ANNOUNCEMENT

Breaking News

My e-book is out! The title is "Life, Love, and God in Montana". It's available for $2.95 from 1chapter.com.

Got to go to Northridge Heights Church of God tonight and during the course of the Bible Study I got my sermon for Saturday Morning.
:)

Big announcement for tonight coming. Watch this space. BTW, please sign my guestbook. No one has touched it in almost two months.

I added a page explaining how I was never an Independent Contractor for Don Cyphers to the Montana Fraud Association. I've also jazzed up the site with a brand new navigation bar at the bottom of every page (except the front page). Check it out and enjoy my site!

I finally won an award. Guy still hasn't linked me from the winner's list. Is it me or have awards gotten harder to win? My old site was really crummy but I still managed to win 20 awards and this one is a lot better I'm struggling just to get one.

Found one longer serving court: The Marshall Court (1812-1823) was together for 11 years between the appointment of Joseph Story and that of Smith Thompson with no changes at all. I found very few courts that were together for more than five or six years without a death or resignation leading to a new appointment. Depending on how long O'Connor, Stevens, and Rehnquist want to hang on, this court may make break a record. I hope not, but it could happen.

By the way, in that same article, it reads

We're going to see a philosophical revolution in the courts," said Bruce Fein, a Reagan administration lawyer. Though he said the courts will let stand the landmark Roe v. Wade decision because undoing it would be "too wrenching," he said Bush's nominees will impose a variety of new abortion restrictions.

Am I the only one who doesn't see how returning the abortion issue to the states would be wrenching at all? Regardless, federal judges unless they're Supreme Court Justices aren't going to be able to overturn Roe v. Wade.

Another thought occurred to me. Did you know that this Supreme Court has been together longer than the Backstreet Boys or N'Sync? They also survived the brief popularity of Hanson. They were together before Keenan and Kel of Nickelodeon fame got together. I'll have to do some research and find out how many courts have been together this long.

Read a distubring article in the Washington Post Online via the Drudge Report. According to this article, the President is nervous about Senator Lott's pledge that he will pass a Partial Birth Abortion Ban, fearing that it will look like he's been captured by "the party's idealogues". (what the Washington Post calls the men and women who spend their lives getting Republicans into office.

The White House line is that social conservatives must wait until later, while the Bush Administration advances other causes. Might, I ask a simple question. Why must social conservatives always be at the back of the bus? Why must the administration cater to the extreme homosexual lobby and the dying moderate wing of the Republican party while ignoring Christian Conservatives. If it weren't for abortion, where would Jim Talent be? Heck, Norm Coleman wouldn't even be a Republican if it weren't for the abortion issue.

Abortion was a winning issue for the GOP, yet the President is ready to spurn and delay our agenda in order to please the press and party moderates. The only way Christian Conservatives will ever get ahead in this party is if they take a firm stand and demand action on items of moral conscience, not in an unrealistic way but to get politicians to actually do what they're capable of. Until then, we'll constantly be this party's doormat.

Finally did some updating on the site. Included all my recent columns on the Baseball page. Also added a link exchange , and updated Living Water to include some extra links.

I've also completed most of the work on the e-book, I'll post a link soon but I want to wait until it's perfect which I hope will be soon. :)

One other thing I noticed in Deceived is that they played with a popular stereotype of Christians. The script author transformed the traditional Hollywood stereotype of the hypocritical Southern Fundamentalist preacher into a hypocritical Southern New Age preacher. i know it's a stereotype that works in the media, I'm very uncertain that it's a good one to perpetuate.

Then again, it could also be taken as a statement of the fact that people of all religions can be just as hypocritical as Christians are accused of being. It could also be trying to make the idea of the Southern preacher regional rather than theological.

Of course, the problem with this is that the stereotypical Southern preacher is also generally "Pentecostal". If you actually listen to ministers, you see there's a great difference in the way that Pentecostal and non-Pentecostal fundamentalists speak. The Pentecostals sound like the stereotypical Southern Preachers. It's a mystery why when Pentecostal preachers get excited they sound like they're from the Deep South even if they were born and raised in Nova Scotia and never been to the South. I find myself curious as to whether Pentecostals in Africa or Asia encounter this issue. :)

Of course, the generally negative portrayal underlies a truth that most minister (pentecostals or not) are doing the best they can serve the Lord despite their faults. That's one reason I really liked Robert Duvall's movie, "The Apostle". Despite it's faults, it portrayed someone who did his best to serve the Lord and his fellow man. Anyway, I'll end this post before this rant gets any longer.

Received the latest Covenant News and the feature link proclaimed "The Problem with Pastorettes-Women as Pastors is Not of God". I'm not technically sure if that title's grammatically correct, but I did read the article.

It was such a red-herring. The author writes, "A lot of dumb stuff is going on with some of these latter-day female clergy coming out of the woodwork." Well duh (or dah as he later spells it in the article), and a lot of dumb stuff is going on with a lot of our male clergy. Every time I read an article about a minister performing a homosexual "marriage", it's generally a man who's doing it.

The author basically gives a couple of examples of some out of whack liberal feminist ministers and Covenant News turns it into a case against women in the clergy. For the reasons above, I think that case is unconvincing. You will find many well-trained, well-schooled and fairly sound women in the pulpit. There is a case that can be made against them but the one presented in Covenant News was just total bologna.

Covenant News on occassion provides links to some interesting articles, but they're a bit on the fringe and at times I worry that some ill-informed souls will read that and think that this page represents the mainstream of the Christian Conservative movement. They are not.

Also watched Cloud Ten Pictures movie, "Deceived". I've got to admit that Cloud Ten is producing some quality films. This is the first one that I saw in which they moved away from the end times genre and I hear they have another one and I'll want to see that. The only criticisms I have of the movie are: 1) I left not knowing what the exact purpose of the film was, and 2) most of the movie was shot underground and the actresses wore flashy nail polish which caused a lot of glare at times. Still, it wasn't like watching, TBN's "The Champion" which left me totally and utterly disappointed. (That movie was supposed to bring people to Christ how?)

I guess the overall message that a choice needed to be made was a lot stronger than the Champion which was basically a remake of Rocky with marginal Christian content. Bottom line is that if it is available, rent (or buy) "Deceived" today. And thus they get free advertising. Not that anyone ever reads this but... :)

I'm recovering from Sleep Apnia (not spelled right I know). When you have Sleep Apnia, you don't dream much at all. As I've lost weight, I've started to dream more. All I seem to dream about is work. What exactly is the point of dreaming when all you can do is dream about work? *sigh*.

If you've got a few bucks, go and buy "Jesus Freaks" by DC Talk and Voice of the Martyrs. It's awesome (except for using the Message and CEV translations for some passages). I never used to be into Daily Devotionals but I needed something to do at work during the slow periods and found Promise Keepers "Men of Integrity" to be a great resource. After that one ran out and I don't have a subscription, I went ahead and bought this book so I'd have a devotional to read. I'm not sure if I'd consider it a devotional per se, though, more like an updated Foxe's Book of Martyrs. Still, it's easily worth the money.

Website promotion is getting frustrating. I'm not sure that going to every award on AwardSites.com is the best tactic to get my site promoted. There's got to be a better way. I haven't won one award. Of course, maybe the awards on AwardSites.com are so "good" that I can't win them. It's not so much a scary thought as a slightly depressing one. I know the site's a good one, I just need to find the right way to promote it.

Got a hair cut and too some new photos, including a new one for the main page. Take a peak at the front page with my new photo on it.

BTW, I really believe in those Community Gift Paks. That made them really easy to sell. I bought myself a book this year and I've already already used the book more than I paid for it. Today alone, I used $31 worth. The book cost $40 and I'd had a ton of fun with it before. I've gotten introduced to some great businesses including my barber and I may use this new lube place for my lube jobs. Folks if anyone from American West Community Promotions calls selling Gift Books and you've got $40 lying around. Say, "Yes." You'll get so much use out of them in a year, it's unbelievable.

Just finished my first month at my new job. (You know the one that pays me.) :) Praise the Lord, I think I may be in for a bonus. Not that that means anything to me. :)

Right now I'm also working on an E-book of poetry. While I'm somewhat reluctant about this whole e-book business, I don't believe there's much chance of selling a book of poetry any other way in this day and age.

Also considering what else to do with the site. I'm thinking of adding some commentaries on either Christian issues or Politics or both. I'm reluctant to do the self-publishing route though in either case. I spent a good 2 years self-publishing political articles and got amazingly few comments for my efforts. Then again, even though I'm on a cool site like fanstop.com, I haven't even gotten a piece of fan mail. I'd settle for hate mail, just to know I was getting some reaction.

If my wife and I had been born six years earlier, we could have jumped on the online bandwagon early like all the established sites (like commonconservative.com) but my last experience with a start-up was incredibly bad. Me and several writers were publishing on a pay-per-click web-server and a pay-per-click article server. Both went out of business and so ended my brief career in E-zines.

Self-promotion efforts haven't been too successful. I, think that most of the awards I've applied for have been down or something. Regardless, haven't heard a word from anybody.

I'll need to get a new picture for the front page, that one wasn't too great, plus I'm now sporting a beard and mustache (it'll keep my face warm during the Winter.).

I've filed some claims with the Labor Department on Don Cyphers. Haven't heard anything back yet. I'm hopeful though. A lady from there read the site and contacted me by e-mail and I called her. She seemed to think something could be done for me. I pray she's right.

Pray for Saturday's service, I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to preach but I know I'll sing, "I've Been Through the Water". I got it on a discount CD from Christian Book Supply and it's been stuck in my head ever since.

Just completed my tribute to my dad. This is the editted version after Dad gave me his "list of corrections".

Some updates.

1) Added the final page of my bio page and also a Big Page-o-Links.

Be watching Fanstop on Friday, I'm going to have a huge World Series preview (will write it tomorrow).

Added a Tithing Policy to Living Water Christian Fellowship , as well as a page about me and all of my Extraciricular Activities to the Bio Page

Added my college story to the bio page .