so i got a little...disturbed i guess, today. my grandpa (i call him Pop) and grandma (i call her Nana, these two are on my mom's side) and my grandma (my dad's mom, call her grandma) and my uncle johnny (who lives with my grandma) were all over today.
Pop...he's one of those grandparents with a story about everything...Anyways, Nana's askin me if i ever knew about my Pop swimming across and back this lake (sweet arrow lake). i've heard the story, but they went on and told it anyways. Pop says he swam across this lake, staying close to shore, but he knew he'd make it, it was just  if he got tired of it i guess. the lake is about a mile long. so he swam to the other side and took a break for 1/2 an hr. he just sat around, this side of the lake had the more "upper crust" people, so no one knew him. then he swam the mile back. now he goes back in time to another story.
he explains how when he was younger swimming across the lake is what made you tough, like your right of passage, this made you a man (that type a thing). he was always scared to do it. he hung out with all these older guys, real tough guys, great swimmers, they'd all done it.
so one day him and the guys, "a tough crew", are walking down to the lake, and "Joe Schmo" (i forget the guys name) he was leader of the bunch, he says to Pop, "Harry, today you're swimming across the lake." Joe says their gonna start at the deep side of the lake and Pop 'll have a convoy going with him. "and these guys could swim, they were all great swimmers". so they get to the lake and joe says alright everybody in let's go, just take it nice and slow Fes (harry fessler)". so they start out, and pop says "i just kept swimming and swimming, i didn't even look where i was going cause i didn't want to see how far i had to go. i just keep going, and i get so far and decide i better look". so he looks and sees he made it, he stops and the water only goes up to his waist. he made it.
   telling the swimming stories you could tell he was proud of it. i never did any right of passage thing that i'm proud of, did i? do we have something like this and i just haven't realized. i guess for all you niggas in the hood it would be the first time you robbed the local mini market haha.
also what happend to tough crews? and the good ol' boys. i've got some cool friends, a cool crew, but it doesn't seem like as big of a deal. maybe it will be someday. and kids just aren't tough anymore. most you "gangstas" think your tough, but..haha..eh most of you are just jokes.

this story is one of many. i'm supposed to hear the one about the guy who taught him how to tie a windsor knot (style of tie tying) at some point. he also told a story about his brothers and stuff they did. another story about this dam where everyone would go picknicking and stuff and how a lot of servicemen got jobs there working on the construction of the dam when they got out of the military.

the thing that bugged me is that hearing all these stories makes me feel like i'm not really doing anything worthwhile. i think it's a flaw with in our whole generation. we no longer appreciate things like people did back in the day. i don't remember doing any kind of right of passage thing. like that type of thing was a big deal to those kids, we don't do anything like that, do we? also i think it's a shame we have nothing like WWII or w/e where so many good memories are made (cause Pop is always telling stories about his time there, just stuff that happened, and people, he wasn't involved in much conflict). i mean of course those things are bad. but look at how the affect countries in positive ways, bringing people together for a common cause. creating a group of people with dignity and respect (servicemen). you hear someone was in the service and you get the image of someon with those qualities, and i think most of us lack those qualities very much.
    now adays all we do is bitch about wars. there's a war or conflict and everyones against it, the only unity is the unification of the people against everything. no one seems to support anything.
maybe our current war is fucked up, i don't know, i'm not getting into it. but apparently there's pretty many people out there that think it's worthwhile, or else they wouldn't have declared war (congress must do this, it can't all be blamed on bush). so even if the war is messed up, why can't we just back it? it's our country, our men and women, what happened to patriotism? maybe i'm wrong, i don't know statistics, but doesn't it seem most older people, people that served in WWII and were alive for all that, most of them give full support of the war. they don't sit around and whine and bitch, they are proud and they don't care if it's right or wrong, more involved people (congressmen) then them decided it was the right thing to do, so that's good enough for them.

i guess i'm just sorta rambling. i haven't really gathered my thoughts and put them in logical order and stuff. sorry for confusion.

Pop's now telling my sister another story about easter or something haha, who knows. i'm just saying, i don't see myself having this kind of pride in my life, and the events of my life

here's some two things Pop has said that really struck me:
"don't ever get too smart, you might not be able to learn anything" in response to my Nana talking to me about grades and junk
"alright i'm gonna get going. give me a kiss goodnight, goodnight not goodbye" Nana was staying over night and he dropped her off.

so i finally updated. i might edit with some pics from recent events...if i get around to uploading them off my camera.
i took some in philly, some at parties. there's this one of kenny that will make you piss your pants.

shit son, it's an update !

i was talking to someone the other day about death. cause i'm hardcore and it's all i think about....
ha, no. it was actually a pretty cool conversation. we were discussing what we think happens when someone dies.
we both had different opinions on what would happen. i think (or i should say hope) you are still sort of concscious, just in an entirely different way.  maybe that consciousness doesn't last long, who knows. but i think it would be terrible to die, and not even be able to realize you are dead. i guess depending on the situation a person might know they are going to die, but imagine if you're just randomly shot...and that's it. nothing. you stop existing. even being in that state is impossible for me to comprehend. it's like the same as before you were born, when you just don't exist, at all. i think that's sort of terrifying...i sorta summed up my opinion as that quote in my info; "i'd rather spend etenity in hell, than die and no longer exist, without even understanding that i've even died."
         i was talking to merima (sp?, sorry.) about it and she thinks we just stop existing. we go back to that state of nothingness. maybe this is more realistic, but i hope it's wrong. you can't really imagine it, but just try. imagine going that blank, that you don't exist. not like sleeping where you'll wake up, but completely nothing.
i want my questions answered, i want to know if this heaven and hell bs is real or not. i just wanna know stuff.
so i was curious as to what everyone else thought. leave me some comments and let me know.

what else...
oh how bout these awesome weekends...
i fuckin hate lebanon...i mean it hasn't been too bad..but wow.

i dunno, it'll probably be awhile till i update...but i'll try. i'm just sick of this xanga crap.

pretty good weekend.
it's a shame...i probably shouldn't say what happened for most of it haha.
when i go to work tuesday wayne will ask how'd my weekend was or what i did haha, i never know what to tell him cause i do so much but it's usualy things i can't say haha.

so...friday i played pool. mmm yeaaaa i love pool. i was doin pretty good too. what'd we call it sonny? machine gun? yea sonny always says shotgun when he hits one in really hard, but i hit like 5 in a row or something, so that's a machine gun ha. it was nice. and a nice night followed
saturday..i think i slept a lot. some boyzz came over. fun fun. then, we did the best thing ever (my idea of course haha). here's the best way to describe it:
1. gather supplies, rope about 10-15 feet long, 2 of them, 2 different sizes work best. sled type things, prefereably the style tha can go in any direction, saucers or things that will go sideways and w/e it's hard to turn a regular sled. snowboards are challenging.
2. tie ropes to trunk of car.
3. get on your sled thing and hold onto the rope (make sure you can let go of it if you need to so you aren't getting dragged around like a black guy in texas {hahahhaha sorry, that was mean...jkkk}).
4. have soemone drive the car. hehehe.
there is nothing more fun to do in the snow. believe me it's fucking amazzinggg.
if i could show you little ol nhut hangin flyin past us bystanders like a dude in bobsled you'd understand. it was fucking amazing. and they said i was on crack. eat your words bitches!@#!$@!!!!!

oooo you know what else is really fun? driving in snow!!! i fucking looovvee it. in the parking lot we "snow luged" (like the thing in the olympics looged that's the car + sled thing..needs a better name though, suggestions?). i was doing donuts and 180s and shit, it was crazzzyy soo good. i love flooring it at snowy spots..soo much fun.

so i guess we aren't gonna make it to ski round top or wherever..at least for this snow. maybe we just have to go some random time. it's so expensive though...

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i just saw some pics in the patriot of a guy snowboarding...it reminded me i really wanna go snowboarding again.
so who wants to go to ski round top or blue marsh or somewhere the next time it snows??
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well apparently no one liked that last post. 6 comments, ouch. so let's try again...

my mom keeps asking me if my friends and i are gonna play paintball or lasertag (scroll down) at this campground we're going to. i guess i'm staying there fri into saturday (shit! no partying that weekend!). this will be saturday febuary 18th. i've been there before and check out the course for paintball and lasertag, and it looks fking fun. it's in the woods and they've got forts and shit for lasertag. the lasertag guns are actual rifles converted to lasertag guns. it looks really fun. so hit up those links for prices and shit. let me know if your interested, i think it could be a lllotta fun.

i took SATs today...oh man...that was not fun. my head seriously hurt after it, this was me--> .
the worst part, was that i wasn't able to hit up a lovely party for the night. i stopped by and it was pretty good, i can't imagine what it got like later.
...speaking of which..what am i doing tonight? mmm..

on the subject of partying; i went out to eat with some people the other day, and everyone wanted to have a party and do all that fun stuff. sooo how bout somebody volunteers their house for a party with all my peoples. ha, see i'm always at these parties but there's not that many people i know. i meet a lot of cool kids though.

sorry i guess i've got a one track mind today..probably cause after those SATs i want to do nothing that involves thinking.
man i miss pictures, my post seems so bland now..

i was gonna update about "Lord of War" and "The Constant Gardner". anyone who's into like..human rights stuff should check them out. Gardner's about pharmicuticuls being tested out on africans. "Lord of War" is about private arms dealers. i think lord of war was better. i guess it's not really human rights..but like political corruption/human rights type stuff. i watched the commentary on Lord of War, it'll blow your mind. i guess i'm allowed to spoil commentaries cause most of you won't watch them. in the one scene there is like 50 tanks or something...maybe more..their actually owned by a private arms dealer, he let the director/producer/whoever rent them for the film but he needed them back by december cause he was selling them to liberia. also there's a scene with nick cage walking in front of storage rooms with like 3000, ak-47's. those are all real and owned by a private arms dealer, it was cheaper to buy them for the movie then sell them back than it was to make fake ones.
whoa.

edit>>>>>>>>>> so i bet i've made a lot of plans with people that ended up never happening. if i've done this with you, let me know what it was we were supposed to do, and it'll go back on the to-do list.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>

yea this was the greeting we got when going into andy's basement, all these half naked guys painting each other. it was beautiful.

so i know that game was like a week ago or two or something. i'm just lazy. also apparently you can only have 10 mb of pics uploaded for a whole month.....so i can't upload anymore for a month, wtf man. fuck you xanga. you will all just have to enjoy those. i made my other pic posts private cause i'm betting my site takes forever to load for some of you...it does for me anyways ha.

so i don't really feel like writting stuff right now. don't really have much of anything to say. except spending the last couple days with one beautiful girl has been awesome. i'm gonna miss you cait, and i don't know what i'll do without you at parties...probably get really sick really often.

to the rest of you lovely people, i  you. leave me somethin.