You Forgot the Video Cam Again?

I don’t have any deep thoughts today. Little Girl Blue turned 3 today and we had a nice little birthday for her, just me, Mrs. Blue and Son of Blue. I’m tuckered out but also have to stay up into the wee hours a bit to finish work for a client, so just a quickie post for tonight.

Soooo, I’m keeping an eye on my girl in the living room while my wife is surfing the ‘Net, and I hear some half-crazed sounding guy in full “preacher voice” talking about how he healed some woman of a tumor, and it came out of her physically and slid down her leg to the floor. (My wife was on some site with video of this guy; I don’t know who the hell it was.)

And I’m thinking to myself cynically: I know God can work wondrous miracles through people, and maybe it’s true. But, why do they always have videos of people getting healing touches and collapsing in some spastic fit because they’ve been “carried away by the spirit” or some old woman with a walker who suddenly tosses it away because she is healed (never mind that no one in the audience knows this woman and she’s probably had two good legs her whole life). Why is it that these crazy sounding healing preachers always have video of that shit, but they never manage to have the camera on when a tumor slides out of a woman’s body or something equally dramatic. Because you know, if I had stuff like that going on, I’d tape it, and bring the tumor to a physician for confirmation that it was really a tumor.

That’s just me, of course. And I am cynical. I have faith in God, but often not in people.

And besides, preacher man also sounded like he could use some daily visits on the couch with a therapist and probably some meds, too. People may have thought Jesus was crazy, but I don’t get the impression he acted crazy.

5 thoughts on “You Forgot the Video Cam Again?

  1. jsprik

    hahahaha you crack me up!!! i agree with the point that you have plenty of beleif in God but not so much in people!! dude, thats the way its supposed to be. God can place people in our lives that can “heal”, but they can’t do jack short of God doing it “through” them!!! wouldn’t you agree??? good post!!

    Reply
  2. Deacon Blue

    @ Big Man:

    I don’t mind sharing with folks in general terms what I do and how I got here. I’m currently a freelance writer and editor in the Northeastern U.S.

    After graduating from a four year journalism program and tacking on an extra year for the master’s degree, I got my start in the trade publications (for those who, unlike Big Man, aren’t journalists and might not know, those would be magazines for folks in various professions or specific types of work, the magazines that DON’T ever show up on bookstore shelves and which constitute about 2/3 of the magazines in the United States). Mostly they were technical trade pubs (engineering-related and security-related). From there, ended up in a medical association’s publication department where I worked on a news and features magazine for physicians. That led to an ill-fated stint in one of the major global giant audit/tax/consulting firms where I did proposal writing. After escaping that, went to a custom publishing firm that did magazines and such for organizations that couldn’t handle the work or pay for full time staff to do so.

    For various reasons, I decided to leave the office-based life about 6 years ago and go freelance/self employed. Not by choice really…I’d much rather have health benefits, the knowledge that I’ll have a check every two weeks and tax money withheld from my paycheck automatically. But it was the most logical and reasonable way to go if I didn’t want to just make a career change.

    I juggle several different clients, some of them regular monthly clients (steady pay) and others sporadic (not steady, and often slow to pay). Some of what I do is related to medical/pharmaceutical articles, some is for environmental and advocacy groups, and one of my clients is an IT recruiting firm. Here and there, I write articles for various business, management and tech publications.

    Mostly, I do reporting and writing. But I also work as an editor (high level and copyediting both). I also do some newsletter work and have done things like brochures, invitations, annual reports and the like, so I have decent knowledge with layout/desktop publishing as well.

    Currently getting out of recent big slump period in which I lost three major clients in the course of year (not really because of anything I did; just bad timing), so I’m not where I’d like to be, but I’m also not down in the dumps. The one nice thing about managing multiple clients is that unlike working at a single job, it’s very hard for me to lose ALL my income. The bad part is when everyone’s deadlines collide at times, and I end up working into the wee hours.

    Some of the nice things about being freelance, of course, is that my commute is just a few seconds long (office is just two doors down from bedroom on the same floor) and I have the very great joy to do like Dilbert does when telecommuting and conduct phone interviews and client meetings by phone while wearing my pajamas.

    @ JSprik

    I agree totally!

    Reply
  3. Deacon Blue

    Thing I’ve always liked about trade publications is that I don’t have to pretend there is a sharp division between advertising and editorial. You don’t let advertisers dictate topics or content, but you also firmly recognize that they are a legitimate part of the mix, since the ads are VERY specific to the readership. And being able to have somewhat comfortable relations with the companies often meant better access to the experts therein whom we needed for articles as sources. I’ve never dreamed of being an investigative Woodward and Bernstein type, so I never really wanted to try to be digging stuff up. Just wanted to report good and useful info and be done with it. 😉

    Association-based pubs were even better in many cases, as they might not have had ads at all in some cases, and then I didn’t have to worry about squat except the reporting and writing. As long as I didn’t do something that would offend the association’s members, it was all good.

    National columnist is even better of course. Who wouldn’t want to get paid to spout their opinions? My wife actually has a monthly column in an independent weekly paper where we live, which is cool. Doesn’t pay much, and it is only in our region, but still cool. I always dreamed of being a Dave Barry type…but I don’t think I’m funny enough consistently to be a humor columnist.

    Reply

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