An Inconvenient Truth

Below you can find the website and the trailer for "An Inconvenient Truth". This looks very interesting. Global warming and all that comes with it is very scary. I hope this movie isn't just trying to use scare tactics like the Bush Administration has relied on for the past 6 years but at the same time this issue really is a scary one. It's unfortunate and sad that many people still live in absolute ignorance of this problem or just think that this isn't happening. But in any case, check out the trailer, looks interesting.

http://www.climatecrisis.net/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TUiP6dqPynE

Apocalypto

You wanna see something awesome?

Watch this trailer and then follow these instructions.

After you watch the trailer the whole way through, pause it and scroll back to where the monkey screams and now rewind it frame by frame and tell me what you see. There is a hidden frame that will freak you out!

Don't forget to tell me what you see, this is awesome! Thanks Andy for sending it to me.

Berns Steakhouse

Last night since Kelli's parents are visiting we took them out to Bern's Steakhouse. I am still blown away by this place. It is the number 1 grossing restaurant in American and the third in the world. It also has the largest private wine collection in the world with 1 million bottles of wine, over 7500 different kinds of wines and 5 Sommelier's on staff! They grow all of their food on their own farm organically. Anyone who desires to be a waiter has to work at every station in the restaurant and also has to work on the farm so they know everything about every workstation. It usually takes two years to become a server. They also have to take an extensive test about what they have learned in the first two years. It really is an amazing place. If you live in Tampa and have never been there, it is quite an experience. After dinner they take you on a tour of the kitchen and the wine cellar which will completely boggle your mind. If you love wine and ports, you will pass out when you see the wine cellar. The most expensive wine they have there is a 10,000 dollar bottle from the late 1800's! There's only one left so get there quickly! They also have a seperate dessert room that you go to after your meal. They have around 40 pages of dessert wines and ports and about 40 different desserts to choose from. This restaurant blows my old favorite Smith & Wollensky out of the water!

13 Million Dollars - GONE!

READ THIS STORY HERE.

Do yourself a favor and read this story. See how two people can waste away 13 million dollars won from the lottery and owe the government 500,000 dollars!

My favorite line:
"We went places most people will never see," places like Lake Tahoe."

Now they live in a trailer with no electricity and no indoor plumbing! Wow!

What is all the hype...

with the Arctic Monkeys? Today I received a Blender magazine (which I get for free by the way, i would never waste my money on this filth); and on the front it says, "Best Band of 2006; Arctic Monkeys." What the *$#&? There's a lot of year left! Then inside I was even more surprised when I saw this headline:

"The World's Greatest Rock N Roll Band: Arctic Monkeys."

What? Can someone explain that to me? They've put out one decent album that their company has spent bazillions marketing to every teenage around the world and everyone is losing their heads! I don't think I have to give you the reasons why they aren't the Greatest Rock N Roll Band in the world. That statement is bizarre beyond any sort of belief! They are another band following suit in the dance rock resurgence that we are unfortunately experiencing. I think they have a lot of potential and I think they have talent but can we wait until they prove themselves a little bit before we start throwing around the "Greatest Rock N Roll Band in the World" stuff? There is really nothing on the album that hasn't been done, they just do what has already been done really well. I don't want to discredit this band or their album because I enjoy it but I don't think it warrants all this hype.

Here is what they have going for them in terms of why their record company is putting a ton of money in them.
1. They're young so the record company can make money from them for a long time.
2. Junior High Girls probably love them because they are from the UK and half-way decent looking.
3. They can play their instruments and the lead singer has a cool voice and a lot of confidence.

Just for the record these characteristics could also be used of any boy band that came out around the same time as the Backstreet Boys.

So I for one am not buying all this hype. As we know record companies pay radio stations to get their artists songs on the radio which is why radio is so horrific to listen to. The more money you pay, the more you can get all the Ashley Simpson and Nickelback songs on the radio the company could ever want and actually try to make people believe it is good music, which sadly works pretty well! All I can wonder is how much their record company is paying Blender to say these absurdly blown up statements about this band.

The Mysteries of the Night

Last night was a horrible night for sleep:

12:32am - Kelli has a nightmare and starts screaming in her sleep. I calm her but she remembers nothing this morning.

3am - I awake to horrible itching on my shoulder and foot. I get up and go to the mirror and I have about 5 large bites on my shoulder and one on my foot. They burn and itch badly. Kelli awakes and sees the bites. I try to find the culprit that bit me. No sign of a spider and no sign of a mosquito. I try to forget about it and go back to sleep.

3:45am - I hear some buzzing in my ear and awake and turn on the light. I find nothing.

4:30am - I hear the buzzing again, turn on the light and this time find a small insect flying above our bed. It is much smaller than a mosquito but much bigger than a flea. It can fly and does once but looked like it was jumping several times. I crush him and laugh at his demise.

5:00am - I hear more buzzing in my ear (this might be contrived) and turn the light on again, this time Kelli feels bad that the insect has completely ignored her and helps me hunt. I find nothing and decide on her advice to go sleep in the living room (probably more so she can get some sleep than I).

5:05am-5:15am - I watch Sportscenter hoping that it will calm me down from all the chaos I have experienced. It does nothing of the sort so I turn it off and lay awake until around 6am.

8am - Kelli wakes me up and I want to die.

8:15am - I take a shower and look in the mirrow and the bites on my shoulder and foot have completely disappeared! What kind of insect bites just disappears a mere 5 hours later???

As you can see this past evening was quite a mystery. If anyone can help solve this mystery please comment. Are there any Floridians that know what kind of bug this might be? Is there any reason these bites would disappear so fast? I'm stumped.

UPDATE: Last night I was not woken up by any biting but I did get bit on the very tip of my pointer finger! Gosh that hurts! I think he was trying to figure out where he could bite me that would anger me the most. He found it!

Band of Horses

Band of Horses; Everything All Of The Time. I posted a few songs over on my plurn player that you can listen to. If you like My Morning Jacket you will love this. I can't believe this is not the same lead singer. It's uncanny how much they sound alike. Some of it reminds me of the older MMJ stuff.

Anyway, i am much less angry today even though I found out that the CEO of Exxon Mobil makes 144,000 dollars a day. I will let you do the math to figure out what he's made in the last 10 years since taking over. Makes me happy that gas prices went up because he apparently needs the money. Oh yeah, I'm also thankful Pres. Bush gave him and others like him a big tax break. They really needed that too. Man life is great today!

Dictator W

"I hear the voices, and I read the front page and I know the speculation," the president said. "But I'm the decider, and I decide what's best." George Bush at a recent press conference to discuss Donald Rumsfeld

So basically he hears what the people have to say but then completely disregards them in the name of "what he thinks is best." Well sorry George but what you have thought best hasn't seemed to work out very well so far, maybe you should start listening to the people once in a while.

How is that representing the people? Just reminds me that there is no such thing as democracy. It's just an illusion the government tries to create to pacify us. The American people have no voice in any of the decisions this country makes. Protestors are worthless, people in suits and ties don't make decisions on account of them. So how do the people get heard in a dictatorship? Because that seems to be what Bush is and has always implied. "I hear what people are saying, but I go ahead and do what I want to do regardless." Nice work Bush. You really make us proud. Ok, i feel better. I honestly can't believe there are still people that support this incompotent government. Ok, now I really feel better. I guess blogs are kind of like therapy in a way. Sorry for the whining.

If it is true as I've heard from Republican Christians that we need to start passing out Bibles to Democrats, then we need to get Republicans to dust theirs off and read them once in a while. Gosh I'm angry today. Where does this anger come from? Do you ever have those days when you just want to scream? Is that healthy? Aren't I supposed to be above that as a pastor? I'm glad Andy is speaking about Anger this Sunday at our gathering because I need to hear it!

In another related story I was at starbucks today and two women behind me started talking loudly and very innappropriately in public and it angered me. At one point some guy called the woman and asked her what she was wearing apparently because she said very loudly for the whole place to hear, "what am I wearing? nothing, i'm sitting here naked." She went on to say several more dirty things and finally I had enough. I got up, looked at them and just said, "Do you think you could have a little respect for people around you? Or at the least, have a little respect for yourself? You sound ridiculous." What is my deal today? I'm losing it! I feel like George on Seinfeld where he always did the opposite of what he would normally do.

Big Cat Rescue

Today Kelli and I went to a place called Big Cat Rescue that houses over 170 rescued cats from all over the United States. Some were rescued from Fur Farms, some from people who thought it might be a good idea to have them in their backyards as pets (morons) and some tigers that are retired from Ringling Bros. circus. They have a guided tour that lasts about an hour and a half. It was an amazing place. If you live in Tampa you HAVE to check this out!

It's hard to believe that there are people in this world that would hunt these things or kill them for their fur. You have got to be one big sicko to do something like that because these things are beautiful. They told us about places today that raise tigers and cougars and such and get them a little domesticated so that they won't attack people (although this only works to a certain age) but then people pay large amounts of money to come into the cage with them, the animal walks up to the person believing they are going to be fed and then the person kills the animal. That's the whole deal. They pay a ton of money so they can walk up to an animal and shoot it. How much sicker can you be than that?

In any case, if you want to check it out, they have info and pictures of all the cats on their website. www.bigcatrescue.org

I will have many more pics on Flickr soon of the cats so you can check them out. I also saw a Peacock today for the first time. Those things are crazy!

Titanic 2, are you ready?

TITANIC THE SEQUEL

Trailer

No, this is not a joke! This is for real! Kelli's favorite part of the trailer was the Celine Dion remix. My Heart Will Go On has a funky dance beat to it.

Bill Wolf has got to be the happiest man alive right now. Bill saw Titanic about 12 times in a theater. Is that correct Bill? Might have been more. he's got to be stoked.

I started watching this trailer when a friend Andy sent it to me thinking it was a joke. I laughed through half of it and then realized it was a serious trailer. Can't believe this.

By the way, this is just a joke.

Happy Birthday

To my beautiful wife Kelli. 27 years old!

SWEEP, SWEEP, SWEEP

Fri 4/7 CHC 5, STL 1

Sat 4/8 CHC 3, STL 2

Sun 4/9 CHC 8, STL 4

More Pics from the NW

www.bagbynw.shutterfly.com

Here are a ton more pics from our trip to the Northwest, just click on the link.

Password: cityofroses

Hilarious!

Today when I was speaking at Journey I was of course talking about Palm Sunday and questioning who the crowd thought Jesus was, comparing that to what Savior people follow today. I was talking about different Jesus' that we have worshipped througout history and was talking about the Revolutionary Jesus, the "ticket to heaven" Jesus, etc. Well at the same time images of these different Jesus' were coming up on the screen. Just as a joke I decided when I talked about the Prosperity Jesus to put up a picture of Joel Osteen and then just said, "oh, i'm sorry i get the two confused sometimes." It was all in good humor and some people laughed, others didn't know who he was. No big deal for our group. In any case, after the message a woman named Barb came up to me and handed me two photographs. They were pictures of her and her husband with Joel Osteen in Houston! Oh man! I was dying laughing and she smacked me with her water bottle and said, "he's not all bad". We had a good laugh about it. But what are the chances of making a joke like that and having someone pull out a picture of themselves with Joel Osteen! Awesome!

Last night at about 3:30 am someone decided to pull the fire alarm to be funny in our apartment complex. Our alarm started blaring, i thought it was in our apartment so I was trying to figure out a way to shut it off. We are also puppy sitting Tito, the little toy poodle again. Well, while I was running around trying to shut it off, he kept stepping right in front of my feet in the dark and I was punting his scrawny butt all over the room. I apologized to him today. So we went outside to wait for the fire department to shut the alarm off (took about 25 minutes for them to get here and they're about 1/2 mile away!), and it rained for the first time in 39 days! What a coincidence! Tough to get to sleep after that but we eventually did at around 5. Got to meet some neighbors though!

Personal Update

Just realized that I haven't actually written anything on this blog for a while. I've just been talking about music and other random stuff all the time. So here's what's going on.

Still plugging away on my book. I have put a book proposal together, have a few sample chapters written and about 25,000 other words. My goal is 40,000, that should be almost 200 pages total for the book which is what I will need. I'm thankful for Kristi Bennett who is going to edit the first chapter for me with her expertise so when I send it to the publisher (which will stay unnamed, there is one that is interested and another in which i'm lucky to have a good connection although i'm not getting my hopes up) it won't be crap. I'm actually afraid to have her read it and send it back. I will hate to see all the things wrong she finds! Ouch. I have about three or four more books to read for research but I have read a majority of the things I need to read finally. So we'll see what happens!

We won our last softball game tonight. We really ended the season well, i think we actually only lost one game this season but also had to forfeit one. Had a lot more fun this season than last, I feel a little more confident on the field although I am the catcher so I don't really do a whole lot. Catch a foul ball now and again but that about covers it. I'm so pathetic that anytime there is a runner on third, the pitcher Brad will come and cover the plate after the hit. It's kind of degrading but might be necessary, who knows?

I'm having these stupid headaches on the right side of my head and feeling dizzy quite a bit in the last four weeks for some reason. My medicine seems to be working for my little disorder but I don't know what those headaches are about, I've never had them for this long before. Probably have to go back to the Neurologist and make sure everything is okay again. Sucks however because my insurance here isn't near as good as it was in New York so any tests are pretty expensive.

Palm Sunday this week and I'm speaking at Journey. Found out I was speaking on Wednesday and had a cover copy for Thomas Nelson due on Thursday for Darrell Bock's new book, "The Missing Gospels" so it's been a very busy week. Bock's new book is a very concise reading through the "newly" discover writings, most of which are Gnostic writings found in 1970 in Nag Hammadi, Egypt. Pretty cool stuff and it is a good answer to Bart Ehrman's wacky writings, "Misquoting Jesus" and "The Lost Scriptures". If you were interested in the letter of Judas that came out lately, you should read this when it comes out.

Anyway, going to watch some more Seinfeld on dvd now, peace.

Recommended music for this week

Centro-Matic - Fort Recovery
This could already be one of my favorite albums of the year. I've been listening to it more and more. I think the first four songs are amazing! And for some reason the song, "I See Through You" makes me want to cry. I don't know what it is, it's a beautiful song. I was lucky enough to see these guys with Jon at New World Brewery a few weeks ago. I wish I would have been a little more familiar with their music first however. Definitely check this album out.















Great Lake Swimmers - Bodies and Minds
These guys opened up for Centro-Matic at New World Brewery. I'm enjoying their mellow sound as well. I've got a song on my music player on here, check it out.




















Band of Horses - Everything All the Time
Haven't heard a lot from Band of Horses yet but I have a song you may enjoy on my music player. Sure they sound exactly like My Morning Jacket but luckily for them i love MMJ.





















Magnolia Electric Co. - What Comes After the Blues
This album is a little old but phenomenal. I love their sound! And please, no Neil Young comparisons. Check this out on my player as well.

One final note. Holy crap, Florida mangled UCLA tonight. I thought UCLA's defense was better than that. I guess I had no idea how good Florida really was this year.

Twin Vs. Twin

The Story at My Sister Sarah Tells It:

"It was all fun and games until Ava tried to take the toy away from Aidan. When he ripped it away from her she fell over and then he beat her over the back with the toy she tried to steal!!! Aidan ended up losing as usual because Ava stole his pacifier!! "

March Reads

Traveling Mercies by Anne Lamott
Everyone in the known world has apparently read this book by now so i figured I should give it a shot. There has been so much hype over this book amongst the common known world that I had very high expectations. I guess I walked away just thinking, "that was pretty good." I think I'm just tired of memoirs. It's like reading a dirtier version of chicken soup for the soul at points with it's heart warming moments and sentimentality (i guess that mostly makes up these kind of memoirs!); but there are also great moments and great stories of her story. I guess it got kind of tiresome because these type of spiritual memoirs just doing feel like they are going anywhere a lot of the time. It's some cutesy, cleverly worded thoughts now and again and then that's it. I appreciate some of the questions which she raised in the book and I honestly did enjoy reading it but still just walked away with a "ah, it was okay" kind of feeling about it.



The Invisible Man - H.G. Wells
Very short story about a mad scientist sort who figured out a way to make himself invisible thinking it would give him an advantage over all mankind. Little did he realize that being naked all the time outside is cold and not eating so you can retain your invisibility is difficult. Being invisible doesn't turn out to be all that he thought it would be and ends up going off the deep end. Great story! Very thought provoking and entertaining. Did they ever make a movie of this???

You; The Owner's Manual - by a few Doctors

I can't remember where I first heard of this book but I saw it once again at the Bodies Exhibit at the Mosi in Tampa and looked through it and talked my mom into buying it for me while she was visiting. I have zipped through it in the last 6 days because it was so interesting. I am intrigued by how the body works and what keeps it functioning well. It was a great beginning guide to how your body works and what goes wrong with time and how you can keep your body as young as possible. The best thing about this book is that they don't really try to sell you any kind of plan or anything, it's practical information that you can use as well as a diet that fulfills this plan in the back of the book with recipes. It was a very interesting read and if you want to keep your body running for as long a time as possible, i suggest you pick it up.


The Time Machine - H.G. Wells

Kind of got in an H.G. Wells kick while we were on our trip to the Northwest. Another fascinating fantasy of a man who builds a time machine hoping that he can go into the future to find answers for humanities problems but instead finds out the horrifying truth! The future is a horrible, awful place where two kinds of species are battling it out with no hope of long term survival! This is another short story you should take the time to read, if you haven't already!




Books on tap for April:
Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
Seven Storey Mountain - Thomas Merton
Practicioners: Voices within the Emergent Movement - Russinger
And hopefully I will finish up reading Great Expectations! That book has given me more trouble than any book I've ever read! Is this not the hardest book to read in the universe??? It's driving me mad!

CHECK THIS OUT!

Click HERE to go to this ebay auction. Make sure you read the story. This is one of the best things I've ever seen on Ebay! People have such a great imagination!

Close Encounters of the Reptile Kind

WARNING: TRUE STORY










Tonight Kelli and I rode our bikes over to a park about 2 miles from here. In this park there is a typical Florida lake with lots of brush and weeds, etc. Well we rode our bikes up to the lake by what we have called "Bagby Head" because it's a little peak right on the lake and no one is ever there so we thought we would claim the land for ourselves.

In any case, I jumped off the bike and jumped from Bagby Head right down to the water of the lake talking like I was the Crocodile Hunter searching for a Croc! Unfortunately there really was a Croc and it was one large mommajomma. As soon as it saw me walking towards it, it jumped and flopped in the water which was a large splash and freaked Kelli and I out because we weren't sure what it was but there in the water in front of us was the head of an alligator just glaring with it's beedy little eyes. It stopped and stared at us for several minutes and then when we started walking away slowly it swam out to the middle of the lake and then over to the other side watching us the whole way. It was awesome! I almost lost my life to an alligator! It was so freaking close! Yes, this is a true story! I'm thankful it wasn't as hungry for my flesh as Barry Bonds is for steroids! I would have been toast.