I have a blog site now, I will be posting much more there, feel free to read.
zombiehaven.blogspot.com

I've felt the fire and it hurts a bit, but if you live you are refined, like silver hidden beneath the tarnish exposed in a kiss.

How are you? I am good, I am learning, I am getting better at life and that is do to my inclination to give up trying to be me by myself. It sounds weird but I cannot attribute a thing that has ever been good about me to myself. I am grown up and I can see the way that God has put obsticles in my path to teach me to jump, He has put mountains in my way to teach me to climb, and in the end when you have felt the fire and you still live, you are refined, you are new, different. I cannot be the person I used to be and would never want to be, I am new. You get knocked down over and over, and will get pushed around and hurt and cheated, but if you trust in God, you will get up, because He has plans to help you, not to harm you, even if those plans hurt really bad at the time. You get up, you look the world over annd get knocked back down, but then you get up again. It is God inside that promps you to fight, to wipe away your tears, stop feeling sorry for yourself for having been in the fire, and be glad that you were burned. Because without that pain, there is no real joy, you would never learn or get to the place you need to be to be me with God and not me with myself. Left to myself and my own devices I am a blundering fool, anything that is good from me is from God. I used to think that life was like some series of hills that you must cross over to be complete before you die. The high points are the times you are doing well spiritually and God feels like He is closer that your own heartbeat, and the lows are the times that God feels forever away. I used to think that was the way it had to be, but maybe that is because I am so foolish that I must always seem to have to learn the hard way on things. Maybe I need the lows because I am not smart enough to look around and see the lows of others as a lesson for me to learn, I must experience these things myself to realize that I should have learned ages ago. Maybe, life doesn't have to have those series of lows, maybe we can go up all the time until we reach the highest point of life, then go meet our God, then you can ride that first hill forever. Maybe memories, the thing I am closest to in life, are a gift, like presents, things to take with you on the ride to show you were you have been and what you have learned. Over the past several years, I have looked really hard at myself and have been stumped with the desire to revisit my past watch it play out again, but why would I ever want to do that. I remember my past because it was filled with fire and I am here because I lived and was forever changed. Those things I have seen and experienced are gone and will never be again, and that is a good thing because I would never want to be that guy again anyway. Memories are Poloroids that are meant to be stored in a box for a time when you are lonely and lost and need to revisit what you have learned and where God has been in your life to put you back on track. I will prolly be moping about getting another year closer to death in a couple months, but for now, I'll take this over anything.


Movies:
Blade Runner
Lars And The Real Boy
The Darjeeling Limited
Sunshine
Fido

Music:
Mono
Brian Eno...Music For Airplanes
Band Of Horses
The Cranberries
Counting Crows

TV:
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia
The Ultimate Fighter
Friday Night Lights...Will someone please watch this show?
The Office
Storm Chasers

Food:
Turkey
Club Sandwich on wheat bread, toasted with Provalone cheese. Lettuce, tomato, and pickles with Southwest dressing from Subway...You will love it forever
Cheesy potatoes
Fruit On The Bottom Yogurt

Reading:
Micah
Malachai

Quotes:
"You have a bloody nose" - I invented that

Meant to be read in musical accompaniment with Brian McBride...A Gathering to Lead Me When You're Gone.

I miss my friends today. There is something priceless and horrible about the fall. The feelings it gives, the nostalgia, the pain, the joy. I can't really put my finger on it, but all at the same time I want to smile and cry thinking of times that have been gone for miles now. Things you did and the way you felt while doing them. Those split second moments of memory that seem to rush in with every feeling, smell, sound that was laced in the moment. You can walk into a bakery and smell 15 years ago, when you were sitting and laughing over leaving a roast in the oven overnight, or the smell of walking into a school and all of the sudden you are in 3rd grade again, getting to school when it was still dark, waiting for lunchtime. Music works the same way. I don't understand people that do not care much for it, it is the single way I can chronicle and file memories, the only way I can control, the rest are random happenings you get to re-experience at it's own will. I can play a song and travel back to when I first heard it, driving in a car, laughing and wishing I were older, now I wish I could go back for a week or so. Those days were like gold, most everything in the past is gold, even the bad times, the crappy things that happen to you change you into something better, something new. I almost love the bad times as much as the good ones, almost. I guess that is why these times bring both joy and pain, because there ain't no sunshine without the rain. The bad times define what happiness really means, we learn to recognize it when we see it, at least I have. As bad as I feel sometimes, I look at all that God has given me, my wife, my kids, an amazing job, a home, cars, and a feeling of being home, which might be the most valuable feeling of all. I look at what God has done and I feel good, I do not feel lost, I may feel lonely but I know where I am and where home is and I can't say that has always been the the case with me. You may notice that I only seem to write when I am feeling down and for that I suck and am sorry, but when things are awesome I don't want to talk about, like jinxing it or something, I just want to feel, experience it without analyzing it, so when I feel bad again, I write, I need to, I need to express it in some way that will satisfy my hunger to be heard, and understood. It is pathetic to use a blog to do that, but ok. So if you read my blogs, and get worried about my well being, I am just venting, maybe subconsciously hoping you will worry, who knows, the sky is the limit. My recomendations this month will reflect the way I experience life in this moment.



Music: (Songs)
Brian McBride...A Gathering to Lead Me When You're Gone
The Polyphonic Spree...Days Like This
This Will Destroy You...Quiet
Counting Crows...Round Here
Band Of Horses...Window Blues
Ben Folds Five...Brick
Bran Van 3000...Drinking In LA
Sigur Ros...Hannes
The Weepies...Citywide Rodeo

Movies:
The Lost Boys
The Neverending Story
Great Expectations
The Crow
The Royal Tenenbaums

Books:
To Own A Dragon...Donald Miller
Rant...Chuck Palahniuk
The Bible...God
I Am Legend...Richard Matheson
Surviver...Chuck Palahniuk
The Inferno...Dante

TV:
Heroes
The Ultimate Fighter
The Office
It's Always Sunny In Philadelphia

Activities:
Haunted Housing
Going back to places you used to live and sitting like a stalker in front of the house for hours.
Writing something down, losing it on purpose and then finding it again to spark your future interest.
Walking in the middle of the night, playing the above songs.
Riding your bike with a baseball card in the spokes.
Looking at old pictures and trying to cry in the mirror, but you look to foolish, so you laugh instead.

Places to go:
Halloweekends at Cedar Point
Manuels Taco Hut in Allen Park, they go all out for Halloween
The Urban Legends Tour, however most sites are gone, everything has to change.
A high school football game
All of the places that carry your ghost from years ago

Games:
Bioshock
Dead Rising
Halo 3
Madden
NCAA
The Condemned


PS: Do you get the impression that I do not want to end this blog? And did you like the song, I was only joking, well half joking I had it on repeat the whole time I was writing so technically it was meant to be read with it.

It has been a long time, I promise to try to do better, who cares anywho right, this is Myspace, or Colbert calls it Myface. It is amazing how stupid you can act and think whilst in the middle of a spiritual and emotional funk of life. I have been dealing with many stupid issues I have been harboring and it is so dumb how these funks can make you fel inside and act and change your attitude. I am emerging though to better days. I feel new today, so new I felt I needed to change some things, today was a good day for change, I cahnged 180's name to Liquid abruptly, I changed my attitude towards people, I have changed how I am going to react to others and carry myself especially around those that have no faith in God yet. I feel like I need to change more, like my shampoo that I have been using for months, or my sleeping and eating habits, although it is charming to stay awake until 4 AM. The wierd thing is that I can't even remember how I got here, like when you drive somewhere and get there and do not recollect a moment you drove at all, how the heck did I get here, was I on autopilot. Maybe that's it, maybe during these funks we are all going on autopilot which does the bare minimum for what you need to maintain. But I don't want to maintain, I want to live loose, be happy, and take as many people there with me as I can, so if you have noticed my funk, I am sorry for that. I cannot promise I will never do it again, but for now, I am trying. Ok, update time, The movie is almost finished filming, a handful of scenes left, but they are difficult ones and will take some time and patience which I haven't much of these days, but when it's finished I will simplify. The family is awesome, Aevry can really sing and knows the words and melodies of songs which is like amazingly early for her age. Caeden starts preschool soon, and he is to smart for his own good. Laura still loves me which is cool, and we are preparing to ride into the sunset. The Green Army Men cd is almost finished, it will be a full length disk with and attached EP, it is our entire collection of recordings, so the disc will be about 18 songs deep, cool. I am currently obsessed with time travel, though zombies really have me by the you know what, but time travel is something that has been boggling me for years. I would really love to take a month and travel back in time and re-experience things over again and just sit there with popcorn and watch my train wreck of a past float by like we all watch the train wreck of Lindsey Lohan or any of those others. I am writing choppy, cuz that's how I feel today, I don't feel like trying to be eloquent, or impress you Myspacers with me considerable literary prowess. Instead I ramble because that is what I want to do, so if you are still hanging on and reading, thanks, now for the recomendations for the week or month or whenever I blog again, I hope it's soon.


Movies:
Sunshine
The Look-Out
Monster House

Music:
The Arcade Fire's new disc is a recording masterpiece
Johann Johannson
Eluvium
The Decemberists
Band Of Horses
John Murphy

Books:
Rant
To Own A Dragon
Hebrews

Games:
Madden 07
NHL 07
MLB 2K6
Dead Rising

Television:
Scott Baio is 45 and Single
Room 401
Human Weapon
Man Vs. Wild
Shark Week.....Scary as crap this year it was.

New Word I Made Up:
Philosofear- One that studies fear, while insane with fear.

Hey friends! Good times to all this Christmas, I spent way too much money this year, so if we exchange gifts, then next year I am going to donate money in your honor to The Invisible Children who are being abducted in the Sudan. I feel like I have allowed the spirit of giving to manifest itself in the wrong ways over the past several years and there are many people who really need money around the world. So next year, most of my money goes to them, that being said, I can't wait to see my kids open their presents Monday morning, although Aevry is too young to know what is going on, it still will be cool to watch her eat the wrappers right? We just bought a used van that looks really nice, but smells of crap and potatoes, so we are working to remove the smell, I think it was in a flood or something and we were the suckers that bought it, I don't know though. Christmas is peculiar to an aging person like me. On one hand, I have the joy of spending another year with my family and friends and on the other I have the nostalgia of remembering past Christmases, which for some reason brings me a little pain, I remember friends that are long since gone, places that have since been torn down, and feelings that are like ghosts now. It really is weird because Christmas brings all of these things for me whether I ask for them or not, maybe you too. I remember Anthony and how he would fill my car with popcorn and them blame it on my friends for me to unjustly pay back, sorry again Justin. I remember my old friend Kelly and how when I had a heart attack just before Christmas 10 years ago, she spent the whole week with me in the hospital after visiting hours were over, they couldn't make her go home, she was a good friend. I remember Jim, and how after that said heart attack, he was not able to come see me because he got the super flu and was both pooping and throwing up at the same time as he called me in my hospital bed. I remember these little elfs my mom used to put on the tree that me and Jason, my brother, used to play with once a year, thanks mom for buying me those elves form ebay a couple years ago. I also remember walking lost and drunken down the Wyandotte streets in the middle of the night with no real place to go because at the time, I had nothing, no hope that things would get better, but they did. I remember throwing hot dogs into the yard of a mentally challenged home at Christmas with Will and Joe, then laughing and runnng away, and I still do not even know why that is funny, but I still laugh. I remember my first Christmas with Laura, she bought me a journal in which I immediately wrote that I wanted to marry her, and I did. I was really smart at that moment. I remember when Caeden was about to be born, we tried and tried to induce labor for the tax break, but he said no and waited until January 13th and had to be physically removed from the premises. All of these things bring me both happiness and pain as I get older and I know that I am not old at 28, almost 29, but it feels that way. If feels like I have had a few too many birthdays, thanks Rocky Balboa for that one. Well thats all I will write all day if I could, so here is the month of music and movie suggestions.

Movies:
Solarus
The Electric Grandmother (Makes me cry every time)
Titanic (Only watch once the ships starts going down though and stop before they hit the water and Rose kills Jack)
AI
The Million Dollar Hotel
Twin Falls Idaho
29 Palms

Music:
Titanic Soundtrack (emotional, cheesy, but good)
Trent Dabbs (Anything by him)
The Weepies (Also anything)
The Reindeer Section
A Charlie Borwn Christmas
Sufjan Stevens...Songs For Christmas

TV:
The Office
Grey's Anatomy (It's not just for girls or they wouldn't have put pretty girls in it)
Fresh Prince Of Bel-Air (Nick At Night)
Scrubs
Arrested Development (Please come back to television, I miss you much)

Web:
enter180.com
allofmp3.com
pitchforkmedia.com

Books:
How can you not read the Bible during Christmas
Frankenstein
To Own A Dragon
Blue Like Jazz

Food:
Panera Bread
New Peking
Johnny Carrino's
Subway (Eat Smart)

Halloween is my second favorite holiday just after Christmas, oddly, both are bittersweet holidays for me. Both bring happiness through my family, and both bring back raging images from the past that I would rather have forgotten, but anywho, my desire to one day die as a zombie could be a reality as more evidence mounts for the existence of zombies, especially the recent sighting of a small outbreak in Prague, so who knows, maybe I will be a zombie one day and maybe I will make you a zombie too. Filming is almost half done, it is tedious and moving more slowly than I wanted it to but it is getting done, and the footage is amazing, so it will be worth all of the hard work. We are making my life to look a lot cooler than it really is, so I guess that goal is complete. I find it wierd that so many people are able to express themselves so much better in blogs than in real life, I read them and find out new things about people that I never knew, what would the world be like if people actually spoke in person the way they speak in blogs, funny concept. Everyone walking around sharing their angst with people on the subway, your barber, your priest, even that little boy who goes around telling you he could win a scholarship if you order the newspaper, he would say, "But if you buy a subscription, I could go to college," and you would say, "Yeah, thats great kid, but did you know Dick Devos is a jerk, " or "I am still repressing sadness and regret for the pony I never got on my 5th birthday." I wish everyone was that open, that transparent. I have spent a great deal of time and study in my life trying to learn how to read people for what they don't say, and it continues to be a struggle. You see there are huge things in people by the way they carry themselves and function, but you never hear anything from them about it, you can never tell what is going on in someones head. I watch that show Heroes on Monday nights and of all of the special abilities of all the heroes, I think one of my favorites is the guy who can hear people's thoughts, don't get me wrong I would also like to fly, or be indestructible, or teleport, but how dangerous would it be to hear one's thoughts, both bad and good I think. On the down side you have the bad things they think about you, but don't say which can do one of two things, they could make you change your personality flaws, or they could wreck you. The good being, you could really know what people are trying to take out of you. If they are attempting to use you for something, or if they are genuine, then you could really know who your friends are. I think I will write a script about a guy that can hear people's thoughts, it would probably be cool, but that is 3 script ideas away.


Movies to watch:
Kiss, Kiss, Bang, Bang
Nightmare Before Christmas
Magnolia
The Prestige

Music to listen to:
Long-View
Without Gravity
28 Days Later Soundtrack
Lali Puna
Rilo Kiley

TV:
World Series
Red Wings Hockey
Mind Freak (Chris Angel is scary)
The O'Reily Factor

Books:
World War Z
Survivor
The Screwtape Letters
As always: The Bible

Hey everyone who reads this, Thought I would check in with the blog people. Filming is going well, it does get a little old leaving home when I would rather be there spending time with my family, but I tell myself it will be over in December. Tonight we shoot the ending sequence of the film, which is the train tracks scenes, should be a little challenging which is cool, but I have mixed emotions about it, it will be hard to recreate the scene safely, which is my biggest concern, because, especially for this scene, I need to have the element of authenticity, without the element of danger. It will prolly be a little creeping being that we are shooting in the same train track location at the same time a year as it really happened, don't really know what to expect there, maybe I will have a break-down, who knows, we will see. North Korea tried a nuke underground yesterday, that is scary, as I have always been afraid of Nuclear Holocaust, but who isn't. Though the subject does entertain my thoughts a bit, I do enjoy post-apocaliptic movies, but it would not be fun to happen. I researched a little about what scientists say about what would happen if there were an all out nuclear war, surprising to me was the prediction that the US would be the most severly damaged, with only a third of the people suriving it ultumately, best case scenario. The scenario ended with Australia of all places emerging as the largest world power, Steve Irwin gets the last laugh I guess. Not that I think we will engage in Holocaust anytime soon, but the Bible does predict during the end times only a third of the people on earth left surviving the judgements, but that is really abstact and hard to understand, so I don't think to much of it. I am thinking of writing a script about the remnants after World War 3, mostly being mutated zombies of some sort, except for one human that was cryogenically frozen through the war and awkens to find the ruins, and the zombies. Would you like to see that movie? I don't think I could film that, So I will have to sell it to someone who could, maybe my room would constitute the scene of a Nuclear attack, but it might be hard to convince the government to let me wreck it's buildings and monuments, except for Kwame Kilpatrick, who will let you do anything for money. Anyways, thats all, see you later, here are my monthly recomendations:

TV:
Heroes
Jericho
Grey's Anatomy
The Office
Friday Night Lights

Movies:
The Departed
The Green Street Hooligans
Everything Is Illuminated
Gattica

Music:
Rosie Thomas
Cat Power
The Album Leaf
Mar
Ryan Adams

Books:
The Bible
To Own A Dragon - Donald Miller
Blue Like Jazz - Doanld Miller
Velvet Elvis - Rob Bell