Life is like pizza...

I can't sleep and thats nothing new so I got to thinking about some stuff and I figured I would just go ahead and blog this shiznit and get it out of my system. Here are some random thoughts that have shot through my head in the past hour:

*** Life is like a pizza. We are all made of the same ingredients and go through the same process, but when we are first created we are handled differently by God and that is what makes us unique. For example, the basic ingredients include dough, tomato sauce, and cheese. The dough is your foundation while the tomato sauce is your heart and the cheese is your physical prowess. Some people get alot of dough and stick to their guns on everything; their foundation is solid and your not gonna break them down or shake them up by any means. Some people, on the other hand, are freakin tomatoey (is that a word?) as nuts. We all know that person that might not be sharpest tool in the shed, but holy balls, if you freakin mess with someone they care about they will quite literaly eat your face if given the oppurtunity. The tomatoey people are the most passionate S.O.B's on the planet and they will be the best friends you could ever ask for. Now cheese on the other hand are those people that wake up everyday and redefine what beauty is. Everyone has seen somebody at least once in their life where your first reaction was, "I will love that person everyday for for the rest of their life if God wills it..." and it just made your heart do this wierd thing in your body where you felt like you wanted to just freakin explode and it took everything inside of you not to kick your legs in the air like a wild stallion in an open field. Yea, those are the cheese people.

Now me, personally, I'm like 64% tomato, 32% dough, and roughly 4% cheese - not alot of razzle dazzle in these shoes but mess with someone I care about and I'll go baboon on your candy ass and end your life. And you might be able to sway me one way or another on a subject, but don't come at me with your opinion if you can't a) back it up b) make an intelligent arguement or c) - and c is huge - if your doing it because someone else is. Oh my God, if one more person tells me their opinion on, say, Micheal Vick being quarterback for the Falcons and the only evidence they have to back it up is because their dad told them so, I am going to smash my guitar over their head WWF 8th grade Jeff Jarrett style and Rikishi bomb their face. Now observe what just happened; my 32% dough and 64% tomato just mixed together to cause a fiery tirad.

Anyways, so all the ingredients are the same. We all might be set up a little different , but basically, we are all rocking the same gear. So we go through life learning who we are and what percentage cheese and dough we are made up of until one day we hit the oven. And let me tell you folks, the oven is a complete douche bag. It might be somebody close to you dying or a situation where you feel like you can't win , but it is gonna come, and it is going to blow Johnny Depp style. This is where we become the pizza or, in essence, who we truly are. All of our dough and cheese and tomato sauce is going to cook together under the heat of the situation and when we come out of that oven, we will be completely different than who we were when we went into it. Now techinically, nothing about has changed. We haven't added or taken away anything that makes up our pizza pie but, for the first time, we aren't 3 separate ingredients but rather one delictable treat. This is because it took everything we had, every ounce of dough and tomato and cheese, to pull through the oven and because we had to rely on all three ingredients instead of just our one dominant trait, we become complete.

Some people are going to hit the oven sooner than others and that is to be expected. Some people might be a pizza in rural Wisconsin and not deal with the oven for a while simply because there isn't alot of demand for pizza when you live in Wisconsin. Me? Shoot nikka, I was a pizza in New York City in Times Square on New Year's Eve in 1999. I got thrown in the oven as soon as I got my percentages down and came out ready to roll. Thing is, as a pizza, you are going to get your crap eaten by this world. I repeat, some fat guy is going to take you, sprinkle cheese on you, fold you up, and percieve to eat you like Roseanne after a 40 day fast. The only thing you can do is hold on to who you are and be cotempt with it. As pizza, you can't really fight your destiny, you just have to learn to accept it and find joy in the fact that your a solid pizza and you are making some fat guy incredibly happy. And in the end, when that fat guy has eaten your last slice and you've gone to heaven in his stomach, you can be proud to say that you were a delicious, nutritous, and freakin baller pizza.

*** I have written 22 songs: 13 about God, 7 about girls, 1 about Cole Britt, and 1 about my dad. I have only finished 8 of them.

*** I have never been in a relationship past two weeks yet I have fallen in love 7 times and the ones I have fallen in love with still do not and will never know that I loved them. 3 times I have gotten the "friend" speech", 2 times I have had some friend complications, and 2 times I screwed things up.

*** I think my dad is the baddest man on the planet.

*** I think my Uncle Richie is probably the second baddest man on the planet.

*** The most intimate relationship I might ever have with another person is Cole Britt.

*** Kyle Barfield is going to change the world.

*** I don't know why but I feel like I haven't had a real conversation with my sister in an abusrdly long time. I feel like for some reason I don't want her to deal with my crap (as well as everyone else I know) so I just kind of listen to what she has to say and then I leave. For the record, I love my sister more than anything else on the planet and I wish I told her that more because she deserves that.

*** Tammy Barfield and Blair Sexton are "adopted" sisters.

*** I have no brothers by blood or last name, but according to feeling and compassion, I have a freaking crew of them. Any guy that was in my graduating class I would gladly, no lie, take a hot bullet to the face for, 50 cent style.

*** James Liipfert saved my life in 8th grade and has continued to do so ever since.

*** WTF am I going to do with an English major...

*** I would love to throw nerve gas into one of the buses on MTV's NEXT.

*** The Goddard brothers should form a boy band.

*** I missed out on about 30 minutes of my senior prom because I hid in the bathroom thinking that everyone was going to make me dance to "Bye Bye Bye".

*** My dog Bella is sssooooooooooooooo old.

*** I think I was a complete homosexual loser my 7th grade year at Feagin Mill.

*** I am pissed that I just met Ben Erwin my last two years of college. That joker is so baller.

*** I wish that I saw Terry Mosteller, Don Walker, and Meyur Vashi more.

*** I wonder if Mike is still the physical trainer at Westfield; man he was such a dick sometimes.

*** I wonder if Teresa Bruce's son is a track star yet.

*** Time is gay. It lets you have the best time of your life but then you can only think back on them because time is a dick and it won't let you go back.

*** When did Saturday Night Live start to suck enormous balls?

*** I wonder if Eddie will make a note referring to this note as the longest note ever.

*** The most annoyed that I have ever been was when Cole Britt dated Morgan Irby and she used to call him at 4:30 AM and ask him what he was doing. WTF Morgan, what do you think he was doing? Shaving? And to make things worse, Cole had her ring tone set to something that slightly resembled a banshee being shot repeatedly. Morgan I love ya but I seriously get mad thinking about how many times you used to wake me up...

*** I would kill a baby to be able to go back in time and start over with this chica that I met last weekend.

*** I hate people who are delusional about life. Seriously, you can't sing, why in the nuts did you go on American Idol and then cry when Simon Cowell told you that you licked donkey nuts. You KNEW that was gonna happen you delusional idiot...

*** I wish 8-sided volleyball was a professional sport.

*** I wish that facebook didn't exist.

*** I wish that I could give Kyle Barfield 3 chances to bust out that face that Emily Rose saw when that car rode by so he could do it to unsuspecting people.

*** I wish I could get a full nights sleep because I haven't had one in 2 and a half years.

*** I wish I could give my friends and family whatever they wanted.

*** I wish some girl was willing to love me as much as I am willing to love her.

*** I wish people would stop telling me that I am going to meet someone cause they've been right so farf.

*** I hope that I make my parents proud.

I gotta quit, I have English 3000 homework to do and I have class in 3 and a half hours. Peace peoples.

This thing in my chest...

What does it take?

I've heard hours and hours worth of advice from people who appear to have what I want, but in all reality, aren't they exactly like me, rehashing and retelling the things they have heard from other people? Is there even a point in preaching a subject if your audience has heard it so many times that they have become numb to it's message? Where is the personal gain for someone being told what or what not to do for the nineteenth billion time? Do people not see the redundancy in this method of "teaching"?

I'm sorry but I can't take it anymore, I feel like everyone is being turned into a piece of meat: a piece of refined, factory made, run of the mill, americanized meat, coming fresh off an assembly line and it makes me sick. We are all taught a certain way to do things and it has led to a massive disconnect of what God is all about. I don't know why this has just hit me like a train but it is burning inside of me like a raging fire; I can feel the pressure of it inside my lungs and I am about to pop like a balloon that has been pushed to it's limits. Words cannot fully emphasize nor describe what I feel so I am asking you, the person reading this right now, to focus not on my words, but my meanings behind them.

I remember in the halls of my old high school I once saw a poster that read "Do you know Jesus, or do you just know about him?". Let's break that down. In essence, the poster makes a brilliant statement, that learning about God and living with him are two completely different things. Nice. I like that. So suppose that poster makes me want to seek God on a deeper level. What is one to do? Well, the first thing would be to find someone you deem "Christian" and talk to them about it. From this person, lets say, you learn the teachings of Jesus and all he has to offer. So now you can check the "know about God" box of off your list and you can move on to the seemingly similar "know God." So you start putting Jesus' principles into action ,but you run into a problem. For some reason or another you can't seem to kick a bad habit or let go of an old temptation, a problem that everyone faces and will face for the rest of thier lives. Frustrated, you go to the same person who taught you about Jesus and ask for advice on what to do.

Now, everything up to this point has been routine. In any area of life your interested in, you are going to naturally seek out people who are experienced in that field and let them teach you everything you need to know. And while this works for 99.9% of the things in life, it does not work for God. There is no way that anybody on this earth can truly know anything unless they experience it for themselves. Example: My grandpa's lasagna. I can sit here and tell you about the gooey mozzarella cheeses and the hearty tomato sauce filled with thick chunks of Italian sausage and basil. I can tell you about the crunchy flavor packed garlic bread and home made lemonade that goes perfect with it. I can tell you all these things, but you will never know how good all that crap is until you bite into yourself; Until you put it in your mouth, chew it up, swallow it, and feel it run down the back of your throat into your stomach. That my friends is personal experience and it is the only way to honestly know something.

I say that because nobody can tell you who God is. No preacher, pastor, prophet, preist, minister, or missionary will ever give you what you need to walk your path laid out by the Lord, only he can do that. Doesn't that make sense? Don't you see that everybody was created in God's mind as thier own person and, in affect, has thier own path to walk? It is God's path people, you are the vehicle, freaking drive already and stop asking directions. Nobody is going to be able to tell you where your headed because that is God's choice, the only thing that other people can do is keep you in your car and your hands on the steering wheel. If you fall asleep and drive into a ditch then that is your fault. But don't go running to Brother Rastus for advice on how to get out. All he can do is simply get your car back on the road, your butt in the seat, and your hands placed promptly back on the steering wheel so you can drive head first into a ditch again. This process will happen over and over and over until you become comfortable in the ditch and start thinking that is where you are supposed to be. Well its not at all where your supposed to be and the only reason you think that is because you figure that if Brother Rastus, man of God, can't get you get driving straight then noone can.

So what does it take? Who and what have the answers we seek?

Our culture is a pathetic one. It is an understatement to say that I dislike most of the things going on because, to be honest, I pretty much hate all of it with everything that I am. We want everything given to us (think those people on MTV's Sweet Sixteen) and if it isn't then why work to obtain it if it causes us blood, sweat, and tears along the way. Our country is materialistic, shallow, and ignorant to most of the things that once made it great. Our founding fathers weren't smart, they were intelligent. They could think critically about situations and resolve issues that arose from any angle. We don't work like that anymore. We don't want to have to fight through things, we just want someone to tell us what to do so we can do it and if we fail, then we say that it isn't our fault and we just move on. This idea has saturated everything in our culture from school, all the way to our faith. People, life is hard. Life sucks. Things are going to happen that will piss you off and make you curse the world. And it is our human nature to want to know the who, what, when, where, and why of every situation, but the only person with those answers is God. And as willing as he is to give them to you, he won't unless you put some effort into it.

Now, it would be hypocritical of me to sit here and tell you how to go about finding God because that is exactly what I have been fighting against in this post. So all I am going to say is this, read the bible. But don't just read it, freaking READ it.

The word became flesh for a reason. God doesn't want you to wander through life like a crack addict on the streets, he wants you to be happy and happy you will be if you just understand who he is and who you are in relation to that.

I am an English major. I love to read and write and analyze things that most people would find hideously boring. It excites me to find underlying meanings in text that is hundreds of years old. Why? Because people back then used to care about their work. For example, if someone wrote a book, he didn't do it to sound smart or try to impress people with his skills, he did it because it wasn't the words he was putting on the paper, it was his soul. You can find this same idea in good musical artists. People who slave over thier lyrics because they don't want you to just listen to them, they want you to feel them. They want you to be there with them as they re-tell an experience or a person or a place in time. That's beautiful to me. To take something intangible and turn it into something that everyone can experience. I want that. When I write or do anything, I don't want to tell you about the experience, I want to give it you.

That is what God did with the bible. You can read it all you want but you will never get the true meaning of it unless you understand that it wasn't written as guidelines and rules so you don't burn in hell. It was written because you are a child of God and he wants to protect you from all of the horrible things that can happen to you. The relationship you have with your parents is the same one you have with God, you just have got to realize that. Sit down and analyze the text of the bible just one time and I promise that you'll find a new meaning to something that you've been reading your entire life. That is when the answers will come, that is when God will show you want you want to see. You might not always like it, but it will be the truth because that is the only thing he has to offer. For example, Jesus' sermon on the mount. Go ahead chew on that, see what it tastes like when you really go after it. Is anyone on this earth truly righteous? Is anyone truly meek? Is anyone truly hungry? Is anyone truly pure of heart? Or does everyone on earth just try to be those things? Jesus, if God blesses these people and noone is like that then how will we gain access to your kingdom? We would need something to cover for our sins, ya know something that is truly righteous, meek, hungry, pure of heart. Something that would take our pla............oh wow, I see what you did there. Check one for the Lord.

Emily Dickinson once said that, "They say that God is everywhere, and yet we always think of Him as somewhat of a recluse." That is one of the truest things I have ever heard. Our view from a human perspective is that God doesn't do enough in the world today. Well think about this, what if we are the ones not doing enough? Our world is infected with disease, poverty, and famine, and while we have the necessary tools to wipe these evil things out, we don't. We sit back and say,"Oh that sucks, I feel bad for those people." and we go on our own way. And this isn't to call anybody out because I am guilty of it just as much as the next person. But I beg of you, don't think that you can't make a difference. You can. You can make all the difference in the world for someone if you're just willing to give a little bit of yourself. This world will never be a better place if the people who have the power to do something don't. Remember that.

I'm tired. I haven't slept well lately and when I say lately, I mean that past 2 years. I'm drained in every sense of the word. Someone who is like a brother to me has just gotten the worst news you could ever imagine. My roommate's heart is broken and my sister is shriveling up in the guilt of it all. Neither one of them responsible for what has happened, just God leading them down different paths. The idea of a mother losing custody of her kids from a crackhead ex-husband breaks my heart. I learned tonight of some other things that weigh my heart down heavier than it has ever been.

One of my friends once called me a loner, said that I didn't need other people to make me happy. I couldn't disagree more. My life revolves around other people and to be honest, I love it. Physically I might be shot, lack of sleep due to worrying and such, but my soul has a purpose and thats all that matters. It is all that has ever mattered. I had to break tradition and it was hard but I found God on my own. His purpose for me and the path he laid was only discovered because I struggled to find it. I fought alot of nasty battles with myself and I still fight some today. The person I was, the person I wanted to be, and the person that I consciousely chose to be everyday when I woke up was being stripped down and taken away because I was being taught to find the answers in everything but myself. I always thought that someone had been through what I was going through before and that they would have the answers. Well noone will ever go through what you are going through in the exact same way. You are unique and so is your life. The only person that can get you through it is yourself and a belief that your gonna make it out of that situation better than when you went into it. My path, as of now, was a breeze. Great family and friends and the financial means to never worry about anything were all I needed until I began to understand that those things merely described me, they didn't define me. I wanted that defintion, I wanted that purpose.

All I ask of you is this, regardless if you want God now or not, you will want him sometime in your life. You might seek help to do so and I highly encourage that. Christianity is a communal activity, if you don't have people to support you then your road is going to be that much harder, that much more difficult. Just remember that God has what you want. You are going to have to struggle to find it though and you'll hit that ditch more times than you want to. But in the end, when all is said and done, you'll realize that it wasn't the destination that was important, it was the road you traveled to get there.

Chicken place on prince...

So me and Kyle have just moved into Campus Lodge and we are absolutely loving our new setup. One night, I walk outside to talk to someone on my cell phone when I bump into our neighbor Lauren. We start to talk but she was getting ready to head downtown so we didn't talk much but lets just say that fireworks was a flying, that is to say she probably didn’t remember who I was the next day.

So one night, Kyle and I were heading back from the tennis courts and I was like, "Kyle I think I am gonna ask that Lauren girl out on a date." and, to my surprise, Kyle was very gung ho for it. This was surprising because Kyle has two levels of excitement. Kyle can either be like, "Huh? What? Oh, yea dude I’ll ride to Wal-Mart with you.... whatever" or Kyle can, it the only way to describe it, completely freak out and make noises that I am convinced he only makes around me. I'm sure if you listen closely you'll hear him say "Yes, sir" like an old black slave and, in complete spontaneity, squat in an athletic position and kind of do this grumbling noise while he has this grimace on his face.

So yea, Kyle was squatting and screaming “yes, sir” all over the place until I finally walked over to Lauren’s apartment. At this point Kyle had assumed his position behind our door peeping through that little eyehole thing as to get a better angle on the impending train wreck that was about to happen. And don’t kid yourself folks, I’m John Lipari, it’s like my manifest destiny for anything to do with girls to end up like a freaking Greek tragedy.

I mean honestly, my freshman year we were trying to find a parking spot so we could head to the Georgia game and this SUV of beautiful girls pulls up right next to us. To my surprise, these girls look at me and say hello in the most sorority voice you’ve ever heard. Now, I’m an English major and that’s not saying anything but my vocabulary is all right and I’m not one to get nervous around girls. But for some reason, I don’t know what it was, the Panama City 9^th grade Rico Suave John emerged for a split second and said “What’s goooiinnn oooonnnnnn lllaaddddiiieeesssss”. You're reading that thinking I’m retarded for typing it up like so but, I kid you not, I held it out that long like Senora Bruce was teaching me a new Spanish phrase in 10^th grade. After that, I don’t know what happened; seriously it is just a blur. I think they asked me where I was sitting and I think I told them I was on the field as a sports trainer for UGA. Whatever, point being that the same guy that orchestrated that masterpiece of a disaster was about to try his luck with the girl next door. Brilliant.

So, lets catch back up to here and now. You have me, John, pacing around in the breezeway like Luke Goddard’s old pug Gizmo, freaking out for no reason. You have Kyle sitting patiently, waiting for the inevitable explosion of awkwardness to go down and then you have Lauren, who has NO idea what is about to unfold in front of her.

So, I do it. I ring the doorbell and as fate would have it Lauren doesn’t answer the door. Instead, I get none other than Lou Ferrigno, the guy who played the Incredible Hulk in the 1980’s. Awesome, this is going great. So, I ask this guy,” Um, is Lauren here?” and he looks me directly in the face and goes, “Why?” Oh that’s simple I was just going see if she preferred the Sweet or Hot sauce at Sonny’s. Why do you think you douche bag, I just want to ask her a question. So, he turns green and stomps away to go get Lauren. At this point, I turn back at the door and look at Kyle like, “You ready??? Here it comes. …COMPLETE FAILURE, HOORAY FOR FAILURE!!!”

Oh lord, so it seemed like forever before Lauren came to the door but she eventually did and she was dressed to her nine’s. She was all done up and she was looking beautiful. So I start trying to talk to her when all of a sudden this small little man pops a squat on my shoulder and starts talking to me, ”Yea, hey john, ummmmm, pfffffffffff, if your wondering who I am, I’m pressure and I’m just gonna, ya know, hang out in your face and make you completely miserable while you do this.” So anyways, now I’ve stalled for a good 2 or 3 seconds but, don’t worry, they were completely awkward and Kyle loved every second of it like he was watching a Ridley Scott epic. I finally get to talking to Lauren and I ask her if she wants to go get a bite to eat some time. Now, just for kicks guys, guess what she says. Ding. “Oh, sorry I have a boyfriend.” Now something cool happened when she said that. I didn’t physically hear this, but I FELT Kyle on the other side of the door do that thing where you suck on the back of your teeth when you see something that makes your skin crawl.

There is more to the story but I could go on for days and I don’t feel like typing anymore. Just know this, I think I offended her when I asked if her boyfriend went to North Carolina and her roommate, Sarah, came out in the middle of all this and made me feel like even more of a jabroni. And don’t think this is like a rare thing for me, this crap happens on a near daily basis. I seriously wonder if my purpose in life is just for God to put me in awkward situations so my friends can laugh. I’m tired, peace.

Home

"Good Lahd John you are SO bad." These are the words that kept running through my head as I tried frantically to clean frappacino off my shirt. You see, I was in the airport getting ready to pick up one of the most incredible men I have ever known and now a small brown stain was setting up camp in the middle of my chest. I was fine earlier, just minding my own business and drinking my frappacino, when out of the corner of my eye I saw a group of soldiers getting ready to fly to a new base to be shipped off for war. Most of these guys were huge, cut men that looked very capable of breaking my neck with their butt cheeks in one swift squeeze. As I scanned the physical specimens before me, I took notice to a soldier near the back of the crowd. This soldier was different in the fact that he didn't fit your typical Rambo mold. He was skinny, 150 pounds tops, and he wore glasses with a thick black frame. He was sitting quietly, looking anxious and nervous while he was waiting to depart with men very unlike himself. He looked almost scared, and if that someone gave him the chance to walk away, he would take it and never look back. Seeing this made me think to myself,"Oh no, somebody call Al Queda cause this dude bout to do his thangy thang." Now, for the past 3 or 4 years of my life I have taught myself not to judge anyone on their physical appearance, but this doesn't mean that I won't make an assumption from time to time. Its just that everything about this guy led me to believe that if he went to war, he wasn't coming back. It was at this point that I started to notice the soldier's hand. He had a death grip on something like he was trying to squeeze a coal into a diamond. As I pondered to myself what that man was holding, the soldiers were called to their terminal. When the man went to stand up, he lost his balance and dropped the item he was grasping. "Wow", I said to myself stunned as the man quickly picked up his lost belonging. After seeing what the man had dropped, I now understood why he was holding onto it for dear life. It was his life. As he stared at the picture of his baby daughter, he kissed it and slid it down his lower leg back into the safety of his boot. I watched in awe as the man picked up his gear and walked alongside the other soldiers to their destination. I have never been to war and, God willing, I never will. In fact, the only person I have ever truly known to experience war was the man I was at the airport to pick up, my Grandpa. My Grandpa fought honorably in the Korean war when he was younger. I have never really brought up the subject because, honestly, I don't know how he feels about it. The only thing he ever said about war is that, "Your not fighting for your country, your fighting for the men beside you. Your fighting for home." When I was younger I couldn't really comprehend that statement because, to me, home was a place you lived and if you lived in the United States how could you not be fighting for your country? But now that I'm older, I have come to terms with what my Grandpa meant. Home is not defined by where you eat your meals and rest your head. Home is your family. Home is that feeling you get when you go out to eat and know half the resturant. Home is a place where you can be yourself and nobody will judge or criticize you; a place that embodies who you are and the ideals you were raised on. My Grandpa didn't fight in that war for a chunk of land. He fought in that war for me. He fought in that war for my father. He fought in that war to protect his family because where ever his family resided was his true home. So it all began to make sense, I could now grasp the concept of why this man was fighting while everything in his body told him to not to. It was because he wasn't fighting for himself or any material object. No, he was fighting for something much bigger. He was fighting for his daughter, for her love and protection, to be able to tuck her in bed at night, and to watch her grow up. He was fighting for home. As the man slowly made his way toward me, I felt a sense of pride burst through my body. I wanted to stand up and scream in his face,"Your NOT the NOT FREAKING NOT man." Doing this, though, would have either gotten me decimated by his huge friends or thrown out of the airport, niether of which at the time seemed intelligent nor healthy. So I opted for a respectful head nod. The soldier looked suprised when I nodded but he graciously did me the honor in return. I was so happy to be acknowledged by such a courageous man that I smiled briefly after he nodded to me. But then something unexpected happened. The man looked at me like he had just seen a ghost as he passed by my chair. But it was not a ghost he had seen. It was a 20 year old kid dribbling frappacino down his face like a fat baby eating mushed up carrots. The problem was that I somehow forgot that I had frappacino in my mouth when I smiled and it preceded to run down my face, onto my white shirt, and all over my pants. "Good Lahd John you are SO bad." After I cleaned myself up, my Dad and I stood by the elevator to wait on my Grandpa. We waited for close to an hour scanning the crowds of people as they left the escalators but my Grandpa never showed. Just as I was beginning to wonder where he could be, I felt a familiar touch that I had not felt in close to two years. As I turned around to see who it was, I was greeted with a tired, but joyful smile. "Were you looking for someone?". My Grandpa was finally home.

Good Job John

Yea, so I guess I am gonna do this thing. I've contemplated starting a blog for a while but I just never actually went through with it. Reasons being that: a) I didn't want to look like I am some guy trying to prove his internet trendiness and b) I didn't want to look like I am doing this just so everybody will think I am cool. I just feel that God blessed me with an outlook and perspective on life in which common situations rapidly become horrid displays of embarrasment or humiliation. This perspective, while comical at times, also has its shining moments of depth. Basically, what I hope to accomplish on this blog is a view of the world through my eyes. So, first things first. If at any point or time a word or phrase is italicized, then I am stating that sentence in my "voice". For those of you who know me, which will probably be the only people that read this, I often use this voice to mask sarcastic comments but don't provide emphasis. For example, in normal english one would say ,"That isn't cool man" but in my "voice" I would simply state, "Baft dude". Another example would be if somebody did something annoying to you. The common response would vary between something like "that's gay" or "you suck", but in the "voice" it would come out as "Your coolf" or a more direct "People like you". The next thing you need to know is what a word in bold means. If a word is in bold then I am saying that word sarcastically with emphasis. This is fairly common so be on the lookout for the bold. Nine out of ten times, though, you will see these two forms used in conjuction with each other. Here are some examples, see if you can follow: "You DON'T love her", "That's NOT homosexual" (just for reference, I have nothing against homosexuals, I hate the sin not the sinner), and a shout out to Kyle "blue-collar" Barfield, "FOOMP Your NOT dead". Well, now that the ground rules are laid out for the blog I think I'm NOT going to NOT bed because I'm NOT freaking tired. I gotta roll out to Birmingham in the morning with my family. I picked up my grandpa tonight from the airport so keep your eyes open for my blog on how incredibly awesome that experience was. Much Love.