The Year of the Five Fs

I'm declaring '09 the year of the Five Fs:

• Faith
• Family
• Fitness
• Finance
• Future

What's all this nonsense about you ask? Baby, I'm a planner. I kinda geek out when a new year rolls around because I get to think of challenges to overcome. This year, it's F⁵.

Do you care? I know you do, and that's why you're still reading, so here's the scoop on how I came up with F⁵:

• Faith. You gotta put God at the center of everything you do. That's freakishly hard, especially for someone like me who is inherently selfish and lazy. For a while I was in the habit of starting every day with devotional prayer and reading. I miss that feeling of starting the day grounded. Also, I've been reading the Bible since I was a tiny anklebiter, but I've never deliberately read the Book in its entirely. Given these two facts, my first goal in '09 is to read the entire Bible. As an evangelical Christian, my first priority is making sure I'm right with God; Living as He intends for me to live, and this is done through prayer and reflection. There is so much in the Bible about doing it, but this passage stands out to me the most, from Philippians 4:
  

  Be careful for nothing; but in every thing by prayer and supplication with thanksgiving let your requests be made known unto God.
  

  Therefore I should read The First Manual Ever Written.
  
• Family. I believe that you are defined by the relationships you nurture. (That's a major reason I'm so anti-Obama. Look at what relationships he's been nurturing and you get a clear understanding of his loyalties.) After God, the most important entities in my life are my wife and four tiny humans, then it's my extended family and church family (meaning, other disconnected Christians). When it comes to nurturing these relationships, I've fallen short. That is why my second goal in '09 is to nurture relationships with my loved ones.
• Fitness. My health is going down the tubes. Every year I break a personal weight record. I'm now knocking on the door of Type II diabetes (the fat, lazy kind) and my triglycerides are way too high. This goal will require the most drastic changes. I need to completely revamp my habits and start kicking the ass off myself, so to speak. I plan to lose 1 1/2 pounds per week in '09. If I can do this, then I'll be at my ideal weight. You can track my progress along with me on my fatman blog: http://thetempleoftheturtle.wordpress.com/
• Finance. This is my hobby. This is what I really enjoy: Personal Finance. I love it so much that I've dedicated an entire blog to it: http://www.theapostleoftheturtle.com/. Of course, just because I enjoy it doesn't mean I'm the best at it. We're still wallowing in debt, which is the ultimate badge of dishonor. My financial goal for the coming year is to have all debt paid off except for the Big Three: AmEx, Student Loans, and House.
• Future. The Final F of the Fabulous Five. Here I am, approaching 34 and I'm still not sure what I want to be when I grow up. My wife and I have a blossoming photography business, which is a likely candidate for the future. That's why my final goal is to plant the seeds to grow our business in coming years. What does this mean exactly? Stick around and you'll find out.
  

Celebration of Animal Protein and Handguns

Tomorrow is the big feast, but we also have one tonight. I look at this holiday as a celebration of the omnivore lifestyle. This is the holiday in which we exercise our God-given superiority over the beasts of land, water, and air by eating them.

We pick the ugliest, strangest creature second only to the duck-billed platypus and say, hey, I'm going to eat you. I'm going to eat you smothered in gravy with mashed potatoes and stuffing on the side. Then, when I'm done, I'm going to digest you fully so that your protein and fat supplies me with energy to absorb while I lay on the floor unable to move.

But something else is on my mind. Guns. You've no doubt heard that guns sales are on the rise because Fuhrer Obama is expected to line-item veto the second amendment. What kind of socialist would he be if he left the masses armed?

Anyway, I've never been a fan of guns. I thought the danger of owning a gun outweighed the benefits. But now that right to own firearms might be coming to pass, my opinion is starting to change.

Not long ago I read a blog wherein the author decided to carry a gun with him everywhere he legally could, and I have to say that reading that post really whet my appetite for packin' heat. I started to fantasize what it must feel like to have one on your person at all times. I bet it feels sort of empowering. Heh, no wonder the Fresh Prez doesn't like us to have them.

But why is this pistolust such a part of our heritage? I think for the exact reason Barry doesn't like them. If the people of your nation are more armed than not, who controls whom? If you have your own "civilian" army and your people are rendered defenseless, who controls whom? As Lincoln said, we are a government of the people, by the people, for the people. There's no room for Obama's Civilian Army.

So what going to happen? Is everyone with a gun going to revolt and take the nation back by force? If that notion seems laughable to you, take a look around the world. It's happened before. It's happened right here. Don't get me wrong; collectively we're too lazy, fat, and selfish to put that much on the line for now. But don't fool yourself into thinking that we can't or won't reach a level of desperate motivation.

So am I going to rush out and buy a gun? Nah. Count me among the fat and lazy. Plus, if I have an extra $600 to $800 laying around, I'm going to pay off debt with it or pad my children's education fund. But for the first time in my adult life, I've considered the option. But if the time to revolt comes before I've bought my Smith & Wesson, I guess I have to be that guy who shows up to a gun fight with a knife.

I Hope You're Paying Attention Now

Dear 52,

This is why you're known as "sheeple" ...



Now, I know you will say, "Hey, that's just a handful of Obama supporters. I bet I could find the same level of ignorance and blind following of the conservatives if I looked hard enough."

The thing is, Zogby International (a public opinion tracking firm that's been around since 1984) took a much larger sampling and came up with these results:

• 57.4% could NOT correctly say which party controls congress
• 71.8% could NOT correctly say Joe Biden quit a previous campaign because of plagiarism
  
• 82.6% could NOT correctly say that Barack Obama won his first election by getting opponents kicked off the ballot
  
• 88.4% could NOT correctly say that Obama said his policies would likely bankrupt the coal industry and make energy rates skyrocket
• 56.1% could NOT correctly say Obama started his political career at the home of two former members of the Weather Underground

And yet.....

• Only 13.7% FAILED to identify Sarah Palin as the person on which their party spent $150,000 in clothes
• Only 6.2% FAILED to identify Palin as the one with a pregnant teenage daughter
• And 86.9 % thought that Palin said that she could see Russia from her "house," even though that was Tina Fey who said that!!
• Only 2.4% got at least 11 correct.
• Only .5% got all of them correct.

I think we're finally at the point that we can all agree that a vast majority of media outlets are liberal to the extreme. "Fair and balanced" went out with black and white television. (If I see Chris Matthews swoon one more time over Barry I think I'm going to vomit.)

Do yourself, no, do your COUNTRY a favor in 2012. Actually make an effort to get an understanding of both sides because you can guarantee that liberal media will give you only what you think you want to hear (that's how they get ratings, you know).

Actually make an effort to try to see through the crap rather than just swallowing what they shove in your gaping maw. You should be embarrassed of yourselves.

Here are a few more tips:

• Don't base your voting decision on SNL characters. What SNL does is funny, but it's parody.
• The same thing goes for The Colbert Report. Brilliant comedy. See that key term? Comedy?
• Anytime you see a journalist swoon over a candidate and then tell you it's his job to support the president-elect, don't watch that buffoon without taking what he says with a grain of salt.

We're very concerned,

The 48

Thanks to HowObamaGotElected.com

Character v. Policy

Dear 52,

I want you to pay close attention to the coming four years. Please note how conservatives will not attack the president personally. You won't hear us call him a "moron" or anything that would be the equivalent to "redneck". We won't make fun of his daughters or the fact that he was a coke head.

Instead, we're going to focus on his policy and values.

Remember how you lambasted Palin? Nothing was off limits, even her infant son was the butt of your jokes. We often wondered why you couldn't just show a little class and focus on things that mattered?

Then we realized, it's because you don't have class. But don't worry, 52, we can teach you class! So please, pay close attention in the next four years, and do this country a favor: learn how to fight fair.

Regards,

The 48

Dear 52

Have you heard of From 52 to 48 With Love? It's on some liberal dude's blog who lets people submit photos of themselves holding signs that say sickening things like, "Let's vow to be gentler, kinder, and more understanding together."

See, these are letters that leftists are posting to conservatives. After eight years of sowing hatred, division, and displaying signs like these and worse, these hatemongers want to call a truce?

They're acting like the little kid in the mall kicking and screaming in full-blown temper tantrum mode until he gets the toy he wants, then once the toy is in his hands he acts as if all is copacetic.

I'm all for forgive and forget, but I find it hard to believe that the left wants to move beyond their hatred when they burst into a church in the middle of worship to act like, well, drama queens, while disrespecting the church outside by parading an upside-down pink cross.

But I digress.

They're writing these letters to conservatives, so I think they most logical thing to do is to write back, and I have so much to say that I can't say it all in one post, but now's a great time to get started.

Dear 52,

If you want us to support the president you elected, why do you continue to attack our beliefs, freedoms, and ideals? Why do you support legislation that suppresses these things? If you're liberal, aren't you supposed to believe and support liberties? Isn't that even part of the name "liberal"?

Your Friend,

The 48

Veteran's Day

It's Veteran's Day. Not really a holiday you prefix with "Happy", right?

Happy Veteran's Day! That just doesn't work, because the purpose of the holiday to is honor those who have willingly and knowingly given up their civilian rights to protect the freedoms and principles of the United States. These men and women put their lives in danger for you and me. What's more appropriate to say is, "Thank you."

In the Beginning, I Created This Post

If I were someone famous, or of a certain level of importance, I'd be able to consolidate all of my writings into one source. Just one blog, or one publication.

As it stands, it seems to make the most sense to divide my musing into micro-outlets. I'm up to three counting this new blog. The other two are about personal finance and battling fattery. In the coming months or years I plan to launch another blog about running a photography studio, which will take the count to four total micro-outlets, and I've tossed around the idea about blogging about my faith, but in reality all the blogs I write contain that element.

This blog is the one I do not want to define, other than to say it's definitive of me.