"The AL-vengers?" (Nickname Subject to Change.)

I spent this past weekend doing my Marvel movie marathon, and therefore, got to watch so many different "origin" stories. Well, the Avengers might have their beginnings together, but so does the team of my fiancée and I. This is ours...

I still remember the day like it was yesterday. Temperatures outside ranging from 78 degrees to 94 degrees. An extremely hot summer day. Most normal people were staying indoors with their water bottles and their A/Cs cranked up to max cooling temps. But me -- well, I've never claimed to be normal.

Being the nature lover that I am, and a kid that grew up outdoors climbing everything from trees to ropes to fences, I still have a need to branch out there from time to time to get away from the stresses of the world. The outside world is MY world. It's where I feel most at peace. However, since I don't necessarily like socializing all that much, it's really no wonder I'd chosen the place that I had to hang out on a Sunday morning. The zoo, with all its many different-shaped creatures, most of whom are on their own fenced-in islands doing their own things never minding me one bit, seems as good a place as any to relax and de-stress for an introvert like myself. I went there expecting to find orangutans, giraffes and koalas, but what I found that day was way grander than any of those exotic creations -- I found the girl of my dreams!

Like the okapi combines the uniqueness of a giraffe with the gracefulness of a zebra, this lady mixed all the best parts I've ever loved in women into one amazingly adorable package. Her emerald green eyes allowed me access way deep into her soul, something a wannabe poet like myself can find inspiration in a thousand times over. Her sunshiny blond hair allowed me to drop my defenses while talking with her, something I normally wouldn't do with women as beautiful as she. Her fashion sense laced with practicality -- cargo pants to defend from bugs, long-sleeved shirt to protect from the sun -- told me this was a down-to-Earth girl not keen on pretentiousness. And, that smile! Oh, how I love THAT SMILE! Her smile was about a mile wide, and made all my hard knocks in life seem temporarily non-existent. It was, and still is, the most gorgeous smile I've ever witnessed in all my life.

Moreover, and thankfully for me, there was a certain familiarity with this girl. She didn't know it yet, but I'd seen her before. I'd had dreams about this very girl. Not just any random blond girl from her neck of the woods, but rather, this very same blond Neck-of-the-Woodsian. Only reason I remember this is because she'd taken my breath away before -- in dreams -- so much so that I'd woken up the previous October and written an entire piece on this unknown person. At the time, I just thought it was some unattainable reflection of a gal, an angel come to tease me amid my rapid eye movements. Never did I really believe I'd be lucky enough to meet somebody even remotely like that, let alone the actual one I'd seen in my (premonitory?) dream. I never thought myself fortunate enough, but fortunately, I was wrong.

To think, would I have ever found her if not for my unyielding stomach pushing me to visit the zoo’s restaurant for a couple of pizza slices? Would I have ever made more than mere small talk with her, if not for the jam-packed nature of that eatery allowing me to invite both her and her sister to come join in at my table? What would have become of us had I not thought to organize a bowling alley reunion later that week? The first day we met, I fixed her broken umbrella with no tools whatsoever by sacrificing the string on my camera, and then we went and fed a giant giraffe together. Three years later, I'm still here fixing and sacrificing whatever I need to, in order to keep my precious angel smiling that amazing smile of hers. She does the same for me, and I always appreciate that. We may not be feeding too many giraffes anymore, but my appetite for her is still as never-ending as a giraffe's long neck appears to be.

In closing, I'll leave you with this: We spend our entire lives trying to plot and plan everything, but sometimes life is doing the same to us. With the ten million variables that went into me finding my soulmate at a packed zoo on a random Sunday, it was a miracle the two of us ended up at the right place at the right time, but it happened... and that's the one thing I wasn't trying to plan at that time. Sometimes, the best way to bring about your future is by getting out and enjoying your present.

LOVE YOU, BABY ... HAPPY ANNIVERSARY!!!

Holëschitt (and Other News from Around the World)!

In a world temporarily hijacked by Bruce... err, Caitlyn... Jenner, I come in peace to bring the over-saturated ones amongst us a little reprieve from all that media attention.

This here's a blog post containing some other big stories from around the world that you can be following today:

* The Islamic State infiltrated the Syrian city of Palmyra on May 20th and is still slaughtering people there as we communicate.

* The government suspended adoption proceedings in Congo back on Sept. 2013, but the wait for several hundred American families who've adopted children from there since then is nearly over as exit permits might soon again be getting issued.

* A new study concluded that the upward trend of global temperatures didn't slow this century, as previously claimed by some experts.

* Flooding in Ghana sparked a gas station explosion earlier today killing anywhere from 73-90 people.

* The UK government is opposing a 10% pay raise for their MPs on grounds of fiscal responsibility claiming that the sovereign state's budget can't sustain it.

* The 2015 NBA Finals begin tonight -- current MVP Stephen Curry leads his Warriors against four-time former MVP LeBron James and his Cavaliers!

* And then, there's this. (I'm not sure whether to "Eww!" or LOL!)

The Marvel Universe: Where Else Can A Monster, A Tech Wiz, A Soldier & A God Be BFFs?

As a child, I used to love reading comic books, but probably even moreso I enjoyed collecting superhero trading cards. In fact, I collected every card in every Marvel set from 1988 to 1994. There was one year where all nine cards on a protector sheet made one giant image when placed together. There was another year when each hero and villain had their own seemingly hand-drawn, über-artistic card. Those were two of my favorite sets to collect. However, for some reason, it was the 1991 set, one which really had no gimmick whatsoever to it, that I remember the most.

I was in elementary school then, and all the boys used to trade their excess Marvel cards to try to complete their sets. For the longest time, I kept buying packs of cards from this comic book store not too far from my home, trying to finish my set, since all I was missing was the card of a superhero named Speedball. As luck would have it, no matter how many packs I bought, I was never able to wrangle Speedball in on my own to finish my collection. Finally, one day, in the boy's locker room, Danny Santana told me that he had an extra Speedball card, and that he would trade it to me that night for five cards. I had a whole bunch of spares, so he saw an opportunity and took it, and I didn't hesitate since I had nothing better to do with those excess cards anyway. My grandma drove me to his house that evening at around 7 p.m. to make the exchange, and the biggest smile came across my face when I finally held that one missing piece to my collection in my hand. My 1991 set had FINALLY been completed!!

Now, by no means, am I saying Speedball's the man. Speedball was a silly superhero. Definitely no Wolverine or Gambit, who were my two faves back then. Keep in mind, this was back when Gambit was still a relative mystery man, before he became a lame Cajun cliché. All he was then was a dude with a trenchcoat, steel shin guards and a weird facemask-looking thingy who nobody knew much about. He sort of resembled a WWF wrestler, but in the comic books, he'd always appear at the strangest of times to throw crap at people (mostly playing cards) and beat them with a very long stick (or a bo staff, if you must). Hilarious stuff, really! Wolverine was also cool as heck. The dude had claws, could heal from any wound in about two seconds, and was every little boy's image of what a tough guy should be. However, in 1991, Speedball was the only superhero missing from my collection, so I was willing to give up five cards for him. That, my friends, is called supply and demand. That and free trade are what our capitalist economy thrives on.

This is not an essay on economics, though, so let me get back to my point. Back in 1991, I had a lot of time on my hands and there were little to no superhero movies coming out. The few that did were lame as all bloody hell. However, technology has finally reached a point now -- some two decades later -- where that same Marvel universe I was a part of as a kid has come to encompass the cinematic landscape. But now, as luck would have it, I just don't have the time or energy to keep up with it, and so I've fallen way behind. In all honesty, I wish I had more time these days to kick back and enjoy three-hour epic movie experiences, but I just don't. However, if reading comics and watching wrestling as a kid taught me anything, it's that where there's a will, there's a way!

So, here's my plan...

Sometime in the near future, I'm going to take just one weekend out of my busy schedule to host a two-day superhero movie marathon. There are way too many Marvel movies already to fully catch up in one weekend, but one's all I can spare for now, so I'm just going to tackle the big ones. Forget the confusing X-Men sequence of movies, and the lame Fantastic Four ones, let's just focus on the biggest moneymakers of them all -- those Avengers that are making Stan Lee's pockets greener than the (Incredible) Hulk's skin! Eleven movies, twenty-nine hours, two days. I'll watch them in this order, which I believe is the order in which they were released to the general public: Iron Man, The Incredible Hulk, Iron Man 2, Thor, Captain America: The First Avenger, The Avengers, Iron Man 3, Thor: The Dark World, Captain America: The Winter Soldier, Guardians of the Galaxy, and then I'll head to the movies to finish off the marathon with the one that's out now, Avengers: Age of Ultron.

For anyone reading this that ain't a lifelong comic book fan, but who still wants to know the backstory of all these movies, I've got something to make your lives simpler. I didn't create it, but I did watch it and thought it'd be helpful to the comic book novice while trying to live in Stan Lee's world. So if you've got 13 minutes to spare, feel free to learn about the overall connecting story arc that goes on in all these movies...

Don't Waste Your Crazy!

HIStory

I don't mean this to sound like a negative thing because I really don't perceive it as such, but if it does, then it does... whatever. I can't control how other people interpret the words that spill out of my mind, so I ain't ever gonna stress that too much. But anyway, the older I grow, the more in tune with society I become, the less the world's ways get to me. Let me explain. Take somebody like Michael Jackson, for instance. At first, Jacko was beloved, then when he became too big, as is tradition in this world, he was destroyed. They build you up just to break you back down. You can only get so big before you piss the world off. On the downward spiral, the dude was made to fit the profile of a pedophile. He may have actually been, or maybe not, but the point is -- without him ever actually being found guilty of such, the world pretty much unanimously agreed that he was one because it fit the "downward spiral" script they were going on about at the time. Then, the dude goes and dies, and all of a sudden, he's the world's best friend again, nobody ever said anything bad about him! These are the ways of the world. I'm older now, I understand them, this makes me better prepared to deal with them, and in turn, I'm happier as a person these days. So like I said, people might look at this and say, "oh, he's more cynical these days, sucks to be him!" But not me, I look at it and say, "knowing what's around the corner and having the knowledge of having already dealt with such experiences makes you better prepared for when it happens again, and knowing is half the battle, now let's get to doing!" See, it's a good thing: experience breeds knowledge.

Which brings me to my next point...

Every time I've gone out lately, I've felt old. It seems like I'm aging, but those around me never seem to do so. I was at the movie theater the other day, and I kid you not, out of the thousands of people there, only like two or three were older than me. What the heck?! I turn on the television, and everybody on there are twenty-somethings that I have no idea who they are! I told my best friend this, and he's like, "we ain't old, what'cha talking about?!" That was my point, though. We ain't old! Why is it that everyone around us seems to be younger than we are? Is it because people our age are all home raising children or something? Why is it that life is going on around us, but the backdrop seems to be frozen in time or something? These are just the thoughts I've been having as of late. To myself. Haven't really wanted to bother anybody with them. Only young kids are allowed on the television, apparently, but I guess that's because network execs think only youngins can be sexy? I don't know about you, but I'll take a Kate Beckinsale, Zoe Saldana or Charlize Theron over a Selena Gomez, Miley Cyrus or Ariana Grande all day, every day! I must really be getting old to think that way, eh? LOL! But anyway, so this is what I've been feeling lately. Old. Just plain older than dirt or sum'n. Whatever, life ain't stopping anytime soon, and with every day, I'm just gonna keep getting older and older and older, so I'm fine with that idea. Why worry about something you can't control, after all? But that's not what I was worrying about. I was worrying that the older I get, the less I'm going to feel like a part of my community, because they apparently have different ideas for who can entertain them or whatever, which in turn affects what kinds of crowds (err, demographics) can fill their movie theater aisles. The older I get, the more I get cast out of society... and hey, someday, if it hasn't yet, the same will happen to all of you, my friends!

That's why, it's not a bad thing. It's just different.

Anything we do in this life is just a matter of perception. I don't live in the negativity that some others do. I'm typically a very happy soul. But every once in a while, it's nice to know what awaits us, so that we can adequately prepare for it. I don't feel life ever prepared me for these outcasted feelings that I've been having lately. Had it, I would've already known these days were approaching. Now that they've arrived, I'm making the best of them -- keeping all negative thoughts outside, trying to focus only on the good and positive ones. So yesterday, I was finally pulled out of my old-man funk and started feeling a little societal again when I went to go pick up my dinner ("to go") at Chipotle's, and noticed the bag. On it, they had a Paulo Coelho writing that reminded me that I'm not the only one feeling this way. As corny as this sounds, that's all I needed, someone who felt the same way as me. Now, I know I'm not alone, and soon, my friends, you'll all be joining me down that path of "you ain't needed anymore!" Welcome to your future. You'll love it here. I guarantee it. Hahaha!!!

Anyway, take two minutes to enjoy the piece I was reading yesterday, "Two-Minute Alchemy" by Paulo Coelho...

A legend tells of a man who used to carry water every day to his village, using two large pitchers tied on either end of a piece of wood, which he placed on his shoulders.

One of the pitchers was older than the other and was full of small cracks; every time the man came back along the path to his house, half of the water was lost.

For two years, the man made the same journey. The younger pitcher was always very proud of the way it did its work and was sure that it was up to the task for which it had been created, while the other pitcher was mortally ashamed that it could carry only half its task, even though it knew that the cracks were the results of long years of work.

So ashamed was the older pitcher that, one day, while the man was preparing to fill it up with water from the well, it decided to speak with him.

"I wish to apologize because, due to my age, you only manage to take home half the water you fill me with, and thus quench only half the thirst awaiting you in your house."

The man smiled and said, "When we go back, be sure to take a careful look at the path."

The pitcher did as the man asked and noticed many flowers and plants growing along one side of the path.

"Do you see how much more beautiful nature is on your side of the road?" the man remarked. "I knew you had cracks, but I decided to take advantage of them. I sowed vegetables and flowers there, and you always watered them. I’ve picked dozens of roses to decorate my house, and my children have had lettuce, cabbage and onions to eat. If you were not the way you are, I could have never done this. We all, at some point, grow old and acquire other qualities, and these can always be turned to good advantage."

And always remember, my friends, you'll always have other traits you've honed in time that will be of much use to this next generation. Don't let yourself feel like you don't belong, as nothing can be further from the truth. People need you... and they always will!!

We ain't old, man, what'cha talking about?!?! ;-)

One Man. One Mind. One Truth. One Life.

Fr. Kapaun