79 thoughts on “Blaming Technology”

    1. The text is my own invention. The art is from an old advertisement for “Jayne’s Vermifuge” — evidently a worm medicine remedy.

      2. Darrell, did the original bubble in the last frame say, “I’m glad that will hit them while they are at school!” or “I’m glad I won’t have to clean up after THAT this afternoon!” 😯

  4. I am thankful for a mother who has super-glued my radio dial on WPCS so that I can better resist the temptation to listen to public radio. She watches over me so well!

    2. CMG, I’ve heard that WPCS often plays music with a beat. Doesn’t this lead you into the arms of carnal temptation?

      1. “Snow white beaches. Blue green surf. And the sound compromise. WPCS. Pensacola.”

        I had heard that WPCS plays music that doesn’t “check” at PCC.

        2. WMUU in Greenville (call letters partially taken from “World’s Most Unusual University”) also plays music that doesn’t check on BJU campus. 😈

    3. If you are online, I’m guessing net radio is an option? I rather doubt many WPCS loyalists are familiar w/ filtering streaming audio.

      1. We use an internet accountability program that my brother, Uriah, designed. He has done all his homeschooling online with headphones and is proficient in writing lots of stuff for the computer. He is so disciplined that he does hours of research on many games. I know that the games are okay because of our internet accountability program that he designed.

        The program is called “My Father’s Eyes” and reports all the links we click or web addresses we type in to a monitoring system. Only after they are approved can we view the web pages.

        If you are interested, Uriah says you may contact him via something called a “gamertag”. His is called “UriahSpyah”, which means that he spies on the world to bring glory to God.

        4. Adding to XBL. I wonder if he is up for some Halo: Reach. 😛

          Not that he would know what that was of course 😉

  5. Oddly enough, the Fundy pastor I had who preached the most about the “evils” of going to movies and watching TV was also the first person I knew who had HBO (for research purposes only, I’m sure).

  6. Apparently, before electronic media were around, nobody ever wasted time.
    At least, that’s what I keep hearing people imply.

  7. I know a Fundy family that has two girls – they are trying to teach the girls to be a testimony to their neighbors. One of the neighbor girls came over with an iPod stuck in her ears. She asked her new Fundy friends if they’d like to listen to her music. One of the girls took the proffered ear bud and stuck it in her ear, only to pull it away from her head, make a “Mr. Yuck” face, and say, “That’s BAD music!”

    How much you wanna bet that neighbor girl doesn’t choose to come as the girls’ AWANA visitor?

    1. I was taught to be the same way, but since I was homeschooled and never had a “worldy” friend as a child, I would just tell my friends they weren’t being “Godly” if they did something I was taught was wrong. The “holier than thou” competition is taught early.

      I was a real life Elsie Dinsmore.

      Ick.

        1. I went to public school, so the first year or so after my mom put us in the IFB (around third grade) I went from confused to strident. I remember telling my BFF boy next door, who was from Milan and Catholic, that he was going to Hell. He came from a string family and so luckily he blew me off and has since forgiven me (we are still friends). I also dished out in the 3rd grade to my largely Catholic schoolmates. I can still cringe at 41 when thinking about this. Luckily, the cognitive dissonance kicked in hard by 5th grade.

  8. My parents never let me have a Walkman with a radio, since they couldn’t hear if I was listening to EEEEEEVIL music (which, of course, I would have).

    They also glued my radio dial to static so I couldn’t sit really, really close to my stereo speaker after my parents went to bed and listen to EEEEEVIL music set at low volume so no one else could hear that I was sinning.

  9. This is awesome. Particularly since it made me think of back when I managed to convince my parents to get me a clock radio and then would stay awake very late at night so I could listen to the country station, under the blankets with my ear pressed to the speaker. If I didn’t keep it very, very low my 4 sisters who shared my room would’ve definitely reported me to my parents if they’d heard it. Haha

    1. LOL, I did similar things. Luckily I had my own room, but I also used to sneak out late at night and watch things on TV that I shouldn’t have. Well, I mean, wasn’t supposed to, but I am glad I did!

      I remember catching my sister listening to “worldly” music at one point too, and she tried to rationalize it to me by saying that the message in the song was good. She was basically pleading with me to not tell. Of course, I didn’t “rat her out” because even though she had no problem being a NARC and telling on me, I already had that “rebellious” streak of being OK with evil, LOL.

      1. When I was a Full Fledged Fundie child, I voiced my concerns to my parents upon finding my sister secretly listening to Steve Green music in her room. That satanic stuff definitely had an anapestic beat

    2. Did anybody else used to watch the scrambled HBO movies late at night and if you watched very carefully you might almost get an idea of what evil thing was going on?……Yeah, me neither! 🙂

      1. Once “The Exorcist” was on TV, and I wanted to watch it, but I put Disney’s “Robin Hood” in the VCR so if Mom called to me, I could say, “What?”, push play, and then be able to truthfully (sort of) say I was watching “Robin Hood” if she asked me what I was watching. (Our TV was in the upstairs hallway not in our living room.) So sure enough, she does call me, and I panic and push Record instead! (“Robin Hood” was dubbed off TV so it was possible to record over it.) Then I couldn’t figure out how to get it to STOP recording! I never did get to see the end of “The Exorcist”, but if anyone ever pulled out that old VCR tape of “Robin Hood”, in the middle of “Ooo-de-lally-Ooo-de-lally!” suddenly there’s a view of a room of swirling darkness and evil voices! Yoicks! That’s what I get for trying to sneak behind my parents’ back! (I was 18 or 19 at the time.)

        1. That’s really funny. It wasn’t until I was 19 that I finally snuck Titanic into my room (by that time I had gotten a TV in my bedroom. It was for school purposes my senior year.) I laugh at that memory now but I was freaked that my mom would find out.

        2. LOL! it’s funny on all levels. It’s bad to watch the Exorcist, but no questions asked that a teenager would want to watch a Robin Hood Cartoon? 😆

        4. “Robin Hood” is cute but it certainly wouldn’t have been my first choice for viewing. Beggars can’t be choosers though! (And I’m glad if I had to ruin a tape, I ruined “Robin Hood” instead of “Ivanhoe” with Anthony Andrews.)

        5. My sister and I used to turn off EVERYTHING when the telephone rang. Mom told us that she could type in a code and hear what was going on in the house even if nobody picked up the phone.

      2. Oh, Rob, you mean those raunchy movies where the picture was kind of twisted like a funhouse mirror, but you could decode it in your mind if you tried hard enough?
        … No, of course I never did that. 😳

    3. In my youth group, you were put on a special prayer list if you listened to “worldly” music.

      1. In the church I just left, you were put on “unspoken probation” if you listened to worldly music, unless of course you were the music pastor and needed to do “research.”

        1. very similar. I was in SHOCK when I was called into the principal’s office and asked, “Are you happy here?” Apparently, when my principal had borrowed my car, he discovered that I had a – gasp – Casting Crowns CD in my car. He was very concerned for my spiritual welfare, and probably more concerned that I might be “corrupting the youth” since I was a teacher. Puh-lease. The best part was that all of the songs on that CD had been performed in our church, but they had been “cleaned up” by using only a piano in the background. Really.

        3. @ Jennie, I LOVE Casting Crowns. I was always told that CCM was shallow, man-centered, and often unbiblical, but groups like this prove such generalities wrong. I have sung “I Will Praise You in This Storm” with tears running down my face, but it helps me focus on God’s sovereignty and ultimate goodness even in my pain. Music like this helps draw me closer to God.

        4. Pastor’s Wife,

          I totally agree. The lyrics to CC’s songs are awesome. I have their music on my iPod, and regardless of what my former ministry said to me, that music was very healing as I left Fundyism behind and started a new life – new home, new job, new church.

          I wonder sometimes if the Fundies even listen to the lyrics of the songs they claim are heretical. This music is much deeper than some of the songs we sang over and over again at my Fundy church.

        5. “double secret probation”…….a toga party! We can’t have a toga party, we’re on double secret probation, whatever that is.

          Thanks Darrell. One of my fav movies of all time. I might have to go home and watch it tonight, it has been awhile.

        6. I swear, every time I read “Casting Crowns”, It comes out “Counting Crows” instead! I can’t help it…

    4. This situation reminds me of The Shawshank Redemption. You know the scene. And then they throw him in the hole. But he still has the music in his head.

  10. We were a “no TV” family, so radio was my only lifeline to the real world. Any time I was alone in the house I’d have the stereo cranked way up while I stood by the window to watch out for my parents.

    Car checks in high school, anybody else go through that? I couldn’t have any stations I liked as presets – and forget about having tapes in the car.

    1. We didn’t get a TV until I was 16. I’m sure I was the only 15 year old girl in 1985 who could sing all the words to “The Wayward Wind” and “Big Bad John”. I was only allowed to listen to two radio stations: the classical station and the oldies station that played only pre-Beatles songs, sort of an “easy listening oldies” station. On Saturday night, we’d listen to “Prairie Home Companion” on NPR. The Christian radio station was unacceptable because of the contemporary music, but we did listen to “Unshackled” and the Saturday morning kids’ programs like Uncle Charlie.

      Of course, now I’m making sure my eleven-year-old isn’t listening to the top-40 stations because of the indecent lyrics, so she probably thinks I’m just as restrictive!

      1. No, you were not the only one. Saturday nights my parents and I would sit around listening to the Oldies But Goodies station, either playing table games or studying the next day’s Bible lesson. Yes, when I was a teenager!

    2. I too grew up without TV, which was a rarity even in the particular fundy circle our family was in. Well, of course, not having television only made me hyper-curious to see it. The only times I got to were the rare occasions when I babysat (usually secular neighbors–surprised my parents let me do that!) or was at fundy friends’ houses. Yes, even going to friends’ houses was rare, as we lived in the boondocks (comparitively). 🙄 Though I’ll never forget the time I was at one fundy girl-friend’s house and we were trying to figure out how to occupy ourselves. She suggested we watch some TV since I never got to do that. Well her mom would have none of it. She knew my parents didn’t allow it, she wasn’t going to let me either. 🙄

      Fast forward to adulthood; I get a TV, and I spend wayyyy too much time watching it…out of uber curiosity and making up for lost time! 🙄

      It gets worse. I’d thought the entire time growin’ up that my parents believed that TV was evil because *some* of what came across its airwaves was evil. IMAGINE my shock when I come home from college one year to find…*they had gotten a TV!* 😯 When asked about it, they said they didn’t believe it was evil; “we just didn’t want one in the house while you kids were growing up.” (I’m the youngest.) The other shocker…my dad, the more legalistic of my parents–he was the one glued to it the most. 😯 🙄

      Later they got rid of it, claiming they never watched it much.

      Good grief! 👿

      1. Did they get rid of the new tv after being “convicted” after some old-fashioned preeeeeeeching?

  11. Radio was my outlet as a teenager. I “discovered” stations other than the local classical one when I was about thirteen, and although I felt somewhat guilty about it, I switched back and forth when people came anywhere near me just in case. (And my parents wonder why I wore earbuds all the time??) I still can’t understand how my parents thought that a teenager would spend that much time listening to purely instrumental music…? But they did. And I never even had to lie about it or anything.

    The ironic part was that I self-censored the songs I listened to at that point anyways. I mean, one swear word, one semi-minced-swearish word, the song was over. Not to mention anything in regards to a person wanting being attracted to the other sex…

    Yeah. Good times. I had a pretty good childhood, despite the stress of wondering if God would strike me dead because of my musical tastes (I literally considered that this might happen, and took the needed precautions; because God can’t strike you dead if you’re prepared? Uhmm, yeah. :roll:).

      1. **Loren goes to get some popcorn and Mexican Coke (no not that kind) that he bought at Wal Mart last night**

        3. @Scorpio,

          Mexican Coke is imported Coca-Cola in half-liter glass bottles that’s sweetened with cane sugar instead of high fructose corn syrup (HFCS) as used here in the States.

      2. Sad: That so many kids were so over regulated by their parents in such minor details. I think that’s really sad.

        I grew up in a pretty crappy family, but I recall, as a child, seeing my father at the dinner table conversing with my three oldest siblings. He expected them to understand current moral issues (at the time, the Viet Nam War and the public speeches of Martin Luther King). I remember wishing I were a grown up teenager (snicker now) who could talk with Dad about such grown up things.

        As bad as my Dad was at so many things, I do applaud him for understanding that growing up is not a series of regulations designed to keep a person from thinking or understanding his or her world. He viewed growing up as a series of steps of taking more and more personal responsibility for your own decisions, conclusions, and choices in life.

        1. Now that I agree with.
          The appearance legalism, and the hypocritical extra-biblical rules and regs are a form of slavery… not liberty in Christ. To be dictated to by the weaker brother elitist ruling sect is another cult practice the fundies have perfected.
          I just wanted to verify that the “sad” was referring to the prison camp restrictions and not the fact that we all broke them and participated in real life every now and again… before putting the fundy mask back on and doing our due diligence required by the mother cult.

    2. Actually the comments in this post are pretty tame. The overwhelming majority of posts are people just relating their own personal lives and experiences.
      But thanks John for judging us anyway.

  16. I had a radio that had all of the buttons on the front. My parents would come into the room and demand to know what I was listening to. I would smile beatifically and unplug the headphones from the side of the radio to let them hear the classical music or Christian radio that I was listening to. (My scam was: in the process of removing the headsets I also bumped the Favorites button which switched the channel over to a preset channel such as classical music. After they left I would hit the button again and it would go right back to whatever heatheness I was listening to previously.)

  17. Here’s a quote fundy parents and authoritarian pastors need to get ahold of:

    “Rules without Relationship breeds Rebellion.”

    1. My fundy pastor used that quote – He still had loads of crazy rules and there was lots of rebellion as church kids got older.

      Of course, he also preached that “quality family time” included being at church together (Three to Thrive!)…even though that meant sitting silently in a pew staring ahead or having the family split up in several different classes.

  18. This is another one of those funny things (like local organic food) where some fundies accidentally line up with some liberals.

    There are non-christians on the far left end of the spectrum who dislike mainstream television and music for all sorts of reasons: gender stereotyping, treating women as sex objects, causing young people to feel inadequate –poor, fat, ugly– compared to their favorite TV characters, encouraging violence, promoting excessive consumerism, dumbing down our minds, programming us to hand over more of our money to greedy corporations, etcetcetc.

    1. And, believe me, it’s extremely awkward for fundies when these accidental alignments occur. I think it’s funny, myself.

  19. My dad traveled a lot on business and spent a lot of time driving, so he wanted to get a CB radio. My mom argued vehemently with him about this because, according to her, people use CB’s to swear. Yes, that’s right, she didn’t want a grown man to have a CB radio in his car because he would hear swear words. True story.

Comments are closed.