ve always known it’s impossible to have a truly unbiased news media, but now bias isn’t even the problem, you blow EVERYTHING out of proportion and start covering it as a leadoff story when, typically, what you’re covering has little to no impact on what the campaigns are doing. McCain’s not creating controversy, Obama isn’t even creating controversy. You know who’s creating controversy? The established media outlets! If they would shut their pie-holes and go back to the good old days of Peter Jennings, Dan Rather, and Tom Brokaw covering the news in a professional manner instead of turning the political season into a freak show that we feel we should be seeing on shows more like Entertainment Tonight, we might, just MIGHT, have an ethical political campaign because no one would care about anything aside from what the real issues are.

I love America. I love that we have the freedom to choose who will be leading our country. But I HATE the fact that so many Americans do it so blindly, without having any idea what they’re voting for other than the charismatic ability of a candidate to make speeches but not really present any kind of real policy. Enough is enough, can we get back to a real campaign now?

As a side note to all of this, I saw a rant from Craig Fergusson that I found particularly fitting. Enjoy!
(Warning: Slight language)

Tags: News, Politics // 2 Comments »

It’s been a while since I’ve written anything (in fact, June is the first month in the last 3 years where I’ve actually missed a month, I believe…), but I noticed this on CNN.com this morning.

Knife violence in the UK

Now this amused me, believe it or not. Not because people were getting stabbed, but, in fact, because anytime I get into a debate over gun control and whether or not it reduced violence, one of the main arguments I get is that “If guns aren’t available, people can’t kill each other in a fit of rage.” And yet here we have jolly old England, model for gun control, and what’s happening there? A rise of knife violence in 24 hours. So what, now we start taking away the knives from the people, too?

The sad truth is, criminals can get to be sadistically ingenious when it comes to killing. Take away the knive, and the road rage incidents will probably involve tire irons. People can use baseball bats to beat each others’ heads in (or have we not seen “The Untouchables”?). Criminals can always find a way to kill, no matter how hard you try to deescalate the problem by removing the tools they’d use to do it.

Tags: Uncategorized // 1 Comment »

Eventful day yesreday. Moved out to my mom’s, living out of a suitcase with a 50 mile commute to work in the morning. I won’t give the details, but here’s the highlights.

~Got pulled over for something, apparently I don’t look old enough to be my father and the DMV thinks my car has no insurance.

~Running around a luau for leftovers like a chicken with his head cut off.

~My car nearly overheated. again.

~”We forgot the barbeque!”

~Borrowing John’s truck to move the second big load & getting a better prayer life….

~”That’s an awful lot of neon for something that’s not a strip club…” -Me after viewing the Washington Roofing Company Signs in the middle of the night, which had a lighting setup that rivals most casinos in vegas…

~Final finish: 3:30 am

~Time up for church: 6:00 am.

Tags: Personal // Add Comment »

Back to the basics for the Marvel vs. DC series…

“My movie’s more family friendly.”
“How is mine NOT family friendly?”
“Yeah, right… ‘sorry, kids, we couldn’t get in to see kung fu panda, let’s watch the clown with the M16 open fire on a school bus!’”

Tags: Humor, Movies // 1 Comment »

Seriously… “It’s fun to do bad stuff”? When asked if he thinks there should be any punishment, “Maybe no video games for a while and that’s it.” If I were the kid’s grandma, I would’ve whooped the tar out of him for the camera so that no other 7 year olds got any wise ideas…

Tags: Humor, News // 1 Comment »

It’s not our public face that defines who we are, it’s who we are when no one else is watching. Men judge by actions, but only God judges by hearts.

(It’s probably been said by someone more eloquently than I, but it’s just a thought I had this week)

Tags: Religious, Writing // Add Comment »

Ah, what a day. It’s funny, it seems like since I’m not intentionally trying to blog every day, now I have no lack of material (although I didn’t use yesterday’s). But tonight, I blog.

The morning started out with me getting to church for setup. I was a little shocked, I was there at 8:30 and the sound booth hadn’t even been rolled out. I go in, call out upstairs (figuring Dave was up there) and it turned out that Jared was up there. Dave’s father in law was in the hospital and so he was with his wife at the hospital. I’m sure you all know what this means: I’m the only non-choir-member sound guy there (and only one of two total sound techs in the building, as Kellie AND Dave are both in the ministry). This also means, being the only non-choir sound guy, that I was pretty much by myself the whole time.

Well, sound check went okay, but there was the proverbial wild card with the first special: The choir was singing to back up Kim. This is a wild card for two reasons:

1) We don’t run sound check with choir
2) The mics can be finicky about cooperating for the choir

Usually the choir sound check is the opener, during which I try to adjust monitors so she can hear them, and after which (during prayer) Miss Faith and I communicate by lip reading and frantic gestures to figure out what we can do to fix things. today was not a good day, because by the time the opener was over, I had cranked her monitor to +5 (which is max on the dial) and she couldn’t hear anything. So everyone bows their head and the frantic gesturing begins, I get my point across, and I unmute Kim’s mic.

Or so I thought.

You see, Kim usually uses one of the wirelesses, which happens to be the same one that Amanda uses, and since I set Amanda’s settings first, I set Kim on another microphone. However, when I unmuted it, I unmuted Amanda’s. Kim goes to start the song, I hear nothing, and I reactively flipped the other mute button off (I have the right instincts when something goes wrong, at least), then wanted to crawl under the sound booth and hide.

Well, after the service I found out that tonight we were going to do a run through for next sunday morning’s group ensemble (which involves two munchkin choirs, the teen girls, and a quartet of my sister, Amanda, Casey, and Kim). This is something that, normally, I would’ve let Dave handle because of the complex nature (and my own feeling insecurities about the job and not feeling on par with Dave, he is, after all, infinitely more experienced). But, recall, Dave wasn’t there and wouldn’t be there for the evening service, either. So, again, the task falls to me.

I did make the smart move of letting Glen mix the teen girls for the evening service (if I’d had to do that, AND the pre-sunday check, I probably would’ve cracked and declared myself emperor of the hundred acre woods…). Then, after the service, I took a seat at the back of the auditorium and waited for the large group to come, and come they did. It wasn’t quite what Miss Faith was hoping for, though, because we didn’t have the mics for the munchkin choirs (Jared’s getting those this week), and the choir mics are hung too high to pick up the teen girls (in fact, the majority of what I picked up through the choir mics was actually the piano…). The ladies quartet in the center couldn’t hear anything from the monitors, the teen girls couldn’t be heard at all, and the munchkins didn’t get mics to use because we didn’t have them yet. I think it’ll go well sunday, but there’s going to be a lot of playing by ear to get everything perfect, which makes Miss Faith nervous, I can tell…

Well, after all of this, I broke down everything, put it all away, and went to my sister’s house to pick up the birthday cake I left there yesterday. After that, I decided (being it was fairly warm outside) to grab a milkshake on the way home. So I went to Baskin-Robbins and got myself a Reese’s Peanut Butter Cup shake. This turned out to be the randomness of the night. You see, for whatever reason, some genius at B&R decided that putting a big old dollop of hot fudge in the bottom of the milkshake. Let’s think about this for a moment.

First of all, hot fudge, for those who aren’t familiar, is rather thick when heated. when it cools, it becomes thicker. and, being in the bottom of the cup, it’s the first thing you try sucking down the straw, which doesn’t really work. Add to that the bits and pieces of Reese’s, which tend to clog up the straw all be their lonesome. So, take reeses bits, add hot fudge, and suddenly, I’m wishing Drain-O wasn’t toxic so I could get the blasted straw unclogged.

And now, here I sit, on the verge of going to bed, realizing in addition to 25 years disappearing, I have no bloody idea where my week’s vacation went…

Tags: Humor, Personal // 1 Comment »

I was reading this story on CNN today, a verdict came in on three men who were accused of killing an unarmed man on the night of his wedding, and good ol’ reverend Sharpton said “Justice was not miscarried, justice was aborted.”

So much of the focus has been on the police (represented primarily as white supremicists, as evidenced by someone’s screaming that the shooters were KKK members) shooting an innocent black man, but really, I don’t think that this is the time to be playing the race card.

Please understand me, this is a great tragedy, I would not wish this on anyone, but at the same time, I’ve been around police enough to know it’s hard enough second guessing yourself on tactical decisions without having the general public screaming that you’re a racist murderer. I’m glad the courts weren’t caving to the political spectacle that Sharpton drags out every time he involved himself with something.

Now, as far as why I think this is a lousy time to play the race card, let’s take a look at something here: The five cops that shot the victim. Of the five, two were black, one was white, one was Middle-Eastern, and one was of biracial Haitian/Mexican descent. In addition to this, the first officer to fire was, oddly enough, black. So now is really not the time to try playing racial politics.

Additionally, anyone with enough sense can take a Citizen’s police academy course (quite a few have them nowadays) and at one point or another, you come to the realization of how quickly the officers have to react. If you try something stupid, say reaching into your jacket pocket when told to put your hands in the air, or trying to run an officer down with your car, the officer has limited time to think and react, and if you’re not complying you’re automatically tagging yourself as a potential threat. When I was in CPA for WashCo, I got to go into the deadly force simulation, and you know what? The reaction time between when a perp doesn’t have a gun and does have a gun is almost obscene, I wasn’t even holstering my weapon and the guy still got the first shot off before I could drop the hammer on him. Time for a police officer isn’t measured in seconds; it’s measured in miliseconds. You never know what kind of situation you’re walking into, and you have to react accordingly.

Let’s look at it from another angle. Let’s assume, just for a moment, that Mr. Bell was, in fact, a bad man. Let’s also assume that, when he went back to the car, there was a gun there. And, just for kicks, let’s assume that the officers, instead of shooting at a perceived threat waited until it was a definite threat. I’ve been shooting enough to know that it does not take a long time to empty a 12-round clip, for kicks, let’s say he’s got a 9mm glock with high-capacity magazines. That’s 16 in the clip, one in the chamber. If you’re fast enough (and accuracy is no object), you can easily empty a clip in under 10 seconds. Now, instead of one potential threat (who, again, wasn’t complying with the officers) dead, we have potentially three to five dead NYPD detectives.

I guess what I’m trying to say is, stop second guessing the decisions made by cops on a daily basis and educate yourself, Mr. Sharpton. Unless you’ve been in those shoes, unless you’ve been there on that dark street, with the possibility of not coming home that night being real to you, you are in no position to pass judgment on those officers, so stop trying to act like you think you know all there is to know in the world on the subject.

Tags: News, Politics // 2 Comments »