The ticket sham

So I'm searching everywhere - my pants, my desk, my coat pocket, even under my car seats - for two quarters. Actually it didn't even have to be two quarters. It could of been a combination of quarters, dimes and nickels. Anything. All I needed was 50 cents for the stupid parking meter. I found 45 cents and put that into the meter - I was safe for another hour and 45 minutes.

Or at least I assumed I was. Then I thought of all the types of tickets I've received parking at the meters. Expired meter ticket? Check. Street cleaning day ticket? Check. Parking over the 2 hour time limit? Check. Parking without a front license plate? Check. Could they get me for any of these?

As my anxiety built up, so did my anger and it hit me: the biggest sham in city government is parking tickets!

Now I understand the need to ticket people who park on the street during street cleaning day; I can even dig ticketing the people who haven't fed the meter. But a time limit? Ticketing a car that lacks a front license plate even though the car is parked? That's a rebuff.

I'm always tempted to send in a jar of vaseline when I pay my fine. Attached to the jar would be a note: "Thanks for sticking it to me." But with my luck (and looks) they'd probably decide that that joke would be a terrorist threat or something like that. Then I'd probably get my phones tapped. And maybe they'd even use my vaseline I sent in for a different type of probing.

Why is there even a time limit? I assume it's to make it fair for other people who want to park at a meter. But really, when does a city, especially Los Angeles, care about being fair? No. There is a time limit because the city wants people to exceed that time limit to gain an extra $30 revenue - even if the meter still has minutes in it. Why ticket for lack of a front license plate? The signal cameras in LA aren't even turned on. That's really the only reason for front plates.

I had a conversation with a parking officer. She said, "We have to ticket out-of-staters and people who have no place to put their front license plate." She mentioned Corvettes, which don't have room for a front plate.

Now I'm sitting at my desk and have a good view at my car. I've probably looked at it about 10 times while writing this to make sure the parking officer isn't there writing another ticket. I know that if I get a ticket I won't fight it. The city knows this too, which is why they have no qualms ordering their officers to write them. Jerks.

The DaVinci Sham

I'm the type of person who promotes free speech to a fault. I'll go see a movie, even if I don't agree with it, just to see it. When people in the Catholic Church boycotted "Dogma" because it promoted the idea that, among other things, the Virgin Mary had other children, I went to see it. It couldn't be that bad, I told myself. And it wasn't. Sure it was irreverant, but overall the movie wasn't mean. It didn't go out of its way to insult an entire segment of the population. In fact, it actually made me feel pumped up about my faith and includes one of my all-time favorite lines about faith:

Faith is like a glass of water. When you're young, the glass is small, and it's easy to fill up. But the older you get, the bigger the glass gets, and the same amount of liquid doesn't fill it anymore. Periodically, the glass has to be refilled.

Some people will point to "The Passion of the Christ" as an insulting movie. They said it was anti-Semitic and that Mel Gibson makes it the Jews fault that Jesus was crucified. Gibson took precaution and actually tried to appease the Jewish leaders who approached him with their concerns.

But times have changed a little bit since 1999 when Dogma came out and even since 2004 when "The Passion" came out. First there were the insulting cartoons of the Prophet Mohammed. The responsibility of the cartoonist and the newspaper editors to make sure that what they are publishing is at least of some redeeming quality.These cartoons do nothing but aim to insult an entire segment of the population - they have no redeeming quality.

That brings me to what I want to write about: "The DiVinci Code." The movie comes out May 19 and will probably make $100 million or more. And it will make that amount of money solely because of its anti-Christian, more accurately, anti-Catholic theme.

This movie will have NO redeeming quality.

How can I say this if I haven't seen it? Well, I read the book. And being a book lover and hearing all the hype, I pored through it. But when I finished it, I thought, "This was a piece of crap." The writing was bad. The characters weren't characters, just poorly rendered stereotypes. The book was a "page turner" because the author cheated. He used a technique of short chapters accompanied by cliffhangers to get people to keep reading.

When I finished, I thought to myself, "Why did this book become so successful?" I pondered it for a few days, I knew the answer, but I guess I gave this country too much credit. But I came to the conclusion that the only answer for the book's success was its anti-Christian theme. The book basically calls Christ's divinity and as a result, Christianity, a sham. The protectors of this sham? Opus Dei - a strict Catholic order - and cardinals of the Catholic Church itself.

Then the book - and now the movie - claims that Christ became "divine" only after the Emperor Constantine declared it for political purposes. Yet, the earliest followers of Christianity professed Christ's divinity.

So I ask again. What made The DiVinci Code such a phenomenon? It was a phenomenon because in this postmodern culture we live in, truths are no more. People are looking for any reason to bring down established institutions. The book reinforced this generation's belief that cynicism is synonymous with intelligence. And people read this book with every cynical synapse in their brains going off - "I told you so," they told themselves.

It didn't matter that the book was filled with lies.

Opus Dei responded to the many false claims in the book. The villain in Dan Brown's book was an monk from Opus Dei who practiced mortification by tightening a belt or a chain, or something like that, whenever he felt the desire to sin. Well, Opus Dei has no monks. But they do believe in mortification, but not the type that Brown accuses the organization of committing.

In the area of mortification, Opus Dei emphasizes small sacrifices rather than extraordinary ones, in keeping with its spirit of integrating faith with secular life. For example, Opus Dei members try to make small sacrifices such as persevering at their work when tired, occasionally passing up some small pleasure, or giving help to those in need.

When the movie comes out on May 19 there is no way I will see it. People will accuse me of being narrow minded. They'll tell me that I should see it just to see another viewpoint. Keep in mind that these will be the same people who said, "I will never see 'Passion of the Christ.'"...On a side note, I remember that among my friends "Passion" became a litmus test. If you saw it, you were too radical. You were a religious zealot who oppressed other people...

Barbara Nicolosi's article says it perfectly about needing to see the movie.

Further, we absolutely do not need to see the film to talk about Jesus. No more than we need to see porn to talk about human sexuality. Or to read Mein Kampf to decide whether we can have an opinion about gassing Jews. Besides, it would be dignifying a really inane story. "The Da Vinci Code" is so ridiculous in its premises that it is giving it a false gravity to even take it seriously enough so as to argue about it.

Nicolosi suggests that everyone go to the movies on May 19, but not to see the DaVinci Code.

We need to bring our kids, our church groups, our youth ministry clubs, our seniors groups--and buy tickets for the homeless for after we feed them. And we all need to go to see THIS!

I'm in. Who's with me?