• It looks like Jimmy Fallon may replace Conan O’Brien as the host of “Late Night” when Conan moves to the Tonight Show in 2009. 07/31/2007
• GameTrailers.com is doing a thirteen-part series entitled The Final Fantasy Retrospective with new ~10 minute segments every Sunday. That amounts to a 2+ hour documentary on the best video game franchise of all time. 07/27/2007
• Newsflash: Time may not exist. A fascinating, albeit somewhat dense, read. “The question is, Is time a fundamental property of reality or just the macroscopic appearance of things? I would say it’s only a macroscopic effect. It’s something that emerges only for big things.” 07/26/2007
• Head over to the Des Moines Register’s Young Adult Board to check out my new blog post entitled The Green Pope. 07/26/2007
• How I envisioned my adult workweek when I was 6 years old. “A filmmaker stops by the historian office. He wants me to speak on the subject of the Roman gladiators and also on the Black Death. I’m running a little late, but I still manage to make history come alive for a few minutes. As he’s leaving, the filmmaker adds, ‘Congratulations on making the cover of Sports Illustrated, Mr. President.’ I shrug modestly: ‘It’s not the first time.’” 07/26/2007

Jake likes to…

Thanks to my older brother for the idea. The rules of this game are quite simple. Google your name followed by “likes to” and enclose the whole thing in quotes (i.e., “Jake likes to”). I will post the first ten results below, and you should do the same and leave a comment with the funniest one for you.

1) Jake likes to ‘Flomp’ wherever he can.
2) Jake likes to scare other monsters! Boo!
3) Jake Likes to be alone.
4) As a student Jake likes to play basketball and his favorite subject is Language Arts.
5) Jake likes to talk big, but he’s really more of an executive assistant than anything else.
6) Jake likes to think he knows a thing or two about swimming, cycling, and running in needless succession, and is forever in pursuit of one day returning to his first job as a minor league baseball mascot.
7) Jake likes to eat poopoo
8) Jake likes to drive the tractor.
9) Jake likes to help with chores.
10) Jake likes to say “Wow-ee!”

• Why Harry Potter won’t be on the New York Times Bestseller List. “Quite simply, if this idiotic rule banning kid’s books from the charts had been in effect before Harry Potter, there might never have been Harry Potter in the first place — and certainly not to the level of sales we’ve seen today.” 07/22/2007

Bear Grylls is my hero

Lately I’ve been watching lots of Man vs. Wild on the Discovery Channel. The premise of the show is that a man named Bear Grylls is dropped in some remote wilderness (usually he sky dives) with only a water bottle, a knife, and a flint, and he has to find his way back to civilization.

Some of the places he’s been dropped in season two include Ecuador, the Australian Outback, Iceland, and the Everglades. In the shows that I have seen, Bear has done some pretty insane things, including: successfully hand-catching a salmon and biting into it while it was still alive; drinking his own pee for the sake of hydration; eating spiders and grubs; and peeing on his shirt and using it as a headdress to keep cool in the desert.

But Bear Grylls is not just some John Doe that the Discovery Channel hired for this television series. He served in the British Special Air Service (SAS) for several years, in which he recalls that he was “highly trained in unarmed combat, desert and winter warfare, combat survival, medics, parachuting, signals, evasive driving, climbing and explosives.” At the age of 23, he became the youngest Briton to summit Mt. Everest, which he did only two years after he broke his back in three places in a parachuting accident. He has also broken several other world records, some of which he has done for charity. He’s a straight up badass.

In response to a fan question about what he always takes with him on his expeditions, Bear replies:

Flint and striker, so I can light a fire however tough it gets — lifts my spirit always and has often saved my bacon! My Christian faith: high mountains and my time in the military taught me that it takes a proud man to say he needs nothing, and I need my faith. And, finally, a laminated picture of my family tucked inside my shoe.

In addition, he’s written several books, has his own “Bear Grylls” knife, and is an international motivational speaker.

I officially have a man crush.

• The New York Daily News puts the odds at 8-1 that Alex Rodriguez could be wearing a Cubs uniform next year. That is the same odds, according to the article, that he would be in Yankee pinstripes. Can you imagine an infield of Ramirez, A-Rod, Fontenot/Theriot, and Derrek Lee? 07/10/2007

Ninth grade vocab list

When I was in junior high and high school, many of my English teachers would request that students circle/underline any words we didn’t know that we came upon in our homework reading. I am sure that at the time I thought it was just a tedious waste of my time. Now that I am reading for pleasure, however, I have adopted many of the practices that were encouraged of me in my youth, including circling “vocab” words.

I am just about finished with Matthew Stewart’s The Courtier and the Heretic: Leibniz, Spinoza, and the Fate of God in the Modern World, and I’ve circled a fair amount of words. Any word I circle must meet one of two criteria. The word must either be (1) completely unfamiliar to me, or (2) be familiar, but one which I would like to work into my vocabulary and writing more prominently. The following are words that I circled for reason number one, followed by their respective definition:

wanderlust: very strong or irresistible impulse to travel

austere: severely simple; of a stern or strict bearing or demeanor; forbidding in aspect

irenic: conducive to peace

syncretism: the union (or attempted fusion) of different systems of thought or belief (especially in religion or philosophy)

mooted: to bring up as a subject for discussion or debate

clandestine: conducted with or marked by hidden aims or methods

parsimonious: excessively unwilling to spend

nefarious: extremely wicked

denouement: the outcome of a complex sequence of events; the final resolution of the main complication of a literary or dramatic work

anodyne: capable of relieving pain

Am I the only one that does this? Bonus points awarded for knowing the meaning of any of these words before reading this post.

Prepare Me

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(Click to play)

I wrote this song, “Prepare Me”, a little over three years ago in anticipation of working at a summer camp, yet it seems like the words that came to me then are as poignant as ever. The first day of my new job is on Tuesday, and these lyrics will serve as my prayer until then.

I don’t know what you have in store
I don’t know what you’ve chosen me for
I want to be your instrument
I can’t swim but I’m jumping in

Prepare me, prepare me
Illuminate the pathway for my feet
Prepare me, prepare me
Take the blinders off my eyes so I can see
Prepare me

I cannot do this on my own
So I kneel before your throne
I want to show your glorious love
But I need some guidance from above

Prepare me, prepare me
Illuminate the pathway for my feet
Prepare me, prepare me
Take the blinders off my eyes so I can see
Prepare me

Amen.

“Stuck In My Heart” on the radio

I played a show Saturday night at a place called The Coffee Cellar in Iowa Falls, Iowa. It was probably my favorite and most memorable show to date; there were lots of people attentively listening and the atmosphere was relaxed and inviting.

Like most musicians, I introduce some of my songs before I play them, and before I play my favorite song “Stuck In My Heart”, I usually talk about how I hope that it’s my first radio single. Well, one of the people in attendance that night who also bought a copy of Dying Stars is the morning personality at the radio station KIFG, and he said he is going to play the song on his Tuesday morning show!

So if you’re in north central Iowa and you can pick up a signal from 95.3 FM or 1510 AM, tune in on Tuesday morning to hear the debut of my music on the radio waves.¹

Click below to listen to “Stuck In My Heart” from Dying Stars.

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1. My music has actually been heard before on two radio stations – KDEC and KVIK (both out of Decorah) – but both of those were live performances. This will be the first time something from Dying Stars has been played without me in the studio. ↩

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