United Bloggerdom

Up until now I thought blogging was mostly a causal experience. A digital diary of the "daily funny's" of peoples real life, or at most a place where the religiously and politcally charged could rant and rave about their opinions to their friends. BOY WAS I WRONG! I am sure some of you may have heard of the Daily KOS. This is a Blog-o-sphere EMPIRE built up of a vast community of people concerned with overthrowing the minds of millions. I am not saying this a bad thing. Maybe what we need is some Via La Revolucion. As a political independent I am VERY pro-freedom and believe that forums like this is a great way to get your points accross to a large audience. From what I've learned about blogger sites like Daily KOS is that they are extremely popular, open the floor of discussion wide open, but allowing the vail of anonmity to prevent percecution towards someones set of beliefs. People chastize the Klu Klux Klan for their anonymous prescence, but groups like Alcoholics Anonymous and similar support groups would not have the success they've had without some secrecy. I am not saying that I support the KKK. Their cause undermines their hoods and makes their outfits a badge of cowardice. I do not think that the bloggers at KOS mean to hide behind their screennames. They recently had a Blogger convention in which most of the editors, facilitators, and writers of KOS were more than happy to reveal their identities. But, for the majority of bloggers on the internet, their screenname provides them aminesty from hassle at their workplace, opposition groups, and harassement from what they call "Trolls" or just mean spirited persons who can't deal with healthy debate. Anyways, hats off to Daily KOS and their contribution to the Blog-O-Sphere!

The Surreal Life.....Class of 96

Well, I've had some "strange" experiences in my life. I think my highschool reunion ranks up there with the first time I ever saw a French woman's armpit hair. I graduated from Enterprise High School in Enterprise, AL in 1996. To this day, I'm not really sure how. I smoked enough marijuana in highschool to stone all the elephants in Africa. Infact, that's all I did besides play pool every night. But, I think somewhere in that mess I managed to B.S. my way to a highschool diploma. Anyways, so there I was, sitting in a room with almost 80 of my former classmates. It was like an empisode of The Surreal Life. I felt like I was in an alternate universe, walking the halls of my highschool, except everyone was fat and bald or pregnant. I made my rounds like everyone else talking to ex-classmates about where their lives had taken them. Most of them sounds like they didn' t have much to say about themselves other than their work. Here was my typical conversation.....hey how are you? I'm good. So, where are you living?? What's business are you in?? Yeah, well I'm blah blah blah......send in the next person.....Hey how are you?? I'm good. So where you living??.....and round and round we go. I felt a more effective way of doing this little catchup would have been to hand out business cards with my MySpace account and just let them read up on current events in the life of Johnny Claunch aka Johnny Caffiene. Anyways, I was somewhat glad I went. I did get to talk to a few interesting people. Including, having a drink before the reunion with an old buddy of mine who didn't even go to highschool with me. Well, that's my story and I'm sticking to it. If any of you ex-classmates of mine read this, some of you (and you know who you are) really have changed since highschool and are better for it.

Memmette has the "Eye of the Tiger"

For those that didn't get the joke in the title of this blog, the song "Eye of the Tiger" was by the group Survivor. For those that don't already know this very regal and vivacious lady, she is my grandmother, known very affectionately as Memmette (the combination of her first and middle name Mary Emmette). This woman is the epidomy of a survivor. She has faced cancer, surgery at almost 90 years of age, and years and years of tense Auburn football games. This qualifies her as Super-Survivor. (Don't you just love this picture also, she looks as though to say "this is my plate of yummy food, BACK OFF!")

If you keep up with my blog, you know she was recently in critical condition at Baptist Medical Center in Montgomery. She was near death, but by the grace of God miraculously came jumping back in the game. Because of her condition, she, unfortunately, wasn't able to attend my wedding. She was extremely missed and will be privy to a full reinactment via video and Power Point presentation sometime during July when my uncle, who also could not attend, will be home. I have already begun to send pictures up to Hayneville via my wonderful Aunt Carole, who has been caring for Memmette diligently for years. Fortunately, she has gathered more help, with the addition of the Memmette care crew, the "bedside" nurse ladies.

She has had a core crew helping for awhile, including my cousin Sonya and the always reliable Kat. Kat is our families very beloved housekeeper, who is known for her biscuits! All of these ladies are co-survivors in MemmetteCare and "rear'in younguns"! Go Team Haynville!

So...I'm going to my 10 year highschool reunion

Alabama has some fond memories for me, most of them being at my grandmothers. Not so many at my highschool. I had a hard time making friends when I moved to Enterprise, Alabama. I was held back a year because Pensacola High School only let's you go on to the next grade if you "pass classes". Also, PHS instructors don't really give two sheets if you have a learning disability. This was made obvious when I went from making D's and F's at PHS to making A's and B's at Dauphin Jr. High. Well, so I graduated in 1996. I knew my 10 year reunion was coming up, but I haven't heard from any of my old classmates in most of those 10 years. Barring some run in's with some of them who still thought they were in highschool. Then something strange happened.....I made a MySpace account and all the sudden I ran into all kind of crazy people from Enterprise. Infact, just yesterday, I got a message from my friend Ben, who was one of my closest friends in Enterprise. Also, I spoke with my buddy Buddha aka Ray Crumpler who was known in highschool for always having about a pound of marijuana on him. Surprisingly, he is now in the army and going to school to be a nutrionist. He also doesn't smoke anymore, or do much of anything phyiscally harmful. Glad to see people change. Anyways, I heard from another MySpace buddy that my reunion was going to be held on June 17th in Enterprise. I decided to go for two reasons. I can flaunt my new wife and I want to see how miserable all the jerks in highschool have become in their hell-hole jobs and have become become sedated by not giving life a chance. What I mean by this is most of the people who I didn't like in highschool did not have much substance to them and had a good chance of never finding purpose in life. Although I don't wish the worst on these people, I just want to be reminded why I made the life decisions I have and why they have their benefits! Also, this one dude named Mark Wilkerson I used to play guitar with became a rockstar and married Melissa Joan Heart. I wanna see if Sabrina the Teenage Witch comes to my highschool reunion.