I am still a (Christian) because...

Being an employee of the Catholic Church, I have managed to accumulate a number of priestly facebook friends.  A number of these Catholic Priests are exceptionally young for their profession, (they're in their 20's & 30's whereas the average age for a priest these days is about 65 - no joke), and seem to be feeling very exposed/vulnerable over the sex scandals of the Vatican.  For whatever reason, a few of them have been fiercely facebooking any little tidbit of information which defends their faith.  And really, who can blame them?  If someone attacks my very way of life, I'm going to do my damnedest to defend my beliefs as well.

Anyway, Fr Adam made a very poignant remark today which went like this:

I am still a Catholic because if these scandals shook my faith in the Church, then I would also have to abandon all my confidence in the school system, the medical profession, the boy Scouts, sports, the family, etc; for one can find at least as much scandalous behaviour in those as well. Plus, our saint to sinner ratio still beats them all.

Attached to this was a link to a National Post article (which I thought overly wordy, but still worth a read).

Anyway, I like what Fr Adam has to say, and it reminds me of a quote I once heard - "The Church is a whore, and yet, she is my mother."  No one really knows who said the quote, but St Augustine generally gets credit for it.

The Church is a whore.  It is flawed and dirty and sinful.  It makes mistakes and doesn't always have a very good reputation.

And yet, she is my mother.  The church, despite all of its flaws, has raised me and nurtured me and taught me everything I know about the glory of God.  There is still good to be found within the church, and that is why I keep going back.

Food Inc

I don't have TV.  That doesn't mean that I don't watch TV, just that I don't find TV important enough to pay money for (rabbit ears don't work where I live, so it's cable, satellite, or nothing).  So I watch TV online - legally, streamed from the television station websites themselves.  It gives me the freedom to watch tv shows pretty much whenever I want, and mostly commercial free.  It's a pretty sweet deal actually (as long as the internet is running smoothly).

Anyway... I was browsing the CBC website and they had last week's episode of The Passionate Eye advertised (April 11th). They were playing 'Food Inc', which is a documentary about where our food comes from.  This documentary was even nominated for an Oscar, so to find it playing on CBC was a small miracle.  Naturally, I started watching it at lunchtime just to see what it's all about.

I've only watched about 20 minutes of an 1 1/2hr long film, but what I've already seen is enough to make me start to question the food I put into my mouth.  If you get a chance to watch it, do.  Just the fact that there is corn by-product in just about every single bite of food we eat makes me wonder what we're doing to ourselves.  :S

I was a farm kid.  I've seen where good food comes from.  There is a huge difference between the way food on the family farm is produced and the way food on a factory farm is produced - and it is gross.  Makes me really appreciate picking weeds by hand out of the garden and chasing cattle around.  When I grow up, I will have a garden of my own.  A big one.

If you missed the show, you can watch it here:
http://www.cbc.ca/video/#/Shows/ID=1464545109

What's the catch?

A fellow blogger passed this video along to me today:





Events like this stir up emotions of happiness and excitement but also leave a sour taste of skepticism and annoyance in my mouth.  On the surface it looks like something that was done for fun, for laughs, for putting a smile on people's faces, and out of sheer goodness.  Makes you smile, doesn't it?

But I know better. I was a business student once. I took marketing courses. And I hated them. Blatantly, outright, hated them. The pursuit of money; the spin to make a sale. Evilness I tell you! Evil.  It made me cynical and always on the lookout for the catch.

This Coke stunt is just one of those marketing schemes wrapped up in a warm and fuzzy package, tied with a pretty bow. But it's still a marketing scheme, a gimmick, a stunt, pulled off by a large corporation all in the effort to gain customer loyalty. I'm sure they made more than a few lifetime Coke drinkers out of that crowd of college kids - and what'd it cost them? A few hundred bucks worth of pop and food? Well played.

And then there's the part where it's a multi-tiered marketing scheme.  There's the original group of people they were marketing to directly - the couple hundred college kids.  And then there's the 2 million  people who have viewed the video on youtube (a free avenue of advertising which directly reaches their target demographic - bonus for them).  And then, who knows how many more times this video has been passed around through MSN, or email or, sadly, even my blog....  (I'm not proud of that - but I trust that if you're smart enough to read my blog, then you're smart enough to be a little bit discerning about the products you purchase).  Suddenly, the little college cafeteria stunt which probably cost less than $1000 to pull off has reached literally millions of people with a message that Coke is a fun, spontaneous, and giving company.  Bravo Coke, bravo.  I bet the Marketer who came up with this one got a big bonus.

Bible Fail

The latest in the line of bible/pop culture crossover fails:

"Apples to Apples - Bible Edition"

Seriously? 

Apples to Apples is a decent game.  If you've never played, basically, you've got a stack of cards with adjectives on them (those are the ones that describe nouns, right?), and each player has a handful of cards with nouns on them (people, places, things, events).  An adjective card is flipped, and each player throws down a noun card out of his/her hand which best fits the adjective.  The judge for the round gets to pick the winner (funny  or serious, which one fits best) and awards the winner for the round 1 point.  For example: the card reads 'smelly', and the players throw in 'feet', 'ape', 'the super bowl', 'Gandi', and 'prunes'.  Which do you pick as the winner?  Good game.  The tag line for the game is 'the game of hilarious comparisons' - which it is; it can get pretty silly.

So why ruin that game with a bible edition?  Really?

The example play shown in the ad I saw was this:  "amazing" - "Michael the Archangel", "Prince of Peace", Nicholas Copernicus", "Isaac", and a couple others I couldn't read.  Wow, can you feel the hilarity?  I am so excited to play this game.  It might just be the most fun I've had all day* - but I doubt it (I do work in an office punching numbers into a calculator all day after all).

The marketing doorknob who thought up the brilliant scheme to mesh 'Christian' and 'bible' with successful pop culture games should be locked in a room and forced to play these terrible games for weeks at a time.  They're not good.  They're not fun.  And, generally, they just add a whole bunch of awkwardness to the game as players carefully sidestep offending other players.  For example... what if in that play above, someone threw in 'Satan' into the mix?  Play that with Gramma in the room; someone would have some serious explaining to do!  (Unless of course, 'Satan' isn't even a word on any of the cards... which I wouldn't doubt.) 

These games are made for one reason - to make some schmuck more money (and possibly to make Christians look like morons who don't know how to have real fun).  Please don't ever purchase one of these 'bible' games for me, nor ever ask me to play (unless of course there's alcohol involved... that might help a little bit... maybe, but I doubt it).



*remember? blue = sarcasm

Tearing it Down

This is the Williamsford Arena:

Built about 60 years ago (my grandfather helped).
Skating, baseball, hockey, curling, dances, weddings, buck & does, garden parties, garage sales, farmers markets.... It's had its fair share of activity.

I've been on the roof (in the wintertime the snow piles up just right for climbing on).
I've climbed to the top of the baseball fence and jumped off the peak (again, in the winter).
I've snuck up to the storage area above the skating rink.
(I know 'snuck' isn't a real word)
I've protested about learning to curl there (and eventually did learn).
I used to buy 24 cents worth of penny candy at the snack bar (because if you buy 25 cents worth, you had to pay GST)
I've had refreshingly cool drinks out of the outdoor water tap after a long ball game in the scorching sun.
I've eaten potluck meals and too much pie; I've shaken the vending machine, quietly asked for my skates to be sharpened, and misplaced my boots in the change rooms.
I even knew where the light switches were.

I say 'knew' because yesterday, it was torn down.

Old and condemned, unsafe for snow load on the roof, it's being torn down to make way for a new building.

The new building won't have change rooms or a skating rink.  The new building will only have 2 curling rinks and only room for about 100 people.  There won't be room for big dances; the new building won't even have outdoor access to the bathrooms.

But people will still meet there, people will have a good time, and community will happen.  Not only that, but everyone directly involved with it seem to be happy with the decision.  This change isn't a bad thing, it's just part of life.

Base Tan

It's perfectly acceptable to sunburn your face on a sunny Easter Sunday, right?

*sigh*

Other than the 'tomato face', great weekend!  Lots of family, lots of driving, too much food, and awesome weather!

Woo!

ps... Yes Dave, He IS risen.

Yo! It's April, Fools!

I happened to be awake last night around midnight having one last browse around Fbook before I went to bed, when I stumbled upon one status update which read: "Canada buys half of Hawaii!!! WT*?"

That's odd... I thought.  Then I checked my Google news feed just to see if anything was there - they're pretty quick to jump on breaking news.  Nothing there though, so I went to bed and forgot about it.

This morning, a good friend of mine sent me this link: "Canada buys half of Hawaii" from the Sympatico.ca financial news.


Even with quotes like, 'each country will build their own immigration and customs offices in order to make travelling through the islands as painful as possible' and '"I don't even like Hawaii, it's full of volcanoes and surfers," commented one New Yorker.', it took me a minute to realize which day of the year it is.


And now for something completely irrelevant:

Tobogganing in the summertime is best done with a large piece of cardboard, on a steep hill, with nice slippery grass.