Belated Ruining of Valentine's Day to You

I used to pay David Pack a little bit more attention than I normally do today. There was a time when Pack seemed somewhat on the move, as if his ministry the Restored Church of God was heading to a nebulous destination. Then I snapped out of it. Mister Pack is hardly in the middle of being and becoming something. He already is and he's not going to change. All of his ranting is essentially theater. For an actor, he isn't badly paid.

For those of you not in the know, Pack's internet based cult is a split off of the Worldwide Church of God, an end of the world cult popular in the 1970s. Pack's own branch is one of perhaps 400 offshoots of this cult and is something of a middleweight with what seems to be about fifty paying members. Members of this church are expected to give Mister Pack about 24% of their net. Even though most of Pack's followers are at or near retirement age, this provides him with a pretty nice income stream. (Assuming all of the followers are netting 18K, this gives Pack a take of about 200k per year.) This may seem fairly piddly until you compare it to the income of a pastor in a similar sized church--the majority of whom would be unpaid.

Pack earns his money primarily by acting as a travel agency for one of the church's major festivals and by maintaining a website. Pack does indeed have a nice website. It's not 200K worth of nice, but it is nice. Having just tried to update my website extensively (more later) I know how time consuming this can be. Pack's website has a lot of built up static content--mostly the written works of David Pack pretending to channel Herbert W. Armstrong. Then there are several elements of dynamic content, by which I mean items that are updated frequently. This includes Dave's PDF magazine The Real Truth, Dave's audio sermon series and a video feed style television show. Other than the above, the church seems to have no other functions than to pay rent on Dave's swank headquarters. As a point of thrift, Dave shares his nicely appointed offices with a law firm.

Besides forgetting about Pack, I had also forgotten about Valentine's Day. I had planned to do a historical piece on how the romance pulps played the day up. Believe it or not, I do try to plan these little writing assignments ahead of time. It was on my list. It just didn't get done. The entire Valentine's Day thing entirely slipped my mind--which may tell you a little bit more about me than I normally like to reveal. (Because I am so mysterious.)

I did eventually remember Pack and took a trip to his wonderful website. Lucky for us all, The Real Truth has not forgotten Valentine's Day at all. They were nice enough to issue this warning about the dread day, a portion of which I will share with you. The author is not Pack himself, but rather Pack Flock member Vidal N. Wachuku.

On the eve of Lupercalia, February 14, a holiday in honor of Juno, queen of the gods and patroness of marriage, was held. As part of the celebration, a “love lottery” took place, in which the city’s bachelors drew a young maiden’s name from a jar and became paired with her for the duration of the festival. The new couples were then often sexual partners for the rest of the year.

Unless I am misreading this, Vidal said all of that like it was a bad thing. As arranged marriages go, this doesn't seem like that bad of a set up. Nothing seems to compel the couple to stay together for a year. And it doesn't say what happens if the couple decides to stay together after that. I would explore this further, but it seems that nothing Vidal said is, in point of fact, in any way historically accurate.* Unfortunately history is just not one of the RCG's strong suits.

(In another little error, the RCG fails to mention that Dave Pack was kicked out of the Global Church of God before founding the RCG and that he is the only living person to have ever been disfellowshipped from the Living Church of God without ever having been a member.)

Having crapped out with the past, let us see how Vidal does with the present...

Today, the holiday continues as a time to promote manufactured love—filled with trite greeting cards and ubiquitous heart-shaped candies. Many people feel obligated by societal expectations to buy gifts and send Valentine cards to loved ones. Others mark the day by indulging in casual sex.

I knew there was something I should have done.

Not to mock Vidal here, but what planet is he from? For those in a relationship, Valentine's Day is anything but casual. And I can think of very few people who are not in a relationship who "mark the day by indulging in casual sex" unless it is with themselves.

Speaking of sex with myself and other expletives, I was not at all able to update my website during the past 3 day weekend. This was not for lack of effort. I have a lot of material to add as well as migrate from the other server. I intend to have a partial done fairly soon.

Let's just say that the HIL-GLE website is evolving at the same pace as the new Newsweek. If you have seen Newsweek lately, the only thing new about it is that it has gotten thinner and, until this last issue, more prone to using spot color covers. From what has come to light, a fight has broken out between Dr. Sidney Harmon, the guy who bought Newsweek (albeit for a dollar), Tina Brown, the woman who runs the Daily Beast (and who once flamboyantly did nothing as editor of the New Yorker before heading off to start up a magazine that failed) and Barry Diller, a money man who sees something in Tina Brown that the rest of the universe does not. What follows is the slappy fight:

Those talks fizzled in part because Mr. Harman felt the agreement diminished his role in the editorial process, which is what drew him to Newsweek in the first place.

Mr. Harman said in an interview that earlier negotiations stalled because of a "series of misunderstandings" that included the nature of his role. Mr. Harman said he expects to be more involved in the editorial process than he understood the earlier deal would have allowed.

"I have every instinct, and Tina has blessed this, to be a participant in terms of sharing and discussing ideas, but recognizing where the editorial authority simply must stay," Mr. Harman said.

Harman also told WSJ that some layoffs would come from both companies. The Daily Beast's staff will move from the Frank Gehry-designed IAC Building on West 18th Street to Newsweek's soon-to-be new offices in the Financial District

Hmm. Let's see. You haven't printed Issue One yet and you're already talking about laying off staff. Best of luck keeping people or attracting talent. I wonder what the Vegas odds are on there never being a new Newsweek. If this is what Dr. Harmon thought he getting into, then he paid too much.

*Some individual facts are correct, but the context is so jumbled that his statement is inaccurate in any rational light.

My feature on Anthony Norvell, Astrologer to the Stars is still in research mode. It may or may not be our next post.