Guess Who Loves Photosthop!?!

~~THE ORIGONAL~~

~~THE PHOTOSHOP CUT~~

So I guess this is what happens to me at midnight on a Sunday...I thought it'd be fun to try, and it was! Oh, and I found out that its really really hard to draw a straight line with a mouse.

Whiteout!!

I freaking love snow, it is by far the best. Unfortunately, on Saturday I was cooped up inside taking the dreaded ACT. But I did get to spend some time driving home drifting in the church parking lot, one of the best things to do when it snows. I had the honors of giving new meaning to first tracks, and, um, got my PT Cruiser stuck in a snowbank. It was epic, but way worth it! Then, my best friend Connor and I went out to get dates for Snowball, and as we were driving, we got hit with some serious whiteout. It was heinous driving down state street, and not being able to see anything but a couple of pinpricks of red tailight. It was intense. Plus, getting out of the girl's neighborhood was intense, because the roads in her neighborhood got iced over, and then snowed on, so traction was down to nil. It was great. So, after one of the best snow days ever, I welcome in the snow, but, geeze, didn't it take long enough?!

A Hero

Today, and every day, I am the luckiest guy on planet Earth. Every day I'm lucky I wake up, I'm lucky I get to be educated, I'm lucky I've got a well loved pair of Adidas to put on my feet to wear around school. And when I get to school, I'm lucky I have a hero there every step of the way. This guy is a giant among men, and I am extremely lucky that I get to make his aquaintance every day. He's mentally and physically fit, he's honest, funny, and he holds his priesthood with honor, and he's one of the coolest guys I'll ever meet. I think what I like most about him is that he's always raising the bar, and isn't ever satisfied with medocrity, which is a trait i struggle to attain. It's extremely important to have these heroes around. Mine keeps me on the strait and narrow every day, and I doubt he notices it, but his influence is there. Heores like this guy are so important because they are the example we strive to be. A hero like my friend is not afraid to stand up, not afraid to accept responsibility, and is not afraid to stand out and be a shining example in someone's life. I'm one lucky guy to have this hero as one of my friends, and I hope one day I can get to where he is now. Be a hero in someone's life. Go foreward in life with faith, and by doing so, leave behind no regrets.

Friends

I decided this week that friends are way stinkin important. See, this week I got told by a girl that we were "just friends," and, as any guy would think, it hurt to hear that. I kinda got bummed out, and ended up feeling depressed about life in general. It was dumb. I decided to try and give her the cold shoulder, but she's kinda in a lot of my classes, so it was tough. Plus she's like one of the nicest people you will ever meet. Anyway, i was thumbing through my wallet on Saturday and found my copy of For The Strength Of Youth, and, ironically enough, I glanced at the section about dating. The General Authortities specifically said to avoid relationships in your teenage years, which was kinda what i was throwing a tantrum about not getting into this week. I read on, and it said that relationships deprive you of long lasting friendships...Wow. So I pondered, a good thing to do when you read something really heavy, and I came to the conclusion that this girl, though blocking me from something that I thought I really wanted, was helping me and giving me something so much more valuable: friendship. It was humbling, and it made me really proud and honored that she wanted to be just friends.

Reasons To Be Of Good Cheer

President Gordon B. Hinkley, beloved Prophet, commanded us to be of good cheer. That's a really tall order to fill, espeicially in troubling times like these, so I came up with a few reasons to be happy on days like today:

-We're alive
-We don't have cancer
-The sun came up today
-We have friends
-We're strong in our values and morals
-Tomorrow will come, I promise
-We're still breating
-We've got families
-The Church is true
-We're smart
-We know history
-The Church is still true
-We can vote in the next presidential election
-I've got friends like you

IN GOD WE TRUSTED

We are officially screwed. Thats it. We, as a nation, have completely removed God from our political views, and do not give me that bull about church and state needing to be seperate. God is, pardon me, was our lifeline through the world's troubles, not just as a people, but as a nation. I say was because we just threw it away. We as a country just threw away our only life preserver in these stormy seas.
This is it, the end of the world. It didn't end with Obama being elected president. No. It came when we turned our back to God. The framers themselves were of many different faiths, but they wholeheartedly and firmly believed in a higher authority. Those great men believed in God! They framed a great nation, building up from that fundamental belief, the cornerstone of God. But hey, we're smarter than a 200 plus year old doccument, right? we're more evolved than the Ben Franklins, the Thomas Jeffersons, the James Madisons, the Paul Reveres, the George Washingtons, right? Plain and simple, we are not! We are a moraly degraded society, who has turned our back to God as a nation.
This eleciton is simply a reflection of what has gone wrong in this nation. "The natural man is an enemy to God," and what does the natural man want? to be taken care of, to have everything provided for them by someone else. The natural man believes wholeheartedly in socialism, in communism, in "spreading the wealth around." Barack Obama is who America wants as president, and that is, put simply, pathetic. We are a nation built on God, and we have chosen an enemy to that God, and as a nation, we deserve the wrath of God because of that choice. Plain and simple. Unless we change, and REPENT of our evil, and yes they are evil, ways, we will pay. This land upon which we live is a blessed land for those who follow and obey God, but as soon as the people inhabiting the land, us, turn their back to their Creator, the land is cursed.
Ladies and gentilemen, we are living on cursed soil as consequence for turning away God at every turn. Heck, listen to our music, look at the way we dress, listen to how our children speak! We are no longer a nation "under God," and we will, I testify, we will pay, unless we change our course. And we have to do it now! Not tomorrow, and not by someone else; It has to be you and me, and it has to be now. So, turn to God. Read the Bible, read the Book of Mormon; find God again. And it cannot work from the top down, not by some large power that will make you. You have to make the concious change within yourself, and others will follow.
Please. For the first time in my life, i wept for this nation, and yes I'm only sixteen, but i know there is a God, and i bear witness of him, and pray for the strength to continue in this depraved society. GOD BLESS AMERICA is my plea, because we sure need it right now.

Hee Hee.  This week is going to be great! Know why?  Its HOMECOMING!!!! That means its spirit week, but most importantly its burning of the H time.  For those of you who don't go to Hillcrest, you wierdos, Burning of the H is like the best thing ever! We do a HUGE fireworks show, and its just way cool, plus we light an H on fire, in honor of HILLCREST HIGH, the best school in the valley.  And, of course, there's that dance to go to.  I asked a cute girl to go, so I'm really excited.  Um, if you still haven't read it, read my venting on the STUPIDEST THING EVER, and please leave me your opinion, because I want to know if I'm just blowing smoke out of my ears, or if I have a legit reason to be ticked off at this whole thing.  Thanks Guys, you rock!

Today was pretty boring. Not much happened today. Connor Phelps, my best friend, returned an onside kick in Hillcrest's football game last friday against Copper Hills, even though we got beat 33-10. Hopefully tomorrow's game will be better. Um. I did ask a girl to homecoming, and chewed out the girl i used to go out with for dumping Connor on his butt because he asked the "wrong" way (See Post Below). I was pretty brutal, and i felt pretty bad about it. That's life in a nutshell. No venting, no nothing.

STUPIDEST THING EVER!!!!

Ok, here's the deal. I found out that if you have the balls to ask a girl face to face to a dance, it doesn't count!! In this wonderful state of UTARD, apparently you have to ask a girl by leaving some kind of trinket on her front porch.  Personally I think this is wrong.  There was a time when a young man had to work up enough courage to call the cute girl in math class on his telephone in his house (yes there was such a thing), and ask her if she would like to go to a school dance.   Or there was even a less technological way to ask her, you could see her in the hall, or at lunch, walk up, sit down across from her, and say ten words: "would you like to go to  the dance with me?" But, no Joe, we have to do it the right way, the traditional way.  I'm letting you in on a little secret here, it was actually a longer tradition to ask a girl face to face than this doorbell ditching stuff which came up in the last 20 years. It takes more guts for a guy to ask a girl to her face than it does for him to go to wal-mart and find a cheap trinket and a card, set it on a girl's porch, ring the doorbell and take off running like a dog with its tail between its legs.  It probably sounds like I'm talking like I'm from Mars, but I think it shows character for a girl to be able to turn down a guy to his face than to give him a load of candy and a letter saying "no." If you feel differently, leave me a message.  I want to know what you guys, the few who read this blog, feel about this

Joe's Bucket List

Hey! I know I'm only 16 but I felt like writing this today, so here it is, my list of stuff I want to do before I go to college.
-Go Skydiving
-Make a Sundance Film without making it about some morally degrading subject
-Find out if the above goal is even possible!
-Be on the Super Screen at the Bee's stadium
-Ride Trax from one end to the other and actually have someplace to go
-TP a certian friends house
-Go on a mission
-Survive High School (Shouldn't be too hard)
-Get a job that will hire me through the entire summer
-Chill out with my friends more
-And Finally, just make life ROCK!

HOLY CRAP!!!

Dang it, I knew this day would come, and honestly, I'd been dreading it. Curtis McDonnald had been trying to get a hold of me for about a week, but he'd always managed to call when I wasn't around, so I didn't have to talk to him, and life was good. I figured it was some reminder about the special needs mutual on thursday, and I knew what time to be there, so I thought what's the rush. He called again today, and I actually called him back because I figured he'd had something important to tell me, but no. He casually asked me to...(are you ready for this)...SPEAK in STAKE CONFERENCE!! The first thought that shot through my head was "holy crap, you've got to be kidding." Then he continued, and I didn't think it could get any worse, but like everything else in life, it did. He didn't want me to speak in the priesthood session, or the adult session, no... he wanted me to get up and speak in the freaking general session. "holy crap" ran through my head like lightning, and i had no idea what else to say but yes. People tend to babble when their brain short circuts, but i tend to agree with everything, and tonight was no exeption. Such is my life's current drama

Have you ever scaled a mountain before? Well maybe you have, but i had never done it until last weekend. I went up with a couple of friends from the neighborhood and school, and we took on Kings Peak, which is the highest peak in Utah. We started off, and began the hike in. We used the buddy system, and i got paired with one of the cross country kids, Adam Price. Honestly i was a little nervous because i wasn't sure i could keep pace. But we started off, and Adam and I lead the way. Shayne and Andrew, the two other guys who went on the trip, both wrestled, and Andrew claimed that he was built for short bursts of extreme exertion, and that hiking was not his forte. After this trip i believed him.
We started, and i was amazed at the beauty of the scenery. We stopped for lunch a few miles in, then spent the rest of the day packing in. Later in the day, we found a spot a good distance from the "No Fire" zone, and thought it a good place to camp. Adam and Cole, one of the leaders that went with us, scouted out an area, and said it was no good. Cole suggested that we go camp by one of the waterfalls way the heck off the trail. I thought it would be fun, and we were off. Needless to say, none of us looked where we were going, because by the time we reached the waterfall, we had all tramped through a good four marshy patches around the numerous creeks that teemed over the landscape, and all of us were sloshing around in soaking wet shoes.
I have no idea how far we went that day, but i was dead tired. A 40 pound pack gets pretty heavy, and i wanted it off. Adam and I set up camp on a hill, and if I were thinking, that would have been a BIG red flag. Then again i was tired, so we set up our "tent." I figured a tube tent made out of visquine would be light and durable, and i was right, I just had no idea how to make a tent out of visquine, rope and rocks. So I let Adam take care of it.
We got the tent set up and made our freeze dried dinners. Even lasagna tastes good after a full day of hiking. It was all of about 8 when i went to bed, and slept like a baby, literally. I woke up every hour to find that i was sliding down my sleeping pad in my mummy bag. I had to wriggle myself up the hill so i was at least on my pad, and would slide down again in my sleep. Finally, at about 7 the next morning, we woke up.
There are people that tell me that camping and being out in nature makes them feel more alive. Picture if you will a sixteen year old kid running on next to no sleep, trying to jump start his morning after sliding halfway down a mountain in a sleeping bag. yeah, that's about the long and the short of it. I've never felt like I'd been run over by a train until that morning, except this train was carrying a load of nuclear mosquitoes. I itched, I ached, and i was exhausted. Then Cole woke up, and told me to hurry up. That was the last thing i needed to hear this morning, but i shut up and made myself breakfast.
Looking back, i probably should have made myself something more nutritious than oatmeal, but it was the best i had. Cole was excited because today we were going to summit, but none of us could share in that rush of energy. I packed my day pack...a water bottle and a tuna cracker lunch, and all the survival stuff my Dad told me to take with me. it was extremely light, and Adam didn't have one, so he took mine and strapped his plastic grocery bag into the bungee mesh on the back of my pack and put it on his back. I went freestyle with nothing but my water bottle to climb the tallest mountain in Utah.
Hunger set in quickly, and the trail we were taking was a long, long, long one. I get cranky when i don't eat, and i was plenty cranky before the mountain was in sight. i bore with it, and tromped onwards and upwards, way upwards. By the time we got to the base of the mountain, i wanted to drop dead. I munched on the trail mix and apple rings that Adam brought, and felt a whole lot better. Andrew and Shayne complained the whole way up, stuff like the trail was too long, "why can't we just pick a mountain to climb and call it good," and stuff like that, and i agreed. So we abandoned the trail and the four of us scaled the mountatin. We rock hopped all the way up, which was easy because we couldn't even see the trail most of the way. I got to a part which looked like the peak from the base of the mountain, and i thought "Yes, I made it!!" But a nasty little surprise loomed on the other side of the 'peak.' There was more mountain to climb, and we toiled onwards, the air getting thinner and thinner as we ascended, until we made it to the peak. We had summited!