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

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!

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.

Resume, the Blog

Still haven't figured out how to put the little dash above the e, but I finished the resume (kind of an oxymoron). I didn't think it would take that long, but I'm generally satisfied. Now, all I have to do is get it checked, returned, rewrite it, find the 'sweet' jobs, send them out, talk nice to jerks, do some interviews, bargain for salary and benefits, and I'm in. It's like I'm practically there! Huzzah!

A Day In Georgia

So I did finally make it to Georgia!! In a record for the books, I made the whole drive in a day, only stopping at a gas station for a 40-minute nap. I was pretty excited to get a move on, and every time I got tired, I thought about laying in a hotel bed, staring at the ceiling, thinking about how I could've been driving. Let me tell you, I don't think we as humans were made to drive 16+ hours in one go. Now that I've done it, I can say for sure that it shouldn't be done!!

I'm really surprised at how many people here that I remember from over three years ago. The bad part is that my memory has never been really good, so the names haven't all quite come back, but I'll just do what I normally do (every day) and try to talk to everyone without using their names, until there's a wear-a-nametag-to-church day. I'm really bad at remembering names. I couldn't remember my wife's name for nearly four months! (After I first met her! Not after we got married!)

Nevertheless, things are great here. I couldn't tell you how great it is to be reunited with my wife and dog after so long, and to realize that I'm no longer in Army's employ (for now). Still, with all of the 'newness' of this place, I'm finding that I'm still pretty scatterbrained, so there won't be any good postings for a short bit.

Just trust that God delivers on His promises!

The Final 48

So now I'm down to the last 48 hours in Army, and most likely Manhattan, KS as well. Needless to say, it's quite exciting, and I'm finding it very hard to concentrate. Maybe later I'll be able to explain more, but my attention span has been extremely short as of late.

Laters.

Colloquialisms, Euphemisms, and Idioms

So a friend and I had a discussion on the difference between colloquialisms, euphemisms, and idioms, and we couldn't come to a proper conclusion. I did some quick homework and found out (and they are not interchangeable):

Colloquialism - Informal or familiar language, such as contractions and slang ("Y'all come back now, hear?")

Euphemism - A metaphor whose literal meaning is dropped; often used as curse word substitutions, acronyms, or to 'soften' a literal meaning (i.e., IRA, dang, "passed on" instead of "died")

Idiom - A phrase whose meaning cannot be inferred by literal definition, and can only be known through common use ("that's the way the cookie crumbles," "wrong side of the tracks," etc)

So, now you know, and you don't have to lose any sleep over it, but YMMV. (I used all three in that sentence!)

Being Sick Is No Fun

For real. It's kind of hard to concentrate too hard on something for too long, so I'm going on blog-strike until I feel better. Maybe that way I can stick it to the man. Or, sickness. Or the sick-man.

Trogdor!

Oh, man...it's still funny after all these years.



Check out the site here for more hilarity.

NSTP #1 (Nothing Substantial To Post)

I'm having a creative crisis, it seems, so here's something to hold the masses over. Be careful, you may want to read this post and have a nerdular affinity before clicking play.

Wikipedia

Let me tell you, one of the best things the wwweb has going for it is Wikipedia. I guess it started getting big back when I was in school, and it was bashed a lot for being inaccurate and unreliable. As far as purely academic standards go, I think that's a good rule of thumb, but it works wonders for any other situation.
I was perusing through the Wikipedia standards of conduct, and I must say it's pretty extensive; I was sure surprised. Let's say you add a new page, or edit another that's already been made--all of that gets logged in a companion 'history' page, along with your IP address and login name, and it goes through several robotic tests just to make sure you didn't do anything dumb. But, of course, it takes another person who knows what they're talking about to come along to dispute what you've said. Now with the large number of Wikipedia crew, as well as non-paid devotees, they're very quick to point out if your edits need sources or if it falls short of the standards--there's even a rating method for how well-researched pages are.
So, not very good for writing papers, but absolutely excellent for 'information on demand' type queries. Lets say, you hear something about Don LaFontaine passing away (we'll miss you bro), and you want to find out more. I guarantee there's going to be an absolute smorgasbord of information there, and depending on how important the rest of the world considers that topic, you'll have pretty recent information.
So if you've been living under a rock that doesn't have wi-fi, go to Panera or something with ye olde laptop and look something obscure up--chances are you won't be disappointed. If you are, just edit it!