I just want to wish you a happy 2010!

. . . And when one of your deacons etches grave markers you find something like this under your tree. And you cry because you know how much they love you. And you are thankful again that God knows what He's doing when he moves you from one place to another.

Merry Christmas everyone, and may you be as loved as this humble preacher!

. . . and so the children surround themselves with piles and piles of loot (before the avarice set in):



Then -- After the carnage:

After Puddn N Pie and Bubba got air time from their school program, I feel it's only fair to present this clip of Little Bit and her daycare group in their "program".

The oldest is now trying her hand at adapting the Christmas story. Check out the results below:

1. I apologize for the poor quality of the video below.
2. I do not apologize for being a doting daddy--you can watch and enjoy or click out.

The oldest is singing these first selections:



The son, as you can see, was a last-minute substitute for one of the "no show" reindeer (a good choice, I think):

My son is really getting into the Holiday Spirit this year. He has now been turned on to Christmas music--like this, and this.

Yesterday he was singing, "Police nadida . . . Police nadida . . ."

Enjoy the show:

A couple of years ago, I posted some pictures of a unique Egyptian Nativity the Blushing Bride gave me when we first got married. If you click the link, you'll also get to enjoy an old seminary joke about exegesis ('extra Jesus'). The old wit says, "Extra Jesus -- we don't need no 'extra Jesus!'"

What do you think? Could you spare a little extra Jesus in your holiday cheer this year?

Here's some more holiday cheer from Straight No Chaser

For those of my readers who get hot under the collar because the local stores have full-blown Christmas displays beginning in late August, stop reading now!

For those of you who decided to stick with me, Christmas spirit has come. One radio station in the major market in which I live started playing all Christmas, all the time last Friday. This doesn't bother me as it does some, simply because I'm a Christmas Junkie--I love (almost) all Christmas junk (whether it's really junk or the real thing). I cry over showings of It's a Wonderful Life and White Christmas.

[aside] My only beef with the radio playing so much Seasonal music is that on the day they started I hear the Euthrythmics' version of "Winter Wonderland" twice in the same day. If you're going to play all Christmas format, there is enough material out there that you don't have to repeat the same song (let alone the same version of a song) more than once in a 24-hour period. [aside over]

Anyway, for all of you but Bill Crider, who might take offense at the crocodile line, here's a little Christmas cheer:

For those who haven't seen this news feed, you want to watch this. Several great headlines come to mind. Add yours in the comments section.

. . . Do not eat all the candy in one sitting.

I really missed it this year. "Talk Like a Pirate Day" is September 19th, and I was so busy, I forgot to celebrate. So, in honor of Columbus Day, and for those of you who want your pirate fix, I'll let these guys tell you why I missed it:

My father-by-law e-mailed this little video that he found posted by Will Shin. The Blushing Bride's dad is a preacher, too, BTW. Enjoy!

As the Cardinals look toward another shot at the title (at least they made the play-offs again), Puddin 'N Pie brought home this pencil drawing from her 2nd grade art class.I call it "Bush Stateyum" -- Enjoy!

So, if it was Christmas Eve a couple of days ago for Sci-Fi Wonder Boy Henry Melton, then it felt like Christmas for me today when I opened up the mail and found this . . . (see picture)

It's been awhile since the word police reared its ugly head, but I just couldn't take it any longer. I saw it again today on a blog where the author should know better. What was it, you ask? That bear of a usage error known as "less." The word "less" is a quantitative amount, and not a numeric register. In other words you can have less water or less money, but you cannot have less dollars.

The culprit this time happened to be a book reviewer who suggests that one should rate a book that they are reading with "5 or less stars."

Of course, this is just another of those things that for no particular reason gets to me, but when reviewing, and using a five-point scale, you should rate with 5 or fewer stars.

Thanks again for listening.

Then you'll be interested in Charles Ardai's Hard Case Crime. I've read a couple of selections from this publisher and find them very satisfying escape novels. Also, check out their Twitter drawing for ARCs of upcoming releases.

It's hard for me to believe that I found this before it made it to Bill Crider's Pop Culture Magazine (so I probably just overlooked it there [update: as I suspected, Bill was up on this story when it first came out--see the comments section]), but the Blushing Bride alerted me to the release of a new Robin Hood film starring Russell Crowe. Interestingly enough, Crowe seems to be taking his role as the outlaw of Sherwood Forest seriously. Read about it here.

I thought perhaps many of my readers missed the blatant beg for a new Slush Mug in my last post, so here's a vintage clip that shows why they are so great. Aside from the cool bike with the banana seat in the opening scene this is just kewl!

Like most awards in the world of blog, the Deer Cupcake Award is really another disguise for the dreaded meme. But I won one!!! So, what else could I do but participate (thanks to my e-friend David Kirk over at Frogtown for the acknowledgement). And here are the rules for accepting this prestigious honor:

• I must answer all the following questions on this blog,
• I must replace one question I dislike with a question of mine own invention,
• and then I must add one additional question. Eventually, some poor blogger, who seeks to accept this award, will wind up having to answer a hundred questions, huh? But not today!

1). What is your current obsession?
Usage—it’s been an obsession for a long time. It’s why I occasionally include the “Word Police” category on this blog. It’s also why I get aggravated with big house publishers who should know better but crank out books full of those pesky typos that were missed by the spell/grammar check software since all the line editors were “let go” for financial reasons. So much for integrity.

2). Where are you right now?
Mulberry Grove—look it up.

3). Coffee or tea?
Depends on the mood: coffee in the morning, tea in the afternoon . . . unless we’re talking about ice cream.

4).What’s one of your favorite movies?
All-time: It’s a Wonderful Life (no secret with my love of Christmas) – but recently I was really moved by Fireproof.

5). What’s one thing you’re looking forward to?
Pastors & Wives retreat with my Blushing Bride—in Branson!!!! Thanks for keeping the kids Mom & Dad!

6). Who was your childhood crush?
I remember Mary Ann was so much more beautiful than Ginger.

7). What is your (current) favorite Song?
The old hymns “Fairest Lord Jesus” and “Jesus, I Am Resting, Resting”.

8). What would you like to get rid of?
15 pesky pounds, but they just act as if they’re here to stay.

9). What’s your favorite book?
Grisham’s A Time to Kill. It’s his first, but still his best.

10). Why did you start your blog?
I needed an outlet to write. I then started a more ministry-related blog, and finally started my book review blog (check them out).

11). If money was not an issue, what is one thing you would purchase for yourself?
A big, big house—part of which would be my family’s living space, part of which would house a quiet study with all the latest equipment and books for me to do some serious writing, and part of which would be home to the best used bookstore around.

12). If you could live in a foreign country, which one would you choose?
Ukraine—specifically, Crimea . . . Been there, done that, would love to do it again.

13). What is one trait about yourself that you wish you could change?
I have a tendency to procrastinate, but I’ll stop that tomorrow.

14). Chocolate of choice?
Mocha-flavored Blue Bell

15). What is one thing you've changed your mind about in the last ten years? Dr Pepper (used to abhor the stuff, now I can’t get enough)

16). What is one thing you've changed your mind about in the last ten days? I know everything. Yes, I do. No, I don’t.

17) If you had to choose between books and movies and could only read or view one or the other the rest of your life, which would you choose?
Books are imagination builders—movies, imagination binders. Which would you choose?

18) What’s something from your childhood that brings fond memories? Slush Mug! This was great fun--and now I find that you can still get one. If anyone is listening, I've got a birthday coming up! (Red or Blue is fine ;))

Congratulations to Kavya Shivashankar. The thirteen-year-old from Kansas who spelled all her words out in her hand as she spelled her way to the national championship this year.

To all you Mothers out there. Here's a cup from me.

Today, I baptized my son while his mom, sisters, and Poppi looked on . . .

I'd just like to take this moment to wish the most excellent of birthdays to the most beautiful of women -- My Blushing Bride.

Happy Birthday, Sweetie.

Luv Ya; Luv Ya, Honey!

Just so you know. I try to post sermons weekly at a podcast site--Loom & Wheel Sounds. On March 15-18, our church participated in Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary's Spring Practicum in which we had a SWBTS student bring the messages for a Four-day revival effort.

Our meetings were well-attended, and our student--one David Miller from Mansfield, Texas--delivered excellent sermons straight from God's word. You can listen to four of the five sermons delivered here, here, here, or here.

Today' s the day to let your Irish show. Have a safe and happy St. Patrick's Day.

Bear with me on this one. I'm including this video, not for the sake of the definition of a political agenda (but you may enjoy Uncle Jay's news items there as well). Go ahead and watch 'til the end where "Uncle Jay answers one of your news questions." Jay's onto the direction of all things media. . . Just watch

As we were finishing our services this morning I received word of the tragedy in Maryville, IL.

Today I'm praying and would ask all my readers to pray. Fred Winters' life was taken for reasons we don't know. Now his wife and children as well as First Baptist Church of Maryville have lost one that they love.

I am speechless. I must pray.

Check out the review of my first two novellas over at Coffeespoons.

Thanks to the ever-vigilant Bill Crider, I've added another lesser-known holiday to my arsenal. And so I give you Square Root Day (we'll wait until the uncontrollable applause and mayhem subsides). Grab your calculator and start dividing. Remember that we can't celebrate every year, so kick your heels up with extra special vigor today!

If you haven't decided how to celebrate Texas Independence Day, why not have some Tex-Mex tonight and enjoy the holiday.

It seems our local school district looks for any reason to dismiss, and exercises its right to dismiss on every occasion it can find. The occasion today is Pulaski Day. This holiday is celebrated in Illinois for the apparent reason of taking another day off.

So, happy Pulaski Day, even though (unless you're from Illinois or of Polish descent) you've probably never heard of him or his day. Take the day off, relax, and enjoy life.

I heard that one of the most familiar voices of our time has been silenced. I recall many days when we would listen for Paul Harvey's commentary as we had breakfast (as I grew older, I discovered some stations played him in the middle of the day). Like many, my favorite part was when he would tell "The REST of the story." I could almost see him turning the page after an inserted commercial for the Bose acoustic wave machine or some other sponsor, and he would say, "page 3."

It seemed that one of the things that helped begin the day was to hear Paul say, "Hello, Americans . . . " concluding with a hearty "Good Day!"

Thanks, Paul, for the memories, for the laughter, and for making us sometimes think about what we thought.

I recall a time (more years ago than I am ready to admit) when we celebrated the birthdays of significant presidents. Typically in the month of February we set aside times to remember George Washington (the Father of our country) and Abraham Lincoln (the Great Emancipator) because (1) they had birthdays in the month of February, and (2) they held certain distinctions as presidents of the Union.

Then someone got a burr under their saddle (look it up) and decided that we should honor all of our past presidents. The school boy in me said, "Cool, now we'll get more holidays!" But alas, what the decision-makers decided was that, instead of celebrating all of the presidents' birthdays, we could lump them all together into one. Consequently we went backward in the number of holidays we received, from 2 in February, to 1 in February and none in the other months which held birthdays of past presidents.

Be that as it may, today is the special day designated to honor our presidents, so here's something I couldn't do from memory -- list the presidents:

1. George Washington, 1789-97
2. John Adams, 1797-1801
3. Thomas Jefferson, 1801-9
4. James Madison, 1809-17
5. James Monroe, 1817-25
6. John Quincy Adams, 1825-29
7. Andrew Jackson, 1829-37
8. Martin Van Buren, 1837-41
9. William Henry Harrison, 1841
10. John Tyler, 1841-45
11. James Knox Polk, 1845-49
12. Zachary Taylor, 1849-50
13. Millard Fillmore, 1850-53
14. Franklin Pierce, 1853-57
15. James Buchanan, 1857-61
16. Abraham Lincoln, 1861-65
17. Andrew Johnson, 1865-69
18. Ulysses Simpson Grant, 1869-77
19. Rutherford Birchard Hayes, 1877-81
20. James Abram Garfield, 1881
21. Chester Alan Arthur, 1881-85
22. Grover Cleveland, 1885-89
23. Benjamin Harrison, 1889-93
24. Grover Cleveland, 1893-97
25. William McKinley, 1897-1901
26. Theodore Roosevelt, 1901-9
27. William Howard Taft, 1909-13
28. Woodrow Wilson, 1913-21
29. Warren Gamaliel Harding, 1921-23
30. Calvin Coolidge, 1923-29
31. Herbert Clark Hoover, 1929-33
32. Franklin Delano Roosevelt, 1933-45
33. Harry S Truman, 1945-53
34. Dwight David Eisenhower, 1953-61
35. John Fitzgerald Kennedy, 1961-63
36. Lyndon Baines Johnson, 1963-69
37. Richard Milhous Nixon, 1969-74
38. Gerald Rudolph Ford Jr , 1974-77
39. James Earl Carter, 1977-81
40. Ronald Wilson Reagan, 1981-89
41. George Herbert Walker Bush, 1989-1993
42. William Jefferson Clinton, 1993- 2001
43. George W. Bush, 2001-9
44. Barack Obama, Our current president
    

In the midst of a publishing community that is debating the value of keeping editors on staff, and the wash of a techno-age that fills young minds with convenience spelling for the sake of saving space on a text message, it has apparently become less than important to properly proofread tests.

Kudos to Geoffrey Stanford for his attention to a standardized test won him his fifteen minutes of fame. Read the story here.

I was intrigued recently by a commercial blitz. It started with the Superbowl ads for Pepsi Max. You know the campaign—targeting real men with this “healthy” version of Pepsi-Cola. The big ad on Superbowl Sunday had men encountering outrageously harsh pain with the age-old statement “I’m all right!” (or some variation thereof). It says a lot about a man’s machismo if he can be hit in the head with a bowling ball and respond with “I’m okay”. My son understands this concept and, whenever he trips and falls, re-echos, “I’m okay! I meant to do that.” He’s been doing that since he was three.

So these ads – I especially like the one which claims that the can houses a nuclear reactor (or some such) and upon crushing it the guy says, “Hey, I just crushed a nuclear reactor.” [For those who have seen the ad more than once, don’t fill the comment section up with corrections to my memory, that’s not the point. I'm posting it here to avoid confusion.]

Now I’ve periodically tried diet sodas. They’re supposed to be better for you and all that. And any time that I have encountered the word “diet” in the title of something that’s not really all that good for me to begin with, I get suspicious. I’ve heard the mantra of the diet soda cult – “You can’t tell the difference!” (repeat four or five hundred times).

And now for the truth: Some of the drinks sold in the category known as “diet soda” do indeed taste worse than others. I recall a swig of Tab from years ago. That seared a memory that will forever be with me. I recall the days of Sugar Free Dr Pepper, and a taste test of Pepsi One (supposedly not a diet drink, but it had the same effect on me as Diet Pepsi, Diet Coke, and Diet Dr Pepper). The bottom line is that if a drink substitutes anything for the sugar or syrup that’s supposed to sweeten it; if the manufacturer tries to sell it with a “sugar free” tag-line – or even a “low sugar” tag line – the product will leave a taste in your mouth.

“You get used to it,” some of my friends argue – but if I have to get used to it, why would I want to drink it? As it is, I don’t drink that much soda anyway. I hear the same arguments about the use of certain artificial sweeteners, and “natural” sweeteners (you can’t tell the difference). But I have discovered that if it ain’t sugar, I can taste the difference. In fact, one popular sugar substitute today is made by changing the refining process for sugar (so it’s made out of sugar). I’m told that you can’t tell the difference when it is used – either by itself or mixed with sugar on the halvsies. But that’s a lie – you can tell the difference!

And so the point: The claim is that Pepsi Max is the kind of diet drink that real men can drink without fear of it being a sissy diet drink. So I had to try this new concoction. Who knows, maybe technology has found a way to make a low sugar drink drinkable. But alas, it has not happened. My advice to you, if you are not of the diet drink cult, and continue to taste the sugar substitute long after the drink is gone, don’t bother tasting this one. Great ad campaigns aside, Pepsi Max is just another in the long line of trying to get us to de-sugar our sugary drinks, and it tastes bad, too.

Here’s to you, Dr Pepper – and if anyone can find a bottle that’s sweetened properly with Imperial Pure Cane, send me some and I’ll be eternally grateful.

Christmas 2007. My Blushing Bride knows that I like to play Monopoly®, but she can’t really stand the game. So what does she do? She finds this interesting item called “Make Your Own Opoly”. It’s loosely (really loosely) based on the classic game, but provides for the owner software and game pieces to build a game custom tailored to their life.

It took a year, but the result I got was Benj-Opoly. Players can travel around a board and “buy” significant places or memories from my life. Once bought, you can charge rent when opponents land on that particular square. There are spaces for my birthplace, my school years, colleges, significant employment events, and references to my love for reading and writing.

There are a few drawbacks in the design of the game itself—such as “play the lottery” squares, which don’t square with my life, and the “Chance” and “Community Chest” squares have been re-dubbed “Good News”/“Bad News” with a little leeway for personalization, but not enough. I’m working on making necessary adjustments to these as well. Enjoy the pictures. And have a great day.

. . . that two of the big names in American modern history passed away this week, and I am waaaaay behind the curve on getting up an announcement, but in honor of these two men, I give you some of their work:

Andrew Wyeth (enjoy his painting, Easterly)

Ricardo Montalban (in his quintessential role -- Khan)

Yes, that's right. Today is Christmas . . . at least on the "old" calendar. In much of the world where the Eastern Orthodox church (and it's many variations) is the norm, Christians hold to the January 7th observance of the birth of Christ. In these cultures, the celebration is more of a solemn, religious experience and is not accompanied with the materialistic bent that has grown up around December 25th. (Often, as in my beloved Ukraine, this is left up to Grandfather Frost at New Year's)

So, may the blessing of the Christ visit you today.

May the Blesser bless you with all the blessings that He has for you this year.

Happy 2009, everyone!