Parenthetically Yours

Hi Randy. Welcome to 2006.

(I’m working on an article for Lifeway about community in the age of Facebook. The following is just me working out some of my thoughts. I promise I’m not this old-fashioned. I am a little. But not a lot. You may proceed.)

So, I got on Facebook. Finally.

I’d been fighting the process for a while because, quite frankly, there are some people out there that I’d just as soon not ever talk to again. I don’t mean that in a jerky kind of a way (maybe). I’m talking from a purely practical I-don’t-have-time-for-all-this kind of a way. I mean, come on. Really? Do you want to be reconnected, reunited, reintroduced to all of those meaningless acquaintances you’ve had over the years? Not me. Sure, if I was 18 or 24…or 30 even—maybe. But 40? I’ve met and forgotten literally hundreds of people. We all have.

When I was 24, that number was significantly smaller and manageable, for lots of reasons. One, I was younger and hadn’t met as many people because I hadn’t toured or been on the road yet. I’ve had 16 more years of meeting and greeting since then. But I think the biggest reason is that today’s technology wasn’t there keeping us connected.

Think about it: It was 1993. I had no email, no cell phone, I had to get my film developed at Wal-Mart, I had a cassette adapter for my portable CD player, and my Mac had a hard-drive capacity of what amounts to 20 hi-res photos. I was finishing grad school, student teaching, and writing for local paper and had go to the office to deliver my floppy discs to my editor. Today I’ve been writing for Lifeway for over a year and have yet to meet the two editors I work for. Convenient? Totally. Connected? Not at all.

I know I tend to write about this kind of stuff often, but are we really connecting with people? Or are we complicating our lives with minutiae? There are only a handful of people I’d really love to be reconnected with. And you know what? I’ve already “friended” three of them. So, in that sense, Facebook is doing its job for me. What I’m afraid of is that I’ll have to wade through about 300 other former acquaintances from high school and college to get to that prime dozen or so people I’d like to see again. Just because we went to the 1988 Harding University Groundhog party (Go Titans!) does NOT mean we should reenter each others’ lives. Plus, there’s a reason the disconnection happened in the first place. Maybe lots of reasons.

I think what’s happening is that there is such a lack of connection, such a lack of community, that it’s driving us toward these virtual social networks. One where you can’t see expressions, hear tones of voice, smell perfume or cologne, feel a hug, or share a meal together. Not one of our five senses are being used in the process. Is this connection? I don’t think it is.

That being said—I still joined Facebook this week. And I’m on Myspace and Twitter. I mean, sure, it’s amazing to see what folks are up to and there are constant surprises in my Inbox, which is fun. But I have to be honest…I’m going to be one of those people that doesn’t answer messages or write on “walls.” That is, unless I’m your husband or your uncle.

What’s hysterical about the whole process is that it turns out I already had a Facebook profile. It had been deactivated about three years ago from lack of activity.

 

 (rw)

RANDY'S FAVORITE THINGS

Hear ye! Hear ye! Friday's are becoming a whole new thing here at the ol' blog. Today I introduce RANDY'S FAVORITE THINGS...sorta like Oprah, except I'm not going to give you any money or free iPods. I'm just interested in turning people on to cool sites, music, companies, books, movies, etc. I'm spreading the love and hope you'll like what you see/hear/read/buy. 

I'm not sure how many of you are familiar with PASTE Magazine, but it's, without a doubt, my favorite. They cover every genre of music, film, and books, but only by people who have something substantial to say. You won't find the latest flavor-of-the-month music or big-budget movie release...but you will find the latest Griffin House or Wes Anderson offering. Their tagline is Signs of life in music, film, and culture. and it was started by these Christian guys in Atlanta who realized there was an entire genre and subculture of art going nearly unnoticed--that is, there's a whole lot of art out there dealing with Eternal and Universal themes. Great stuff, but it's usually pretty under-the-radar. Their point was and is to get this stuff noticed.

Well, one of my favorite new sites, www.noisetrade.com (started by Derek Webb and others) is offering a Name Your Own Price subscription to PASTE. You can get an entire year's subscription for as little as $1...or more, you decide. I signed up for $5. You can even renew if you're currently subscribing. Here's the catch: after the year is up, you will automatically be renewed for another year at the going rate of $19.99. Not a bad deal, in my estimation.  So, CLICK THIS for the Paste offer.

FAVORITE THING #2:

My favorite local music happening, Ten Out of Tenn has released their Christmas CD and tour dates. I'm not going to over-hype it too much because I did that already here. If you'll click the link to their Myspace site, you can hear many of the songs and find out how you can own it. This will be the most-played music this season in the Williams household. 

Well, except for our own little Christmas EP. You'll be hearing more about that soon enough. Let's just say my wife has a ridiculously great voice. 

(rw)

Workin' for a Livin'

I like my job, but I have some friends who don't like theirs. So, occasionally I’ll head over to craigslist and see what might be out there for them. Every now and again I’ll even run across something that makes me think, that sounds like a pretty fun job. Usually though, if a job sounds really fun, it’s near the bottom of the posting that I realize they’re looking for college-age girls to pass out Red Bull in the parking lot at Titans games. 

I’m neither college-aged, a girl, nor do I like Red Bull. But they make the job sound so inviting. Do you like to meet people? YES! Would you like marketing a high profile product? BOY WOULD I! Do you love our 4-0 Tennessee Titans? MORE THAN ANYTHING IN THE WOOORRRLLLD!!! At this point, when I’m in a rabid lather of unbridled excitement and anticipation, the cards come crashing down with the following question. Are you between the ages of 18 and 24 and have food service (preferably Hooter’s) and/or social (preferably Myspace) experience?

Nope. I prefer my job…and I’m not gonna forward this one to anyone I know.

But today I found a listing for a job at Belmont University here in Nashville that had something like “curriculum manager” in the title, so naturally it caught my eye. Naturally because I went to college for six and a half years to teach high school, so words like curriculum still catch my eye. What I found was absolutely the most honest assessment of a job I’ve ever read. And I present it here for you (see the original here):

Sedentary work. Requires standing when delivering classes; occasional lifting, pulling, pushing, carrying and climbing, reaching both high and low. Frequently requires walking and balancing. Requires sitting, repetitious finger and wrist movement, speaking clearly, hearing conversations, hearing (with acuity), seeing near and far with depth perception and color vision.

Are you kidding me? What will you do in this job? Well...let me tell you: you'll sit, lift, push, carry, pull, reach, climb, speak, hear, and see. All the senses will be used, apparently. They all but said, this job really sucks. The person who wrote this is either the absolutely most literal human resources person. Ever. Or it was written by the smart aleck departing employee who is leaving this job vacant.

I can hear the conversation. “Mr. Johnson, since you’re leaving us next week and none of us know exactly what you do here, could you write a brief paragraph explaining your duties that we can place online along with the job posting?” Ding! A lightbulb begins to flicker above Mr. Johnson’s head. “Sure thing, boss. I’ll get right on that.”

Viola.

(rw)

Stop the Madness

The latest financial "crisis," in my opinion (and the opinion of my two favorite financial gurus, this guy, and this guy) is no crisis at all. It's simply the market responding to stupid loaning and borrowing practices by people who should know better. Greed, plain and simple, is the sin here.

I say, if a business makes poor financial decisions, they should pay for their mistakes. I don't care if it's a 300 year-old, multi-national investment bank or a local yogurt shop, the public should never be called on to pay for their bad financial moves. Free markets fluctuate. That's part of the "free" in the market. Bailout or no bailout, the market will respond. 

Sure, the Dow fell more yesterday than any one day drop in U.S. history. But, considering inflation and percentage of the market, it was nowhere near depression era numbers. In two days in 1929, the market fell 23%. Over nearly three years (1929-1932) it lost 89% of it's value. With today's numbers, a 700 point fall is equal to only 6%. That's definitely a bad drop, but not unrecoverable. My goodness, I'm sick of the constant media coverage of it all. It's making people freak out and make short-term decisions. If you have money invested, you'll probably see it go down for a few quarters. You know what you should do? Buy more stock. Why? Because it's a buyer's market. Things will recover. I promise you, in ten years you'll be ecstatic that you were patient and waited it out. In fact, it's already recovered over 245 points as of this writing.

I was talking with my neighbor last night and he said something really revelatory to me. He said if you want to see how the economy is doing, go look at the Target parking lot. It's full.

Folks, don't freak out. These are unstable times, but like my mom said, this always happens right before an election. She has a little more perspective on these things than I do, and I trust her opinion. 

UPDATE: just found this great quote. Bono said, ""It's extraordinary to me that the United States can find $700 billion to save Wall Street and the entire G8 can't find $25 billion dollars to saved 25,000 children who die every day from preventable diseases."

(rw)

I'm not a cynic, really

I don’t like feeling cynical about anything, especially my fellow faith journeymen, but my first trip to the International Christian Retailers Association’s convention (also known in the industry as CBA—or Christian Booksellers Association—week) did nothing to lessen my inner cynic. I don’t want to bad-mouth my good-intentioned brethren (and sistren), because truth be told, there are some unbelievably talented people among the aisles of this trade show. My problem with most Christian art (including music, writing, film, design, artwork/crafts, etc) is a profound lack vision and/or purpose. Or a business plan.

It’s quite a spectacle, the CBA trade show. There are several rows of booths featuring everything from major record labels to the the tiniest mom-and-pop start ups hoping to peddle their wares to the major and minor Christian retailers. There are some amazing things and some full-on gringe-worthy embarrassments. Or should I say embarrass-mints? There was a booth for children’s books and videos that featured a guy walking around dressed as Jesus. I suppose he was there to suffer ye the little children, but he more or less looked like Barry Gibb in a toga. When I saw him—sorry, Him—there was a gaggle of 20-something girls lined up to take photos with Him. I was hoping they wanted the pics for cheeky, ironic reasons, but I’m afraid they just thought He was hot. You could tell Jesus liked the attention. There was a big display for a new book coming out called “Lord of the Flies,” which is apparently a devotional for fly fishermen. Call me crazy, but that seems like a pretty small niche. Why not open it up to all fishermen and just call it “Hooked on Jesus”? Or “Thy Rod and Thy Reel, They Comfort Me”? There was an entire booth dedicated to hawking a bad, melodramatic poem and, of course, the awful parody t-shirts were everywhere. Things like Ourapostle instead of Aeropostle, or Jesus died for Myspace in Heaven, or Church Girls Gone Wild, and so on. And they will know we are Christians by our t-shirts. Ugh.

To be fair, there was some cool stuff too: a new book called “Evolution: A Fairy Tale for Grownups” by Ray Comfort (Darwin’s 200th Birthday Special Edition. Genius.) debunks the theory of evolution simply using quotes from many evolutionary scientists and experts without “quote mining” (using quotes out of context). And Hayley DiMarco has a new set of short books for teen girls and if nothing else, she has some of the best designed books in the CBA market. Most of the Christian publishing industry could learn something from the modern design of her books and the understated booths of Oxford University Press and Penguin Books, two of the mainstream publishing houses in attendance. By far the thing that got me the most excited, though, is the announcement of Crossway’s English Standard Version Study Bible. I’m feeling so nerdy right now, but I’m kind of obsessing about it. Who gets that excited about a study bible? Me apparently.

As much as I hate to say it, though, the bad outweighed the good. It’s just that so much of what I saw was simply a reaction or response to something offered up by the general market. I’m not one of those people who say Christian art shouldn’t exist in the first place, though. I totally believe in "the industry" and that there’s a place for it. I think some people have a gift and, if you will, calling to the church to encourage, uplift, and lead. BUT I also believe that they should be doing things in such an excellent way that when the un-churched come in contact with their work, they’re drawn towards belief, not repelled by it.

(rw)

Love/Hate

A few months ago I was picking up my favorite hot beverage (short vanilla latte) at our local Starbucks and noticed a small pamphlet called “My Starbucks Idea.” My first reaction was genuine elation, but I’ll get back to that in a few hundred words.

I have a love/hate relationship with Starbucks. We all do. We love the tasty goodness and the predictability, but hate the price. I love the hang and the convenience, but I hate the McDonald-ising of coffee shops. And even though it’s June right now, I’m already excited about the holiday cups in December and how cozy every store is around Christmas. I’m also a BIG fan of Starbucks, the company. They have genius marketing, a moral business plan, take care of their employees (profit sharing, health care, etc), and promote fair trade. Unfortunately, though, they’re becoming the Wal-Mart of the food industry. Because of sheer volume, the quality of the coffee has dropped considerably and they’ve become an easy target for locals-only coffee snobs, intellectuals and anti-corporate city punks, all of which practically defined the original target market for espresso consumers. However, thanks to the Seattle company, Americans are used to paying $3 or $4 for their lattes which has indirectly made it easier for mom-and-pop coffee houses to survive. The non-conformist, anti-sbux consumer will be happy to plop their $4 down at Portland Brew (or Bongo Java or wherever). But I digress.

I’m an idea person and occasionally these ideas will incorporate Starbucks to some degree. So naturally, when I saw the brochure asking patrons to visit www.mystarbucksidea.com, I was overcome with joy. I could just see it—my bank account filling higher and higher as a result of royalties from the scores of genius ideas/advice I would send to the suits in Seattle. Then I read the legalese. Let me sum it up for you: Zilch. Nada. Nothing. You will receive no payment, no royalties, and maybe even no credit whatsoever for your idea. Not even if it makes them millions. Nothing. Basically, it’s an easy way (and an absolutely genius plan, by the way) for Starbucks to get the public to do what their Marketing and Merchandising departments (who no doubt came up with the concept) are paid to do. Except you don’t get paid.

So, here’s my Starbucks idea: Don’t give Starbucks any free marketing or merchandising advice. I’ll keep mine to myself and let another company pay my consulting fee.

As a P.P.S. (a pre-postscript in this case), everyone can get two hours of free wifi at their stores now. See? I hate them…but I love them.

So. Much.

(rw)