Thursday, December 31, 2009

Things I find funny

browneyes2202 #in2010 I will not waste any energy on people not prepared to move forward w/ me in life-wasted too much of life on ppl not moving forward

Thanks Browneyes2202- looks to me like you might have wasted time typing that - time was wasted too much on that tweet.

Thursday, June 25, 2009

.Body Movin', Body Movin With the A-1 Sound, Sound So Soothing.

I hear by do solemnly swear not to take my body for granted any longer. I will keep it up and not be lazy. I will make it work and remind it that it is alive and needs to work properly. I will rip my muscles to shreds and let them rebuild. I will lift 30lb weights and whimper like a little girl because it hurts so bad because I've been so lazy for so long. I will NOT forget to stretch...Lord, help me to remember to stretch.

I will run on the treadmill and NOT drop my iPod and watch it shoot toward the back wall. I will not fall off the treadmill. I will not pass out when I exit the sauna. I will not pass out when I enter the sauna. I will do my best just to not pass out.

I will begin to take better care of the body that I was entrusted with so that I can have a longer, healthier, happier life to spend with my wonderful and beautiful wife and my children (when I have some :) ).

I will not take being able to scratch my head, put on my shirt without rything in pain, being able to point, hold my arms out straight, put my shoes on, or pick my nose (hey it happens...don't act like you don't ever do it. Everyone has seen you at some point driving down the road picking your nose and rocking out to some sweet dance tunes) for granted.

There are a lot of other silly things I could type but I'm too sore to type them. And yes, I am complaining like a little girl so you don't have to tell me.

Wednesday, June 24, 2009

.Eli The Barrow Boy.

This past weekend my nephew, Eli, spent the night at mine and my wife's house for his birthday present. I know that probably doesn't sound like a good birthday present to most but when you are 6 and the spend the night weekend consists of swimming (at a mansion), playing games, rock band, two puppies, making cupcakes, rock band, weird car wash on Hwy 42, happy meal, rock band, playing drums and guitar and singing blues songs with your uncle, finding a dollar in quarters at the weird car wash and getting to keep it, rock band, and one of the coolest aunts (Auntie Awesome is what they call my wife) it's a pretty good present. I must add that he is pretty awesome too.

Some of my favorite quotes this weekend were:

-"I fell out of the bed last night."
-"TALLULAH! I knew I smelled something weird."
-"We can go outside! It's not really raining." Shortly after the worst thunderstorm I'd ever seen in my life.
-"I'm not tired." *Yawns* *Falls asleep*.
-"Smell the sweet goodness, Uncle Joel." *On making chocolate cupcakes*
-"I want salsa and syrup with my eggs. Oh, and jelly on my biscuit."
-"Don't play that one. It cusses" -Luke Lewis, 6, on the South Park Pinball Machine.
-At 730am after I had asked him not to wake us up early on my day off: *Knock Knock* "Hey, Uncle Joel, Auntie Awesome. Do you have a shoe? There's a spider outside of your door and I need to kill it." He had 4 shoes in the living room where he was hahahah!
-"Hey Mr. Booty Pants!"
-"Hey. I didn't get a toy in my meal..." *Uncle Joel runs back into McDonald's and gets toy. Returns triumphant. "Oh yeah!"
-"This is their house?!?! It's like a hotel!"
-"Legos are more important than real people!" *Luke's reaction when he was informed that he had to stop playing Legos and play with real people* Hahahahah :) That was one of my favorites.

And the winner of all quotes was said from Eli to Luke (6 year old to 6 year old) while walking down the stairs of Luke's house (which is a mansion) to the game room that leads to the pool.

*Eli, hands in pockets and acting cool he says, very calmly and like it's no big deal to him at all*: "So, you guys have a mansion, huh?" Luke replies, "Yup." Then we went swimming and had fun.

So, the spend-the-night-party was a success! even though the night he got there I was too dumb to figure out how to get my xbox360 to sync back up with the controller (so no rock band the first night and oh how those drums were taunting him), our digital converter box broke (so no TV), and I realized that we have zero bedtime stories in our house. Thank the Good Lord for the Internet and brother-in-laws that know how to get gadgets working again. He fell asleep to a Brer Rabbit story read from a Asus laptop.

Happy Birthday Eli Jones. We love you.

*A special thank you to Farris Lewis for letting us bring our nephews to her house to play. It is like Disney World for them :) Thank you for being so kind :)

Saturday, June 20, 2009

.The Devil Made Me Read This.

.The Devil Made Me Do It.

The devil sits idle beating his trumpet
While the two new nuns are eating a crumpet
And the feeble old priest opens his windows
And the smoke from the grass dances into his nose.

*********************************************

.Numbers&Letters.

One
Two
Tree
Frog
Jumped
On
Me
And I screamed,
"Get it off!"
And he leapt off toward a fly and
Eight it
That nine
For tenner.

**********************************************

Friday, June 19, 2009

.Happy Birthday Scientology.

The other day, June 13th to be exact, was my cousin's birthday party at his house in Conyers, Ga. I think he turned 27? I was that guy who didn't bring a gift because I forgot...BUT I did bring the chips and dip, which me, him, and my brother Jon promptly inhaled. Also, I did eat the pizza, drink the coke, and play the xbox360.

Now for those of you who know my cousin, Josh, you know that the most odd things happen to him all the time, so it seems. He always has a story from something that happened recently at work or church or, heck, just about anywhere! They are not always good stories but they are stories none the less. Not to say he doesn't tell them well. He tells a story very well. Not to say that his vocation is a "story-teller" but I think he could be. I think he should be, actually. He tells a good story. At any rate...

When I got to his house the other day he was sitting on the couch with his daughter, Tybee, and he was playing MOH (Medal of Honor. Don't all the cool people just abv. it?). Well being that it is a two player shooting game I obviously wanted to play and try to shoot him!

Before we began though he had a story to tell me. He said that the other day when he was dropping off some things at the Goodwill bin he found "THIS!" *at this point he whipped out his laptop and hit play on the DVD that was on the screen*. The first thing I see is a sea of people in a huge auditorium and I think to myself "He has found some crazy preacher or guy that thinks he is Jesus. Maybe Yahweh-Ben-Yahweh?" Josh is notorious for finding the craziest preachers or cult leaders so I was ready to laugh. I didn't laugh. Yet.

The first words I heard were actually not words...well I couldn't understand them anyways. The first words I did understand were something like *In mumbly voice. The kind that creeps you out in old b&w science fiction flicks* "I had a hat. And I wore that hat... *some words I don't remember* other people don't wear hat...And they looked for the pyramids and they searched for them. They tried to figure out how to use them. Lexamystics, congraguaty, triangle, knowledge!" OK, so I made that last sentence up but there were so many odd words I didn't understand. I knew this DVD was gunna be good. But I didn't laugh I just sat with my mouth a-gape like a hole that's been blown into the side of a mountain: deep, dark and silent.

Then after what seemed like a 15 minute introduction (and boy was it an introduction! It was so good that I had NO IDEA what was going on! A CGI world floating and CGI books and tape sets zooming around the world. Sound clips and excerpts from these books/tape dubbed over the video. Then an anouncer voice saying other things I didn't understan) a man walks out onto a stage in front of the huge crowd of people that I had seen before and the crowd goes wild. Jumping and screaming, hootin' and hollerin'. People of all types. The set looks like an elaborate set like the ones you see on TBN or in John Hagee's church (*disclaimer: I am not saying anything bad about either one of them. I am just saying they have elaborate sets sometimes and I know what they look like because I grew up seeing them on the TV). The camera pans across the front row: Tom Cruise, Katie Holmes, John Travolta, SCIENTOLOGY!!! This is when I began to laugh. Mostly because Tom Cruise was jumping out of his skin, clapping and screaming and his wife (Katie Holmes) looked like she just lost her best friend. Her mouth was in a downward spiral, her eyes seemed dark and sunken, and she flopped her hands together like two dying fish fighting to revive themselves.

The man on the stage was young and good looking. He had a head full of hair, a nice suit, a strong jaw line and piercing eyes. His voice was the voice of a speaker and his confidence was through the roof! He began to speak and this is what I heard: "Avboadoifkjlw adhoviefa oadskw0i anavo ariyru nvfoaiwer aowlmfaalei fgybbnvr oainfae. Uaiioae bvai 948hai9 qg30 nvqp83q367v*/aa jhaif. Nvoaiufaerh aouva 9w84hakj!!!" the crowd goes wild! What was going on?

OK, he did not say that exactly but he might as well have. I did not understand a bloody thing the guy was saying. Was it even English?! Then they kept showing really weird, old movie clips with L. Ron Hubbard's mumbly voice overdubbed on them saying all sorts of weird/creepy things then they would cut back to the speaker on the stage and an eruption of applause would ensue.

I have been a Christian all my life and have never known anything else religion wise. I don't know what a lot of other religions really believe and I didn't know what it felt like to be a "non-Christian" until I watched that DVD. I felt totally lost to what these people were talking about. I mean it seemed great the way they were acting and they had lots of money and big movie stars and flashy things and big stages and beautiful people! Who wouldn't want to join!? Other than the fact no one who didn't already know stuff about Scientology could understand anything that was going on.

Then it dawned on me: this is probably what it feels like for a "non-Christian" to walk into most churches without having any former knowledge of Christianity. We use all the Christian terminology and such and they can't understand it. We clap and sing (well some of us...but that is another subject) and they don't know why. We smile and laugh like we are happy about everything and they don't get it because life isn't always that good, and we speak of God like he is, as my friend Paul Wilder would put it, some Pie-in-the-sky God, some mystical thing in the outer realms of the universe that has supreme control over us and our actions. It just sounds bazaar!

Now this just may be my opinion but I don't know that Jesus called us to be flashy and big and lights and stuff. There is nothing wrong with that stuff and sometimes it does help to draw some folks in to the church building but if that (and some fancy lingo) is all we have to offer we are missing something. God called us to love. Love is a thing that I think everyone can understand or feel or see. You know when you have seen or experienced love. You just know.

John 13:34-35"A new command I give you: Love one another. As I have loved you, so you must love one another. 35 By this all men will know that you are my disciples, if you love one another."

Romans 5:8
But God demonstrates his own love for us in this: While we were still sinners, Christ died for us.

While I have always been taught these truths growing up (that life and being like Jesus was about love and not flashy things) the light finally came on 25 years after that fact. I finally understood why it was about love and not fancy words and lights and sound and looks and stages.

So, with that said I would like to say thank you to my parents, my pastors, everyone older and wiser than me that has ever taught me anything, my wife, my father and mother-in-law, Tom Cruise, John Travolta, L. Ron Howard, and the good looking speaker for making me look at being a Christian and Christianity from a whole different perspective: From the outside in.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

.Harder.Better.Faster.Stronger...or just Harder.

Life's much harder on you when you do things the stupid way.

I could write more but why?
Why use more or larger words when fewer will work?

Life's much harder on you when you do things the stupid way.

Wednesday, June 17, 2009

.The Rooftop.

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"What could be said?" he said, "Fred."
"What could be said? He was only passing by when I saw that piano fall from the sky."

"It went aloof off the top of the roof!" a woman shouted.

"Aloof? OFF of a roof? No my dear child that is the wrong word" Mr. McQueen did pipe up and say. "What you meant to say is that it jumped off by itself."

"No, that would mean that it had legs." Mrs. Stanchold cried.

"Pianos do have legs you old hag!" McQueen shouted fiercely, "And they move about thus and yonder like you wouldn't believe!"

"I would believe it" She said with a grin.
"No you wouldn't either...It is impossible for a woman of your stature to believe anything like that."
"You are right. I wouldn't believe it" She said as she fanned her self with $100 bills.

"What could be said?" He said.
"Poor old Fred".
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