Hello

I feel like I say this an awful lot but it's been a while since my last blog. I guess I'll share what I've been doing lately. Most of my time has been consumed by school and church. Thankfully I've been able to finish another short story and start a new one. I guess my novels will have to wait a little while longer before they are completed on paper. It's amazing how much I've written since starting school. I had to write ten short essays for my American History Midterm. It's becoming increasingly difficult to find time to read (leisurely) and write (leisurely). Somehow I keep finding the time to do both.


Another thing that has seemed to jump into my life, and rather unexpectedly, is tennis. For the past few days Daughter of the King, a few of my friends, and myself have gone to a nearby tennis court for a few games. Before this my experience with tennis reached as far as Mario Tennis and Top Spin. I find that I enjoy playing quite a lot.


Hmm... what else is there? Ah yes. Another thing is that now we have upgraded to wireless internet. People always asked me why I never did anything online. My answer was always "Because our internet makes me want to throw my mouse through the monitor." Now though, I can finally enjoy being on the computer.


Another thing I'm glad has finally happened is that I churned out another song. Another two and my friend and I can cut a demo record. Not only would that be a great way to make money, but it would also get us out into the business.


Well that's all I can think of sharing for the moment. Until next time...


~Steps

My whenever-I-feel-like-it review (#2)

I've been trying to think of something to blog about for a while now and I finally came upon a subject that I felt the want to blog about. As you may know, Dark Knight comes out this month and there's been a lot of hype on the movie ever since its release earlier this year. So I think I'll add a little to the noise.



This newest installment into the Batman series based off of the version of comics by Frank Miller (writer of the graphic novel 300) and is the grittiest so far. I find it actually amusing that critics couldn't find anything wrong with the movie so they attacked how Batman talked. I personally think the way he talks if sweet, besides the fact that if he didn't disguise his voice everyone would know it was Bruce Wayne.

Anyway, back to the movie itself. This movie has Joker who is essentially the character that made it so big. Coupled with the fact it was Heath Ledgers last performance (thank God in Heaven it wasn't Broke Back Mountain) made the movie a regular record breaker. I won't give away any of the plot because I want you to get the full affect of it. I will tell you though that if you're planning on watching a remake of the first Tim Burton Batman, you're in for a shock. The Joker (and another villian I won't mention in case you haven't heard) is more than ready to kill anyone and everyone. And they both kill a lot of people.

Here is where the movie found its enemies. Parents who must not have seen the first one thought that there was an excessive amount of killing in it with no show of the consequenses, meaning no blood. Now I can understand this, but if they're not taking their to see a movie with violence, but no blood, would they have taken them to see a movie where when Joker stabs a man in the eye with a pencil (which he does) blood sprays everywhere. I don't think so. That's what war movies are for. Also, if they had put blood the movie would have undoubtedly been rated R.

Now me, I don't have a problem with that. An R rated Batman sounds pretty cool. But that's beside the point. The point is would the movie have sent a better message if it was bloody. Uh...NO! So I would rather not hear that side of the spectrum.

Another thing is that people deemed it too dark and disturbing for a PG-13 rating, but if we rewind a decade Poltergeise was only rated PG! So I don't want to hear that either. It's an action movie that give you a warning of it's content. So I suggest we look at the cartoons that are being played on kid's networks. Why don't you count up the kills in those and show me where the consequence of violence is there?

And finally, (are't you glad I'm almost done ranting?) there are those who have gathered an opinion of the movie before it came out. I've read numerous reviews from people who haven't even seen the movie. They say their sources are other reviews from people they don't even know. A review is nothing but an opinion on a movie. You can't judge a movie by five reviews alone. Those reviews that I mentioned were nothing but saying the movie is scary and disturbing and unsettling. I've seen movies that are like that and this is nothing like that. I'll just say that before you make an argument on a subject research both sides. Find a point and a counter point, then I'll believe you.

One of the biggest problems with people is that they always have a preconception on what the movie is like. I know quite a few people who just knew for sure that The Happening, M. Knight's first R movie would have sex and cussing in it. Needless to say it didn't. It wasn't even that gory or bloody. It just dealt with suicide a lot and that's a touchy subject.

Oh well. I give this movie two thumbs way up, as they say.

My Sweet Heart

I don’t believe I’ve done this kind of an entry before. Hopefully it will be the first of many. I want to dedicate this blog entry to my sweet heart, Daughter of the King. This’ll just be a few tidbits about us.


The first story I want to share is actually kind of embarrassing. This happened about a month ago (I think, anyway). I had gotten this email and I thought it was from Daughter of the King. But you see her email address and her mom’s email address both start with the same word. So, hasty me just clicked on reply and began to write an e-mail back. Now I didn’t say anything bad (I can’t really think of anything I’d say to her that couldn’t in front of her parents), but I did proceed to call her “honey” and “baby” and “sweetie” and all that jazz and ended it with a few X’s and O’s. Well it turned out that I had accidentally sent it to her mom. At least Mrs. Lady G was a good sport about the whole thing (in her next e-mail she called me honey and that made me laugh). How I found this out was almost as funny. I was talking with Daughter of the King over the phone and asked her if she had gotten my e-mail. She said no and this perplexed me. I knew for sure I had sent it. Then she asked if I could hold on a second. I said of course. Apparently her mom had told her to come here. Well she took the phone with her and in five seconds all I could hear was laughing and Daughter of the King exclaims, “Mom! How did you?...” And that was when it hit me. I had noticed that the e-mail sounded a little too formal. I was like sweating, thinking about what I was going to do. Now that I look back on it I don’t know why I was so worried. But yeah, that was funny…afterwards.


Another time (this wasn’t embarrassing) me and my family went to the west coast for the day. I asked if Daughter of the King could come and her parents said yes. I was sooooo excited. Well we spent the day at the beach and we had fun looking for seashells and sand dollars. And the water was great. We spent the day on the beach until the sun went down. She and I got some great pictures of us in the sunset. It was great. Then we went to the bathrooms and changed. I got done before Daughter of the King so I just sat against the stall outside waiting. I can’t really remember what I was thinking about, but when she walked out I know it flew from my mind in a hurry. I don’t know what it was, but in the fading light of the day (magic hour) she was magnificent. She was in a pink tan-top and Capri’s (nothing revealing mind you) and she was just gorgeous. I just kind of stared at her for a moment, and then she chuckled and asked me what was wrong. I told her what she looked like and she just smiled and shook her head. After this we (my family included) took a walk down the pier and it was wonderful. We walked and laughed together. The whole time, all I could think of was how much I love her. I find that’s all I can think of more and more lately.


Well I could think of a thousand other things to share with you, but I have to start getting ready to leave soon. But I just wanted you (whoever you may be) to know just how awesome and incredible Daughter of the King is.


This is for Mrs. Lady G and her Knight (I don’t know what his actual pen name is). Thank you so much for letting me develop this relationship with your daughter. I know that you realize how much of a blessing she is, and I couldn’t ever imagine having to deal with letting her go. I know you approve of me or I wouldn’t be having these wonderful experiences with her. (Personally I don’t think I’m good enough for her, but she apparently sees something in me and you do as well.) Thank you, thank you, and thank you.


This is for Daughter of the King. I love you so much darling. I promise to protect you with everything I have and everything I am. I will strive to be the best, man, brother in Christ, and friend I can be for you. I love you.

My whenever-I-feel-like-it book review

Well I’ve decided to start something on here (hopefully I’ll keep up with it). I’m going to put up my own reviews of books. I’m going to have to put this message up every time so the nincompoops who love to say things like “The author doesn’t feel that way” or “The publisher doesn’t feel like that” or “You’re not qualified to say things like that” or (my personal favorite) “That’s not what the author was thinking when he wrote that”. Yes I have heard all of these complaints. Ergo, (wow, I’ve never used that word before) I need to write this.


The feelings or thoughts of the author(s) and/or publisher(s) of the book being reviewed are not expressed here. These are simply the thoughts of the author of the review itself.


There, now that that’s been taken care of we can move on to bigger and better things. This review will be on Stephen King’s The Stand (Uncut and Unedited). Now if you’re not a Stephen King fan, hold it! Do not exit this site yet. At least read some of the review. The common misconception of Stephen King is that he only writes gory, scary stuff. This is nowhere near the truth. Yes, he does write some gory things, like in Misery. Do we all remember the famous breaking the legs with a sledge hammer scene? What actually happens in the books makes this pale in comparison. She chops his foot off with a dull ax and then cauterizes it with one of those propane torches. All while he’s wide awake! Then later she cuts his thumb off with a mini power saw. There are a couple more gory things in this book, but they’re not gratuitously drawn out. In fact the chopping off of the thumb is skipped over and is told while he’s thinking of using the space bar on a type writer. The scary things, well I’ll get to that when I get into my review. The fact of the matter is he tells a story, not about ghouls and ghosts, but about people, people with regular problems. Like in the Shining. Jack is a former teacher who has a drinking problem. How many American’s alone have this problem? The story is about him dealing with this and overcoming it. It is just by happenstance that he has to do that inside a haunted hotel. (Quick note: if your only experience with The Shining is the version with Jack Nicholson then you have been greatly deprived. They could have named this movie Haunting and given the characters different names and no one would have thought it had anything to do with the book. Order the six hour version written by Stephen King himself.) One director said it perfectly, “Steve doesn’t write about the monster in the closet, he writes about the people who own the house which the monster’s closet is in.” Now I can move on to the review itself. You can leave now. I’ve had my say.


The Stand (Uncut and Unedited) is 1,141 pages long, possibly longer if you get the hardback version. It’s his longest and probably his best book. At least according to some people. I personally think IT was his best, but oh well.


This book starts out in a little military base in Washington State, I believe, where they are working on a biological weapon. Well due to unseen events the virus breaks loose and one man gets out of the base and travels east. Now the virus is 99.9% communicable. This means that .1% of everyone they come in contact with will be immune. Then the people they give it to will give it to whomever they come into contact with and so on and so forth. So you can see how this could affect the world. Steve sticks with America to keep it simple (haha, simple is one word I wouldn’t use to describe this book). It’s all about people having to deal with their problems when, by coincidence, the super flu hits. One man is dealing with debt and running from loan sharks. One girl has to deal with being pregnant before marriage. One man doesn’t even seem to have any problems; he simply works at a gas station. Another man gets caught up with a psychopath and gets put in jail (imagine being locked up when most of the world dies). And last of all is a woman who is 118 and chosen by God to lead the survivors. Now polar to her is That Dark Man, or Randall Flagg. He is the imp of Satan and wants to pretty much take over the world. Well the story unfolds as the people gather to the two different forces. So on the outside you could say it’s an epic battle between God and the devil. Which is what it’s about, but it’s filled with characters and events I don’t think a single person could hold in their minds while staying sane. I don’t suggest letting anyone under fourteen read it due to some content, but if they’re interested and you think they have the time for it, please let them read this book. I give it a 9/10

Busy, Busy, Busy (Part I)

Well these last two weeks of summer have been a little hectic. In this blog I’ll try to share with you what has been going on.


First off, there was Youth-i-Versity. Yes I know that’s not the right spelling, but that’s the way we spell it. Anyway, Youth-i-Versity is a week where from 7:00 to 9:00 youth gather together and have classes called tracks, in between those classes are what we call Snack ’n’ Yak where we eat whatever food is provided for that day and just talk about stuff. After the classes is the all important Lip Sync contest. This is probably my favorite part. The Lip Sync contest is where a group of people pick a band or artist and then Lip Sync to the song they pick. Now it has to be a Christian song and you get points for realism. It may sound stupid it is awesome. They hook up our sound system and put speakers everywhere so whenever they playa song it sounds like you’re in a concert. There was some pretty stiff competition. For example my friend A-ron did the song by Kirk Franklin, Stomp. Now if you have heard that song you can imagine how hard it is to lip sync to all of the stuff he says. He had gotten a couple of people and put choir robes on them to sing background. They were one the third night. My group was on the last night, Thursday. Me and four of my friends did a Third Day song that was live. That was really fun. For the first minute and forty seconds the lead singer (whom I was playing) talks. Just talks. No rhythm, nothing but talking. But I got it. I wish I could show you some pictures, but other individuals had there cameras out for that part of the night. Well we won and I’m glad because this is my last year doing this. Oh well, such is life; moving on from one phase to the next.



After the lip sync there were epic confrontations of power and might and skill... O.k. so we actually just did pogo sticking (I’m not really sure that’s a term) contests, hula hooping, jump rope, and carpet ball competitions. I came in second on both the hula hooping and pogo sticks.




Needless to say it was fun.

A New Boogeyman

This blog will be shorter then most because there’s not that much to tell. (I don’t even know why I’m posting it, perhaps to exorcise a demon or two.)


I was writing last night and it started out about an emotional memory of a character’s (now deceased) grandmother whom the character had taken care of during the last few years of her life. I began with a cousin who was a bit haughty and all that jazz. Nothing that bad, right? But when I turned around to give a little bit of background on what the grandmother went through in those last days she said something that disturbed me.


The character I had mentioned before was sleeping in bed, but was awoken with a start when she heard her grandmother screaming in the other room in the dark house. “Susie!” she had screamed. “Susie, baby! The men in the white coats are here! They’re finally here for me! Susie, please! Their hands have claws. Oh dear Lord in heaven they have claws!”


Now after I wrote this I just kind of sat back and reread it a couple of times. Then I cast a nervous glance over my shoulder into the dark living room behind me and a chill ran down my spine. Ah heck, it traveled all through my body. I finished that paragraph and shut the computer down in a hurry. Then I rushed (as quietly as possible, mind you) into the bathroom and flicked all of the lights on in there and began to brush my teeth in a hurried frenzy. After this I had to walk from the bathroom to my bedroom, which is at the opposite side of the house, through complete darkness. By now I’m sure you can imagine how my somewhat twisted mind was coming up with crazy visions of tall men in white coats hunched over in the corners and crannies with there long claws hanging by their sides. The darkness is a perfect back drop for the fantasies of the mind to play out upon. I got into my room and flicked the switch on. I don’t know about you, but this happens to me a lot. When I turned the light on I actually saw (or thought I did, anyway) one of the Clawed Men standing next to my bed in the mirror. When I turned around, of course, there was only a shirt hung on the chair.


Well like I said before I don’t really know why I posted this, but I figured I needed to get it out of my system sometime. But it seems that now I’ve discovered a new boogeyman of sorts. Hopefully I won’t get any more “visits” from them again. If so, then I’ve dealt with worse.


Until next time I’ll be dreaming, writing, living for Jesus.

Long Time No See

Well, it’s been a while hasn’t it. I guess I’ll have to fill you (whoever “you” might be) in on what’s been going on with me.



Hmm…where to begin? Ah yes, “Concerning Hobbits.” Ha ha. Sorry about that, I just watched The Fellowship of the Ring and I thought it was somewhat witty. Tolkien quotes aside I’ve actually been quite busy. I’ve now come into possession of my own car which actually used to be my parents. My mother was the one who usually drove with my dad being gone at work all day so it had a bumper sticker that proclaimed proudly that “I [insert a red heart here] love my husband!” Well as you can imagine I was vary happy to finally own this car so I wouldn’t have to drive it around with that on the back anymore.



Now that I’m sitting here writing this I find that the car seems to be the center of all of my business. I needed the car to get back and forth to school (I’ll fill you in on that later) on my own. But to have a car I need money to pay for gas, which oh so painfully expensive now. Then again I did see a Seven/Eleven with the price of $3.71. Not bad when compared to the price of gas a month ago. But anyway, the issue of money brings me to my next point; a job. I was worried about finding a job near me (I live a half an hour away from the nearest Walmart, if that gives you any perspective on how much I have to travel), and the hours, trying to schedule around my classes. Whew, that’s a lot to worry about. (I know, not really. Unfortunately you can’t really tell when I’m being sarcastic with this thing, oh well, on we go.) But I got lucky. Real lucky. I got a job with a friend from church who does his own tree work business. This is more of am extra money thing for him and it’s not his actual career. He does this on Saturdays and pays me by the hour. And since we average 8 to 10 hours for one day, which fills my car twice, and I’m only going to be filling it maybe once a week you can see how that will add up. So God provided for me there.



The reason I need the car is so I can get back forth to school (as I stated earlier). Now let me fill you in on school. ­I won’t get into all of the details of financial aid. I’ll leave this simple. We sent in the information in April and didn’t get this thing resolved until yesterday. You can fill in the ridiculously large ­­gap with you imagination. Have fun with that. But I didn’t get my classes scheduled until yesterday as well. Once again I was extremely lucky (or blessed) with that. I got Tuesday and Thursday classes, Tuesday from 11:00 a.m.—6:20p.m.and then Thursday from 11:00 a.m.—9:30 p.m. And I like all but one of my classes to boot. (Go figure it’s Math). I’ll be taking College Composition I, Psychology, Elementary Algebra, (which is actually High School level Algebra) and American History (only on Thursdays).



So yeah. That’s what I’ve been doing. Until next time I’ll be dreaming, writing, and living for Jesus.