Great Aussie Firewall claims first victim...

Anti-abortion website placed on blacklist

And Whirlpool is fined $11,000 dollars a day for posting the link on its website.

Welcome to censorship 101!

Disconcerting: American Evangelical Christianity

The Exile's Saga: Update 1

Notes: 50 pages, 17,754 words
Book 1: 10 pages, 4,655 words

This is going to be a pretty epic fantasy series. I initially decided to call the series 'The Exile's Saga', but then after a bit of Googling discovered that there's already a series out there with a similar name. So now I'll have to think of something a little different. Oh well.

Anyway, I originally started the basic story to this quite a few years ago, just writing whatever came to my head. Then I put it aside for quite a while (we're talking 7-8 years here), but I've now decided to return to it and flesh it out. It's been really good as ideas have been flowing freely and I now have a basic plot outline for the entire series, plus a more in-depth outline of the first half of book 1.

How many books will it be? I'm not sure, as I'm following several plot threads and many characters. Initially I've split it into nine parts, although it may be more or less depending on how things pan out and how much attention to detail I put in there.

I'm going to update this blog as I progress through writing. At the moment I really want to keep focusing on the notes, putting the rest of book 1 together and drafting together a history of the land our heroes find themselves in. Either way it's exciting times!

Prostitutes go in before priests

Another gem from John Piper

I went and saw 'Australia'...

Terrible. Absolutely awful.

Too long, too boring, bad acting, full of mistakes, unrealistic CGI...

(WARNING: spoilers follow)

But the worst part was the end of the droving. It's decided with two groups of cows racing down the docks trying to be the first onto a ship.

I'll say that again. One of the 'highlights' of the film is watching two cattle herds race down a wharf and onto a boat.

Honestly, I'm pretty sure that the ending of Homeward Bound was more exciting. How are we supposed to get excited and worked up about a freakin' cow race?!?!

The only half decent part of the film, after you've numbed your butt through an hour and a half of the cow sub-plot, is the bombing of Pearl Harbour and subsequent rescuing of the orphanages. Even so, it follows all the standard movie cliches, with the self-sacrificing friend of the hero, the last-minute reuniting of hero and heroine, and a final threat that is foiled by the deus ex machina. Yes, the ending of this film is so absurd, and the worst part is this: they believe someone has been shot. But the trigger was never pulled because the bad guy got speared. So where did the sound of the gunshot come from??? Why did the fall to the ground and lie prone?

(END SPOILERS)

Now I'm just making myself annoyed. Plenty of people liked it. It's my recommendation that you wait for the rental, because there is no reason to pay big bucks to see it on the big screen. Our party ended up paying over $70 combined for cinema tickets only to decide that a $7 rental would have been a much better option... but the film still would have sucked.

Clive Peachy, a bricklayer, who saw two-year-old Abigail Rae walking down the road after she had escaped from her nursery school in Warwickshire, he did not stop and help her because he thought people would think he was trying to abduct her. The result? She drowned in a pond.

Have we become too afraid of touch?

Lack of Joy IV: You are free

When Satan tempts me to despair,
and tells me of the guilt within,
upward I look and see Him there
Who made an end to all my sin.
Because the sinless Savior died,
my sinful soul is counted free;
For God, the Just, is satisfied
to look on him and pardon me.
to look on him and pardon me.

If you are in Christ, you are freed from your sin. Sometimes a lack of joy is Satan tempting you to despair with feelings of guilt over past sin. But you are free. Christ has died for those sins. They now have no power over you. They now cannot separate you from God. This struck me on the weekend when we sang this song at a wedding. Unbidden, tears spring to my eyes. I've struggled so much with guilt, but God, the Just, is satisfied to look on Christ and pardon me.

I'm not one of those 'Love Thy Neighbour' Christians...

Classic from the Onion...