Our Government Goes Too Far This Time

The following is from an email I received from my father this morning. I hope that not just all Christians who read this, but all U.S. citizens concerned about their rights, will sign the petition linked below. We cannot allow this injustice to stand.

Christian chaplains are being told NOT to pray in the name of Jesus! For more, read below from the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ):

A pattern of hostility to free speech - specifically the rights of Christians to pray - is on the rise in our country.

We saw it in our nation's public schools ... where prayer was officially banned. We have seen it in our workplaces.

Now, our United States military seems to have ''jumped on the bandwagon'' ... with Air Force leadership recently releasing proposed guidelines that will restrict how Air Force chaplains can pray.

If approved, these guidelines may well be implemented throughout the entire Armed Forces.

Already, it is documented that chaplains are ''feeling the heat'' to restrict their prayers and mask their faith.

Christian chaplains are being told NOT to pray in the name of Jesus!

For many Christian chaplains, praying in the name of Jesus is a fundamental part of their beliefs. To suppress this form of expression would be a violation of their constitutional rights and religious freedoms.

Furthermore, to censor Christian chaplains is a disservice to the thousands of Christian soldiers in the military who look to their chaplains for comfort, inspiration, and support ... just as military soldiers of other faiths look to their chaplains.

Again, we cannot allow these proposed guidelines to be passed. We cannot sit idly by while our honored Christian military chaplains are singled out and silenced.

The American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ) has assembled a senior legal team, including a 20-year military veteran who worked at the Pentagon. They are drafting a legal analysis and comments to be used in this process.

Thankfully, a group of Congressmen has joined together to call on the President to protect by Executive Order the constitutional right of military chaplains to pray according to their faith.

To sign a petition to help prevent these restrictions from being imposed on Christian chaplains, you can sign the petition at the link below:

Sign here

Ride the Mule!

What's going on? I invite you to my brand new blog site. Once there, you're free to speculate about it as much as you want, but I'm still not going to tell you what it's all about. Ha!

The Mississippi State Fare

No, that's not a typo in my Title.

Liz and I attended the Mississippi State Fair this weekend. We'd spent 15 bucks before we were even through the gate. Five dollars for parking and an additional ten for admittance (5 apiece). Once you're inside, there is nothing you can do that doesn't cost you money (except maybe to visit the bathroom, but I didn't visit one while I was there, so who knows?). Each ride requires you to use coupons, which are available at ticket booths, spaced about 20 feet apart from each other for easy access. These coupons sell for $1 each, and a decent ride goes for at least four coupons.
After getting into the fair, buying a candy apple, a chicken-on-a-stick, a root beer, and a plastic green alien full of fruit punch, we'd spent $31. All this was under ten minutes. We decided very quickly that we weren't going to ride any of the rides. The ones we wanted to ride were 5 coupons, so for the two of us to ride one two-minute ride, it would have cost us ten bucks.
We did go see "the world's smallest horse" and the "elephant skin dog," however. At 50 cents to see each one, we figured we were getting a deal. The horse was actually a dwarf pony, and the dog was a breed of dog known as a "Xolo," or "Pila." We also observed the zedonk, a hybrid cross between--you guessed it--a zebra and a donkey.
We spent our remaining fair funds to see a movie. We would never have made it through 2 more hours at the fair with what we had left.
Incidentally, I did manage to win Liz a stuffed animal. It only cost twice as much to win it as it would have cost me at Toys R Us.

You're About to be Eaten by a Grue

Ever wanted to write your own text adventure? The first text adventure I ever played was a game called Zork. You've no doubt heard of it, as it's probably the most well-known text adventure ever compiled. It was written by Dave Lebling and Marc Blank of Infocom, and released in 1980.
By the by, you can download the first three Zork games at Infocom's website, for Mac or Windows.
For those of you who think you can write a better game, or at least want to try it out, there are a number of open source tools scattered around the Internet for doing just that. One that I've been playing with is called Text World, a freeware utility that enables you to create simple text adventures with as many as 500 rooms, and four items per room. The space allowed for describing objects and rooms is a bit limited, but by limiting your creative juices a bit, you can most likely get all you need to fit inside the space alotted.
Text World was created by an entity known as White Divine, though some suspect that this person may really be Mickey Crocker (the copyright holder).
White's utility resides on a site run by a fellow named Bryan, who keeps a pretty constant blog. He also has an extensive collection of text games and utilities, if you're looking to kill some time with the grandpappies of modern gaming.