eh, its short and its not that good, but i like it. and i figure, being here for about 3 years now i should probably have more than 3 blogs.

It's been said that when boys turn into men, they trade their action figures and imaginary friends for cars and trophy wives (lord knows they have about the same IQ). But while some of us may not have the 64 Shelby GT in our garages, or the 36-29-36 wife in the kitchen, (which honestly, I have no idea what that means, thank god for yahoo answers) we never really grow up. If you walk up to a 6-year-old boy and say "booby," then try the same thing with a 60-year-old man, they'll have about the same reaction. I always knew that, but never fully realized this until watching the WWE Hall of Fame induction for 2008. Here sit's a room full of males between 8 and 80, and when, for the first time in four years, Dwayne Johnson -also known as the rock- walks up and says one of his iconic phrases, chills run up and down the spines of everyone in the room and everyone watching around the world like a dog chasing a car. And I'm in awe.
When you're little, you fight with your friends over who gets to be the red ranger when you're playing, when my father was in high school, he and his three closest friends called themselves the four horsemen after the wrestlers. You don't lose your imagination, your creativity; you just go from putting on a red t-shirt and pretending to be a power ranger to putting on a suit and pretending to be a lawyer. You never stop playing, you just up the stakes of the game.
I'm not saying, of course that women don't feel the same way, but women seem to have more drama, when they're younger (SHE STOLE MY DOLLY!!!) and when they're older (B***H, HES MY MAN!). When you're a little boy the only drama is that you wanted to play third base but instead you're playing first, which is easily remedied by a punch to the face (which I'm not in any way condoning, 'course not). The fact of the matter is, girls mature faster, and spend their whole life trying to be older. At work, all the time, I see little girls coming in with their parents buying little toy makeup kits, or little flavored lip gloss, and when they get them the girls just light up. In contrast though, boys spend their whole lives trying to regain the joy of their youth. Either by making what is seen as "stupid" purchases (c|assic cars, comics, video games, old toys, etc.) or by living vicariously through their sons, who will, in turn, grow up to do the same thing.
So ladies, when you call your man (or any man) immature, you may be right, but yall still love us anyway. I guess it's better than being with a woman the rest of your life, but that's another blog completely.

okay yall, i wrote something because i needed a writing sample to turn in with my college application, and i need some feedback before the end of the day tomorrow, so i can make some changes and send it in. Thanks



“Play me a song Curtis Loew, Curtis Loew. I got your drinking money, tune up your dobro. People said he was useless, them people are the fools; cause Curtis Loew was the finest picker to ever play the blues”

That’s about the fictional character of Curtis Loew from the ballad by Lynyrd Skynyrd; in it, he was a friendly drunkard who would play the blues if you gave him some drinking money- a good sentiment, but he’s nothing like the man I knew. Old Jim was a homeless man. He always sat outside the old Howard Counts’ store and play his old guitar. I think it was one of the few meaningful things he had left in his life. He’d sit all day and play and, by most peoples’ standards, beg for money from people who passed. Most of which, predictably moved along without saying a word, some were even angered, sometimes enraged so much that Jim had to run, but occasionally there was a nice person who would pass and give the old man something, even if just a nickel, all that mattered to him was that someone actually cared. I was one of those people.
I was a young man, maybe 16, just passing by, running in the store and running back out, a daily chore, I needed one or two things, both of which I’ve completely forgotten the identity of at this point, but that’s not important, what is, is that when I came out, I saw an old man playing a song that captivated me. I grabbed a chair and sat there for hours, just listening to the man play, talking about all the pain and heartache that he’d been through. I was enamored. But it got late, and I had to go, and he hadn’t found a place to stay for the night, so we parted ways. The next day I went to the store, brought him a few dollars and sat and listened to a whole new set of songs from old Jim, amazing how one man could come up with so many songs, not written anywhere, and remember them all. And so began a trend, every day I’d come for at least an hour and listen to Jim play.
He sang about the depression, a few of his wives (apparently he’d been married at least five times, and that was just my count), money and love lost, some of the stereotypical blues topics, but one thing that seemed to leak its way into most of his songs was a bitterness and attitude about war that I’d never heard in blues before. He seemed to feel that war was necessary, but that it was wrong to send people to fight. A bit hypocritical, I’ll admit, but it was interesting. After a while, I began to feel out how his mind worked, and again, I was in awe. A man who lived through some of America’s worst times had a sense of patriotism like that of a founding father. I knew he was old, but I don’t think he was that old.
Then, like a shot in the dark, I just lost interest, to this day, I’m not sure why, but I know that I just stopped going. When I saw Jim, I'd still give him money, but I never sat around and listened to him like I used to, a couple times when I'd give him money, he’d start playing my favorite song in attempts to get me to sit with him for a while, but I never did. After a while, I realized what had happened. So I set a date, Saturday August first, no matter what was going on, I’d go sit with old Jim again. As I made my way around the curve to enter the store’s parking lot, I saw a gruesome sight. The man I’d idolized for months, lying bloody on a stretcher, still clutching his old guitar, holding on like it was the last thing he had in the world, because it was. I’d betrayed him, I got close to him and he became a father figure to me, and then without any sort of warning, I abandoned him. I rushed to his side, and just before the man I adored passed away, he said five words that have stuck with me to this day. He said “have it better than me,” I protested, saying how his life was great, and that he’d taught me that on the roller coaster of life, the ups mean nothing, it’s the downs that make you who you are. He just shook his head, patted me on the shoulder, and then he was gone. Just as quickly as he entered my life, he was gone. I was devastated, to say the least. I just cried, I got into the ambulance with the medics and the whole way to the hospital I cried, then I cried some more. Hours later when I finally regained composure, the doctors came and talked to me, explained that he was dead on arrival and there was nothing they could’ve done for him, I knew that, I just wish I’d been there earlier…
They said it was a gunshot that killed him. A gang fight had gotten out of hand and old Jim was shot because of some idiots in a car driving around with a bandana hanging out and he was got caught in the crossfire. A pointless death for a man who valued life more than anyone I knew. The death certificate said James Coburn Allen, aged 87, but to me he was and always will be Old Jim. No one was at the funeral, Jim didn’t have any living family; it was the priest and me. I said a few words, quoted some of Jim’s songs, not that the father knew that, and just as the eulogy was almost over, I saw five women about Jim’s age walk in the room separately and I just laughed, I couldn’t help it, before me sat the five women I’d heard about in so many of Jim’s songs, most of the time accompanied with some kind of insult; so I was amazed. For one, that all of them outlived him, but even more so that they all came to their ex-husband’s funeral.
Afterwards, I talked to a couple of the ladies, said I was a friend of Jims, they all said they could tell that I’d been touched by Jim (figuratively, of course, not literally--that was one of the widows’ jokes, not mine). But eventually they all left and I was left alone at the burial place of Old Jim. I brought his guitar--the police didn’t think it would be crucial evidence--and I placed it on top of the casket, and forever said goodbye to one of the greatest men I’d ever known. A friend. A mentor. A good man. And while to Ronnie Van Zant, Curtis Loew may have been 'the finest picker to ever play the blues,' to me, it was Old Jim Allen.

so we can now have real avatars. yay! lol, for now, i just made my silent bob rockin out thing that was my personal image my avatar, but im workin on a new, themed thing. i found the cover for green lantern #1 (the most recent one) online the other day, and it looks pretty kick ass, so thatll prolly be my avatar and ill theme the rest of my profile GL and stuff, ill keep the venom thing as my sig though, just cus its awesome, and somebody on the DC boards was nice enough to compose all the little clips theyve shown of venoms taking over of eddie brock into one little thing, so ill leave it.
anyway, i just got home from work and im dead tired, but theres no school tomorrow, then we have exams for the rest of the week, so we come home early, so it should be a fairly low impact week, then i have a church trip this weekend, so no work. then next week we start new classes, which im kinda sad about, cus i love photography class, but im glad im gettin rid of everything else, i have astronomy next semester, oooh. anyway, just an update

im beginning to get a bit angry with tv.com. i mean im not leaving or anything, by no means, but i dunno, i just think that someone whos been here over a year and made over 2000 forum posts should have a few more emblems, and i went on a show adding spree and actually lost one of them because the action adventure show count dropped below 20%. i dunno, i just felt like A. maybe making a blog would help me a little, and B. typing something because its 3 in the morning and i have nothing to do. and i think having more shows should probabyl help you, not hurt, i mean if you have 10 favorites and 2 of each are from the different catagories then u get all 5 of the genre emblems. ah, i suppose its just as well if i dont worry about trivial little things like that