Month: January 2016

A Story Concerning 13 Hours

A friend of mine is retired from the Air Force. Recently, he invited some Facebook friends to join him for a viewing of Michael Bay’s 13 Hours at a local theater. This was the second week after the movie’s release. He stated that we should all arrive early to be sure we got tickets.

I followed his instructions and arrived at the specified time. Not seeing him outside the theater, I bought my ticket so I could get out of the rain and inside the theater to see if he was already there. Again, I did not see him in the lobby, so I got a medium popcorn and drink and went to the appropriate theater. Again, I did not see him. I found a seat and waited.

After about 15 minutes of previews for TV shows I probably will never watch, I sent him a text. His reply was that they were about 8 minutes away.

Ten minutes later, they finally arrived. He said, “I’m sorry we’re late”.

My response was, “Isn’t that the whole point of the movie? You Air Force guys being late?”

wink

ECUSA Gets a Timeout

The Anglican Communion has suspended the Episcopal Church of the United States. In a move that should have happened when the 1928 Prayer Book was dumped in favor of a watered-down, modern language one (i.e. the 1970’s), nevertheless, the worldwide group has finally acted.

For the first time, the global organizing body of Anglicans has punished the Episcopal Church, following years of heated debate with the American church over homosexuality, same-sex marriage and the role of women.

The Anglican Communion’s announcement Thursday that it would suspend its U.S. branch for three years from key voting positions was seen as a blow to the Episcopal Church, which allows its clergy to perform same-sex marriages and this summer voted to include the rite in its church laws.

It was also seen as a victory for conservative Anglicans, especially those in Africa,, who for years have been pressing the Anglican Communion to discipline the U.S. body.

“The traditional doctrine of the church in view of the teaching of Scripture, upholds marriage as between a man and a woman in faithful, lifelong union,” the leaders of the Anglican Communion, which represents 44 national churches, said in a statement during a meeting in Canterbury. “The majority of those gathered reaffirm this teaching.”

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/acts-of-faith/wp/2016/01/14/anglican-communion-suspends-the-episcopal-church-for-3-years-from-committees/

The article goes on to report that since 2003, ECUSA

“has lost more than 20 percent of its members since it consecrated Robinson, and new statistics suggest that membership continues to fall, dropping 2.7 percent from 2013 to about 1.8 million U.S. members in 2014.”

What is happening is that the faithful part of the church—which is showing exponential growth—has isolated the malignant tumor that is the American Church. Were it not for hundreds of millions in trust funds and endowments, ECUSA would be extinct. This large cache of money has insulated them from having to hold to biblical orthodoxy in order to survive.

It’s sad when wolves like Gene Robinson are the Shepherds of the flock. When lay people need to pray for the repentance and salvation of their church leaders, in my world it’s time to go elsewhere. No wonder today’s youth are so pagan. Many people are in hell today because of Robinson and his fellow liberals but they’re ok with that because they don’t believe in hell anyway.

Since believing the words of Jesus is not necessary to be a Christian as Robinson defines it, I’m not sure why he would even call himself a Christian. Gene, if you don’t believe in the Bible, be honest enough to get out of the church. Heretics, heathen, and hypocrites are leading ECUSA beyond apostasy. Scripture promises that leaders like you should be fitted with a millstone and put out to sea.

Instead of repenting, look for the ECUSA leadership to double-down on their rebellion.

Cartoon Network: Leaven in Your Living Room

It is the belief of some fringe protestant group—possible the Amish—that claim that “Satan travels true wires” so if you don’t have electricity, he can’t target you. I’m starting to think they might have a point.

Earlier this week I was reading articles on Blastr.com. I often visit this website to see what movies are in the works; one article caught my eye.
Cartoon Network UK censoring Steven Universe’s sexuality misses the entire point of the show

Until recently, I would not be interested in what is happening in the U.K. but since Obama took office, I have found England’s U.S. news coverage more comprehensive than I usually get from American journalists. The media here is so in love with our dictator-in-chief that they are rarely objective. Often they either praise his rule by Executive Order or just ignore what he is doing—whichever they think will further his administration more.

When a website dedicated to the genre of science fiction entertainment is talking about Cartoon Network, censorship in England, and sexuality; clearly something is amiss.

Before I get into this article I want you to understand who owns and operates this website. This website is run by the SyFy Channel. SyFy is owned by NBC-Universal which is owned by Comcast. This is not some fringe place on the internet. No, this website is part of one of the largest entertainment companies in the world.

The article is an opinion piece that defends a particular cartoon and castigates the censorship by English broadcasters. The edit being complained about is rather mild in my opinion. What shocked me most was the high praise of Steven Universe for being the most openly gay cartoon ever made. Steven is gay; not just the side-kick or some peripheral character.

Steven Universe is gaaaaaaaay. It is easily the gayest kids’ cartoon in the history of western animation. And we’re not just talking about subtext, either. While Steven Universe may be innocent and cutesy, there’s no denying certain facts:

– Garnet is a gem fusion that resulted from Sapphire and Ruby being in romantic love

– Pearl is in love with Rose Quartz (as confirmed by the show’s creators), often to the detriment of her own self worth

– Amethyst shape-shifts into all sorts of forms, many of them male-presenting

– Steven and Connie have fuzed to form a genderqueer person, Stevonnie, who is, let’s be real, attracted and attractive to both men and women

– Background characters often feature same-sex couples

In short, Steven Universe is a rainbow show, kids. And everyone loves it for that.

Well, almost everyone …

 

I’m like dang! I had no idea that there was such a thing. To me this cartoon is totally out of bounds. I know that most programming on Cartoon Network is not Thomas and Friends but really! This is propaganda and recruiting in its most blatant form.

The fact that this is shown on Cartoon Network means to me that it will fly under the radar of most parents. When I think Boomerang or Cartoon Network I think of children’s programming and I likely wouldn’t give much thought to the title Steven Universe. I thought it was Jimmie Neutron for the next generation.

It’s hard to have worse programming than the pre-teen crap on the Disney Channel but apparently NBC found a way. Too bad they can’t keep homosexuals confined to their Bravo channel.

This also means Steven Universe will eventually find its way to streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. Parents, it might be a simplification that Satan travels true wires but he certainly is trying really hard to get through your television to desensitized your children to evil.

This is another reason to “cut the cord”.

Cutting the Cable in 2016

2016 began with my efforts to stop more fiscal bleeding so I can add more fuel to the Dave Ramsey “snowball”.

On New Year’s Day, we cancelled our subscription to DirecTV. I had been a customer of DirecTV for about ten years.

Back in 2006, I traded in our miserable service from Comcast. Comcast’s Internet and HD television we just crappy. Dial-up was faster on evenings and weekends than anything offered by Comcast. Their HD could be beaten by “rabbit ears” any day.

Unfortunately I live on the “old side” of Elk Grove where there is no fiber-optic cable or competition. Thus we looked at Dish and DirecTV. The deciding factor of which satellite product to go with literally came down to one TV show. My three year old liked Thomas the Tank Engine and Dish didn’t carry the station and DirecTV did so we went with them.

In contrast to Comcast, DirecTV had great service and a superior television experience. However, the bill kept inching upward. Two years ago, we dropped one television from our bill. We went from three to two TVs. I think we did that in November or December of 2014. We also went to a lesser programming package. Then in January, DirecTV raised their rates. After all was said and done, our DirecTV bill was about two dollars cheaper than having a higher programming package and an additional TV.

We have been subscribing to Amazon Prime and Netflix anyway so I decided to bite the bullet and “cut the cord”. The only thing we immediately miss is HGTV. They have no streaming subscription package and you can’t get much from their website. Yeah I know you can get them on Sling TV but you can’t DVR the programs or watch them when you want. Besides, we just added Hulu and the idea is to save money not reallocate it.

We bought a TiVo Bolt and a drone unit for the bedroom. Only after buying it did we learn that Hulu is not available thru the Bolt. As best as I can piece together, the app for the Bolt needs to be written in HTML 5 but previous TiVo products used Flash Player to power their app. TiVo has yet to get their Hulu app working on the Bolt. I called TiVo a few days ago and was assured that the Hulu app would be deployed to users in the next few days; I have yet to see it.
Update: After posting this blog, I checked again and found that the Hulu app is now available on my TiVo Bolt

Anyway, here is the quick and dirty economic analysis. DirecTV costs $109 per month less Hulu subscription of $12 yields a net savings of $97 per month. ($1,164 per year)

Oh the TiVo Bolt was $299 at BestBuy but was on sale for $289 and when we paid for it, for some reason we were given a $50 BestBuy card. We used the card to buy the $149 drone unit so we got both for about $400. The Bolt will support 4K displays and record up to four programs at once off the HD antenna.

In April, we get to kick Verizon to the curb. We will finish switching to Cricket. This will cut our monthly cell phone bill about $140 dollars compared to what I’m paying right now for two phones on “Big Red”. Oh, I think we will at least double our data when we switch.