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She was gorgeous. That was the first thing that I noticed about her. Probably 5' 6” at the most. Small frame, maybe 120 pounds soaking wet, something I'm sure many of you would love to see at that. Lightish auburn hair fell to the middle of her back, straight as a bone. It had little volume to it, the strands being so thin themselves. Bangs fell across one side of her face, partially covering her eye in an ever so seductive manner. Oh, and speaking of eyes, such shimmering green ones have you never seen before. A lovely green, passionately filled to the brim with her fiery personality. One gaze into them would put anyone water her hypnotic spell. They were framed by long and luscious lashes, topped by perfectly portrayed brows. Her proportionate face was perfectly smooth and soft to the touch. Lips neither full nor thin were the outskirts of her dazzling smile that always shone so greatly. She hates her freckles though, spots that pepper her nose and cheeks. I personally adore them, for which she would probably give me grief. Her body is purely angelic. Her clavicles (over pronounced in her gorgeous eyes) provide a sultry introduction to her petite, yet curvy frame. The smoothness of her face continues to all of her body. Her thin frame gives way to more strength than you would give her credit for; but I know better. Her hands are perfect against my face, caressing my head and neck, strongly rubbing my back and shoulders, but most flawless when holding mine. She always feels her back is slightly slouched and curved, but no one notices, and even I can barely see it. Her spine and ribs are always visible, but not in a gaunt, unhealthy fashion. Even her bones feel soft to my touch. Her chest is of perfect size, regardless of what she thinks; it is really of no consequence in the overall picture. The smoothness of her abs is capped off by her perfect belly button, and who knew such a thing could exist. Her frame curves back into lovely hips, which lead into a quite amazing butt, as she would undoubtedly proclaim herself, and who am I to disagree. Her legs are just as soft as the rest of her, and still equally as beautiful, the perfect length to go with the rest of her body. Only the scars on her knees could arguably mar her figure, to which she may agree, while I, however, vehemently deny; they tell the story of her body, making her irrevocably herself. And to cap the head-to-toe view is just that: her toes. Well, her feet in general, crafted to grace the earth with her perfection of beauty. Beautiful feet lead into beautiful toes, lending balance and closure to her well-defined arches. That is the abridged tale of her glorious looks. I could easily go on and describe every square inch of her body since I am only at half the words a true picture is worth. But a description of all angelic details is most likely far too much to divulge into. No amount of paper would be able to contain the descriptions of perfection that was handcrafted by God Himself and miraculously sent into my life. And if her beauty would take that many pages, the outstanding nature of her soul would take so many more. My life is truly amazing thanks a great deal to the presence of my soul mate: Sarah Elizabeth Mallough.

Places I Want to Visit

in absolutely no particular order:

the Grand Canyon

four corners

Japan

the palace at Versailles

Vatican City

London

Madrid

Caribbean cruise

New Zealand

Morocco

Egypt

Sevilla

New York (again)

D.C. (again)

Sydney (again)

My grandpa's home village in Lebanon

Greece

Costa Rica

Honduras

Alaskan cruise

all 50 states

excerpt

The wind whistled through the clearing as the dust finally settled. He took a step towards his final opponent, driving his heel through the skull of the writhing body at his feet. A sharp yell barely escaped, then silence. Much blood had been shed already, but this fight was different. Ryu was fighting for revenge, his normal morals falling to the wayside, shifting into gray at best. The murder of his love J.R., and the self-sacrifice of his sister Misty, had driven him over the edge. His sanity was not in question, despite how insane he may have appeared to all around him. The sheer heartbreak and loss was too great for one man to bear on his own. His soul became cold and dead, leading him to become a hollow shell, a mere shadow of the man he used to be. But with this deadened Ryu came forth a new power: he became a warrior with nothing to lose, but nothing to gain either. Every man he fought and killed brought him no nearer the closure that he so desired. Instead, his heart only gathered more pain and suffering with every slain warrior.

And the man standing in front of him right now was no different. He didn't want to fight anymore; the battle was over, his side was clearly defeated; his spirit was broken. The lone warrior was no match for Ryu, and both sides were well aware of this fact. Ryu took more steps towards his opponent, bloodlust building up inside his body. The samurai threw his sword to Ryu's feet. "You know you have won; I concede defeat." Red fury was visible in Ryu's eyes, slowly stalking his unarmed opponent. No words came from his lips; no thoughts came from his mind; no emotions from his body. "Look at yourself!" the defeated samurai pleaded. "Do you even remember what you once stood for? So self-righteous, a defender of the weak, not a slayer of them! You have your victory. Let me go to be free from service and return to my family, my children. Just think what your beloved would do..."

Suddenly Ryu's fingers were grasped around the neck, lifting the body into the air, cold black eyes staring blankly at the suffocating face. "How...dare...you speak...of her!" Ryu seethed. "You serve him, he who had her killed in my very presence! Her blood strewn purposefully all over my body! You may as well have done it yourself...Paul." The name struck discordantly like the maniacal grin on Ryu's face. Shock flew through the body. "Oh yes, I know everything about you Paul McCanns." His fingers continued to tighten and close on the throat as he listed of age, weight, place of birth, enlistment records, and distinctions. "And the odd thing is...you were never married...nor do you have any children." With that, Ryu put his whole force into choking. The eyes bulged, blood began to trickle from the face, starting at the nose, then from the ears and corners of the mouth. The mounted pressure made the neck creak and snap until it finally shattered. But Ryu took no notice that he was holding a corpse. The splintered bones broke through the skin, piercing his hand. Yet he continued to squeeze still, until he finished his decapitation, the head and body falling separately with dull thuds onto the blood soaked earth.

The raging fury slowly gave way to the pure pain in Ryu's hands. He stared down, his fingers and palms drenched in blood, pierced with the shattered vertebrae, possibly mixed in with his own broken bones. Deep down, he knew this was not the source of his great pain. And as the voided hole within his body grew even larger, he knew there was no chance of salvation for himself. His soul had been condemned long ago, something he had already accepted, becoming a lifeless pawn of the feigned righteousness in the world. The sun began to set on the horizon, Ryu dragging his bloody self towards it, one step closer to ending the war, but one step further from retribution.

superpowers

I have them. They are rooted deep within things that I wear. Each one does something slightly different. For instance, let's say i'm wearing a fitted cap. It makes me look cool. If i wear it "properly", it makes me look like a douche. If I wear it backwards, I'm from the 90s. Sideways, well I just look like an idiot. But nice and forward, in a proper fashion, I look like a normal guy. I've been told before that I can rock a hat pretty well, and I took that to heart since I was told by some pretty good and close people that fact. But I digress. Simply put, hats allow me to change my outward appearance to other people.

Sunglasses. Most notably polarized. And dark black. They turn my eyes into curious weapons. No one can ever tell where I'm looking or even if I'm looking at all. Anyone can wear them, but not everyone can pull off a different style. For instance, I am hopeless when it comes to aviators. And there is again a douche look, this time with white framed sunglasses. If you add in some messy hair like you just got out of the shower or something, your douche meter goes up tenfold at least. Extra points if it's spiky. So sunglasses, too, can change your outward appearance as well. Like hats, it can affect how people view you.

Ipods. Not a Zune. Not some mp3 player. Or a Walkman or what have you. An iPod. There's just something about them that makes them vastly superior to all other mp3 players. And if you don't have an mp3 player, you are just plain weird. CDs won't exist in the near future. I listened to a cassette tape the other day, and it was thoroughly confusing on how to work the player since it hadn't been done in such a long time. But there's also something magical about iPods. They have pretty colors. You can touch some of them and play games and such. Steve Jobs must have some sort of leprechaun or unicorn sealed in each one because of what they can do: people think you are deaf. It's actually spectacular to witness. Someone will be going along to class, and they will pass by a group of people with flyers or something. The interaction is either one of two options: the flyerers yell at an unnecessary volume or they just wave the paper in front of the iPod-er. Clearly, these are the two best options to garner results, especially since everyone who walks by without an iPod doesn't take the flyers anyway. And, yet again, you can still look like a douche. Just walk around with $500 headphones that are huge and cover your ears. Sure, it's not that douchey, but once they turn up the volume so that any passers-by can hear what's happening, the douchery definitely increases.

And now, finally, I unveil my greatest superpower of all: I can become invisible. I can hear you all now saying, "What is this pish posh?" Absolute nonsense you non-believers will say. But let me assure you that it is true. Simply perform the following steps: add an iPod to your person, add sunglasses, and top it all off with a hat (no pun intended). Presto, change-o, you are now invisible! Don't believe me still? Try it. Just walk anywhere looking like this. You become deaf to all with the use of the iPod, but the sunglasses throw everyone off more so. They look at you and are like, "So are they blind too? But they don't have one of those cane things...?" And now all they can think about is what disability you may have. But they can't ask you, that's rude. And they don't want to yell at you like a jerk because you could just be the new Helen Keller talking with your hips. By the time they make up their minds what to do or say, if anything, you are long past them and free as a bird. In all honesty, the hat is probably unnecessary, but who cares? It gives you some character and adds another distraction into the mix.

So follow these simple steps and you too could be invisible. All products can be found at your local shopping mall. If you act now, I can't double your order, but you could probably do it yourself. Insert copyrighted material here. Now get out there and disappear!

a revelation

It is amazing how well one can think while simply cleansing themselves in the shower. I have never been one to believe that a particular place can lend anything significant to its occupant, seeing as how the thinker is the one doing the thinking, not the place they are in. But still, there I was, letting the cooling water run over my body, dripping down from my head. And it was here that my life forever changed.

For those of you who don't know, I have always considered myself something religious, being raised in a Catholic household and attending private Catholic schools my entire life, up until UCLA. I had all the markings of a holy person in the making: playing Jesus in our re-enactment of the Passion, altar serving for nearly eight years, and just having an all-around Christ-like presence. I went to church, professed my faith, and acted accordingly. However this was only on the outside. Inside of my body was a furious tempest, a constant struggle of confusion with what I was doing in my life. I had never had the option of questioning these beliefs. Or, rather, I had simply never questioned because the thought had never crossed my mind. Inevitably, with such torment and anguish, my faith fell, and my spirit fell into a dismal path of sin and despair. My rock bottom kept growing deeper and deeper as I refused to reach out to anyone for help, allowing myself to be consumed by the desires of the flesh and the materialistic principles of society. The days of joy and happiness on the outside were tarnished and destroyed by the gloom and darkness inside of me.

I continued on such a horrid path, forsaking the path of righteousness and treading down my own path of crude vulgarity. The months passed as I went deeper into the darkness, falling away from my family, from myself, and from Him. And still none of this was visible to me. I could not see the beam in my own eye, but was willing to pull the splinters out of my friends'. How ignorant and blind can one man be? I lost complete thought and track of who I was, who He had intended me to be. My life became meaningless to me. Nothing seemed worth doing anymore. I eventually started contemplating selfish and weak thoughts of ending it all. Soon, it became an obsession. Sure, I came out and told my parents, but it's easy to lie and say you are okay after awhile. It still haunted me, through most of college. One may even argue that I embraced it, finding some sort of twisted, maniacal solace in it. And just when I was sure I was so far gone, beyond help, it happened.

I was forced to confront everything. I had forgotten about God, but He had not forgotten about me. My life would be completely changed forevermore with the addition of one person. She knows who she is. And I know she will say she did nothing. Then I would have said that was a lie, but now I can see the truth. All she did was talk to me and listen to me and remain patient with me. It was up to me to deal with everything that I saw on the inside because I was the only one that could truly see it. My mask of completeness to the outside world hid everything, except from her. She asked, and for some odd reason at the time, I answered her, with complete uncensored truth. And before I knew it, I was crying and spilling my guts, professing all my inequities and faults, divulging all my secrets to someone I barely knew. To me at the time, this was her helping and me beginning to change. But I was wrong.

All I became was talk without action, word without deed, a long-lived wind of fallacy that just blew hot air over the idea of changing and becoming who I was supposed to be. I pretended to change, ignoring the true value of her love and friendship, the friendship of all others, and most importantly the worth of myself. Within the course of two months, I didn't change nearly as much as I should have, nearly as much as I said I would. Just last week, I showed imperfection again, hurting her who is closest to me in the blink of an eye with a careless word shared. And in that very moment, the beam in my eye was removed, and I could clearly see myself, the dark and twisted truth inside of me. The slight embrace I was giving to God seemed so small and insignificant. My despair mounted at my lack of commitment and resolve, self-pity welling up inside my soul. I dropped into a state of near mourning, trying to only figure out what I needed to do, and my frustration piled high as nothing came to mind...

And now this brings me full circle, back to my shower. As I stood there, I could feel something deep inside of me. The atmosphere around me changed, turned more powerful than electric, something I had never experienced before. Immediately, though, I knew what was happening; I could feel the omnipotent presence surround me, filling up every pore in my being, being inhaled and ingested and enveloping every bit of my being down to my soul. I dropped to my knees in wonder and awe, in fear, in loving devotion, and in graciousness. And then I prayed, aloud, conversing with my Lord and Savior, who was standing in my midst. I could feel the Holy Spirit filling my body, giving me wisdom and grace that I had never seen before, but I somehow knew that it was mine all along. In that moment, I knew that I had received the strength of my heavenly Redeemer. And that changed everything.

As if in the waters of baptism again, I rose from my knees, lifting my hands to the heavens and praising the Lord. I could feel unending strength within my body and soul, the presence of the Spirit remaining within me. And in that very moment, I proclaimed my devotion to Him. My life is no longer my own; it has been dedicated to Christ and His will. While remembering who I used to be, I know who I have to become, and who I am already on my way to becoming. I shall be a vessel of His word to all the people of the earth, whether they know Him or not. My life is no longer my own; I shall be whatever I am called to be, and now I understand what that truly is. The joy in my heart outweighs all of my past sorrows combined; the happiness I have discovered once again in Him easily outstrips any worldly and material values.

My brothers and sisters, I now turn to you in faith, and I implore you to listen and wait for the Lord. Let Him come into your life in His own way, and then hear Him. He strengthens us with His words, nourishes us with His spirit, and has saved us with His one and only Son. And as He has loved all of us, so we must love each other as we would love Him in return. Rejoice in the Lord! Live His words and commandments, embody His spirit, and show the world His everlasting love and salvation! Again, I tell you, rejoice, for the Son of Man has saved us all from the unquenchable fires of Hell and given us eternal life with the Father in heaven!

1 Corinthians 13: 1-13

Everyone...

...needs something to do

...needs something to fight for

...needs something to believe in

...needs someone to love

forever

at first you can't see where you are it's pitch black and you don't know what's going on until you realize that your eyes are closed so you try to wrench them open but nothing works until you finally focus with all your might and as they crack open the light filters through blinding you with supreme beauty that you have never seen before and you look around but still cannot see anything because of the glorious white light that seems to emanate from a single source so you decide to reach out and go for the source of the light that is so intense and blinding but you can't quite reach it for whenever you reach out towards it it gets farther away from you and only then do you realize that your other senses have failed too with your throat tightening up and your palms becoming sweaty coupled with butterflies welling up deep inside you with your heart pounding out of your chest and you can hear it inside your ears with every heavy step you take all you can hear is the throbbing of your heart and the deafening roar of the silence still unable to see anything finally getting closer to the blinding light and then you fall the ground suddenly giving way beneath your feet causing your body to plummet into the darkness again uncertainty about where you will land coursing through your body and fear begins to take its stranglehold upon your soul as you plummet further and further away from the light until you can barely see it anymore and all the thoughts in your head are jumbled into useless mush as you try to figure out what is going on and how you can stop it but then you realize that your body is starting to separate from your mind the numbness of your flesh becoming a minor detail in your life as you continue to fall alone and deserted full of despair and chaos surrounded by nothing your emotions having left you as well incapacitating your ability to think and rationalize and the pressure of disaster just presses in on you harder and harder until your feeble mind is ready to crack and then...you let go. you stop caring about what could happen or what might happen and begin to focus on the moment. feeling slowly starts to return to your body. you begin to realize that there is something at the bottom for you, something that will stop you from falling. your throat loosens, the butterflies flutter away, and your heart calms itself. your hearing slowly returns as your heart resumes its regularity. your muscles relax as you fully embrace the fall, despite not know where it will take you. but you realize you still cannot see. you call out into the uncertain darkness, empty words drifting off into silence. again you make sure your eyes are open. finally, as you look down, there is a small speck of light. you expect to hurtle towards it, but you softly float downwards. then you realize it is gliding up to meet you. slowly, surely, you meet up with the destiny in the bright light, the one person you always knew you could count on to be there for you. they catch you from your fall and you stare into the eyes of forever.

that's basically what love feels like.