Future Drama

A lot can happen in a short amount of time. I’ve been accepted into Baylor’s doctoral program, starting this fall, and I’ve been fired from my job. That makes three consecutive non-academic jobs that I’ve been fired from. The only job I was able to maintain, for more than a year and a half, was teaching. Perhaps this is a suggestion as to where my future lies, or maybe I’m just a failure. Time will tell. 

I say “Time will tell” and not “God will tell” because God doesn’t seem to say those kinds of things to me. I don’t get clear leadings from the Spirit, or dreams or words of knowledge. On occasion I will be overwhelmed with piercing emotion and affection, which I interpret to be a caress from the Lord. But a crystalline directive? No.

Doubtless this is due to my own sinfulness. I still struggle with sin, an inordinate amount it seems to me. I lack self-control in my appetites, I am greedy and selfish and afraid. This surely must be the kink in the connection that disallows the Lord from making His will known to me in unambiguous terms. I had a chat will my friend Nathan this evening, and he was saying that the cure to sin and temptation is to focus on and walk with Jesus. I agree. So why don’t I? Why can’t I?

I am stuck with a conundrum. For if the way to avoid sin and grow in my relationship with God is self-discipline, that is, to direct my thoughts in ever-increasing frequency and duration upon His wonderful face, then I will be unable to ever accomplish growth in this regard since one of my struggles is self-discipline. If the means by which I can overwhelmingly conquer, as the NASB version of the Bible puts Romans 8:37 it, is a quality that I need the Lord’s intervention for in order to achieve the Lord’s intervention, then my situation is even more desperate than Paul’s in Romans 7! I need self-discipline in order to gain self-discipline; but I can’t achieve self-discipline if I lack self-discipline which is what I need to attain self-discipline. 

There is no condemnation for those who walk according to the Spirit, Romans 8:1 says. Fine, I’ll buy that. But what if I am unable to walk according to the Spirit? Perhaps I missed a lesson somewhere, but that’s always been my downfall. I understand and believe the Life more Abundant thanks to our New Identity in Christ argument, but how to effect this in my experience? I want to hear the voice of the Lord, I want to see Him at work in the lives of others through me. I want to be conformed more closely to His image, the likeness of Jesus. Oh God, I want that! 

But no matter how I try, how good my intentions are, no matter whether I pray the armor of God on or invite Jesus to live in and through me, I still stumble and fall. I still give way to lust and gluttony. I still loathe the figure that glares out of the mirror. I still look on with envy the couples I see around me, even those whom I love and admire. I still covet the presence of my friends and family, and daydream of winning the lottery or marrying a rich girl. Foolish fantasies. I still worry about grad school and surviving until then, and through the process, and writing a dissertation, and learning Spanish, and making ends meet, and finding a church, and making new friends, and everything else that looms in the oncoming future. And of course I look at my failings and despair curls around my soul like Shelob spinning her monstrous webs.

Will I ever be free? Will I ever see any progress? What remains? What else can I, must I do? If I must surrender all to Jesus, how can I? What happens if I can’t?

On the Redistribution of (Spiritual) Wealth

I have always been a rather fearful person. Sometimes fear can be a healthy thing; fear of spanking led me to behave as a child. Fear of failure pushed me to succeed in school. Fear of poverty pushed me to seek out jobs, and fear of firing to become a better and more mature employee. Fear is a great motivator sometimes.

Fear is also healthy when perils abound. Fear of heights or snakes or spiders help avoid dangerous situations. Even exaggerated fears like hypochondria help avoid germs. Fear is even biblical: Job 28:28 says, “the fear of the Lord—that is wisdom.” Proverbs 1:7 is perhaps the best known verse related to this: “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of knowledge, but fools despise wisdom and instruction.” A few chapters later in 9:10, “The fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom, and knowledge of the Holy One is understanding.” Even in the New Testament, Act 9:31 says, “Then the church throughout Judea, Galilee and Samaria enjoyed a time of peace and was strengthened. Living in the fear of the Lord and encouraged by the Holy Spirit, it increased in numbers.” 

People like to quickly amend this concept of fear as being more of a reverence and awe and I have no problem with that amendment, but the word is Fear for a reason. God is the ultimate Unknown, the Utter Alien, whose thoughts and priorities are so beyond human comprehension that they can seem at times heartless, capricious, even wicked when viewed through human eyes. And humans fear the unknown when confronted with it.

And this segues into the main bone I’m going to contend with. Not pick with God, but worry. Because the fear of the Lord’s judgment, punishment, condemnation has dogged my spiritual life for many years. Who can’t relate to that at least slightly? One of the downsides to growing up in Christian homes and converting at an early age is that you have no convenient excuse for sinning. Ignorance, unregenerate flesh is not an excuse, but it at least explains why unbelievers sin. But Christians? Who supposedly share the life of Christ? Who have the Spirit of God within them? Who have been set free from the Law of Sin and Death, and are alive in the Law of the Spirit? 

This is, of course, a common theme in Christendom, and I mention it only to expose the past fear that I am only now starting to dispense with. Grace is the antidote to fear, and humility is required to step into grace. Grace and humility: probably the two must inhuman characteristics that God reintroduced to mankind with the Resurrection. 

My point, however, came as I ruminated on the story of the talents in Matthew 25:14-30 in conjunction with a message recently preached at my church. The sermon dealt with Christians standing before the judgment seat of Christ and answering not for our salvation but our reward (I Cor 3:10-15). The preacher’s message was that we will not be able to explain our actions, give excuses or shift blame for apathy or fear in sharing Christ with a spiritually dead world. We will stand mute; our actions in this life will testify for us, and what we did or didn’t do with what God has given us will determine our reward, or whether we will squeak in by the skin of our teeth. 

The parable of the talents, as I’m sure most of you are aware, involves this very theme: a wealthy man gives three servants various amounts of money and charges them to be faithful stewards. He gives greater amounts and lesser amounts “according to the ability” of each servant. Well, you know the story: the fellow with five talents doubles the investment, as does the chap with two talents. The dingus with only one talent buries it and preserves what he has instead of attempting to multiply it on his master’s behalf. He offers excuses for this in verse 24, and wraps it up with verse 25: “I was afraid and went out and hid your talent in the ground.” Do you see the correlation? God has given us everything we need pertaining to life and godliness (2 Peter 1:3) so that (v.4) we may be partakers in the divine nature.  The point isn’t to build us up and fill us up with blessing and fulfillment for our own sakes; it’s so that we might spread the wealth, redistribute it, if I may quote our esteemed President. The faithful servants went out and put the talents they were given to good use. They were active for their master, and multiplied his investments. Well, if God has invested His Spirit and Life in me, what is the multiplication of that investment? Not to preserve the single investment He gave me, but to multiply it.

And here’s where the fear boils up. Because I fear standing before the judgment seat of Christ and seeing my life pass by, seeing my actions being burned up like wood, hay, and stubble, find that my life did not count for God. He’s not going to banish me like the unfaithful servant was, but I will have been unfaithful in my service to Him. 

Now. Before you charge out and try to do your best for Jesus, that’s not what I’m advocating. Because our efforts for God, if divorced from God’s will and plan for our lives, will avail us no more than apathy would. That’s a different discussion. I am just trying to sort out my feelings and fears about this inevitability.

So I was ruminating on this, and the Lord seemed to murmur, “Don’t be afraid, be bold!” And this is how I will end, with my “life verse” in the Christian parlance of our time. Joshua 1:6-9: “Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.”

The Freakonomics Guide to Parenting

I find it constantly amazing how people keep “rediscovering” things that we already knew, or perhaps more importantly, were already communicated to us through the Bible. 

I just finished reading a book called Freakonomics, a well-written and intriguing book that addresses a wide range of topics that are loosely related to each other. The underlying theme of the book is that economics’ study of numbers and trends offer insight into the behaviors and motivations of people, as well as reveal or at least theorize about certain societal issues. 

For instance, one of the most shocking revelations that the authors proffer is that the decline in crime in the 1990s was a result of Roe v. Wade and legalizing abortion, which allowed lower income, single, teenage mothers to avoid bring children into an environs that is conducive to a life of crime. Whereas previously abortions were prohibited and prohibitively expensive, so that only the wealthy could afford them, the new availability and legality reduced prices and stigma (somewhat) to the point where unwed mothers in high school with poor prospects could avoid bringing their sons (mostly) into such a situation. This transpired in the early 70s, which meant that when those aborted babies would have reached the late teenage years/early twenties when most burgeoning criminals began their careers, aka the 90s, those criminals simply weren’t there. Less criminals means less crime. Crime prevention through abortion, a solution that eerily harkens back to the Eugenics movement that led up to WW2 and the Holocaust. 

The authors, however, are not agitating or advocating abortion as crime prevention, merely following the data. This discussion led to the age-old question of nature vs. nurture in the formation of a person’s identity and behavior. And herein lies the issue that I wanted to share my thoughts on. Through demographic studies in California over the last 50 years, a wealth of information was gathered about babies and their mothers, specifically their socioeconomic, educational, etc. background. To make a long story short (TOO LATE!), the authors were able to compare different factors about the children’s development academically (admittedly a limited measurement) and show that parents matter not in what they do, but in who they are.

For example, if a family is in a higher socioeconomic it will lead to better test scores for the child than if the parents are still together. A higher income bracket suggests better educated parents who value and exhibit hard work, and therefore model it overtly or implicitly to their kids. It matters more if the parents are well-educated and have books in the home than if they take the child to museums or spank them. Spanking does not negatively affect test scores; reading to children does not positively affect test scores. A low birth weight does affect test scores years later because what it indicates is that the mother had the birth prematurely or did not have ample and appropriate prenatal care, which suggests that she was either uneducated, poor, or indifferent, if not all three. It is not a great leap in logic to assume that the child’s home life after birth will not significantly improve, which will then negatively affect the test scores. 

Make sense? That’s kind of the idea of the book in a nutshell: taking hard data and seeing where the connections are. Not necessarily that low birth weights cause bad test scores, but the correlation between the two can provide clues as to the common factor, the actual cause.  The point to this section of the book claims that children derive their behavior, work habits, etc from their parents’ lives, not teachings. “Do as I say, not as I do” is a proverb in the converse; it’s basically wrong and most people know it. 

And herein lies the brilliance of the Bible. “The sins of the father are passed down to the third and fourth generations,” the Old Testament states several times. And what that has usually been taken to mean, what I take it to mean, is that the consequences of the sins of the parents reverberate down to their children, shaping their children’s lives and affecting their behavior and decisions. My own thoughts and feelings toward alcohol were inherited from my father, who was deeply affected by his mother, whose personality and behavior was impacted by her drunken and abusive father. Four generations affected by a parent, almost a century of rammifications. And who knows if his father was the same way? Too often sons grow to be their fathers, or else the polar opposite of them; either way, the sons are inextricably affected by who their fathers are. 

As insightful and interesting as their observations have been, the authors of Freakonomics are covering old territory when it comes to understanding human behavior. For all that, their empirical approach lends credence to the proverbs and beliefs that have been passed down through generations. Consider this a recommendation to pick up that book, though everything you’ll ever need to know is to be found in the Bible.

The Upside of Selfishness

I was ruminating in the shower the other day about my freedom. As a single male with adequate financial means and no relationship of a romantic nature, I am unencumbered in the pursuit of my pleasures and entertainment. Is this always a good thing? No, but as I reflected on my friends, most of whom are married and have children, I realized how much freedom I truly have. I can go to a movie anytime I want; I can dine out or drive around town for hours on end. Should my health and weather permit, I can indulge my chief pleasurable activity, golf. Aside from work and a small group I am leading that meets at my apartment, my social calendar has no requirements. I can do anything and go anywhere (within reasonable bounds, of course) that my interest and means allow.

It is not lost on me how undeniably selfish this attitude is. Lest you write me off as hopelessly self-involved, I do care about other people, and seek their company. I willingly endure discomfort or inconvenience for the greater good of fellowship. And I think that I am not unduly selfish with my time. It cannot be denied, though, that I have much freedom. This occurred to me in the context of the unlikely event I should ever procure a wife and family. My life would not be my own, my responsibilities would immeasurably increase, and my freedom would completely vanish. I would have to consult with my wife about any social engagement which I might wish to attend, or when I could choose to arrive or depart from said engagement. I would undoubtedly have to fulfill obligations to her family or friends, to accommodate her wishes and desires as I hope she would accommodate mine. But no longer would I have autonomy over my life. 

And when children come? Pah! Farewell peace and quiet, adieu solitude and freedom. My schedule would fill up with activities geared toward their appetites and activities. The relative freedom of a married couple would diminish to an even greater degree than when I first joined forces with my spouse.

Not, of course, that there wouldn’t be compensations. I have often commented on the desolate loneliness I experience, the devout wish for someone whom I can completely entrust my life and heart, inasmuch as is possible with another human being. And I do cherish a hope one day to hold my son or daughter in my arms. Additionally, the greatest counter to this is the presence of God in my life, who banishes loneliness whenever I am wise enough to turn to Him for comfort and consolation. But this entry is primarily about the lack of freedom such entanglements, blessed though they may prove, would entail. 

As I mused on this subject, it occurred to me to be thankful, therefore, for the season of life in which I find myself. If and when I find a mate and start a life together, then everything will change. I will no longer have the freedom to go and do what I want, to spend my money on things I choose solely because I choose them. The present is a gift, enjoy it while I can, was the message that deluged me as lightly as the droplets from the showerhead. 

And herein lies the lesson. God tells us in His word to live in the present. The past is done and cannot be undone. It has been paid for and put aside; wounds may not fully heal but Christ can provide solace for them. Memories are, well, all in your head. And the future? Anyone’s guess. No good worrying about what might happen, any more than you should worry about whether you can grow a couple inches or change the tenor of your voice. It’s beyond your control, by and large, and again, Father knows best. We walk through this life one step at a time and one day at a time. All we need is strength and grace and love and kindness and patience for one day. And we live each day one hour at a time, one minute at a time, one second at a time, so we really only need grace and mercy and gentleness and self-control for a second at a time. When you look at it that way, it’s not as daunting as when you think about how to live the rest of your life. 

The point of all this is to cherish each moment, each minute, each hour, each day, each week, each month, each year in that order. The present is a gift, because it is Life, and we can live Life with the Life/Truth/Way. In fact, it’s the only way to live Life, capital L, and not trudge your way through life.

One final note: isn’t it amazing how God can take something as egotistical and selfish as my initial musing, and twist it into something good and beneficial? Only God can do that. Just imagine what He can do with your life, if you let Him.

Pre-Op

In two days I go under the knife. What a quaint and grotesque phrase, “under the knife.” Appropriate, though. For the first time, steel will taste my flesh, humans will look inside me and see my damage. Hopefully they can fix it, to the extent it can be fixed. It’s not really registering yet, I think. I always strive to be in control, and for the first time I will be completely helpless, at the mercy of another human being. It’s a powerful feeling of powerlessness. And though fear extends filmy fingers across the horizon of my thoughts, they are dim members amidst the bright promise of healing. Can I be healed? Will this be a turning point in my life?

I approach a crossroad. My third decade of life on earth begins with new experiences, new challenges, new promise. What will my eyes see going forth? What streets or terrain will my shiny new legs traverse? Or will they plod the same rambles and stumbles they have heretofore trod? Will I change? Can I change? Do I want to change? Will I take the opportunity that beckons like new spring after a cold, dismal winter? Or face the groundhog’s shadow and sink wearily into stupor, sating my appetites with rubbish best consumed by fire, not fit for the lowest scavengers?

A clock ticks behind me, summoning my remaining hours, counting off the chapter’s end to my story so far. Will the new chapter read like an epic? Full of adventures, triumphs and tragedies, grand and operatic? Or will I settle into a comfortable regimen and find satisfaction in the familiar things? Will my pursuit of Jesus lead anywhere? Or do I pantomime my faith?

Who could ever love me? This is a hard truth, the fact of God’s love. It’s a love that pierces every prevarication I erect, every subterfuge to which I resort, every filthy corner I try to hide in. God compels me with His love, against my wishes it seems. Why doesn’t He leave me alone? What have I done to deserve such attention? Why cannot I have peace from His o’erwhelming presence?

But I have spoken with forked tongue. Because when I do turn away from Him, the horror of myself, my nature, what I’m capable of disgusts me to the point of death. I turn away in despair, and find that I have turned back to Him. And He washes my face with His tears. And He bathes me with the Light of His presence. And He clads me with raiment pure and white, His terrible and wonderful presence burning away my soiled and shabby rags like ether in the wind. Not even I can separate myself from His dogged affection, His dauntless joy, His irrepressible salvation.

Of Suds and Sundry Matters

I was having a pint of beer with a couple of friends of mine, in itself an unusual occurrence, and we fell to talking about sundry matters (though sudry matters may have been more apropos). They are a married couple, very quirky and extremely well-suited for each other. I thought I was eccentric, but they make me look tame, even if they look very tame from the outside, but that’s beside the point. Plus, I love that about them, their eccentricity. Anyway, we were talking about relationships and I inquired, as part of my ongoing research, what women look for in men. Rebecca gave three criteria: men have to be intelligent (I’m thinking: “Check.”), self-confidence (“Uh-oh”) and not embarrassing (which, when I requested clarification, simply means social decorum). Despite my unfortunate tendency to commit social faux pas in groups of friends, generally I can negotiate social interactions with strangers with aplomb. I am reasonably intelligent, though I realize more and more just how unintelligent I am compared to how intelligent I think I am. That just leaves Self-Confidence. 

This was the least surprising of Rebecca’s criteria; I’d heard this from literally every other woman I’ve surveyed. And of course this is where I struggle the most. But that long and sordid tale is not the aim of this rumination. I’ve noticed a certain dynamic in relationships, my perception of which, granted, comes largely from the portrayals in drama (movies, TV, literature) and is therefore to be taken with a metric ton of salt. However, working on this basis, I find this requirement of women to be problematic. Let me explain.

Let’s say, for instance, that a woman is approached by a man. The man is smooth, suave, confident. The woman is impressed. They strike up a relationship. Now, most of the time, women want to go deeper and deeper with their emotions and dialogue with men. In other words, they want to get to the reason why the man is so confident, why he is how he is. And if the man is only fronting his confidence, as it seems the vast majority of men do (aware, as they are, of this requirement women have of men), then either the man will maintain an emotional distance from the woman, since any real relationship must show the man’s self-confidence to be the fraud that it is, or the man opens himself up to the woman, and then becomes needy and lacks self-confidence, which is what attracted the woman in the first place. (The third option, that the man is truly confident, will be dealt with later.)

Do you see the conundrum? Either the woman cannot truly get close to the man, or they succeed and find the man’s self-confidence to be a lie. Now some women would probably say that they want a man to be vulnerable, but they would also say (if pressed) that they want a man to be assertive and quasi-domineering rather than milquetoast. And they are quite right; a woman must ultimately despise a man who allows himself to be ruled and run roughshod over by the woman, who will continue to do so even as she berates the man for allowing her to do so. A happy and healthy relationship cannot be built upon such a foundation. 

What is the solution? No, really, I’m asking.

The third option, the man who is truly self-confident, can be self-confident in one of three ways. First, if he is obtuse to his own shortcomings and blithely assumes that any character flaws others might ascribe to him are jealous mutterings. Easy to see and diagnose the cure: avoidance. Second, if he is aware of any possible flaws and chooses not to care about the options of others; in other words, a narcissist. Again, an easy person to avoid.

The third way is the most tricky. This man acknowledges his own failings and has made peace with them, an uneasy balance of banishing self-recrimination with seeking self-improvement. Obviously the ideal in a man (and human at that), and certainly the rarest of beasts that walk the earth.

So just as the man might wish for a gorgeous, intelligent, and doting wife who will meet all his needs and adore him unconditionally, equally imaginary is the woman’s desire for a truly self-confident man, or one who they might break down and build up. A man cannot find his self-sufficiency in the woman; she is coming to him for that. It would be like two people sitting on one end of a teeter totter and expecting the device to function properly.

In the end, the answer, which is in a sense vaguely unsatisfying, must be that God must provide that sense of fulfillment and confidence that men and women must have so that they won’t try to elicit from each other. I say it is vaguely unsatisfying because it seems like God is a panacea: whatever is wrong in your life, God fixes it. But how does He fix it in this particular instance?

Herein lies the interesting paradox, which was echoed in the original conundrum I outlined above. Because God does know us deeply, intimately. He knows us better than we know ourselves. And we must journey with Him in the heart of darkness, pain, and doubt that each person bears because of sin. We must be broken down, all our false bravado and hollow self-confidence shattered. But He can mend our hearts, He can provide us a confidence and peace of mind and heart that nothing can shake. For we can place our confidence in who we are in Him, which means putting confidence in His sufficiency and power and assurance. His perfection.

Then we can give out of the wealth of our sufficiency in Him instead of giving out of our own poverty. He meets our needs, our deepest desires and gravest wounds He cares for. We can pour out our darkest sins and know that they are no more, that He knew of them before He descended from on high to crawl across the face of the earth, a man, and to bear the punishment, the utter rejection that was my lot, deservedly so. O blessed Savior! How great a salvation! How wonderful to know that I am a hopeless failure and God loves me just the same! I can laugh in the face of ridicule, I can huddle in the Everlasting Arms when the Devil throws my sin in my face. I can cry out for His forgiveness for failing Him again and again, and know that it is mine before even I form the thought.

Twolvight and Gears of Mt. Mart

It all starts with beer. A commercial a few years ago capitalized on the growing trend of product placement. It was a swashbuckling film set with musketeers and damsels in huge dresses. The producer and director were talking, and one said that they would get free beer for placing references to the beer in their movie. The other was thunderstruck, and promptly began to place as many references to the beer as feasible. The capper at the end of the ad was a beer truck bursting through the wall.

I’m not sure when the first intentional product placement took place in a film. It’s become a running joke for some filmmakers (see: Bay, Michael). Critics bewail it as the insidious creep of commercialism into an art form, disregarding the fact that the movies advertise to generate revenue, spending millions of dollars to do so. And with the ever increasing cacophony of ads jostling for the consumer’s attention, the making of an effective ad has become something of an art form. The movie has become more commercial, and the commercial has become more like a mini-movie, with special effects, high production value, and celebrities. 

(A currently running ad features two actors who have starred in major movies. It’s even unclear what the ad is about, as the two just conduct warfare at various places around the globe. It felt like a movie trailer, my initial reaction, until the NBA star appeared at the end. Go figure.)

Two recent ads have shaken my hope for the future of this country, however. (Don’t you love it when they say things like that? “This week’s sign of the Apocalypse!”) The first features an ad for the movie Twilight: Breaking Wind…er Dawn (excuse me, Freudian slip). It is an ad for the movie which features the main characters driving. The reason why a movie about vampires and werewolves is advertised with scenes in a car? The ad is also one for Volvo. So selling the movie, a completely separate kind of product, has been melded with a car advertisement. Now, if the movie was something related to driving, like the recent film Drive, then it would at least make theoretical sense to combine the two. But Vampires and Werewolves driving Volvos? Goth goes suburban. (Though the glittering vibe of this permutation of vamps, coupled with a nauseating romance, does sort of fit.)

But the second is, perhaps, the more egregious and breathtaking/groundbreaking, if slightly more subtle. (It’s the subtlety, in fact, that I find interesting. More in a moment.) The movie is actually a combo as well, but less contradictory than the Twolvight ad. The newest iteration of the video game Gears of War is coming out, and it features two guys talking on the phone. One has just returned from Wal-Mart where he purchased the game at midnight. He calls his friend who is in a hotel room, and who tells the first guy that he the second guy flew to New York City to get the game one hour ahead of the second guy, therefore getting a head start on the game. Fine. Certainly not the most irrational premise to a commercial I’ve ever heard, someone spending hundreds of dollars to fly to NYC and rent a hotel room to have an hour’s advantage playing a video game that will be passé in seven months. But here’s the kicker: when we see the second guy in his hotel room, in the corner there is a Mt. Dew cube. It’s subtle but it’s there. 

And this is why I feel this is the more intentional and representative instance of product placement. Because while the mail thrust of the Gears of Mt. Mart commercial is to sell the game and the store you can buy it in (hence the combo), the fact that they inserted a third product (even if it is associated with people who spend thirteen hours straight playing video games) is the homage to slipping in a reference to BMW or Burger King in a Michael Bay movie or TV show (a la Arrested Development).
 
It's a commercial within a commercial.

Why is this such a big deal, you ask? The onslaught of consumerism marches on. I have the sensation that we will soon be unable to differentiate between a commercial and a show at all, if things progress as they seem to be doing. Don’t get me wrong: I’m more sympathetic with capitalism than the opposite ideology, but there’s a limit to good taste and creativity. A half hour show is barely twenty minutes of show anymore, or so it seems to me. I know for a certainty that an average hour long show is 42 minutes. That’s almost a third of the hour devoted to advertising! A Third! What if a third of the newspaper was the classifieds and sales brochures? Oh wait…

Does this make sense? I feel like I’m turning into one of those people who will eventually toss out their television and stop watching movies made after 1995. There are a lot of creative ideas and people out there, and I don’t think you have to compromise creativity to get people to consume your products. Neither do I think that the bottom line must color everything. To squeeze every last drop of profit out of something may make sense in a business sense, but the world isn’t a business, and people aren’t solely customers. At least, they didn’t used to be.