Thursday, December 30, 2004

Too lazy to think up a title

Something I guess I haven't really mentioned before is that ours is a family of theatre geeks. Pretty soon after my little brother, Eric, finished in the show The Boxcar Children, some of us went and auditioned for the next show, Alice in Wonderland. And, wouldn't you know it, most of us got in. Of course, considering that four of us auditioned I don't know that that's really surprising, but anyway...my sister got the part of the Queen of Hearts, and she's really happy about that. It's obvious that she's just been waiting and waiting to play a sociopathic, Guillotine-happy queen. I, for my part, get to be the Mad Hatter and will have to wear a hat that's about half the size of my body. Eesh. However, on the plus side, I know I'll definitely also have fun playing a crackpot.
Yay fer us!

Tuesday, December 28, 2004

ChickenWire

Well, the site about Jack Chick I mentioned in my last post is up. It isn't anywhere near finished, but the homepage is finished and the rest is clicking along smoothly. I take that as reason enough to show it off ;)
Anyway, in case anyone is interested (I know you're just dyin' to see it), click on the following link and visit Project ChickenWire (also equipped with a ridiculously long AngelFire URL). Hope y'all like it.

Sunday, December 26, 2004

Heigh ho, heigh ho, back to the drawing board we go

A while back, I made a site with Freewebs.com which was dedicated to debunking the idiotic claims of Jack Chick, who is, for those who don't know, an exceptionally paranoid fundamentalist Protestant publisher. Visit his site and you'll see what I mean. Anyway, I more or less finished the site, and I was pretty proud of it, and justifiably so, I think. But after it had been hanging around doing nothing for several months, I, in an act of terribly bad foresight, deleted the site. After checking out some of Chick's stuff again and being reminded of what an idiot he is, I've decided to make that site again, this time with Angelfire.
So, anyway, because I'll be working on that, posts may once again become few and far between. Or maybe not. I dunno.
P.S. By the way, my other (much weirder) idea--see the post "Am I Nuts?"--has been done. You can see it here, although it's not much to look at.

Friday, December 24, 2004

Do I really need to put a title here?


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Yes, this is a day early, but we're all going to be busy tomorrow, anyway:

MERRY CHRISTMAS TO ALL!

I hope you all have family, friends, and fun this Christmas, and be glad the ACLU hasn't yet changed it to "The Universal Winter Solstice Holiday," or some other such hogwash.


Thursday, December 23, 2004

Not a geek? No!

Well, I finally waltzed on over to Thudfactor and took their (in)famous geek quiz. Here be the results:

You are 15% geek
OK, so maybe you ain't a geek. You do, at least, show a bit of interest in the world around you. Either that, or you have enough of a sense of humor to pick some of the sillier answers on the test. Regardless, you're probably a pretty nifty, well-rounded person who gets along fine with people and can chat with just about anyone without fear of looking stupid or foolish or overly concerned with minutiae. God, I hate you.

Take the Polygeek Quiz at Thudfactor.com




Soo...he hates me and I look like Ahhnold.
Yow.

Am I nuts?

You know how sometimes you get an idea that's so weird you can't tell if it's the product of sheer genius or sheer stupidity, or neither? I've had one of those. Here's the idea, and the more I think about it, the dumber it seems:
Say I create a new blog. ("Yeah, great, okay, what happens next?") Then, upon creating the blog, I tinker around with its HTML so that the password and username I'd use to log into the site are displayed at the top of the page ("You idiot!!"). Why would I do something so stupid?
Well, in the little "About" box that's on every Blogger blog, I write what the purpose of this particular--and now minimal security--blog is. You see, the blog wouldn't be for me. In the "About" box, I would invite any and all visitors to this blog to use the provided password and username to log into the blog's account and post anything on the blog.
Ooh, yeah, this is really starting to sound stupid. Would Blogger even let me do that, or would they delete the blog immediately upon discovering that I had displayed it's password for all to see?
Anyhoo, where was I...? Oh, yeah.
I'd leave the blog and not check back up on it for, say, a couple months to see if there are any posts on it not written by me. Simple and stupid. My kinda plan.
Actually, now that I think about it, it sounds like it would be an interesting experiment. Sure, why not? Full steam ahead, I say, Blogger permitting.
What think, readers?

Wednesday, December 22, 2004

Haloscan!

If I have any complaint about Blogger's service, it's that the commenting system is pretty tedious. I finally figured out (well, was told, actually-thanks, Brian) how to get Haloscan commenting and trackback on this site, so, here it is.
P.S. Sorry to all those folks who commented, as your comments were unavoidably deleted in the process.
P.P.S. Anyone have an inkling what trackback is?

Tuesday, December 21, 2004

Just 'cuz it's funny

I realize this has absolutely nothing to do with anything, but it just cracked me up, so here's a link to it:

Gus Openshaw: The Modern Captain Ahab

In fact, I think I'll make a link to this on the sidebar, like, now. It's just too *snort* funny not to.

Monday, December 20, 2004

Christmas is getting cranked

I'm sure most readers out there are painfully aware of the great hullabaloo being raised about the attampted secularization of Christmas going on. Naturally, I believe that Christmas started out Christian, and it should stay that way. I'm not sure of all the conspiracy theories floating around that people like the ACLU* are out to destroy Christianity, but they sure are looking that way. Anyhoo, I've been thinking about posting about all this stuff, but, fortunately, Bill O'Reilly has done it for me:

"Christmas with the Kranks" is not only the name of a holiday movie this year, it is also a national trend. Once again, Christmas is under siege by the growing forces of secularism in America. Put these facts in your stocking:

# Federated Department Stores, which includes Macy's, has suggested that managers avoid displaying "Merry Christmas" banners and have ordered employees not to talk about it.

# In Denver, a church was banned from the "Festival of Lights" parade because it wanted a religious theme to its float.

# The Maplewood, N.J., school board has banned all religious music from "holiday" concerts. (Would somebody please tell me exactly what holiday this is?)

# And New York City Mayor Bloomberg insists that the lighted tree outside City Hall is not a Christmas tree, it's a holiday tree. (What holiday, Mr. Mayor?)

Surveys show that more than 90 percent of Americans celebrate the federal holiday of Christmas, signed into law by President Grant in 1870. Despite that overwhelming number, the tradition of Christmas in America continues to get hammered.

The anti-Christmas forces say it's all about diversity, protecting the sensitivities of those Americans who get offended by the mere mention of the birth of Jesus. Somehow I haven't been able to locate any of these people; folks who find a baby in a manger so off-putting it ruins their day.

So the diversity excuse is a bunch of bull. What's really going on here is a well-organized movement to wipe out any display of organized religion from the public arena.

The secular-progressive movement understands very well that it is organized religion, most specifically Christianity and Judaism, that stands in the way of gay marriage, partial birth abortion, legalized narcotics, euthanasia, and many other secular causes. If religion can be de-emphasized in the USA, a brave new progressive society can be achieved.

It has happened in Canada. Once a traditional religious country, Canada has become like Holland in its embrace of the secular movement. Some facts: In 1980, 79 percent of Canadians said that religion was important to the country. That number has now fallen to 61 percent, according to an Environics Focus Canada poll.

In 1971, less than one percent of the Canadian population reported having no religion whatsoever; now that number has risen to 16 percent.

The fall of religion in Canada has corresponded to a change in public policy. Unlike Americans, Canadians have legalized gay marriage and any kind of abortion. Also, the age of consent for sex up north is just 14 years old. Can you imagine American adults being allowed to fool around with children that age? I can't.

Even drug legalization is close to being a reality as the city of Vancouver is developing a heroin giveaway policy and pot has been largely decriminalized across the country.

The Canadian model is what progressive Americans are shooting for, and, so, religion must be dealt with. Since Christmas is the most demonstrative display of organized religion, the strategy of minimizing the birth of Jesus makes perfect sense.

I know this sounds kind of conspiratorial, but it really isn't. Most of those marginalizing Christmas have no idea about the big picture I've just presented. They simply think they're looking out for the minority of Americans who don't celebrate the birth of Christ.

But committed secularists in the media, in the courts and in the education system, know exactly what's going on. And now so do you. Merry Christmas!


That's more or less (mostly less, I guess) the gist of what I'd have said, only Bill O'Reilly's smarter than a 14-year-old.

*Some clever commentor on some other conservative blog called them "All Crazy Lunatics Unite". Pretty fitting, don't you agree?



Well, so much for THAT idea

*sigh* Stupid RPG's. I was looking forward to making a pest of myself in the virtual world, but when I try to start a Runescape game, all I get is a stupid little blue page with the Java logo and one of those shoot the criminal/tank/killer kangaroo-and-get-a-free-iPod ads. Bugger.
Along with this, I tried downloading a demo for Myst 4 and that ain't working either. Gaaarr!! (If you don't know what Myst 4 is, click on that link there and for heaven's sake educate yourself).
Sorry that this post is just a complaint and isn't of any value otherwise. Feel free to ignore it.

Friday, December 17, 2004

Yaaayyy....!

Ah, one of my favorite days of the year is the Friday before Christmas Break starts...and here it is. Goody gumdrop! Or, perhaps, in the words of some rather odd friends/acquaintances of mine (I have a lot of those)--WOOT! Gotta love Christmas Break...
Some other good news. Ideas for blog posts have started popping back into my head again, so you may actually see things start happening around here (No! You're kidding!). Something else interesting...
I have never been much of an RPG person, or, really, any kind of game person for that matter, with the exception of Myst.
But since vacations can tend to get boring, I cooked up a little plan to keep myself entertained. I'm sure most all my readers have heard of Runescape. I just went ahead and signed up for it, and as soon as I can figure out how the &@#!! thing works, I plan to join the vast universe of virtual gaming and make a pest of myself to fellow players *cackles evilly*, you know, by following them around until they snap and yell at me, that sort of thing. Should be fun. Heh heh heh...

Tuesday, December 14, 2004

Wonder what a malt ball symbolizes?

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Today in school I picked up some interesting info regarding the candy cane. Apparently, it was created by some guy, Christian, obviously, who wanted to make a candy representing Jesus. Weird sense of ambition he had. Anyway...
Pretty much all parts of the candy cane symbolize something, except for, funnily enough, it's flavor. The shape, when turned one way, is that of a sheperd's crook. I'm sure we're all familiar with the Jesus/shepherd analogy. Then, turn it the other way, and whaddya know, it becomes a J, as in (duh) Jesus. The white represents Jesus' purity, and the original pattern of stripes represents Jesus' Passion and death. The original pattern is the one you commonly find today, one bold red stripe and three smaller red ones. The three small ones are the lashings Jesus received at the Scourging at the Pillar, and the big one is the blood he spilled at the actual crucifixion.
Just an interesting, if somewhat unimportant, factoid in the spirit of the holidays.

Saturday, December 11, 2004

[Insert another title here]

Well, ho hum. I seem to be suffering the worst case of, um, "Blogger Blahs" in a long time. However, it's showing signs of getting better, as shown by this post being here. Sooo...
A belated bit of news. My little brother, Eric, along with another brother, Chris, got himself landed in a play, the Boxcar Children.
And he has one of the main parts, too. For those who read this book way back when and are somewhat familiar with it, he plays Benny, the youngest of the four Boxcar Children.

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There's my brother, the little imp on the far right. Aaawwwww.....
Not a great picture of the four of them (five, counting the dog), but it was the best I could scrounge up quickly.
They opened last night, and of course, the whole family went to see it. It was a pretty good show, I don't think anyone forgot lines or anything, and I must say, the hobos in the show, who make up more than half the cast, were impressive. Great costumes/makeup. My one complaint is that scene changes were happening ALL the TIME and it gets a tad tedious, but other than that, it was quite good.

I'm not really sure why my interest in blogging seems to have died. Possibly because I've been doing other things on the Internet and stuff that...demand (not really) my attention for the moment. Between sniffing around for ways to promote this site, trying to handle HTML so I can possibly change the template to my specifications, and joining the folks on Bloghogger in a game of verbal Ping-Pong with this forty-something gay guy who has to argue with any political statement anyone makes, it's been a trifle busy, I guess (gasp, gasp, how's that for a run-on sentence?).
The "forty something gay guy" calls himself "God of Biscuits". He first visited Bloghogger almost a month ago, and ever since, he's been arguing with everything of a political nature said on the site. He's like a dog with a bone.
To his credit, he's made some good arguments, but, at the risk of sounding conceited, someone over there has almost always been able to refute them. Of course, he just refutes back, hence, the Ping-Pong.
Anyway, I think that's all the babbling for today. Thank you, you've been a wonderful audience.

Friday, December 03, 2004

[Insert Title Here]

I seem to be experiencing a lull in my interest in blogging. Not like I'm about to say something like "Oooh, it's all soo stupid!", and delete this site, or something like that, it's just that inspiration for posts hasn't been coming to me of late. Eventually, (hopefully) it will pass, and my posting will stop being so sporadic and stuff.
While I may not be posting much on this site, I may be making template changes and stuff, so, stay tuned for that. This is pretty much all I have to say. Kinda boring, I know, but life's like that sometimes.
P.S. If you haven't left me any comments to make me aware of your existence, please, LEAVE COMMENTS!!!