Well here I am after a few days of being back in corporate America and I survived.  You know what sucks about starting new jobs?  Everything...hahahaha.  Serious, you almost feel like you have to ask if it's ok to go to the bathroom.  You don't know where to go, what to do, when you can eat...all that.  It sucks but after a little while it all starts to even out as you settle in.  The new gig isn't too bad and I'm getting more money then the last gig so I really can't complain.  As Dante of "Clerks" said "it's not like they're asking us to slay children"...but then again...Randall followed up with "not yet"....hmmmmmm.

This past weekend the mighty NoiseCult was locked in the studio all day Saturday to get down the tracks for the upcoming CD release...and it's gonna rock!  Serious...it will.  This thing will kick some serious ass.  Only bad thing that happened was this - On Sunday our guitar player, Don, went back to the studio to do some doubling of guitar tracks and solos.  He called Sunday night when he got home and said "you want the good news or bad news?" so I asked for the bad news first.  Turns out that when we were recording one of our tunes, "Evilution", we somehow left out a verse.  How this happened is beyond me.  Granted it's not difficult to get lost in the tune without vocals because if you don't count exactly where you're at in the tune, you can forget.  It happens sometimes...but the weird thing is we ALL forgot.  Chris, our singer, was manning the mixer and everything while we got the basic music tracks down...and somehow me, Don, and Kelly our drummer forgot an entire verse all at the same time and just played right through everything completely clueless.  That is just very weird that we all made the same mistake...oh well...we're gonna redo it next weekend.  Don't worry everyone, it will be on the website soon (in just a few weeks) along with the DVD that is back from duplication, t-shirts, stickers, all that!  Yep...we're big time now...we have stuff to sell!  HAHAHAHA.

Well it seems like all the talk on my evil conservative right-wing political talk shows as of late has been about the Minutemen in Arizona.  In case you don't know...it's a group of citizens who are fed up with the illegal immigrant problem and decided to do something about it, so they decided to man a 24 mile stretch of the border in Arizona, and when they see people trying to cross they alert the border patrol.  I applaud them.  Well of course I would...I'm one of those evil right wing religious zealots who tries to impose my way of life on everyone with a Bible in one hand and a gun in the other.  Now here's what I really don't get about the whole issue with the borders - we already have laws on the books aboutt illegal immigrants...we have designated checkpoints people can come through and everything and if you don't use those then it's a violation of the law.  So what is the big deal about people enforcing a law already on the books?  I swear the way they are being portrayed, you would think they were out there with shotguns picking off the first Mexican they could line up in their sights.  Oh and the politicians...jeez...both parties just don't get it...they really don't.  We already have laws against this, yet both parties act like by doing something it's introducing some wacko kind of new legislation.  Well it's not...all it is doing is enforcing laws we already have.  And this thing is a HUGE problem.  I live in Nashville, Tennessee and several years back our beloved governor...a republican I might add just in case someone says "oh you just side with the republicans"...made it ok for ANYONE to get a driver's license even if they weren't a friggin citizen...all they had to do was have something showing who they were like a birth certificate or something.  And what's happened because of this?  Two days ago I went to eat lunch at Wendy's hoping to find a chunk of a finger in my chili so I could sue...sadly I didn't though.  While I was in line I looked at the wall and noticed a display with job applications in it.  Guess what...there were two different applications.  One was written in English and the other in Spanish.  Now...here's my question - you mean to tell me a place that is customer service driven is going to hire someone that can't even speak enough of the language to fill out a job application???  Oh...there I go again...I'm being a bigot...what the hell was I thinking???  I've said it numerous times before...I am all for someone becoming a citizen of the US through LEGAL means...I am ALL for rounding up everyone who shouldn't be here and shipping them back from wherever they came.  To think that there is a possibility I could go into a place to grab a burger and the person taking my order screw it up because they can't understand me well enough infuriated me beyond belief.  What we need is a wall....about 20 feet high with dudes patrolling the top of it with guns.  Now some of the hardcore ACLU types have said "oh well that's the same thing the commies did in Germany with the Berlin Wall"....ummm....no.  See the Berlin Wall was to keep people from LEAVING....not from coming in.  Oh you could go into East Berlin all day long...you just may never get out.  "Hi, I would like to come into East Berlin and embrace the communists"...well come on in, and to quote the Eagles in "Hotel California" - "You can check out anytime you like, but you can never leave".  But again, everything is becoming politics it seems.  When the hell are people in this country gonna say "STOP!!!!".  I have HAD it with the politics of everything...can we just do something that's the right thing to do like enforce a law that already exists please???

Hey...guess what...we have a new Pope now....oh boy.  Seriously though I am not Catholic and the word "pope" appears nowhere in the many different Bible translations I have so I really don't understand the big deal.  I mean in my Bible when Jesus forgave sins the Pharisees wanted to kill Him because they said that no one has the right to forgive sins except for God....yet a Catholic Priest can forgive sins and be addressed as "father"?  I'm sorry...I really just don't get it.  Denominations drive me nuts anyways because they all think they are the ONLY ones who have it all right.  It's not hard...Jesus came here to die for us and to forgive our sins if we believe in who He is and the next thing I know there's a chimney with different colors of smoke coming out telling the world what the vote status is.  I will say this...I love the conviction those guys have to their faith...but I don't get the pomp and circumstance surrounding it at all.  And c'mon guys...please let the priests marry...nothing in the Bible says they can't and it is not helping things at all.

I was doing some thinking this week about religions and stuff...I guess with the passing of the Pope and the election of a new one...and I thought about something that I don't know if it's sad or funny.  As a Christian, I believe that Jesus Christ is part of the Holy Trinity with God the Father, God the Son, and God the Holy Spirit.  Yeah I know...it took me a while to get a good grasp on all that too but it does make sense...it is what The Bible teaches.  Just read the first chapter of the Gospel of John...it's described in there pretty well.  Anyway, my faith is dependent on one thing - do I believe that Jesus' claims were true and He is who He says He is.  If I don't believe it, then I am not a Christian because in the book of 1 John it states that if you don't have the Son, then you don't have the Father (I'm paraphrasing).  Basically if you don't believe in Jesus' claims then you don't believe in the true God.  However, the other big time world religions like Buddhism and even *gasp* Muslims believe that Jesus existed, but say that he was just a prophet and deny the claims made by the Bible.  So here's what I find a little messed up - If I was on TV and made the claim that Allah is not the same god as The God of the Bible, then I would be a bigot, a preacher of hate and intolerance, and not celebrating "cultural diversity".  Yet when Muslims or whoever get out there and praise their god, then everything is fine and the world is a much better place because we celebrate our differences EVEN THOUGH they are denouncing the God I believe in by labeling Jesus as "just another prophet"...yet somehow they aren't seen as bigots or promoting hate or anything like that at all.  But isn't it the exact same thing???  I think it is...and I'm sick of it.  I refuse to sit back and have another religion be embraced as ok yet if I stand up for my faith I'm a bigot and intolerant.  Sorry everyone...they are doing the exact same thing.  They don't embrace the God of my Bible at all by denouncing who Christ is so in my eyes they are doing EXACTLY what I am accused of doing by not celebrating cultural diversity.  I'm so sick of it.  I'm sick of the things this country was founded upon being sacrificed every day so someone's feelings don't get hurt.  I'm sick of coddling to people and this notion we have to walk on eggshells to keep from offending someone when the things that might offend them are what this country stands for.  I've had it with hippies and the "let's play like it's 1968" all over again.  I'm sick of the sacrifices my bloodline has made for this country turned into a mockery.  I have had it...and I have an idea of what I want to do.  Yep...I am planning right now to start making a documentary about America.  It will take a lot of time and may not take place for a while...but every generation of my family has stepped up when the time came, so I need to do something because I have had it...I really have.  Stay tuned....