A Wonderful Opportunity to Teach Our Kids About…..Vampires and Sex….


A Really Teachable Moment!


Ditch the Dish…. and DON’T get the whole picture!

Part I

I was somewhat irritated (that’s an understatement) when I decided to write this post. I thought about naming it many different things. Three of the names are recorded above…several others didn’t make the cut as I realized they were emotionally charged responses emanating from the dark part of the (I guess mine) human psyche.

So what got my eyre up? Well the other week I was in Chicago on business and when I called home one night to check out the situation on the home front my beautiful wife relayed an experience she’d had that afternoon that had her, to say the least, uh…. frustrated. She went down the driveway with my daughters (4 years old and 3 years old) to get the mail, like they do each afternoon, and as usual, they each asked if they could carry a piece of mail back up the driveway. Well fortunately, she glanced at the piece of mail in her hand seconds before my older daughter grabbed it, and was able to exchange it for another piece.


Now the pictures above show it just as it arrived in my mailbox. After unfolding it – per the handy instructions on the side – it was even worse. (Bad enough that I decided not to include those pictures here.)

So after a short rant about the evils of HBO, Showtime, and the entertainment industry in general, I did what any normal person (who secretly might have enjoyed being and undercover reporter) would have done. I decided to call Dish Network (DN) and seek their advice. So here’s how the call went.

DN – Hi are you currently a DN subscriber?
LM – No, but I did get an interesting advertisement from you in the mail the other day I’d like to ask you about.
DN – Sure may I please have your home telephone # beginning with the area code.
LM – Sure, XXX-XXX-XXXX
DN – Okay Sir, how can I help you?
LM – Well I got an ad from you in the mail the other day, and it showed a scene from the HBO series True Blood, on one side and on the other side it showed a picture of the lady from the Showtime show Weeds.
DN – OK
LM – Well the side with the True Blood guy on it showed a very nice 4 color glossy of a vampire, fangs exposed, about to bite the throat of a very scantily clad, beautiful woman – who by the way didn’t seem to concerned with the advent of immortal vampirism.
DN – OK
LM – So my question is if you have any advice for explaining that scene to a 4 year old little girl?
DN – So sorry Sir, I don’t really understand what you’re asking. Do you want to sign up for a plan with HBO? (Obviously very puzzled)
LM – No really I was just looking for some advice. See you sent me this ad in the mail and since my daughter usually gets the mail with my wife I was wondering if you had any thoughts or ideas about how to explain this graphic picture of a man with fangs about to bite the throat of a scantily clad woman to a 4 year old. I mean you sent it out in the mail – so I’m sure I’m not the only one who’s called with this question. I bet you probably already have a prepared response for calls like this from your marketing department. Just take a moment and look for it. Maybe search the database under vampires and kids that should come up with something good.
DN – Sir can I place you on hold for just a moment?
LM – Certainly.

About 2 minutes later…..

DN – Sir I’m sorry about this would you like us to stop sending advertisements to your address.
LM – Well that’s another issue, but what I’d really like is to talk to someone else, perhaps your supervisor?
DN – Yes Sir. Please hold on while I transfer you.

This time about 3 minutes…..I thought about just hanging up.

DN – Hello Sir, thank-you for holding. I understand that you would like us to stop sending advertisements to your house?
LM – No that’s not really it. Here’s what I would like. The other day your company sent an advertisement to my house through the U.S. Mail, that almost ended up in the hands of my 4-year-old daughter. The ad contained pictures of vampires that were extremely inappropriate for a young child to see, not to mention an adult – but I guess that’s business – and I’d just like the opportunity to discuss this Direct Mail campaign with someone else, perhaps someone in Dish’s Public Relations department, a company spokesman, or maybe someone in marketing.
DN – I’m sorry Sir, we don’t have any of those departments. We do have a Customer Service Department and I am a Supervisor in the Customer Service Department, and you are talking to me.
LM – Oh, well that’s good to know. (By the way this entire exchange was done in my most cheerful tone.) Since you don’t have any of those departments is there anyway to get feedback to your company about this Ad you sent me.
DN – Yes Sir, would you like to provide feedback by email or in writing?
LM – Email would be fine.
DN – Sir, please send your comments to feedback@customermail.dishnetwork.com
LM – Thank you, you’ve been most helpful.
DN – Sir is there anything else I can help you with this evening?
LM – No thank you. Good bye.

Well, that’s how the call went. I plan to email them this evening, and I’ll let you know what (if anything) they say.

Well I’ll conclude this with a slight twist, and then update you with another post if I get a response.

Since I’m someone who also has an interest in sales and marketing, and I understand marketing campaigns, how they’re designed, and how they’re measured on a revenue based scale, I wondered a little about this one. In general, mass-mailings are (or are becoming) a thing of the past. Behavior based marketing, and population segment based campaigns are quickly supplanting the mass-media-mailings of the past. For one reason they are much more cost effective, and for another reason they are much more cost effective. (That’s two good reasons in case you didn’t notice) Well anyway, I thought it was interesting that Dish spent their money sending a marketing piece to someone like me who: doesn’t have cable, doesn’t have satellite, doesn’t really watch any TV, and probably doesn’t even own an FCC compliant TV.

Upon relaying my conversation with the DN Customer Service Supervisor to my lovely wife, she asked if I had at least told then not to send any more of their filthy ads to our address?

After thinking about it for a while…I realized that that was definitely not the move to make. Instead, giving careful consideration to the fact that since I’m neither a customer, nor likely to become one any time soon, they likely don’t care about me anyway… As well as reflecting on the overall lack of satisfaction and justice I felt I’d gained out of the whole experience……I decided that the closest I could come to a sense of justice was to instead continue receiving their ads, with the knowledge that they were continuing to waste their money on each piece of mail they sent to my house, as well as on a less-than-stellar, non-targeted marketing campaign.

Oh, and of course one final note to keep within the general limitations of this blog. If you do have Dish Network, (or any other service that provides HBO and Showtime) why not turn it off for a night and instead read a good book (I have a suggestion if you need one). You’ll feel much better for you efforts if you do.

God Bless,

LM

Which Came First?

The Liberated Woman or the Liberated Man?

I was at a “Christian Book Event” recently (whatever that is – use your imagination) and I noticed an interesting (to me anyway) phenomena. I talked to both men and women, but mostly to women – I think there are more female readers of Christian Fiction than there are men (though I haven’t checked any statistics – let’s just say that it’s true though for the sake of this article – as well as for the sake of this run-on sentence.)

Anyway, afterward I realized that I could easily group the women into two groups.

Group 1 were generally: open, friendly, gregarious, interested in engaging in both dialogue and debate about apologetics, doctrine, apostasy, the purpose of the Church, if the Church was effective, if my book, The Second Trumpet was doctrinally correct, if it was even a good read (btw - they said it was), if Christian fiction was important, if fiction in general held any value……the list could go on and it did.

Group 2 were generally: (how should I put it)….. wary. Wary it seemed of me, of conversation with me, of conversation about any seeming controversial topic, even of lively conversations with the other women.

At first I just chalked this up to personality. Hey, people are different right? – And well, maybe they just didn’t really like my book, my views, or me. That’s certainly OK, but then through my keen powers of human observation (yes, they’re different from other powers of observation) I began to notice things. The first thing I noticed was the husbands.

Almost every one of the husbands from the Group 1 wives, also shared certain characteristics. First I noticed they were open, friendly and easily engaged with me in conversation. Given the setting, the topics of conversation all either began, or eventually got around to the subject of religion, to include doctrine, and each person’s pet beliefs. (Yes everyone has them – even you.) What really distinguished these men from their Group 2 counterparts however, was the non-threatening way they were able to engage in discussions about doctrine, the purposes of the Church, and how it worked.

It occurred to me that what made these Group 1 husbands different was their confidence of belief. They weren’t at all threatened by discussing concepts foreign to their own experience or current beliefs; in fact they seemed to enjoy it. Similarly they seemed pleased when they learned that their wives had just engaged in similar discussions.

In contrast, the Group 2 husbands, much like their wives were, well, wary. Wary of me, as well as any topic or subject that offended their view of the world. (Upon realizing this I decided it would not be helpful to mention that their wives had recently stopped by and exhibited the same standoffish behavior. (Then again, maybe that would have made them feel better to know that their wives hadn’t been contaminated with another view of what the Church could do, or a different take on their pet doctrines.)

After the event I continued to think about my experiences with these two groups of people, who – I am certain – all loved Jesus equally. Was one group right and one wrong? Did I like one group better than the other? (Well that’s kind of obvious I guess.) Why were the two groups, both men and women so different?

To me the most defining characteristic of the Group 1 wives seemed to be freedom. They seemed free to talk, free to think, and free to engage. I kept being reminded of:

2 Cr 3:17 Now the Lord is the Spirit, and where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is freedom.

Perhaps the Group 2 women were free too, but it sure didn’t’ seem like it. So what made these Group 1 women so free – obviously the answer is two lines above, but could it have also been that the Spirit of freedom, manifested through their husbands, affected them this way? Or did the Spirit of freedom manifest through them and so affect their husbands?

It left me wondering, which came first the liberated woman or the liberated man? And in the end convinced me that what I’d truly witnessed was perhaps less about personality and more about letting the love of Jesus shine through to your spouse, and then to all others with whom you come into contact, regardless of whether you agree with them or not.

God Bless,

LM

SWINE WHO????


H1N…WHAT????

What in the world is going on?

That’s actually a good question and it really depends upon whom you ask.

The good folks at the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) clearly think we have some things to worry about… in the area of getting sick that is….

http://www.who.int/mediacentre/news/statements/2009/h1n1_20090425/en/index.html

http://www.cdc.gov/h1n1flu/general_info.htm

These folks also think we have reason for worry, but for uh, slightly different reasons…

(Surely the government would not use the possibility of a potential flu pandemic to try and push through their healthcare plan???? Come on people…..)

http://www.wnd.com/index.php?fa=PAGE.view&pageId=108478

And then there are these folks who think you have a whole lot more to worry about than just getting the flu, or being the recipient of government run healthcare…can anyone say “Conspiracy”…

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14901

…But this one is my favorite.... Having personally (back in 1998) been the recipient of 2 out of the series of 3 Anthrax vaccinations that the Army mandated prior to deployment to the Persian Gulf, you can imagine how overjoyed I was to read this one. [after getting rather sick within 45 minutes of each of the first 2 vaccinations I uh, “opted out” of number 3. ] Squalene….who knew….

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14851

Ok. Well to tell you the truth there’s a whole lot more on the subject I could tell you….like the fact that they’re making vaccinations mandatory in Massachusetts…well not really mandatory, you could opt for the $1000 per day fine…but then I think you’d probably go to jail for 30 days and while you were there they’d probably just stick you anyway….

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_oD55WvDmM

But the real question is what in the world should you do? What’s the truth? Is the Swine Flu really about to be a terrible pandemic that we can only fight against with vaccines courtesy of the CDC? Is Uncle Sam doing his best to protect us? Or is there a global conspiracy attempting to grab power under the guise of a manufactured pandemic, made even worse by the fact that they are simultaneously trying to kill half of us with an untested and unsafe vaccine? Ahhhhhh!!!! It’s enough to make you want to scream, oh yeah, I just did.

So back to my original question… What do you do?

Let me start by saying that some of you are going to like this answer, and some of you won’t. But here goes anyway...

Look at Proverbs 3:5

See if you just read through all of those links above, your head is probably swimming with confusion and fear for both you as well as your children. What do I do? Who do I trust? You ask. Well the first thing you do is clear your head by reading that passage no fewer that 5 times and then spend another 45 seconds just thinking about it. OK, now you know who to trust.

Next read Proverbs 3:25-26. It sure seems to me that those verses clearly say that trouble will come from time to time, but you are not to be afraid. Now read the words carefully…it says “sudden terror”. I don’t know about you but to me that sounds like some pretty serious stuff, “Sudden terror,” yeah, no doubt about it that’s some bad stuff. But as bad as it apparently is, God says you should not be afraid. Now here’s the only way you’re going to be able to accomplish that. You need to spend about 10 times more time reading and meditating on these verses than you do reading stuff like I posted in the links above.

Here are a few more. Ps 91:2-3 (perilous pestilence – that sounds like it could be either Swine Flu or squalene filled vaccines), anyway, Ps 91:5-7. And if you’re someone who needs a word from the NT here are a couple more for you: Deut 31:6 (oh wait, I said NT didn’t I – well read that one anyway…) Heb 13:5, or how about the Master himself: Luke 10:19-20.

Now remember, the Lord also said that the Word does not prosper you unless you mix it with faith, so read it, meditate on it, let it build your faith, and then the next time someone asks you, “Oh no, what are you going to do???????" You can tell them exactly what you do do, and how well it works.

Oh one last thing….since this blog is supposed to be about “Faith & Fiction”, I was thinking about how the whole fiction part played into this subject.

So after you allow the Word of God to cleanse you of fear, you need to make sure you don’t go back to feeding that spirit of fear with the same things you were looking at and reading before. Here’s a suggestion, go get a good Christian fiction book, you know a real page-turner, one that not only captivates your attention, but also simultaneously inspires you and builds your faith. If you can’t think of any like that let me know and I’ll be glad to make a suggestion!

God Bless,

LM