When the Stars Speak

It's been awhile since I put up a poem/song up on this site. This one was done about 24 years ago when I was about 19. Hope you like it!

I've heard questions before me
And no answers around me
Life seems a mystery to me
I want to fulfill my life
With answers of the unknown

Voices said...

When the stars speak,
I'll tell you a story

Is there anyone to ask
About the stories of untold?
I've asked many of kind
The teachers and the preachers
And the local madman

Voices said...

When the stars speak,
I'll tell you a story

Hey there, dear Mr. Madman,
Tell me that old, old story
Glassy eyed and laughing
And then he walks away
Tell me what made you that way...

He said...

When the stars speak,
I'll tell you a story

I guess when I look to the wind
The sun rises above the ground
The light rays will spark my mind
And the story will come clear
To my surprise, the wind said...

When the stars speak,
I'll tell you a story.....

Cry of Love

There is one band I've been listening to a lot of lately is called the Cry of Love. This southern jam rock band came into the scene in the early 90's with their debut album "Brother." They broke the airwaves with tunes like Bad Thing and Highway Jones. Unfortunately, their lead singer, Kelly Howland, left the band after the first album and was replaced by Robert Mason on their second album, Diamonds + Debris. That album yielded some good tunes like Sugarcane and Georgia Pine. Unfortunately the band split up after the second effort. Guitarist Audley Freed soon joined the Black Crowes for their album Lions and did his time for the Jimmy Page and the Black Crowes tour. This first video is Broken Toy, a song not on any album from them. The other one, Highway Jones, I just love it.





Enjoy!

Nope, I Didn't Go

Nope, I didn't go the the benefit that I wanted to go to. Instead, I got stuck at home watching my son while my ex-wife deals with my "daughter's" issues.

Apparently, she got kicked out of her bio-mother's house (no surprise here) She is a sweet girl with a kind heart. But make no mistake-this girl here is a drama queen. She is very opinionated and her free speaking mind often gets herself into trouble. When this happens, this 24 year girl gets herself into a jam and expects everyone to get her out her out of it. This is NOT how I raised her. I admit, I'm ashamed of this.

To further explain her situation, I met AC when she was four years old when I was dating my ex-wife. When she was eight, her mother (my ex-wife's sister) dropped her off on us and vanished for three years. Presumably, to follow her drug induced ways. Since then, my ex-wife and I raised her till our divorce five years ago. She has struggled with many issues her own identity (she's half black) and the abandonment of her own parents. We did the best that we could to help her out.

Since our divorce, AC has been struggling with self independence and financially. She has moved around from place to place, never staying at a place for long. This is not good for her and her daughter. They need some kind of stability in their lives.

Knowing that she needs stability in her life, I try not enable by helping her out by giving her money and giving her rides. Being her "Dad" it's so hard not too. If she ever wants to be self independent I have to.

Stumple Upon

Lately, out of boredom, I've been playing around my StumbleUpon add on to Firefox. It's a feature that I have playing around with lately. I've come up with good stuff. For those who don't know what is, it's a search engine that throws "everything" at you. It's kinda like a random thing that opens up a whole new world for you via the Internet. Here is something that I stumbled upon and I thought it was quite funny.

Take it Easy

Sorry that I've been blogging a lot lately. It's been kinda like therapy to me lately-just letting it all out. I've been listening to a lot of my Last.fm stuff lately (see sidebar) .I have it set for a certain station and it's bringing me back memories of how cool classic rock is. I missed it so much!

As I was listening to this station, one of my favorite bands came up. The Eagles. I remember seeing the Eagles at Alpine Valley in East Troy, WI during their 1994 Hell Freezes Over Tour. It's only an hour drive (or less) from where I live. Anyways, it was a GREAT show! The vibes were unbelievable! It was like a peaceful, easy feeling. The audience was singing along with the music so loud that Don Henley announced that " Do we have to sing?" And that included their solo stuff! It was the most laid back concerts that I have ever been to. And YES, I do have a copy of this show in my music collection.

Packers Week # 12

The Packers totally dominated the Detroit Lions in this fantastic feast of a game today! The Packers played well on all sides of the ball with quarterback Aaron Rodgers throwing for 348 yards and three touchdowns. The final score was 34-12. More on the game here.

It Snowed!

photo courtesy of Pete Setclowe

I woke up this morning to a total darkness. The power had gone out in this place. Somehow I stumbled around and found my way outside to see how much power had gone out. To my surprise, I saw an inch of this white slushy stuff on the ground. YUCK! I hate snow! In all the years that I've living in Wisconsin, I never liked the snow. The stuff's cold and dreary. Shoveling it and driving in it is a bitch. Just seeing it is a firm reminder on how depressing it is that your stuck inside of your home with nothing to do. I just hope this isn't going to be a long winter.

The power was restored three hours later.

Happy Thanksgiving!

A special wish to my family, friends, and all those who read here a very Happy Thanksgiving! Looking forward to the turkey and the Packer game!

Thoughts for Food

This weekend is the 2nd Annual Thoughts for Food Fall Harvest Benefit. I've been to many of the springtime benefits over the years and they are always a blast! So I may go this one and blog about it. I always have been a big supporter of the local music scene. I've seen many of these bands from time to time, including my fav, Mean Jake!.

At the Crossroads

Since October 19th, my personal life has been in shambles. Much of it is in confusion and pain. I'm not sure what to do anymore. I've made many mistakes in past and many of them have caught up to me. I've been doing a lot of soul searching here trying to find answers to the questions that I have. All I found were more questions. Life has so many paths to follow.

So here I am, sitting in the crossroads of my life, smoking a cigarette-thinking of the path to follow. I know want I what in life per say, but getting there is the hard part. There are so many obstacles and "walls" in way of my true happiness. So where do I go from here? Which way is the right way? I 've been trying to use my better wisdom to make the right choice. And that is hard to do.

In my soul searching (and after a recent conversation with a friend) I came to realize and accepted a few things. Some of these things are something I had already knew, but I didn't want to hear. Like-

-You can't really always get what you want-
-Hopes and dreams don't always come true-
-The Lord works in the mysterious ways-
-Love doesn't always conquer all, but it can sometimes divide the heart and mind-
-Sometimes you can't always go down the road you chose-

I keep talking about "walls" in the path. This wall that I have before me is way too hard for me to break. My fingernails are chipped and my chisels are broken. It'll take a miracle to get to the other side. Now I must go down another path. It's not the path I had chosen, but it's a way out of my personal cell. Who knows were this path is going lead to?

So I flipped my cigarette and I am starting to walk down this path....

Packers Week# 11

The Packers trashed the San Francisco 40Whiners (I can say that, right?) today 30-24 at Lambeau Field. The Pack dominated the 49ers with a near perfect game in the first half. San Francisco nearly came back in the second half. More on the game here.

Wish I Would Have Gone

Some words were spoken about attending a Bruce Springsteen concert last Sunday night at the Bradley Center in Milwaukee. Things changed before then. My friend, the Rock and Roll Guru attended this show. They play the entire Born to Run album! Here is his review on the concert. I wish I would of been there!

Them Crooked Vultures

I've been hearing a huge buzz about this band lately called Them Crooked Vultures. The band features Led Zeppelin's bass player John Paul Jones, Nirvana's drummer David Grohl, and the singer/guitarist from the Queens of the Stone Age, Josh Homme. I think they sound rockin'! What do you think?

Oh Deer!

Twice this week, I almost hit a deer on the way to work in the morning! I hate it when that happens. Crashing into a deer can cause some serious damage to a car. My folks hit a couple a deer a couple of years ago and it did over a $1ooo worth of damage. Yikes.

Now is the time of year the were the deer is on the move. It's mating season. The bucks would running around in search of a mate. Although deer are active all times of the day, they can be mostly be seen during the dawn and dusk hours. That's way you have to be extra careful when you drive.

Here in Wisconsin, we have a hunting season that draws thousands of hunters to the northern parts of the state. The idea of a hunting season, seeing that there really no natural predators, is to trim the herd to a more manageable level. The wolf population is endangered in the state (yet, they are making a comeback) and the bear, well, they can't do it all. Without the hunting the deer population would increase and cause problems. One the problems would be starvation in the winter. Too many deer and not enough food. The other would be car accidents.

Sorry, I would want this to happen to my car!

Packers Week # 10

The Packers stomped the Dallas Cowboys 17-7 today at Lambeau Field. I dozed off during the first half of the game and missed much it. I watched the second half with excitement as the Packers' defense bore down on Dallas' quaterback Tony Romo. I thought the game would a complete shut out till the very end when Dallas finally scored. More on the game here.

Impromptu JTI Meet

Today we had an impromptu JTI meet. Was kinda nice to these guys again. That's one of the coolest reasons to be a part of this team. We get to see each other! We are kinda like family here. This family started on our local newspaper blog The Journal Times. It's a big site with its issues. Many of the issues were over censorship, trolls, and the lack being able to express an opinion without being blasted for it. The blog got ugly. We tried to negociate a truce with the paper, but were met with a deafening silence. Some of us got banned. Tired of it all we decided to form our own site.

Oh fun we having with this site! Now we are free! Free to write whatever we wanted to. Free to express ourselves. Free to push the envelope a little bit. We respect one another's opinion. All without the fear of being banned! Isn't that great! We have been at for almost two years now. our membership has grown to over 30 bloggers from all over the world! WOW!

It was Lizardmom's idea to have this meet. She contacted me to make some arrangements. She fired off a blog and some e-mails and viola! A meeting! Tonight's meet was rather small. Only SER, OrbsCorbs, kkdither, and myself made it. We were supposed to go bowling instead, we ended up yaking for a couple of hours. It was fun getting together with my friends! I needed it!

Some Autumn Pics

It's about past peak season in southeastern Wisconsin. It's still pretty though.

Packers Week #9

The Packers were beat by the winless Tampa Bay Buccaneers 38-28 today. Aside from the special teams, the Packers looked solid in the first half. I'm so glad that I missed the second half due to an appointment. This has not been a good season...

Prison System Overhaul

I'm a strong believer of an overhaul of our country's prison system. It seems to me that our prisons and jails are overcrowded with non violent inmates that can rehabilitated. Many of them are drug addicts. Our war against drugs is dysfunctional. As long as there is a demand, there will always be a supply. So why feed into this? We need to take the demand away. We need to focus on rehabilitation and prevention. Studies have shown that it is cheaper and more cost effective to rehabilitate than it is just lock them up for their crimes. We Americans as a society need to stop thinking of this "just lock 'em up'" mentality and start thinking outside of the box. Some of these "prisoners" could use a second lease in life.

The state of California has already started a program that works. I've seen it.

Here is an excellent article on the subject. Check it out, please.

Still Thinking of Her

I still think of her quite often. Trying not to. It's hard... All it takes is a song, a photo, something on TV, a sight around town, a plane in the sky and the memories come rushing back. Many good memories... A memory of a love so strong that I thought it could conquer all.

The pain of loss is still there. I don't know if it would ever go away... Still trying to pick up the pieces and move on... The sadness is still in my heart. Some days are better than others.

Got a New Blog

I've got a new out there for you rock and rollers out there! It's called DrewTube. It's bacically a montage of videos as I go through certain stages in my life. At the moment, it's a work in progress....Enjoy!

Simple Man

With my personal life in confusion and chaos, I think it's time that I should take a couple of steps back and focus more a person that matters to me the most-my son...

He's a good kid...

November Rain

Welcome to the Machine

After all the downtime on being on vacation all summer long and being sick...It's back to the grindstone for me. It SUCKS, but yet, it's a relief. Just needing some stability for a while.

Eight Irrestible Principles of Fun

I stumbled across this today....It made me think.....

Eight Irresistible Principles of Fun

I should take some of that advise as well...

Someday

A friend of mine sent me this video and it makes sense to me...



Enjoy...

Went to the Doctor

Went to doctor today after two weeks of being sick on and off for the last two weeks. Some days were better than others. I would having the shakes, chills, headaches, fever, uncontrollable coughing, spasms, ect. Some days I would feel better enough to something, until it hits me all over again. For the most part, I would go to work (no sick days there) come home and sleep. When I wasn't bed ridden, I was a walking zombie. I just couldn't function. Finally, I had enough strength to get myself to the hospital to get myself looked at.

After a series of tests, the doctors told me that I have a severe case of bronchitis. This is nothing really new to me. I've this before. (It's caused by me smoking WAY to much and stress) I figured I'd take care of it by using the the over the counter drug treatment. It doesn't work very well as you can see. I've been prescribed a series of powerful antibiotics and more inhalers. I'm starting to feel better now. I hope it continues.... I NEED to get out this funk I'm in and move on.

The Love Song

Tesla was one of my favorite bands out of the '80's

Packers Week #8

Brett Farve and his Minnesota Vikings beat the Packers 38-26 today. The first half of the game the Pack looked like they were going to stomped on. They almost came back in the second half.