new music from me!

a couple of new songs on the myspace page...which is, by the by, now much easier on the eyes.

dec. music was:

the national, joshua james, the weepies, ben lee

why do i love hip-hop gone folksy? this.

1st grade...or 2nd grade

so we were sitting around at dinner last night and this was the conversation that occured:

















dad: did you know that when you were in first or second grade the class had to say who their heroes were...and you wrote down pele and george burns.

me: awesome

mom: the other guys put things like "my dad". i think he felt left out.

me: i'm sticking by my choices...i think they were fantastic...did the teacher know who george burns was?
dad: that's what i'm still wondering

august rush....august smush

i found this a rather enjoyable read. though i haven't even seen the movie beyond the trailer, i think we can all enjoy the witty banter in this paste review of the movie entitled:



Nov. music was:

paolo nutini, missy higgins, the avett brothers, the robbie seay band

read this one:

if you like good music...and you like things that are a good time...then go to the paste magazine website and get yourself a year subscription....and pay whatever you feel like paying...mmhmm....you get to name your price. all year for $1 or $1000....whatever you feel like. and if you dont know about paste...its amazing. along with the obviously great music stuff in the magazine itself you get a sampler cd of seriously awesome music each month. do it...if for no other reason than me begging you to. do it.

Hillsong

the other day a group of up jumped in a van drove and hour to baton rouge to see hillsong united. (for anyone who doesnt know the awesomeness out of australia that is hillsong united:
they have been probably the most influential band in my life the past half a year or so because of the amazing worship music they put out there and the fact that the churches i have been involved with have all been a fan of using their stuff.) so, hillsong i love and the way that they do worship and it's amazing music, amazing everything in general, etc.



well the van rolled up a mere 15 before they were to hit the stage and the rather large church at which they were playing was already packed and the fire marshall was making them close the doors. well needless to say we were a bit dissapointed as we were pointed in the direction of the outdoor screen from which we could watch the events inside. here is where i decide to do my own thing. as the rest of the group found a place outside i decided that i would go scout a way to the promise land of the sanctuary. so i struck out on my lonesome and wandered back around the church. i found myself at a side door through which some of the staff was going back and forth and in the midst of a few others dedicated to the idea of getting in. we soon realized that there were in fact a few seats left in the glorious promise land and that one of the staff was counting them out by going in and tracking them down and then returning to this side door to let in groups in the amounts which seats were being found. so we formed a....less of a line...more of a ....oh yes....mob and waited. he would come back and forth and grab those he thought had been waiting longest and let people in. well, in one of the groups that got in i found myself whooshed and in i was. so were you excited? you ask...i'll tell you. i was. kind of. as i was swooped inside the doors i caught sight of one girl who had been waiting longer than i had, who had already seen her friends go in and was still waiting and as i looked back through the glass of the doors i felt like crap. so...i tried to go in but couldnt and came back to ask the door security if i could go switch with her because she had been wating longer....to which his answer was dont worry about it just go in....and i was mildly shocked at this response here at a church but listened and went in. one song later (which i had decided was as far as i could go without feeling like the most selfish person ever) i returned to the door to once again loby for the girls entry. the guy at the door this time was willing to let us switch but as i looked out at the few still waiting i saw not the familiar little hat of the girl. she had made it i hoped...and when i said she was not there he said that he had walked across the room for a minute and the door had somehow been opened allowing a group of 15 or so to rush in...to which i replied "good...i mean not good for the fire code marshal thing....but good that she got in....but not good..." to which he replied with a "yes...not good about the fire code." and i returned to watch the rest of the excitement with a much less guilty conscious and it was freaking amazing.



so in conclusion i am glad that i decided to try to get in since hillsong is only in the states a couple weeks of the year and why oh why they were in baton rouge only an hour away i have no idea...but it was fantastic and though i found myself to be waffling on being incredibly selfish i think in the end things turned out ok. so if you get the chance to go see them...show up a little early.

Some new pics from around town over at the flickr...

thanks BBC

i was on the bbc news online today and came across some interesting things:

a. the bbc has changed their look. they now have a british home page and an international one which, i hear, may soon have advertizements.

b. the delhi deputy mayor was killed by a pack of monkeys who attacked him in his home and knocked him off of his balcony. that, while an interesting story, was not what caught my eye. it was, in fact, the part of the article where they adresses some of the proposed solutions to the problem of the monkey infestation the city faces. in particular the option of training larger more ferocious monkeys to chase the smaller less ferocious ones (the ones that did this) out of town. pause. something seems a bit off with that idea. anyone?

c. dumbledore way gay. oh yeah, he was in love with gellert grindelwald. j.k. told me.

it's been a while...

sorry not to have posted in the past month or so but it has been a bit chaotic recently. not that i havent had a chance to post but i have been traveling quite a bit and therefore exploring new places instead of being online. so....when last i blogged i was at camp. running the camp store for a couple of weeks was a great experience but one that happened, to my mind, ages ago. since then i have been to fayetteville for a couple of weddings while spending a week with my parents, to visit lee and kyle in wilmington and get my one day of nc beach in for the summer (way not enough nc beach), through raleigh/chapel hill and to the dash for a few days before traveling to chattanooga to visit deeds on my way to the woodlands, tx, which is 45minutes or so north of houston. i also like run-on sentences. i stayed in the woodlands for a month taking care of a house for a family that moved to kazakhstan and meeting some great folks as well as finding one of the most amazing churches i have ever encountered or could ever even make up. after a month there filled with relaxing, playing my guitar, and hanging out with awesome folks i packed up again and drove east to NOLA, the big easy, good ole' new orleans where i will be for the next year. my new job is being a human grant. for real. i work for americorps and ngo's applied to get us to work for them to aid in the rebuilding process. so that's me. a living grant, applied for and recieved. i get to do what i did earlier this summer over in slidell, ie be an onsite leader of volunteer groups coming down to help rebuild homes in the area, learning and then imediately teaching construction techniques and making sure the teams have tools and whatever they need and that things run smoothly, etc. it's been a bumpy start so far but a good one too. more on that later though. for now that i think is all. i am nervous/excited about the year and ready for all the training and orienting that is going on now to be over so that my group and i can get down to doing what we all came for, helping people for whom, two years out, little has changed.

badgers pt.2...squirrels that is:


i missed this one in my excitement over the previous rumors of man'eating badgers.

watermelon down...


so i've now checked the "try every flavor of cookout milkshake" line off of my list of things to do before i die.

whats that, badgers you say...


where i am:


a calling

today i was talking with a friend over an old question. how can you tell what god wants you to do with your life? how can you know what path he wants you to take? something along those lines anyway, however you want to phrase it. the question you ask when you have no idea what god wants you to do or what path he wants you to take, and it seems like he has given you way to many options or none at all. i've been stuck on that question at various times in my life, but it was my friend who happened to be stuck there today. having not really spent any time recently gathering my thoughts on the question i was interested to see what my brain would spit out in response. out spilled a sum up of, i guess, my most recent take on the christian life and i will try to sum up my sum up.

i guess we arent really talking about what god wants us to do on little stuff here, this is mostly like "what does god want my prefession to be" sort of stuff. but i will sum up on the little stuff first. i've noticed things recently such as the fact that god and the writers of the bible pretty much assume that the christian will be serving others, meeting needs, giving of what they have(financial, time, etc.), especially to the needy(orphan, widow, homeless, etc.). they speak to this stuff in terms of when you do it, not saying that you should, its just a given. so thats something. in the small, day to day, its a given that we are to give, love, share, build up, be the samaritan to the person everyone else is walking past.

so in christianese we are saying that our life is a ministry regardless of what our prefession is. in non-christianese(which i like) we are saying that we will experience life as it was meant to be lived when we love those we come into contact with and give willingly of what we have been blessed with, etc(continue on with anything that lifestyle might produce) without any regard to who those benefiting are(whether they are in with the christians or not). theres a lot there and stuff that i would love to adress (like how we as christians give all of our words bad connotations, ie ministry sounds like a job not like the lifestyle i described in the non-christianese section just now) but i'll save that for another time and we can move on.

as far as the big stuff i have moved past trying to figure out the whole what is the exact one thing that god is calling me to. i've got this idea that he wants me to be myself. the me he created me to be. i think the me he created is passionate about life and people and him and that he wants me to seek out the life that fuels that passion within me. if i am pursuing the things that i am passionate about and allowing myself to be the me that he created then i think i am in his will and am where he has called me to be.

N'arlins...

well i'm back again with another update. nothing exciting except another location change. after a week in indiana, spent at my aunt and uncle's house in the woods, i returned to the 'ville for a couple days and then after a brief swing thought the dash i made my way down to slidell, la. Having been here for a couple weeks i'm now headed back up to nc, etc.

observations on each of my locations:
batesville, indiana: has a lot of farmland and narrow hilly unlined roads. there are also very few bugs.

fayetteville: doesnt change

winst: the mellow is wonderful...and a magnet for all that is emo.

slidell: has a lot of snow cone stands...they are all good.

indiana

i'm about to leave for indiana with my parents to see my grandpa, aunt, and uncle. we'll be there for a week and i'm looking forward to resting and relaxing by a pond outside of batesville indiana. we've got books, fishing poles, and golf clubs ready to go as well as the camera, which having spent a year at my side has grown roots into me...ie i'll be shooting portraits of the fam all week for old times sake...and maybe stalking down a few animals for close ups.

ps: an update. we are now at a courtyard marriott about halfway to indiana because my parents are the wimpiest travelers ever and couldnt even sit in the car past 9:45 while i drove. jeeze. peaceful pond i'm coming...soon-ish.

lone star...

ps i'm moving...

june:
3-10 visiting aunt, uncle, g-pa in indiana whom i havent seen in a few years.
11-16/17 visiting friends as i make my way to slidel, la.
rest of the month relief work in la.

july/aug. ?
at some point making my way to the woodlands, tx. (just outside of houston)
finding a job, etc.

...more info as i figure it out.

Mario Kart

so here's another blast from the past...not mario, i'll get to that, but another picture/story (though slightly shorter i hope):



When i was a kid, like age 2 all the way through high school, one of my best friends, Roddy, lived just down the road from me. There was a brief few years where we didn't live by each other but in the end both of our families ended up back in the same neighborhood as each other albeit all the way across town from the original neighborhood. I tell you this to preface a story, which is the story i plan on prefacing the post with. that may make sense in a minute.

I'm using paragraphs here per the request of Justin Lewis. So, as children we were always making up stories. Roddy mostly of how he was related to nearly every person of any importance regardless of race or nationality or era of human history. As a matter of rule we would refer to all people, that he could not attach himself to through his wandering bloodlines, as former college roomates. every story about anyone began, "back in 65 when pele and i were roomates at ucla" or something of that nature. i tell this story because i want to begin my story about this picture with, "back in college..." and i want you to know that the ficticious stories of my childhood are gone and i have in fact been to college and finished have had several roomates though not quite as many in my 4 and a half years at wake as i did in 65 alone.

Your welcome Justin. Back in college...(the story begins) i attended a college ministry at first presbyterian church and to this day remain connected with the ministry. As with all minitries there were yearly service trips to various locations in and out of the states and on more than one occasion i found myself in an orphanage in guatemala as well as in our nations capitol. i'll let you guess which location the pic up top is from.

the trip to d.c. falls after the finals of fall semester and before one makes their way home for christmas. i wish it was less obvious why that fact is important for the picture but in fact it is quite obvious and therefore i will say that the temperature in which we apear to be swimming laps in was quite not warm.

durring the d.c. trip one is exposed to quite possibly the earliest mornings a college student will ever face. up before dawn to serve breakfast to the homeless at a breakfast/worship service with rev. green and pastor brown, one of which became a pastor only after having spent most of his early life as a pimp. makes for a great testimony and at the same time no one can ever try the "i'm so bad that jesus can't love me" excuse with him because he has always done more crazy stuff than they have by far. so, anyway thats the morning. singing and listening and eating and it's great. after that you head off to deliver food, or prepare food at some kitchen, or hang out with kids in anacostia (which by the way is the scaries place ever...wiki it). needless to say that all the work and long hours can wear one out and therefore they schedule in a day to rest. for one afternoon we get to go up to the mall and talk to people about homelesness in the city/do a bit of being a tourist and check out some of the monuments and museums. that is the day in the picture. brooks smith, on the right, and myself decided that for some reason we would add the swimming shot to the long list of our antics for the week. we froze, pedestrians looked at us as if were were the dumbest people ever, but we loved it. in fact apart from the pic of the "giant joint" this one is i think my favorite of the ones we took that week.

ok to sum up, i'll clarify the "giant joint", other antics, and mario kart. one night we were dropped in the international district with money to eat wherever we chose. for the unlucky of us we happened upon and ethiopian restraunt with the worst food ever. i was nearly convinced that the hunger situation over there is not a result of not having food but of the sheer inedibility of it. this story deserves a bit more than it will get but in the end we rolled the green mush that we were served up in the round sheet of spongy bread on which it came and had what looked to be a 2 foot joint. we found other ways to amuse ourselves though apart from playing with our food. brooks and i played make out chicken with our leaders and left them with quite possibly the most shocked expresions i have ever seen. amy's jaw dropped in sheer horror and stayed for nearly 2 minutes as we all rolled around laughing on the sidewalk. along with sidewalks we rolled elsewhere. ever time brooks or i crossed an intersection with enough cars to warrant action we would fall and spill as many of our belongings as we could about. it's so funny to watch people try not to laugh at you for falling in an intersection. and, last but not least, if you ever find yourself lying on your back at the base of the washington monument, think rainbow road. once again sorry for not proofreading.