Over-Analyzing Church Signs

Hey, still reading this thing? I know I just posted last week, which means that based on prior experience my next post should be due sometime in February, but I want to try to be a little more regular about this. The purpose, after all, is to help myself be more confident in my own voice, and to do that I actually have to do it.

To help with that, though, I'm introducing what I hope will be a semi-regular feature: "Over-Analyzing Church Signs." I've gotten into the habit lately of taking pictures of church signs that I find especially interesting, for whatever reason. Now, since religion is a very powerful force in our culture, and church signs are a way for religion to get its message out to the general public even if they never set foot in a church, they deserve perhaps a closer scrutiny than we usually give them.

I want to make clear, though, that it's not just about whether I agree or disagree with the message (as an atheist I'll most often disagree, but not always). I saw one today that said "Grow in the Son's light." I have no problem with this, besides the rather overdone sun/Son pun. I disagree with the message, but it's clear, inoffensive, and uses an effective metaphor. In other words, no fun at all.

It's also not about simply making fun of them. I'm not going to be picking apart their grammar and spelling (though it pains me not to do so), and I'm not going to be pointing out unintentional double entendres only to follow with "That's what she said." After this one.

If it doesn't come, the 10:30 brunch will be AWKWARD.

No, this is about the message, and how well it's coming across in the limited space available to them. It's about confusing metaphors, mistaken assumptions, and sometimes just plain bafflement. In each case, I'll try to tease out the intended meaning, and what the problem is, usually in extremely nitpicky fashion. On that note, let's start off with a real over-analysis:

Somebody Make This Happen

So I've got this idea, but I lack the technological knowledge/connections to implement it.

My wife and I recently decided to drop our cable television service.  We realized that we rarely use it, as most of the shows we go out of our way to see are available streaming somewhere online, or we just wait for them to come out on DVD and Netflix them.  I used to have TV on as background noise almost constantly, but for the year and a half I lived by myself I couldn't really afford it and never really got back in the habit once I could.

I've never really gotten into streaming TV as much as many other people, though.  I mean, if there's something specific I've heard good things about, or that I'm already into, I'll watch it, but I rarely think "Hey, I'd really like to watch a specific episode of this particular show," which you have to do with either streaming or DVD.  Part of what I really liked about regular TV was the surprise factor, especially regarding reruns.  You could flip through the channels, find, say, a twenty-year-old episode of Wings (...now I feel old) and enjoy watching it.  Now, I'm not likely to ever search Wings out specifically (though now that I bring it up, I kind of want to), but it was a good show that I'd enjoy seeing a random episode of now and then.

I apparently remember more about Wings than I realized

That's what I miss: the randomness.  Coming across a show or an episode that you wouldn't think to search for.  And not just coming across it in your taste preferences, that doesn't cut it.  I gloss over seeing Wings there, because if I feel like something random I don't want to have to sort through seven years of episodes.  Do I want to watch the episode where Roy tricks the others into thinking he buried a fortune in his backyard so they'll dig him space for a hot tub?  Or the one where Joe finally snaps and runs off to be a beach bum (a two-parter)?  Because, really, sometimes I'm just in the mood where I want to go "I don't care.  Surprise me."

What I want is this.  I'd like some sort of programmable stations for streaming television, sort of like Pandora is for music.  Plug in some specific series that you like (as few or as many as you want, as long as they're available), tell the station to play episodes from only those series or to add in episodes from series like them, and then whenever you go to that "station" online, it'll pull up a random episode from one of those series to play.  Once it's over, they'll pull up another one.  Naturally, if you don't like the episode that's up, you can just skip to the next or ban it outright, because really, "Beer Bad" was a terrible episode of Buffy.  Similarly, you could ban an entire series because you may love Lucy, but you probably don't love Life With Lucy.  

You could set up stations with different themes: Rob's Sitcom Station (Wings, Dick Van Dyke, Roseanne, Arrested Development), Crime and Punishment (Law & Order: SVU, Bones, Dexter, Hill Street Blues), Saturday Morning Cartoons (Looney Tunes cartoons, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Animaniacs, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic), or make it just a little of everything you like.   You could even check a preference so that it'll only show episodes of a given show in the correct order, or leave it totally random.  There could be some pre-programmed stations, of course, but the real draw would be the ones that you program yourself.

The services wouldn't need any more rights permissions than they already have, I wouldn't think.  Obviously, the selection would be limited to the shows that are already available to stream, which increases all the time.  It would only be available to those who get the streaming shows anyway (Netflix subscribers, Hulu with commercials, whatever), all it would require would be a new infrastructure to support it.  Would it be that difficult to set up?  Couldn't they use Pandora or Slacker's music algorithms, and just replace the music library and player with video?

DO IT.

I know, I'm not a programmer.  Maybe there are some sort of technological issues that make it too difficult, or maybe there are rights issues I'm not aware of.  But couldn't this be done?  Is it being done, and I'm just not aware of it?  Am I the only one that would really use streaming services a lot more if something like this were available?  Do I waste enough time looking at a computer screen as it is?

Surely someone out there can make this happen.

To Joy

I'm not a music person, not really.  I mean, I enjoy music, of course.  Well, certain music.  But it never really seems to... I don't know, transport me the way it seems to for so many other people.  Maybe it's some sort of in-born temperament thing, or maybe it's because I never really learned the language of music properly, I don't know, but music rarely speaks to me the way many other types of art do.

I'm best with highly narrative music.  I do love me a good story, more than almost anything else, and music can certainly be a way to do that well.  When there's no real story evident though (to me, at least), I find it much harder to grab onto it, emotionally speaking, and it becomes just sort of pretty sounds to me.  I find this is especially bad with things like jazz and classical music, music that I know - I know - can be profoundly emotional artistic statements, but the meaning, the true genius of these pieces, always seems to be just out of sight for me, and I feel like I'm missing out.  It's like listening to a foreign language: you may find it pretty, even beautiful, but you don't understand.

Sometimes, though, sometimes... I catch a glimpse.

Anti-Vaccine = Pro-Disease

It's taken me a long time to write this post, because it just makes me so very mad.  I can't even include many of the pictures I originally considered in this post, because it makes me too angry.  People who know me know that I don't get mad easily, probably not nearly as easily as I should.  If I am going to get riled up about something, it's most likely to be less an interpersonal thing and more some big, social issue.  I've touched on some already: civil rights, creationism in public schools, etc.  If you really, truly want me to get spitting mad, though, one of the best ways is to bring up anti-vaccinationists.

Smallpox vaccine

Surely you've heard about it by now, from someone, somewhere.  The story most often goes that vaccines contain some sort of toxins that cause developmental problems -- primarily autism -- in children, and that the rise in cases of autism since the early 1990s is directly caused by an increase in the number of vaccines children get.  Supporters of this idea cite their personal experience, where their children only started showing signs of autism shortly after getting vaccinated, and a 1998 study by Dr. Andrew Wakefield published in The Lancet.  They claim that children are getting too many and too dangerous vaccines, that they are being pushed on us by the pharmaceutical companies not for health reasons, which are negligible compared to the risks, but because of profit and greed.

This drives me insane.

Review: The Book Thief

For some reason, when I go to the library I often get out books on a theme, usually unintentionally. A few months ago (because I take a while to read and, more importantly, write), the theme was "books and censorship." Oddly specific, I know. It largely started because of a novel that happened to catch my eye in the young adult section: The Book Thief, by Markus Zusak, about a young girl who steals books in Nazi Germany, narrated by Death, all sort of things that appeal to me.

11 Great Things About Baltimore

You know, Baltimore gets a lot of bad press.  Much of what people know about it comes from Homicide: Life on the Street or, more recently, The Wire.  It's not unusual for visitors here to expect little better than a war zone, instead of the few bad neighborhoods that all cities have.  It doesn't help that our (now former) mayor was recently convicted for stealing gift cards from needy children.  Even when we top a "best-of" list, the news story is how surprising it is that we're not "worst-of".  However, in the six-plus years I've been working and/or living in this city, I've grown to love it, and here are a few reasons why.

Duty to God

Exactly one hundred years ago last month, Chicago publisher W. D. Boyce incorporated the Boy Scouts of America, several months after being helped on a foggy London street by a boy who refused a tip, explaining that he was simply a Boy Scout doing his daily good turn.  Much has changed over the past century, but much has not.

I've mentioned before that even if I wanted to get back into Scouts as a leader I couldn't, not without being dishonest with them and with myself.  See, I'm an atheist, and the Godless are one of the three "G"s not allowed into the Boy Scouts, along with Girls and Gays.  I was only just starting to figure this out in high school, after I was well into Scouts (and had earned the Methodist religious award).  Even though I've only started calling myself an atheist within the last few years, at the time I was definitely at least an agnostic, and became pretty uncomfortable with the religious aspects.  I kept my mouth shut, though, because I loved Scouts, and wanted to see it through to my Eagle.