Archive for the 'Just Ranting' Category

Heresies

Published
by
Eddy E
on February 25, 2008
in Just Ranting
. 1 Comment

Thanks for visiting my blog, Serving Bread. Here you'll read stories, insights, reflections and ramblings from a campus minister, father, husband and Jesus-follower. If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to the RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

I came across this post over at Christarchy.com that identifies the author’s opinion of the Top Ten Heresies of the American Church. A couple that I found poignant were: equating salvation with comfort and prioritizing politics over prayer. I’ve thought what I would include on my list. I would add:

  • Church = Consumption culture. We shop around for what we think best meets our needs. I heard of a couple who chose one church over the other because of the better playground structure.
  • Faith is 10% commitment. We look for ways to give our tithes and offerings up to 10%. A fraction of our time and money belongs to God, but the rest belongs to us.
  • Personality-driven leadership. The church misses out on the opportunities to empower more people for ministry when the focus is on the single person who is uniquely gifted and even branded with his or her particular church.

What would you add?

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Maybe the answer to government is… government???

Published
by
Eddy E
on June 26, 2007
in Just Ranting, Politics and Random
. 0 Comments

Dealing with government is swimming (rather drowning) in bureaucracy. Whether it is trying to get through to someone in LAUSD (4 phonecalls and still waiting for a response) or trying to get a passport, government leads me to conclude that it is an entity that we have to try to fight to get what we want.

I woke up at 4:30am this morning to pick up a student in Pasadena and then headed to the Federal Building in Westwood to renew her damaged passport. We arrived at 6:30am and I thought I would have some time to pick up a cup of coffee before making our way to the passport office that opens at 7am. But when we arrived, there were somewhere over 300 people already in line.

Most of them did not have appointments (we didn’t either), which means that we had no chance in hell to renew our passport. (By the way, we tried to get the appointment, but the system was jammed and had nothing available for the foreseeable future)

We had two choices: quit or stand in line and try our luck. At that point, the student had the idea of calling her congressman to see if he could pull some strings. She got through to a secretary who said she’d take care of it. Within ten minutes, we got a call back that the student was placed on a Special Handling List. Within half an hour, the security guard came outside with a list. She was on the list. She went from the back of the line to the front of the line.

She made it inside the building and renewed her passport. Now, she did stand in 4 to 5 lines and finally picked up her passport at 6pm (11 and 1/2 hours later).

The passport system is a mess, and some of the training that the In N Out people get could go a long way in this instance. (Condy, my services are available on a part-time basis) I was surprised how quickly putting a call to the congressman worked. I am convinced that without that phone call and without the advocacy of government officials, the student will never have gotten her passport renewed.

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LAUSD Woes

Published
by
Eddy E
on June 22, 2007
in Just Ranting
. 1 Comment

Get in a room with two LAUSD employees, and you will be quickly swept into the vortex of despair and complaints regarding this behemoth of an organization. From time to time I try to find some hope that this organization can function with an approval rating better than the President, but that might be just a hope for the future.

In the latest wave of mess-ups, LAUSD has either underpaid or overpaid its employees on June 5. My wife got a letter last week saying that she was overpaid and they want their money back (and they plan to get it back by July 5). Of course, they want their money back and it is totally appropriate for us to return the overpayment.

But, before I am totally ok with returning that over-payment, I decided to do some detective work. I am curious to see how many people were underpaid and how many people were overpaid on June 5. And, I’d like to know how quickly they plan on rectifying the underpayments.

I called both the LA Times and KNBC and submitted my idea for a story. But I knew that I have to take this into my hands, so for the past three days, I have put in a call to the payroll services department seeking those answers. Three days and no response yet. I plan on calling every day until someone gets back to me. And of course, phonecalls not being returned only fuels my school board candidacy, and some of my sane ideas to fix the system.

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An open letter regarding the $6 burger

Published
by
Eddy E
on May 12, 2007
in Just Ranting and Random
. 2 Comments

Actual letter sent to Carl’s Jr.:

Dear [tag]Customer Service[/tag],

I am sold on your marketing campaign of enjoying a $6 (restaurant) burger without the restaurant. Your commercial that shows a waitress spraying and wiping down a table while the patron tries to enjoy his [tag]$6 burger[/tag] is an experience I am sure many of us have had. It is for this reason that I write you this letter. A week ago, while I was enjoying my $6 Jalapeno Burger, one of the employees approached me and asked whether she could clean my table.

I did not know how to respond and before I knew what to say, she was spraying the pink stuff all over my table and she wiped it clean for me. While I appreciate eating in a clean environment, I did not enjoy my burger since the aroma of the ammonium was now accompanying the delicious burger

I agree with you—all of us should enjoy the restaurant burger without the restaurant experience. Unfortunately, my recent experience at Carl’s Jr. prevented me from enjoying my burger. Since [tag]Carl’s Jr.[/tag] prides itself on eating the burger without the restaurant experience, this issue should especially be of concern to Carl’s Jr. management.

Sincerely,

Eddy E.

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Netiquette is just a word and other web 2.0 observations

Published
by
Eddy E
on January 5, 2007
in General and Just Ranting
. 2 Comments

Every so often, I come across an article about netiquettes or the etiquettes of life online. The idea and value behind netiquettes is to highlight conventions of politeness when interacting (back in the day through usenet groups) online. As the internet has grown and “matured” to web 2.0–where anyone with a heartbeat can contribute to the virtual world without any knowledge of computers or experience–netiquettes seems to be losing ground.

When teenagers (or preteens for that matter) keep a MySpace page or a Xanga diary, netiquettes will inevitably be redefined or diluted from its original intentions. For example, one of the basic rules of netiquettes (as recorded on wikipedia) is “Think before you post”. I know I am guilty of responding to posts through comments or posting stuff that reveals I had a lapse of my thinking. Though I have no data to track this, it is probably safe to say that there is a lot of stuff out there that is–pardon my language–crap (and I am by no means not guilty of posting or responding to/with crap).

Since so many people enter the world of blogging every day, interacting on web 2.0 may be the new cross-cultural experience. I am not talking about interacting with someone half way around the world, but with someone across the street. It seems to me that people have different definitions of blogging and a different answer to the question, “Why blog?” Is a blog a sermon or a conversation? (I choose conversation). Are comments an interaction or an opportunity to be told ”you’re right!”? (I choose interaction). Are bloggers meant to be experts or learners? (I suppose it depends, but most write as if they are experts rather than as learners). Forget netiquettes (which is just a word and not really a guide anymore), what we need is to learn how to interact with one another cross-culturally. I have made plenty of mistakes in my interactions online because I misread the purpose of the post and the poster.

Blogging is fun (though to be honest, I’m still trying to figure out why I do it), but it lacks several things:

  1. Bloggers are rarely experts (though most come across as that).
  2. Bloggers should be learners and open to interaction and discussion
  3. Blogging is kinda like a radio talk-show. When you call in, you are going into the lion’s den. You don’t debate, you just argue, and as the caller, you always lose because it’s not your show. (A true debate is when there is a moderator and a neutral facility)

If this post is crap–then I suppose I have to thank you for taking the time out of your schedule to read my crap :)

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Thank you California voters for my new credit cards

Published
by
Eddy E
on November 9, 2006
in Election Season and Just Ranting
. 1 Comment

Dear California voters,

I want to congratulate you for self-approving us with new credit cards. With the election yesterday, we took out a credit card (I think they are called bonds) with a $43 billion credit limit. But by the time they are paid back, it will cost us close to $100 billion. Of course that’s an addition to the $49 billion we already have outstanding and the extra $31 billion of an old credit card that we must have forgotten about and haven’t touched yet.

You taught me that it’s ok to open credit lines and buy both luxuries and necessities using the credit card, even if it will cost me more to do it that way than to actually prioritize it and build it into my budget. I thought that I’m supposed to learn how to save, and save for things like rainy days, but I guess, that’s not something that’s politically expedient or correct or something.

I cannot wait to drive in the central valley and show my daughter how nice those levies look. Finally, if in 10 years our roads are not better and traffic is not lighter, is there anyway you can help me get a refund?

Sincerely,

Eddy E

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So is this how justice works?

Published
by
Eddy E
on October 5, 2006
in General and Just Ranting
. 0 Comments

John Mark Karr is a free man. The judge in Sonoma county threw out all the charges against him. Karr is the man who about a month ago confessed to killing Jon Benet Ramsey. He was in Thailand doing only God knows what (though I do have my fair share of assumptions) when he confessed in front of cameras that he in fact was the killer in the Ramsey case.

The US government on little or no evidence flew him in Business Class from Thailand back to the United States on our (tax-payer) dime. They then dropped the charges (in Colorado) and sent him to California to face child pornography charges. Again that was on our dime. And now he is a free man.

First of all, he is a sick man. Anyone who would confess to a heinous crime that they (allegedly) have not committed is sick. Second, the government needs to recoop all of its costs. It seems to me that Karr got in trouble in Thailand doing something (only God knows I’m sure) and needed to split. Why purchase the ticket himself when the Uncle Sam can do the work and front the cost for him? It cost him a month of media attention and some traveling requirements, but he got his ticket paid for with benefits (I doubt he had to wait the long lines to get his bag and go through customs).

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40%

Published
by
Eddy E
on September 28, 2006
in Just Ranting and Random
. 2 Comments

Can you locate Iraq on a map? If you can’t, don’t worry, you’re in the majority! Only 40% of young Americans between the ages of 18 and 24 can pinpoint Iraq on a map–the country where we are at war. Now that is a marked improvement from the 14% in 2002, so you gotta give kudos to someone for that. It’s no secret that Americans are geographically illiterate, but it’s a bit disturbing to read that figure and to be reminded that we are at war in the Middle East, and yet the majority of people who would be foot soldiers of that war know very little about the country and presumably, its history. I know some people might argue that even our own leaders are in that category, but I won’t go there in this post.

Some of the studies also show that identifying the US on a map is also not something to brag home about, so it’s nothing particular about Iraq. To remedy the problem, my idea is that the next time we wage war on any country (even if it’s justified), the president, rather than delivering his impassioned plea for support, instead gives a geography lesson and maybe even a history lesson. I would make it a 30 minute segment that airs on every network. And then in a couple weeks, every household is sent a simple test to answer a few basic geography questions.

Those households who pass the test are given a badge that allows them to debate the merits of the war, etc… (The badge can also be used to get discounts at the gas station) And those households who don’t pass the test are given a badge where they could be arrested if they complain or raise any opinion on the war (And their badge would add an extra tax on their gas). I know it sounds a little anti-American, and I know that even some of our leaders might be given the second badge, but you gotta start somewhere.

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I announce my candidacy…

Published
by
Eddy E
on September 17, 2006
in Just Ranting
. 4 Comments

I have always been interested in politics. I’m not sure if it’s the righteous anger within me or my Middle Eastern blood (try finding a Middle Eastern who doesn’t care or have a “strong” opinion on politics). So I’ve been thinking that I should run for some office. But for what? I can’t run for the presidency of the US because I wasn’t born here, but maybe with the new “democracy” in Iraq, that might be an option for me. Nah… that doesn’t sound like a fun, fulfilling or a job that is even possible to do.

Another option would be to run for congress. Legislation is not really my thing, and considering I have no idea who my congress-person is, the job doesn’t sound appealing. To be governor of the great state of California doesn’t excite me either. For one, Sacramento gets hot and there is nowhere to go (at least in Northridge, I can drive 30 minutes and get to a cooler part of LA). Also, someone in the family already did that job (Yes I’m related to George Deukmejian who was governor in the 80s and 90s).

If I were to run for office, I think I’d start very local. I’d start with a job that could make a difference. And it would start with a job where I feel the effects of the status quo, and I’m righteously angry for some change. So I’m gonna run (one day, inshallah) for School Board.

Continue reading ‘I announce my candidacy…’

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