new year's resolutions (or: how i am going to become a better person than you)

1: spend more time with people

2: spend more time with God

3: be a better worker

4: get a job

5: try new things

6: eat fewer chips

happy christmas here's a song

yeah. this is what christmas is all about. enjoy your figgy pudding.

i'm so weird

i'm pretty sure i'm the only dude in the world who asked for this album for christmas

2012

it's 19 degrees were i live right now. i was promised a fiery inferno today. i want my money back, you stupid mayans.

why song of the week has been gone for awhile

because i was working on bringing you THIS:

for all you maniacs who freaked out about 12-12-12

Five Iron Frenzy ‏@fiveironfrenzy

Happy Mic Check day! 12-12-12. Check. Check.

-from five iron frenzy's twitter- @fiveironfrenzy

questions

when i get to heaven and i get to talk to God face-to-face, i will ask Him these questions that tend to plague me. i'm glad He made me. because if He didn't, He'd probably have a hard time telling when i'm being serious or not.

1. how come whenever all my friends are tired and grouchy, i'm really happy, and when i'm tired and grouchy they're all really happy?

2. are calvinists right or not? is everything i do predestined?

3. why did you give girls the confusing part of your personality?

4. what's your favorite band? it's dc talk, right?

5. speaking of dc talk, you're the only thing that's keeping tobymac alive, right?

6. so wait, you're gonna let me hang around for eternity? that's kind of a long time!

7. what's your take on mormonism?

8. what's your take on homosexuality?

9. do i ask too many questions?

10. chicken or the egg? seriously. i want to know.

11. what do you have to say to all the people who told me harry potter is evil?

12. homeschoolers are your favorite type of Christians, right?

i apologize some more

so song of the week may or may not happen at all this week. my weekend was crazy. i have something to upload, but i don't have much time to upload it for a couple of days. so i may just save it until next week.

apologies!

paradox

the live intro to this song is so unbelievable every time. if it didn't say "fireflies" in the video title, you'd never recognize it as the same song. i think owl city needs a full album that sounds like the first minute and twenty-eight seconds of this video.

song of the week 4

i put up my christmas tree today. it made me happy so i hastily made this song. it was fun. probably not that good, but still a lot of fun.

happy five iron day

so yeah, today was thanksgiving be thankful for everything eat turkey watch a really long and boring parade visit your family pass out watching football on the couch blah blah blah blah blah blah blah...

that's not the holiday i've been celebrating today.

that's right kids, one year ago today, five iron frenzy came back from the dead and started playing music again. you can still download their newest song (at date of writing) at noisetrade.

so yeah, eat a handful  of mayonnaise in celebration of this monumental day.

day=made

so if i think you're incredibly awesome, and you give me a big, genuine smile because you appreciate how i thought of you and/or did something for you... you will absolutely make my day and i will write a blog post about you that never actually mentions you by name.

song of the week 3

so yeah, song of the week is officially moved to Saturday. that's just easier for me. and i apologize for the lack of weighty posts, lately. i've been crazy busy and haven't had time to write...

the mayans were wrong

so, yeah... the mayans were close, but incorrect. the apocalypse was today. not the 21st

http://hostessbrands.com/Closing.aspx

the end is here

                                                                             

why i cannot be spider-man

so now having seen both the spider-man films (at least the ones dealing with origin stories), i got to thinking... i could very easily be peter parker. i made this elaborate mental list with all the reasons why i could be him. but then i forgot it. so here is a new list.

the top 10 reasons why i cannot be spider-man

1- i don't wear glasses

2-my photography skills are somewhat lacking

3-i don't have an excessively wealthy best friend

4-i never go on field trips to large scientific corporations

5-heck, i don't even know of any large scientific corporations

6-i mean, i don't even like science!

7-my parents and uncle aren't dead

8-i'm too afraid to ever try to wrestle bonesaw

9-small knives are my weakness

10-nobody in their right mind would ever move a big crane so i could swing on it

tired

so if you got up today and complained about being tired... you'be got nothing on my friend who got out of play rehearsal at 10:00 last night, and then had to do homework, then get up at 4:00 a.m. to go to work.

so if you were complaining about being tired to day, you should be ashamed.

song of the (last) week 2

sorry. i'm late. really late.

i've been spending a lot of time in a wood box surrounded by buttons and dials, lately. i've also purchased an organ (the musical instrument kind), and have been working on a worship ep.

needless to say, i think i have a decent excuse for being late.

everyone hates politics!

so if the internet or your tv had to remind you that it's election day...

i'm sorry, your vote doesn't count. come back and try again in four years.

the futility of trying to weigh our hearts (or, sin, confession, and the soul)

as the word leaves your friends mouth, sending the surrounding air molecules spinning out of control, you have only one response.

dude, what was that for?

what was what for?

uh... was that word really necessary?

dude, calm down. i'm just expressing the emotion of the moment. It's not like i killed somebody! nobody's going to hell for what I just did. i'll just ask for some forgiveness later.

uh-huh. you just kind of let it go as your friend continues ranting about what a crummy day he had, then you sympathize, and go on your merry way. all the while you're plagued by what he just said.

of course, the above is very generalized and stripped down to a cold, impersonal story line. there is little to no emotion, but i must say that this sort of thing has weighed heavy on my heart for some amount of time, now.*

it seems as though, in western american (dare i say "Christian") society that we have gotten really good at being the judges of what is sin and what isn't. we're really good at weighing the hearts of ourselves and everybody else. believe it or not, we're not the first.

AND NOW: A MAGICAL TRIP THROUGH THE HISTORY OF SIN AND CONFESSION**

ANCIENT EGYPT: *** these guys didn't play for peanuts. this sounds like a joke, but it's really intended to provide the backdrop for everything i'm going to say about them. from the day of their births, until several days after their deaths**** these dudes were prepping for the afterlife. imagine a family trip  out to the pyramids to check out how your afterlife home was coming along. sounds like a whole bunch of fun, doesn't it? yeah. not really. basically, on the day they died, the process of preparing the body to be buried began. the most famous step was of course, removing the brain through the deceased's nose. (this may be interesting to note, as we commonly credit our brains to our ability to judge others.) so after the body was wrapped up, stuck in a box and shut inside some sort of tomb, the survivors believed this:

1: the god anubis would take the heart

2: he would weigh it on a scale against a feather*****

3: then, the god Thoth would interview the heart and ask it 40 questions about who it previously resided in.

4: if the heart ended up feeling guilty, it would get eaten by some creature-thing.

5: if it didn't, it went to heaven. hooray.

now obviously, to us western Christian hipsters, we turn up our noses at this idea and prepare a foreign missions team to go minister to these poor lost souls.****** however, this is not what i wish to pull from this. i wish to pull these things from it:

6: the heart is incapable of weighing itself

7: other hearts were incapable of weighing it, making a need for this (nonexistent) deity and his magical feather scale.

JEWS: the chosen people! okay, so backing up, the hebrew people are now out of captivity from the egyptians, charlton heston-er moses, has led the people out of it (with some major help form the Big Man upstairs) and now they are aimlessly milling around the desert because they were too chicken to enter the promised land. so, in this desert they set up this tent that they called the tabernacle. God dwelt in the tabernacle (in the soon-to-be-discussed Most Holy Place) the tabernacle is run by the priests******* who basically are the pipeline to God. the priests have access into the Holy Place, a curtained-off section of the tabernacle, where they can talk to God. the high priest, however is the only one allowed to go into the Most Holy Place. as previously mentioned, this is where God was. later, of course, under the rule of king solomon, the hebrews built a temple for God. now, this is where sin and atonement really come into play (though they were there in the tabernacle too). whenever someone sinned, they had to drag some bleating, hollering animal to the temple, give it to a priest, and let the priest kill it as a sacrifice to God. this was how they said they were sorry back then. why? because of course, the promised Savior hadn't come quite yet.

A.D. 4 or 5 (SOMEWHERE IN THERE): a Baby is born in a shabby little stable in the town of bethlehem. some distance away, a band of angels shows up, scaring the living daylights out of a bunch of shepherds. and even farther away, a giant star shows up in the sky, and leads some learned astronomers for about, oh, two years.

33-34 YEARS LATER: And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.
At that moment the curtain of the temple was torn in two from top to bottom. The earth shook and the rocks split. (Matthew 27:50-51)********

THREE DAYS LATER: The angel said to the women, "Do not be afraid, for I know that you are looking for Jesus, who was crucified. He is not here; he has risen, just as he said. Come see the place where he lay. Then go quickly and tell his disciples: 'He has risen from the dead and is going ahead to Galilee. There you will see him.' Now I have told you." (Matthew 28:5-7)

CATHOLICS: confession, father. according to catholic doctrine, to be forgiven for our sins, we must come in and confess them all to a priest. sound familiar? yes, though the bleating of goats is not heard in catholic churches, these days.

MODERN CHRISTIANITY: and some 2,000 years later, we're sitting around, reading blogs on the internet and wondering what this all means. and here is what it means:

1. we are incapable of judging others. you still have a plank in your eye, man!

2. we need God to weigh our sins

3. God doesn't weigh sins like us. All are equal to him (swearing=murder=homophobia=hypocrisy=grand theft auto=etc...)

4. a man who was so much more, named Jesus took the collective weight of human existence upon his shoulders, and it was finished.

5. the veil was torn and we can now talk directly to God

6. we come to Him for forgiveness.

7. if we are in Christ, the weight of our existence (which is equal to the weight of our sin) has been lifted from us. we are forever forgiven.


*allusion
**along with some soul history (eschatology) hang on kids, it could be a bumpy ride.
***a lot of this information is taken from the fabulous book "everybody wants to go to heaven but nobody wants to die" by david crowder and mike hogan. 2006, relevant books. suggested reading if you ever need to know how bluegrass pertains to death and vice versa
****sometimes years
*****note! WEIGH it against a feather
******you know, give them a future of forestry or sufjan stevens cd or something
*******a tradition that will carry all the way up 'till now, both in jewish and catholic beliefs. more on the catholics in a few...
********also, at that moment several holy people arose from their tombs and started appearing to people after JesusÕ Resurrection  which is pretty cool. it's like... good zombies or something like that. which makes one really want to listen to that family force 5 song...

i apologize if this got really heady and intellectual, but i'm all for backing up my points. this reflects exactly what i believe. please feel free to draw your own conclusions to it.

note: the egyptians are noted to show that other religions (other than Judaism or Christianity) also believe that the heart cannot weigh itself.

note 2: heart and soul can sometimes be used interchangeably.

"worship" is not a genre

wor·ship

  [wur-ship]  Show IPA noun, verb,wor·shiped, wor·ship·ing or ( especially British  ) wor·shipped,wor·ship·ping.

noun

1.

reverent honor and homage paid to God or a sacredpersonage, or to any object regarded as sacred.

(from dictionary.com)

i talk to a lot of people about music. like, seriously, almost everybody i come in contact with, i talk about music. and this i have found: pretty much nobody likes country. there’s like, one person i know who even listens to the stuff. (why, i am not sure.*) and secondly, in the “Christian” market, a lot of people will tell me: “oh, i like all kinds of music. except country. and worship music! 

i really hate most worship music.

what did you just say?

i really hate most worship music.

uhhh… define worship music.

oh, you know, that stuff that like, chris tomlin and hillsong united play.

uh-huh. so what bands do you like?

oh, i really like house of heroes, and family force 5, and maybe some mike mains and the branches, sometimes.

cool. you know that one song by house of heroes, “touch this light?”

yeah

it’s a worship song.

what the- no it’s not!

yes. actually, it pretty much is. and you know d-i-e-4-y-o-u?

yeah?

that’s pretty much a worship song, too.

you’re insane

and of course, “miracle” is one too…

you’re an idiot.

at this point in the conversation , the other person has a tendency to walk away and associate with someone who’s a little more of a hipster Christian that i am. and hipster Christianity is fine if you don’t feel like going very deep. however i am about to touch on something that the hipster scene really can’t. lyrics.

you see, lyrics are everything in a song. if the music is great, but the lyrics are simply a bunch of angry, disparaging gibberish, the song stinks and only angry disparaging people like it. and if the music is annoying and atonal, but the lyrics are fairly good, only radiohead fans like it.** 

the point is, the genre of worship music simply does not exist. there are worship songs, but they come from all different types of music. i think the doxology, played in drop c tuning with a triple kick and more angry screaming and yelling than an episode of dr. phil* is still a worship song. now, granted, it is unpleasant to listen to, and makes one rather nauseous*, but it is still a worship song.

i think the general Christian market needs to rethink what we call worship music. so instead of those typical 1-4-5-3 acoustic guitars and a djembe*****, playing a newsboys song, our thoughts of worship music should extend to all different styles of music.

*zing!

**zing 2.0!

*** zing 3! on a roll!

**** though, michael w. smith’s early records (and some of the later ones) have a similar effect 

*****i promise that this is the last zing.

a monumental day + song of the week: one

first of all...

yep, that's right kids. one year ago today, pick your own apples played their first (and last) show ever.

secondly, i got my driver's license today! hooray. i'm now extremely dangerous to you all. stay off the roads in the state of iowa.

also, i had a butterfly painted on my face on halloween (courtesy of a more personable version of the incredible hulk.)

 very manly, you do not think, eh?

And now... i guess i'm starting a thing on this blog. every week i'll post a song i've been working on. (on off weeks, i'll probably just post some old song that i found on my hard drive.

so without further ado, here is a brand new song

and pretty soon, i'll actually start writing stuff on here, but for now i pray this will suffice.

brielle

firstly...

didn't know this existed until today. this version is so much better than the final one.

happy all-saints day

pages

i'm adding some pages to the blog today. i'll try my best to update the "currently" page, but again, don't count on it. hope you enjoy reading the pages.

also! the "writings" page is not finished yet. still more to come on that one.

an attempt to start over

why, hello.

welcome to this strange little corner of the internet. it is a freshly dug one, thus it might need some time to be smoothed out.

this corner wasn't always here. a very long time ago (read: nearly a year) i wrote on a blog called "iowadski" (later changed to "the official blog of myself"). needless to say, it wasn't very good. prior to writing this, i dug through several old posts. i never realized how much of an internet n00b i really was.

therefore, this blog (entitled "for all the deepest thoughts compiled") is an attempt at starting fresh. maybe this time i will actually make posts with some amount of substance.

but don't count on it