New Year's Resolutions

I thought I would write about how much I don't like New Year's Resolutions, but for once, maybe I'll be a bit nicer. Recently, it was pointed out to me that I seem to 'not like' things more than most people. So perhaps I'm more discreet about what I formally approve than your average bear, or maybe I really like 'not liking' things. Anyway, I think I gave more than one person too many the wrong idea. (It's okay, I didn't really like them anyway.)

So, in a rare move for goodwill towards men indirectly related to New Year's Resolutions, I've devised the following two lists...

The first list are for those persons or entities who were at one time or another officially declared 'not liked' by yours truly, but have been granted a pardon (in full) from the aforementioned declaration. The recipients include:

• Derek Webb
• Francis A. Schaeffer
• The International House of Pancakes
• The Coca-Cola Company and Its Products
• John McCain
• Rob Bell
• Joel Osteen
• Bill O'Reilly
• Jon and Kate (plus their eight)
• The Army
• Really Long (and Repetitive) Books by John Piper
• The Six-Hour A&E Presentation of Pride & Prejudice (starring Colin Firth)
• Trigonometry
• People Who Speed (to include my beloved wife)
• George W. Bush
• Black Olives
• People Who Have Sent Me Chain Mail in the Past
• The Auburn University Collegiate Football Team
• People Who Disapprove of Me Wearing the Auburn University Collegiate Football Team's Officially Merchandised Ball Cap That I Got For Christmas

The second list are for those persons or entities who were at one time or another officially declared 'not liked' by yours truly, and unfortunately have not been granted pardon at this time. However, all listed entities may reapply at a later date for next year's New Year's Not Liked Pardon List. They include:

• Monopoly and All Licensed Spin-offs and Reprints
• Bethany Dillon
• Rush Limbaugh
• Enya
• 24 (Not the number, the TV Show)
• Ray Vander Laan
• Sarah Palin
• Joe Wurzelbacher
• Nancy Grace
• Wells Fargo
• The TV Show(s) Featuring The Duggars
• Sean Hannity
• Dogs Weighing Less than 20 Lbs. Fully Grown
• People Who Like to Be Loud Outside Late at Night
• Seinfeld (the TV Series)
• Open-Mouthed Chewers
• Imaginary Numbers (which somehow exist yet aren't real)
• l33tspeak and the haX0rs Who Use Them
• The Color Purple
• Door-to-Door Cable Salesmen (and women)
• People Who Keep Sending Me Chain Mail
• Green Olives
• Butternut Squash
• Arachnids
• N'SYNC (even after all these years)
• The Lifetime Movie Network
  
• New Year's Resolutions

The Need For Motivation

I sure hope everyone had a good Christmas this year--I definitely did! Don't know why, but the season of giving, or hope, or 50% off sales wasn't really motivating me to blog, but now I've seen something that changes everything. If you ever needed motivation to do something, well, here it is:

Now sally forth and do great things!

GWAPTASTIC!

 

So, found this some time ago, but I figure I should let out the secret. There's a free game site (www.gwap.com) that has some pretty addicting games. It should also be noted that my wife enjoys them too. Here's a couple of my favorites:

Verbosity - You and random partner #1 take turns trying to describe and guess a secret word, much like the party game Taboo. The describer has only a few specific clues that they can write, such as "is like ____", "found in ____", etc, and can tell the guesser whether they're hot or cold.

ESP Game - You and random partner #2 look at the same photograph and must think of words to describe it. Name words like crazy until both of you come up with the same word, score a point, and move on to the next picture.

Tag a Tune - You and random partner #3 listen to music, and must describe what you're listening to. Is your partner listening to the same music? Both you and random partner must decide. Get a point if you're right.

If they don't sound like fun, you must have no imagination, and should check it out just to prove me wrong. But here's the neat part of the games. Ever wonder how, if you do an image search on a search engine, how it knows to show a tree when you type "tree"? It's two types of unrelated data, and the computer can't tell if the .jpg it's storing has a "tree" at all. Some poor sap had to come along and tell the computer that image has a "tree." (It's the same with music, and word comprehension; the computer can not associate.) It would take too much time and money for one person to do that to the billions of pictures on the web...unless you turned it into a game, and made other people do all the work for free!

Brilliant! I guess that's why they call it Games With A Purpose. So go, try it out, and have fun making computers so smart they take over the world.

CTS Opens the Worldwide Classroom

I just received an email today from Covenant Theological Seminary--seems they're offering 20 free 'classes' (recorded lectures and notes) for personal education.

Check it out here!

I know not everybody's a nerd, much less a Jesus nerd, but I'm super stoked about it. I've heard about this stuff being available before, and I'm sure it is, but this is the first I've actually seen and heard it.

Most of it looks like pretty good stuff. Well, except for two classes dedicated to understanding the man, the myth, the legend, Francis A. Schaeffer. I'm not a big "Christian Right" guy, so me and him would probably have it out. But the rest of the stuff seems really neat! Anyway, check 'em out!

Oh, Holy Night

I'm not sure if this has ever happened to you yet: There's a song you've heard many times before, but then one day you hear it recorded or sung in just a way that it brings tears to your eyes, and you can never hear it again in the same way...

Well, this is true for me and the hymn "O, Holy Night." I haven't found a good way to put straight audio in my blog, so you'll have to do with a video.

You can find more about this rendition at the Burnside Writers Collective.

Beer Me Another 75 Years!!

If you didn't know it, today's the 75th anniversary of the passing of the Twenty-first Amendment. It repealed the infamous Eighteenth Amendment, otherwise known as the Volstead Act, otherwise known as the Prohibition.

Praise the Lord. Let me tell you, beer, when made properly, is absolutely wonderful. I'm not a big liquor guy, mainly because of what shall henceforth be referred to as the "Jagermeister Incident of '01." No, I won't tell you about it, but I will hint that it happened in college, and I was building my testimony at the time, and that I can't stomach liquor anymore. But beer, my, that's good stuff.

So, in honor of 75 years of hops, malted barley, fermentation, and moderationism, I submit to you one of the better drinks I've ever encountered. It's not quite a family recipe, but it's most certainly a family favorite. I bestow upon you...

The Snakebite

Pour yourself 1/2 a glass of your preferred hard cider (I will recommend Hornsby's Amber Draft) making sure not to let it head (foam up). Then get a bent spoon and "float" (or pour on the spoon in the glass above the cider to layer it on top) 1/2 a glass of a heavy lager (Guinness Stout for this one). Use the other halves to make another one, and give it to your buddy. Cheers, and give praise to the Lord, for He is Good!

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Farewell, Dear Beard...

...I hardly knew ye. After getting some hard jabs from the family about how unprofessional beards were, I made the tough decision to let it go for a while--at least until I got another job.

It was great while it lasted, and the more it grew, the more I liked it! Sure, it was only a month, but it felt great.

So, in retrospection, I took a gander on what Wikipedia had to say about the History of the Beard, and it was pretty interesting! Here's some things to think about:

• The Spartans punished cowards by shaving off a portion of their beards.
• The Lombards derived their fame from the great length of their beards (Longobards - Long Beards - Langbarten). When Otho the Great said anything serious, he swore by his beard, which covered his breast.
• When a priest became convinced of the doctrines of the Protestant Reformation he would often signal this by allowing his beard to grow, showing that he rejected the tradition of the church and perhaps also its stance on clerical celibacy. The longer the beard, the more striking the statement.
• Veterans of the French Emperor's Army were known as "Vieux Moustaches" (Old Moustaches), while greener conscripts were forbidden to grow them, thus making them especially coveted and prestigious.
• "For God wished women to be smooth and to rejoice in their locks alone growing spontaneously, as a horse in his mane. But He adorned man like the lions, with a beard, and endowed him as an attribute of manhood, with a hairy chest--a sign of strength and rule." St. Clement of Alexandria, 2.275
• "A kiss without a moustache, is like soup without salt." - Breton saying.