Thursday, January 31, 2013

THE STRAY CHILD ON WATTPAD

I was cruising around Wattpad today when I came across a story that looked like it was written for children. I thought, "That's cool that a children's author is coming on this site. I haven't seen anything of that genre on here before." After a little further reading of the story, I found out the story was actually written by a child.

Wattpad has a rule you can't join if you're under thirteen, because goodness knows age restrictions are such an effective tool at stopping people from doing things on the internet. I would peg the author of this particular story at about nine years of age. It sounded like the child really wants to be an author, and I wish them well at this endeavour. However, this story is written in the typical style of a nine year old or thereabouts.

In an age where anyone can be an author or a singer or what have you and have an instant stage for what they're presenting, it means stuff will get out there that really shouldn't get out there. Maybe in a few years this child will produce some stories that really blow people away, but for now they're a typical nine year old or whatever, as far as their writing is concerned anyway. This is the age where they should be writing their stories for the fun of it and not putting them on social networking sites where trolls and other neferrious kinds of people will make fun of them.

Monday, January 28, 2013

RADIO-RELATED STUFF

Good to hear "Star Date" on WBBM. I haven't heard it for years, ever since I used to listen to it on The WRVO Playhouse.

CBC Radio 2 was coming in really well from last night till I changed the station tonight.

Picked up Kruz-fm (CKRU-fm) tonight with commercials.

DON'T BE LATE!! -- SONG CIRCLE AT THE BEAUFORT

Hey up!


The Acoustic Song Circle @ the Beaufort Pub in Belleville is rolling round again.

This coming Monday (January 28th), starting at 6 pm and running through the evening until we’re done. Bring your instruments, your voices and your music. It’s all unplugged and it’s all good!

Through rain or hail or wind or snow (and even days of freezing cold!), the Acoustic Song Circle happens the 2nd and 4th Mondays of each month. If you didn’t join us last time around, you were missing out; it may be time to shake a leg and come on down....

Thanks to Kim and Taryn and the wonderful staff at the Beaufort for the welcome and the space to get together and play. The Beaufort Pub, 173 Dundas St. E. (South side of Dundas at the East end of the TSC Plaza).

Our friend Mr. Paul King being away down south, sampling the delights of the ‘Redneck Riviera’; we’ll be keeping his seat warm in absentia and the circle ‘unbroken’ until he returns.

Any questions? Drop me an email or give me a call.

Looking forward to see you this Monday evening.

Friday, January 25, 2013

INTERNET STUFF

I rejoined Fiverr. Figured I might as well give it one more kick at the can.

Good to see short stories on Wattpad.

Speaking of Wattpad, why is teen fiction categorized under humour in the emails I get from them?

Wednesday, January 23, 2013

YOUR LOCAL EMERGENCY ROOM WISHES YOU A HAPPY GUN APPRECIATION DAY

Not sure about the mainstream media in the United States, but the media up here has been making fun of the injuries that occurred at gun shows in the U.S. Saturday, Gun Appreciation Day. This is of course an attempt on the media's part to say the United States needs stricter gun control (gun confesgation) laws.

However, there is a side to this story no mainstream media outlets are reporting.

According to what I heard on Kurt Wilson's program, "The Armchair Survivalist", on SFAWBN Sunday, the man who caused the injuries at the North Carolina gun show was an undercover cop.

Wilson also reported what went on at a gun show in Santa Rosa, California, that he attended. He saw a man come in, pick up a few guns, and leave. A little while later, another man came in, picked up a couple guns, put one against his hand and pulled the trigger. The gun was loaded. The man was then heard to yell, "They said it wouldn't hurt."

While Wilson was treating the wounded man in a nearby bathroom, the man said he had been dared to do what he did.
I think these two incidents show collusion on the part of someone. Gun owners and distributors would not bring loaded guns to gun shows because of the obvious safety risks. I speculate this is either the mainstream media or the government's attempt to demonize gun owners in the wake of the Sandy Hook shooting.

Tuesday, January 22, 2013

MEDIA-RELATED STUFF: NEW COMMERCIAL I LIKE; HUMBLE AND FRED

I like that Pepsi Max commercial with the parrot.

Heard "The Humble And Fred Radio Show" last night. It was quite interesting.

CBC Radio Two was coming in well Sunday night through yesterday afternoon.

Saturday, January 19, 2013

REPLY AWL

The title of the editorial of the December 10-17 issue of Maclean's is "The End of Families." The editor writes about statistics concerning low rates of birth and marriage. Forget the end of families; what about the end of humanity in general? The baby boomers are dying of things like cancer, heart disease and dementia. Similar problems are cropping up among generation xers, as well as ms, cystic fibrosis and various other diseases. Many young people these days are obese, which has lead to speculation that this generation will be the first one that dies before their parents. Also, possibly as many as one in every 67 children has some form of autism spectrum disorder, to say nothing of children with other intellectual disabilities and other problems. Many of these children will not be intelligent enough to raise children, and the ones that are will have problems socially which will lead to trouble finding a spouse.

Emma Titel writes in the same issue a column about working from home. In typical Jewess fashion, she complains about working from home, even though this is what she does. Also, Titel injects levin into her column by acting like working from home is a recent thing. Actually, it used to be everybody worked from home. Most people farmed, and merchants and tradesmen lived above or behind their shops.

This issue also contains an article about the widening gap between the rich and the poor in South Africa. South Africa was better under apartheid. Now, the things that are done to white farmers and other tragic goings-on are never talked about in North American media.

Wednesday, January 16, 2013

SAD SAINTS: SERVING GOD, FEELING BLUE

Thoughts on an article from the January-March "Encounter With God" daily devotional.

"... then faced the misery and disappointment of the prayer the next time I see them ... and the time after that."

Yeah, and you wouldn't have it any other way.

"One belief is that a Christian has more cause for joy than sadness, so we should not be depressed."

"Joy" as found in the Bible is a contentment. It isn't to say Christians never go through bad times (see Psalm 34 19), but through it all, though hard times may be accompanied by sadness, frustration and other emotions, there is a contentment in the knowledge that Jesus is with us.

"Another belief is that depression is the result of sin. Maybe, occasionally, depression is the natural outworking of a decision to disobey God ..."

Actually, depression is a lot more than occasionally caused by sin. In fact, depression is one of the consequences of disobeying the Lord in Deuteronomy 28.

Interestingly and unsurprisingly, the writer, Joe Sweeny, does not at all mention demons as the cause of depression, even though it's known that demons have caused depression in many instances. In cases where depression is genetic, this could be due to demons travelling on DNA or the manifestation of a generational curse on a family for an ancestor's past sin. (See Exodus 20)

"... depression is a medical condition, not a spiritual one."

An out and out lie from the pits of Hell.

"It can be provoked by an external cause, trauma, bereavement or life change. It can be a side effect of medication or another medical condition such as a stroke. Or it can be an organic imbalance in the chemistry of the brain."

People do need to recognize the above-mentioned things can cause one to be depressed, but, on the other hand, people need to realize there is a difference between someone who is severely depressed and someone who is sad because of a death in the family or their kids leaving home.

"Repentance is not the answer; medication and talk therapy are."

Repentance is not the answer? When those gathered in Jerusalem asked Peter "what must we do", he told them to repent. (Acts 2 36-38)

As far as medication is concerned, the writer is talking about pharmaceutical medication. Pharmaceutical comes from the Latin word pharmachea, which means and is translated in the Bible as witchcraft. These antidepressants are conduits for demons. It is well worth noting and should be publicized that all the school shooters so far have been on psychotropic medications.

By talk therapy, Sweeny most likely means lying on a psychiatrist's couch complaining about your mommy till Lady Gaga comes out with a song that's not totally stupid. Talking to a pastor or Christian counsellor may be helpful, but psychiatrists and psychologists, who are also themselves sorcerers in the vein of what I talked about above, are not the solution to depression.

"My response to that would be that: 1. God doesn't need us to scrub Him up and make Him look better; He is awesome and holy and radiant and anyone who seeks Him will find Him ..."

By that logic, why try to live the Christian life at all? If He will shine through our faults, why not just live the way we were living before we got saved and whomever looks for Jesus will eventually somehow have a saving relationship with Him.

"Biblical Heroes With Black Dogs"

True, Elijah possibly got burnt out and ran in fear from Jezebel, but he did more for the people of God than these Christians who constantly whine about how screwed up they were will ever do.

The writer also cites David as an example of a depressed Biblical hero. Sure, David went through a lot of stuff, but there is nothing to suggest he was chronically depressed. Christians all go through trials and we have natural emotional and physical responses.

If you are a Christian struggling with depression, I pray the following suggestions will help:

commit to reading a significant portion of the Bible every day, prayerfully getting into the Scriptures and learning more about God;
pray more, especially that God will reveal Himself more to you in everyday life;
make a sincere efert to try to find the possitive in daily situations;
accordingly, be thankful for every good thing, even if it's small: thank God for warm beds, hot coffee, electricity, running water, hot showers, indoor plumbing, the fact He put your nose on straight, all the diseases you don't have.

It's funny how Sweeny recommends a book whose subtitle is "a journey out of depression."

Friday, January 11, 2013

REPLY AWL

In this week's edition of the online Matilda Ziegler Magazine for the Blind, Anne Chiapata writes about the lack of audio description for the blind on TV. I am not a big fan of described video myself, as I have written about on here in the past.

Eventually, all television programming will be described, except the stuff that really should be described which is documentaries with subtitles.

Anne also mentions in her article about recording TV shows with a digital recorder as an alternative for blind people to VCRs and DVRs. As a kid I was constantly taping stuff off the TV with my little tape recorder. I wonder if there's a way you could hook a digital recorder into a TV for better sound quality?

In the same issue, there is an article about online seminars. (I can't say the word "webinar" with any seriousness.) When I attended online seminars in the past for a company I used to work for, I found the experience neat. It was kind of like attending a conference and watching a TV show at the same time.

Speaking of which, in his op-ed piece, Bob Branco writes about a proposal his city has in mind for virtual classrooms. He says these could cause the students to become isolated and cause other problems. Ever heard of homeschooling, Bob?

Wednesday, January 9, 2013

EXODUS CHAPTER 1-CHAPTER 11

I have the feeling Pharaoh didn't order the killing of the Hebrew baby boys as a tyrranical thing against the people's will at first. Rather, I think he did a bit of PR and tried to get the Hebrews on board with the idea, making it seem like the right thing to do, maybe even the "cool" or "in" thing.

When Moses intervened when those two Hebrew men were fighting, the men asked if Moses was going to kill them as he killed the Egyptian. Often, the one who is trying to free people from an unjust system can look like the bad guy to the people he is trying to liberate.

Pharaoh was so arrogant he had the magicians mimicking the plagues that God was placing on Egypt. "My magicians can do that. It isn't enough that the Nile and many of our other sources of water have turned to blood. I'll show Moses and get my sorcerers to turn some of what little water remains into blood."

The Israelites were forced to gather their own straw while making the same amount of bricks. This paralels our society where it is getting more and more difficult to live.

Tuesday, January 8, 2013

ROMANS 1 18-2 16

Romans 1 18-32: The verses about homosexuality and reaping the recompence in the flesh are still as true today as they were 2000 years ago.

2 1-16: The Gentiles, that is, the members of the ten lost tribes of Israel, had God's law on their heart still even though they no longer knew the Most High God. By extension, other peoples have a basic moral code within them. Even the most primitive societies know things like adultery and murder are wrong.

God is good to people because he wants them to repent.

These two things are an example of common grace.

Monday, January 7, 2013

1 SAMUEL CHAPTER 1-CHAPTER 12

Our Israelite ancestors worshipped idols and today we have idols as well. Idols aren't just things like self image. People, such as preachers or talk show hosts, can also be idols.

Samuel's sons were corrupt, so it was right that the people should want them removed. However, rather than asking for the Lord to give them judges who couldn't be bought like they should have done, the people said they wanted to be like everyone else and have a king. Samuel warned them what their king would be like. Like government today, he would impose taxes and have the attitude towards the people's property of "I want it, so it's mine."

The reason the Ammonites wanted to take the right eyes of the people was so they couldn't fight back when they would eventually and inevitably want to get rid of their Ammonite oppressors. The right eye is the aiming eye, used when one is aiming a bow or a gun. This is similar to how governments want to disarm their citizenry today.

After the victory, the attitude was an idolatrous one, as was seen in earlier chapters. The people were basically worshipping Saul, saying, "Hey, Saul's just led us to victory in this battle. All these people who said they didn't want to have a king, let's kill 'em."