OS X and the Speech Recognition Server

Hello. As I am among the recently unemployed, I have decided that now would be a good time to do a little futzing with OS X and AppleScript
I have an older iMac (ruby with a 400 mhz G3) that I use as a stereo component. I have been using a USB media remote to control it but have gotten irritated with losing the tiny little remote. I am trying to write a remote application that will listen for a bunch of commands and perform certain actions when the machine hears the command.
I tried using listen for but that will only listen for one command at a time and not a list of commands. When I tried using listen continuously for I got an error that the speech recognition server does not understand the listen continuously for command in spite of the fact that it is right there in the scripting dictionary.
Any thoughts?