The Voice

~~

I hear a voice inside my head,

Who is with me until the end,

He has no name or face,

Just the voice I cannot chase,

He tells me things in my mind,

Things easy to learn but hard to find,

The tells me that people are bad,

And he tells me they make him sad,

To keep them safe, they have their rules,

The voice says that they are fools,

They have their religions to blame the hate,

But when rules get broken, they question their fate,

The voice tells me to do bad things,

He tells me to bring down their kings,

I don’t need a god, I don’t need to be saved,

The voice shows me how I should have behaved,

The voice knows how to ruin their hope,

With the sickness, the voice helps me cope,

The voice is all I need, he sets me free,

The voice says be who you want to be,

The voice knows the truth,

And even in my youth,

The voice makes me smart,

I have been from the start,

The voice is filled with rage,

He’s a lion in a cage,

The voice tells me to make them go away,

And let them into the ground decay,

The voice tells me things I want to hear,

With his silent whisper in my ear,

The voice inside wants to come out,

All he does is scream and shout,

I’m letting the voice out today,

It is now time for him to play.

The birth of It

Shoot me once, I hit the floor,

Shoot me twice, gone forevermore,

I walked through fire for you,

I can no longer tell what is true,

My soul is burning,

I can’t stop yearning,

For the one that took my heart,

Right from the start,

And now I’m falling,

For you I’m calling,

This void I cannot escape,

Is a prison of my own fate,

My world is being ripped apart,

I cannot stop the destruction of my rampart,

Please try to piece together my mind,

Be afraid of what you might find,

The twisted monster that lives inside,

The one who will no longer hide,

The monster is your birth,

And I will release IT upon the earth.

Cutting the Grass

~~

The sun’s beating down on my back,

I fight off the heat’s deadly attack,

I march forward into the untamed wild,

Weeds overgrown, walls defiled,

Scythe in hand, I start to fight,

The overgrown weeds to meet their blight,

The fight is long, the day is hot,

I battle hard what Mother Nature wrought,

The sweat rolling from my brow,

I know I must win somehow,

From my scythe the weeds fall like rain,

The heat of the sun does my energy drain,

The day is done and my work finished,

The sweat pouring and my energy diminished,

But it seems my work is in vain,

For in one week, I must fight the weeds again.

I haven’t been in the theaters for a while, and I have noticed that things have become a little more expensive, which means that movies have to be all the better to make it worth the money (about $20 a person). I took a little gamble on my first time back and I saw a movie I really didn’t know much about. Jonah Hex, directed by Jimmy Hayward, based on the DC comic book, albeit a few changes in the movie. Overall the movie was decent, with decent acting and a decent plotline.

Jonah Hex is set in civil- war period America just before the fourth of July. It opens with a nice graphic explaining things up to the plot point. Jonah is a confederate soldier who comes to his senses and betrays the army to do what’s right. Hex becomes an outlaw in the south, fighting against the confederates, he kills the family of Quintin Turnbull, which in turn comes to bite him in the ass as Quintin ties him to a cross and kills his family and makes Hex watch as his family is burned alive. Turnbull then takes a hot branding iron and brands Hex’s face with the initials QT (which later he burns off with a tomahawk leaving him with a brutal scar). He is found near death by native Americans who then try to bring him back to life, but instead Hex walks a void between life and death where he can now touch and wake up the dead to talk to them. Hex, with a heart filled with vengeance, hunts for Turnbull but finds that he burned himself alive. Hex then becomes a bounty hunter, and in turn gets a price put on his head. The union army finds that Turnbull is alive and is planning on destroying America with a secret weapon. The general then decides to summon Hex to fight against Turnbull and stop him before he can blow up the north with a nuke- like secret weapon.

First, I want to talk about the plot. It differs quite a bit from the comic book in Hex’s upbringing, which I don’t find appealing at all, and the new plot that they wrote has a lot of holes in it. They don’t explain the relationship between Hex’s character and Megan fox’s character, Lilah. At least she’s not just eye candy, she does plenty of ass- kicking on her own. There are also many holes in the relationship between Hex and turnbull; I didn’t understand what was going on between them half the time, and why Hex turned on him. They also randomly would switch to different times in the plotline, which got a little confusing. Also, the story was a little too short. It was just action after action after action, they really didn’t slow the movie down at all. Toward the end, they kept switching back and forth between the actual boss battle and some random dream battle between the same two people, which just got annoying.

The action was done really well though. There are a lot of cool western shootouts and and really cool fight sequences. The camera was steady throughout which I liked, and Hex, in a couple scenes, had some really cool weapons at his disposal, but for how action- packed the movie was, I would have liked to see more of these cool weapons, also one of those slow- mo shots of the bullet soaring through the air would be cool too.

The acting was alright. Not everyone really had the wild- west accents (except for Brolin and Megan Fox who did a stellar job.) There was not a whole lot of emotion in the movie, which again goes back to the storyline really. Josh Brolin also mumbled a lot which made it quite hard to understand what he was saying. The acting also seemed… forced. A lot of the actors did not really capture the characters for me, which is a major nail in the coffin for this movie. Megan Fox was really the only stand- out actor in the movie, but she always does a great job. Also some of the characters seemed to have posh British accents, which really made no sense.

Another blow for the movie was there was almost no character development. I really had no idea who anyone was or why they were even there. The pictured Hex as a vengence- ruled madman who gets a sick pleasure from killing, and Turnbull as a complete sociopath hell bent on killing everyone, and Fox’s character was practically an ass- kicking prostitute. Turnbull’s minions seemed brainless and anyone else was rather insignificant.

I did like the background music, which consisted of wild- west style guitar or banjo, at sometimes having electric instruments, and even some full songs. The music did set the mood very well, and at the right breaks, the lighting was both realistic and dramatic, setting the mood as well. (one of the only things that the director did right.)

Overall, the movie really wasn’t worth the twenty dollars (that’s ticket and refreshments), but it was still a cool action ride. Unfortunately, I had to pee the entire time, so it was a little harder to concentrate. The movie was mediocre, not the best, but not the worst. There are many improvements that could be made, but there are a couple things that they did well. It would be a cool movie to watch with friends on a boring Saturday night, but I don’t think it’s worth the money in theaters.

In a rating… 4.5 out of 10 stars.

Online relationships… They are, to me, obviously relationships that start online, either in a chat r0om or on a page such as E- Harmony or any of those sites. I have been in many confusing, complicated, online flings, but only two real relationships started online.There are definitely some interesting people you meet online… my poison is a little chat application called “Whoshere” on the I- pod.    I ask myself constantly, is it worth it? especially with longer- distance relationships such as the one I’m in now. Sometimes, it is difficult to stay faithful, but I try my best. my girl and I see each other very rarely, but we do our best to make things work. From a neutral point of view, I look at these online relationships and I ask myself, are these the key to finding true love,?

Statistics show that one in five relationships start online now, and the trend is growing. I have a few insights into why, being one of these one- in- five myself.

1. There is less nervousness when you talk to someone online. I don’t really know why, but I feel a lot less nervous meeting someone online rather than in person, and very candidly, I actually prefer meeting someone online first. I feel that appearance has to be the major factor

2. You can know a little about the person before you talk to him or her. On the chat application that I use, there are ares where the person can type out information about themselves. This makes it a little easier to pick someone who shares the same interests, and it’s a little easier to keep conversations going. In person, you really have to pry out information on people, but it’s sometimes displayed on the clothes they wear. I’ve been in many awkward pauses because the person and I had nothing in common.

3. People tend to be more of themselves online. In today’s society, we hide our true selves in fear of being judged. Online, we tend to ease up on our fortifications and our true selves come out. It simply makes it easier to understand someone.

4. You can’t read facial emotions online. This can either be really good or really bad depending on the conversation, but whereas in person, someone can read your facial expressions, online you can’t. This makes it easier to convince people of things, or even lie.

5. If you don’t want to talk to someone, you can ignore or “block” them. there are many, many people online who are either looking for only sex or to belittle people, these people, called “creepers” can be really annoying, even sometimes psychologically damaging when it turns into cyber bullying. Fortunately, in the cyber world, there is a little button called “ignore” or “block.” when activated, that person can not talk to you, sometimes, they don’t appear online anymore. We can’t “block” people in real life.

It seems easier to meet people online than in person, but in a relationship, you will eventually want to meet them. From experience, the process of going from knowing someone online to them being an actual physical human being is a bit.. awkward. I tend to get very nervous and conservative in my actions out of fear of making a bad first in- person impression. Something seems different in person and online. Conversations are different, moods are actually felt instead of estimated, and you don’t have your handy emoticons or text- speak at your disposal.  After the relationship get time to grow though, it changes, and become more personal, more based on when you get to see each other next rather than the small talk online.

It is hard for me to handle long- distance relationships. A yearning grows in me just to be with them as much as I can, which is really hurtful. Relationships are built on trust, and trust is harder than ever in long- distance relationships. I heard a quote from one of my friends a while ago. “Being in a relationship means giving someone the power to break your heart, but trusting them not to.” This is ever more true for long- distance.

Another part of most relationships is sex. In my mind, sex is the most pleasurable act there is. It releases, I believe, ten times more endorphins  than a dose of heroine, and it become really addictive. This is probably the worst part of most online long distance relationships. After you have sex, there is a bond there, something that is unbreakable. Sex, in my mind, is the ultimate confession of love, and you can figure out why. This is not true for all relationships, though. There are plenty of relationships where they are waiting until marriage, which is perfectly normal.

One of the perks of a long- distance relationship is that eventually, you can cut the person from you life completely. This is always the hardest part of letting go is getting your heart back. It is a little easier, in my mind, if they are far away. My first girlfriend is rather close, and I see her once in a while, which is rather scary because I don’t know what her or her parents would do. If you’re in a long distance relationship, chance are that you will never see each other again.

There are a lot of perks about meeting someone online, but there are also downs. For example, when you need your girl/boy the most, chances are that they won’t be able to see you. If you get put in the hospital or something, you want your girl/boy to be there. this also goes the other way, when my girl was put in the hospital, I would have given anything to get over there to be with her.

Another down is not being able to see each other often, if at all. My girl and i see each other only every couple of weeks, which really sucks. And really, when she is over, all we really want to do is cuddle and be close to each other. It gets really hard, and when we don’t see each other, we really miss each other. Our conversations degenerate to “I love you” and “I miss you” half the time. It’s even worse for me, because of certain “gifts” I can become addicted to peoples’ presence, but that’s another blog for another day.

In conclusion, online relationships are a growing phenomenon. They’re also, however, a double- edged sword. They have their perks, but they also have their downfalls. So to answer the question, “are online- relationship sites the key to finding “the one?”" I would have to say, yes!

I notice more and more that the news media does not do their job. They care more about profit rather than bringing important information to people. An immediate example, there is a war in the middle east with thousands of soldiers dying, there are millions of barrels oil leaking from the gulf coast yet the biggest news that I see is that Tom Izzo decided to stay at MSU. This is not the first time that this has happened, and it definitely will not be the last.

The news industry is rampant with corruption, greed, and defamation of character. The news media is obsessed with making the big money rather than informing the people. whenever there is ever a celebrity scandal, despite someone being shot or something catastrophic happening, that always is the top story. The media even drags things out way longer than they should be. For example. The Tiger Woods scandal is still in the media and continues to headline, whereas the oil spill in the gulf is already fading out into the mini- stories.

Maybe I grew up with the wrong idea of the news media, but I thought that they were supposed to present the news that matters, not the news that’s going to be the most controversial or scandalous. I want to hear the news about what is going on, not who is going on. It is not all hopeless though, there are still some news companies that still bring the honest, important news to us, but that may be because news is all that they show (of course I’m talking about channels such as CNN or MSNBC.) I do not watch them, I normally watch local news, so I’m not claiming to be an expert on anything.

So here is my request to the news media: Present the stories that matter first. I want to hear about what’s going on in the middle east or what they are doing with the oil before I want to hear about Tom Izzo (and I’m sure that I’m not the only one.) Please and thank you. Also, enough is enough with character defamation. I know that the lives of celebrities are public, but the negative light helps no one.

Your friend,

Josh Robbins.

Picture a gun. When a gun fires, the bullet is going so fast that the naked eye can not see it. The bullet rarely misses its target. Every gun, no matter how big or small, is deadly. When one is faced with something like a gun, a response triggers. Psychologists have named this response the “fight or flight” response. You can either try to run away, or face the gun head- on. Either way, there is a great chance that you will die, but, depending on which response you choose, you can increase your chance to survive. With a gun, if you run from the assailant, you give them the power, giving them a greater chance of hitting you. If you charge them head on, you can startle or intimidate them, making them respond slightly slower. The decision between these two responses can mean either life or death.

Now picture Life’s problems as this gun. No matter what happens, when life’s problems, whatever they may be, hit you, they are fatal. Life’s problems will always affect you and will keep on affecting you until your dying day. Your response to these problems, however, may greatly affect the outcome of the short term and long term. You can either choose to run from your problems or take them head on.

Running from your problems shows weakness. Running shows that you are a weakened soul and life can easily get the best of you. There is a wide range of styles of running from your problems, that includes doing nothing. Running looks like someone trying to escape and numb the pain by doing self- destructive behavior like smoking or drinking. Running is simply watching as the world around you burns and wanting to do nothing about it. Running is giving up. Running from your problems will come back to haunt you. You can not out run a bullet. No matter what you do, you will get hit.

Taking your problems head on shows strength and character. Taking your problems shows that you are willing to do anything to survive. Taking on your problems is not letting life take you down, no matter how broken, beat, or scarred you are. Taking on your problems is being able to refrain from choosing to practice self destructive behaviors like smoking and drinking, because you know that they will just come back and bite you in the ass later in life. Taking your problems head on is never giving up. Taking on your problems is sometimes talking to people, and getting their help to hold you up when you need it. Sometimes, when you take your problems head on, you can win, and you will not die.

The gun is now pointed in your face. Life’s problems are facing you. You only have one chance. You can either run away or charge head on. What will you do?

Poor Bleeding Me

~~

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding with no sense of apathy,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding there’s no one to rescue me,

The day is dark, The night is clear,

Nothing to love, everything to fear,

Darkness falling over,

It just got colder,

Living only through my scars,

I can never see where you are,

Forever doomed to forever fight,

Put me in my grave tonight,

Pooe bleeding me,

Bleeding with no sense of apathy,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding, there’s no one to rescue me,

Existence is just a lie,

Not made to live, just made to die,

My eyes close shut as my veins turn cold,

I failed searching for seas of gold,

Your memory keeps me alive,

But to the grave, I slowly drive,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding with no sense of apathy,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding there’s no one to rescue me,

The day is done, the night has come,

I don’t know what I’m running from,

Poor bleeding me is bleeding out,

Apathy and friends without,

I’ve fought the fight; I’ve lost the fight,

I rest my head in my grave tonight,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding with no sense of apathy,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding there’s no one to rescue me,

Poor bleeding me,

Bleeding me!

Everyday when I wake up in the morning, I ask myself, “who am I? what is my purpose on this Earth?” It seems that my existence is a mere fleck on the timeline. I have an average life, there is nothing special about me. I’m not ultra good looking, or a master of something, I’m average. I am a speck upon a speck upon a speck. I have a girlfriend that I rarely see, and both of my exes hate me.

So I am now asking God, what is my purpose? why am I suffering through so much hardship? Is my life going to be another average life, or will I do something extraordinary?

I hope I find my purpose in life soon, because I need something to hold onto.

So I’ve been wanting to get a tattoo, as all badasses do. I’m tossing around a few ideas, and I have decided on one that is a must- get.

The tattoo would be on my back. It would be an eagle in flight, wings at full span. In one talon, he is carrying a cross, and in the other, the American flag. And in the top of the wings, would be my two favorite bible passages (which two, I haven’t decided yet.)

The eagle represents freedom. Both the fact that I’m free by the constitution, and also free as a thinker. The flag and the cross in the talons represent what I hold dear: My faith and my country. And then in the wingspan, my two favorite bible passages represent the word of God on which I can soar, or maybe put Isiah 40:31 (those who follow the LORD shall mount up with wings as eagles).

If anyone is willing to draw this out for free (seeing as I do not have money), I would really be appreciative.