Co-Op Missions

What is there to say about the super secret Co-Op Missions at the football game on Friday between Apollo and Marshall County? Well there's a lot to say about it. Would you like to know how that went down? If you said yes, I'm sorry, but you're going to have to deal with disappointment. I could tell you, but then again I can't there's this sworn secrecy dealie pact understanding thing between me and the other two unnamed male individuals who accompanied me on our various escapades in the name of secrecy and national security. If you said no, you don't want to know what we did, that would be the operative answer. That means you have read the beginning of this blog and realized that you didn't want to deal with that crushing disappointment that would accompany answering yes. So way to go that smart minority of you who realized from the title to this blog that you wouldn't get any information out of this guy. Co-Op Missions. It's where it's at.

Tomorrow

Vagary. I don't know if that's a word, but if it's not, everyone can credit me with creating that word. Tomorrow. Vagary. Tomorrow. Vagary and tomorrow, they go hand in hand. Kind of like Bonnie and Clyde, peanut butter and jelly, and baseball and....sports. These two words are one and the same.

Vagary. Like I said earlier, I don't know if that's a word. But my intention was to relate to vague. Vague equates with unknown. If someone is "vague" with you, they tell you a little bit of what they mean, but not the whole thing. You get a visual outline of what they're talking about, but the flesh behind what they're saying remains hidden. Vagary.

Tomorrow. Tomorrow is vague. Vague is tomorrow. No matter how you spin it, what different combinations of words you use, there is no denying that tomorrow defines vague. One never knows exactly what will happen tomorrow. If it's Monday, you know that tomorrow you'll have to go to school. But will you have to? What if you get sick? What if a family member dies during the night? What if some horrible tragedy comes about and the school doesn't exist anymore? You don't know any of these things the night before. You know basically what will happen, you'll go to school, then, if you play a sport, there's practice after school, and then homework after that. That's your outline. But how do you know how all these things will go? How do you know that a very close friend will be sick tomorrow and you don't have anyone to sit with at lunch? There's so much that you don't know about tomorrow. You know what you are going to do, but you don't know how exactly it will go. Tomorrow.

Vagary. Tomorrow. Vagary. Tomorrow. Tomorrow. Vagary. Tomorrow. Vagary. They start to sound the same after a few repetitions, because they are the same. Tomorrow is an unknown, vague quantity that we deal with everyday. Vagary. Tomorrow. One and the same.

Laughter

Some weeks ago, or maybe it wasn't so long ago at all, or maybe I've just dreamed this whole scenario up and everybody in the world is really a figment of my subconscious and no one is really reading this right now because everybody doesn't exist. Whatever the case is, I was asked to write a blog on laughter, and I've neglected this duty. I apologize Kaitlin, so without further ado, here is....laughter.

Hmmm...laughter. You can't think about laughter without feeling a little bit better inside. You could be having the worst day ever, your boyfirend broke up with you (or your girlfriend, I don't know how you roll), you're sick, your pet giraffe just died, nothing is goin right. Next thing you know, your best friend, or recently acquired aquaintance, tells a joke. It's hilarious and you pull a muscle in your lower back from laughing so hard. But even through the excruciating pain in your back, you feel better about everything. It's like looking at....something bad, through rose-colored glasses. It may be terrible, but through the glasses it is given a softer appearance. Bad circumstances close in on us all the time, but with a little laughter, a pair of rose-colored glasses, and a cute puppy to snuggle with, and even more laughter, the sting of awfulness is somewhat dulled. So laugh a lot, love a lot, and hug a puppy today. I promise you will feel better.

I dedicate this post to my Rose-Colored Glasses. Thanks for making the world so much more...rosy.

Mornings

Okay, after mutiple posts outside the realm of normalcy that I usually have as a template for this blog, I'm finally going back to what makes this blog tick. And I apologized for spending so much time out in the ether, I'm coming back. On the subject of mornings....

In my humble opinion, the morning is the best time of day. If you walk outside just before the sun rises, there is just such a feeling of peace throughout the world. The hum of life in this industrialized world has yet to be awoken, and nothing is disturbing the world. Occasionally the birds will be singing as they go about their business of mating, eating, and providing for the family back in the nest. Sometimes the neighborhood turtles furtively sneak across the road, even though it takes them forever, so there really is nothing furtive about it, but it looks cool. Nocturnal wildlife is sneaking back to their daytime hidey-holes, and the diurnal wildlife is getting ready to have a great day doing whatever they do. The world is peaceful.

And then you run into the human wildlife. Most of us are still slumbering as the real world outside (aka nature) is gearing up to beast mode (no pun intended) the day. We, that is to say humans, generally miss this wonderful period of readiness that the world goes through each and every morning. It's a shame really, more of us should get up to experience this symphony of everything natural. But the fact is we need our sleep. Humans are, for all intensive purposes, diurnal creatures. But due to advances in communications and technology and keeping in touch with people, we've transformed our roles into those of half nocturnal, half diurnal creatures. It's just not natural. For this reason, we stay up later at night, and get up later in the morning (all this is speaking from the fact that it is the weekend and most students, and some adults, don't have to get up for school), and consequently miss the morning stillness. It's a real shame.

Morning, it's what's for breakfast.

Sports

Sports are.....awesome. It's an outlet for people to let go of their emotions and its acceptable. There are a bunch of different sports out there. Contact sports, non-contact sports, gentle non-contact sports, violent non-contact sports, cardiovascular sports, muscular sports, mental sports, non-athletic sports, athletic sports, games, and numerous other activities that fall under the umbrella of "sports". Contact sports usually run on emotions, people try to get angry because it helps them play better, coaches of these sports draw on their players' emotions to get them to play better. And it usually works. And the kids who play like to hit people and have a fanatical obsession with getting hurt.

But sports are more than people using their emotions to play better and all that. Sports are about passion. You're passionate about what you, and that drives you to perform. If you're a professional athlete, loyalty drives you, to some extent. Loyalty to your fans, and what your fans expect you to do. Fans are a huge part of professional sports. The fans pay for the tickets, that money goes to the organization, and pays the athletes. Without the fans there is no sport. The fans make the sport. Professional athletes realize this, and they elevate their games to please the fans and make sure they keep coming.

Sports are huge in America. They help us regular people to relive our childhood dreams of being professional sports stars. We see them perform unhuman feats and imagine that it is us out there doing it. They provide us with an outlet for our dreams. Sports are amazing things, whether you play them or not.

This post is dedicated to Tyler "Lefty" Calhoun, whose choice of the word "Sports" inspired this blog post.

David Crowder* Band

Whoa!!!! Is that more than one word in the title of Graham's Blog? Why yes, yes it is. When I started this blog, I told myself that I wouldn't deviate from those one word titles followed by a (hopefully) deep or funny post about that one word. But as I'm sitting here in study hall, bored out of my mind, and listening/rocking out in my head to David Crowder* Band on my iPod, I decided to change things up. I hope the world stays intact as it is.

Hmmm...the David Crowder* Band. They are truly a great band, their sound is great, their music is awesome, and they are Christian. Now don't look at that label and say "Oh, their a Christian band, their no good at all." Don't say that to yourself, who says that Christian music has any one sound? I myself have listened to many Christian songs that don't sound any different than many mainstream songs. Now if you asked me to give the mainstream reciprocal of David Crowder I wouldn't be able to do that. I don't listen to my music like that, but I highly encourage you to try out the David Crowder* Band, who knows you might be surprised at what you hear.

Stars

Stars. Stars are many different things to many different people. To a scientist, a star is a burning ball of hydrogen and electricity. It's something that produces heat and light, it constantly burns. Then a star can run out of fuel and implode creating a most mysterious phenomenon known as a black hole, with gravity so intense that even light cannot escape its pull. And then there are yet other people who use stars as metaphors for something that they aspire to be. "Shoot for the moon, even if you miss you'll land among the stars." Stars are things that these people aspire to reach, they are physical representations of their goals. The stars are the goals that they have, whatever it is. Stars give them hope, something that they can look up at. And that action of looking up is inspiration to continue to climb, to get better, to achieve your goals and then do even more. Stars are everything to these people. And then there is another group of people who think of stars as the people in the movies or the people who sing songs, or the people who play sports. We call these giants of their respective industries "stars". They have reached the top of the game, people look up to them for inspiration. Stars are many different things to many different people, its all in your perspective and what kind of person you are and what you wish to be. What's a star to you?

Teeth

Teeth are wonderfully splendid bone fragments. They jut up from your lower mandible and down from your upper jawbone like stalagmites and stalactites, respectively. Teeth are covered in a hard, white substance known as enamel. Now enamel is a wonderful substance. It is the second hardest substance known to man, and its second only to diamonds. But the reason enamel is number two is due to the fact that it can be eaten away. Acids damage and eventually destroy the enamel. And the more enamel that gets eaten away, the more your teeth lose the distinction as being "pearly whites". But enamel is just the outside, whats underneath is pretty cool too. The enamel is hard for a reason, and that reason is to provide protection to the sensitive nerve endings that are located on the interior of each tooth. Those nerve endings need a lot of protection, so it's best that you keep your pearly white enamel in the best health possible. And because enamel is so hard, it enables teeth to do what they do best, and that is brutally mutilate every single morsel of food that finds its way through your jaws. Teeth are specially designed to rip, tear, and mash food into smaller portions that are easier for you stomach and digestive system to process. And they are very good at what they do. Teeth are wonderful fragments of bone, protect them with your life, you'll wanna keep the set you have.

Youth

Young people, adolescents, children, kids, immature freaks. The older generation (aka adults) have many names for the youth of today, but do they really understand us youth-y types? They'll say they do, they'll say they've been there, but in reality, they haven't. The society today's youth, including myself, is growing up in is vastly different to what our parents and others of increased age grew up in. So really they have no idea where we are. And a lot of the time they don't either (and no that is not a sleight on their memory). Us youth are facing much different times than our "elders". They didn't have the Internet, cell phones, the same kinds of peer pressure, Facebook, YouTube, iPods, televisions, MTV, and many other modern products that we now use everyday. So how can we expect to get viable advice from a generation ago? Most of the time we youths have to do the educating of the "elders", we have to get them caught up in modern times. Don't get me wrong, I know lots of the older types have assimilated well into today's fast-paced and technology based society, but how did they assimilate? More often than not it was because a youth in their life taught them, educated them, caught them up, and enabled them to help function in our society. To use a terrible cliché, we youth are the future. It's annoying to hear I know, but really when you think about it, its the truth. Who almost innately knows how to function in modern times? Who continues to get smarter and help to develop newer, and better, technologies? We youths. We have a bucket of potential most of us haven't attempted to tap. If we youth all rose to our potential we could do great things to this world. The top is hidden, there is so much more of this mountain to climb for us up and coming adolescents. The top will forever remain hidden, but our yearning to see what is at the top should always remain strong. If that desire remains strong, there is no limit to what the youth of America, and the youth everywhere, can do. We can change the world, but why wait until we're adults? Let's get started now.

This post, which until recently escaped my notice as without a dedication, is dedicated to the lovely, wonderful Morgan Nation. I apologize for letting this go so long without dedicating. I'm sorry Morgan :)