So now that the sky is falling and the world is soon coming to an end, it seems my plan to pay off all my debts couldn’t have come at a better time.  Just a few more months and I will be back in black, so to speak. 

And I figured, what better way to celebrate the coming of Armageddon and my soon debt free existence than to give myself a much needed and overdue makeover?  After all, if I’m gonna go out, I might as well go out in style. 

This is where you, my beloved readers come in.  I’m going to need some advice and suggestions to complete my makeover here, and your much valued advice will most certainly be welcome.

So where do we begin?  Well it begins of course, with…
 

The Leather Jacket

 
Yep, there’s not a brother in creation who can lay claim to being the baddest of the badasses if he’s not donning a slab of weather beaten leather.  And I don’t mean the kind of leather sported by a 500 pound biker either:

Oh, HELL NO.

No, not quite.  I’m looking for a blazer type jacket that swings in the breeze as I walk in slow motion towards whatever epic battle I’m about to engage in with a gritty but determined look on my face.  Something like the following might be more appropos:

I'm kind of a big deal.

JCPenny’s never seem to have what I’m looking for though, and something like this I can’t chance ordering online because it’ll likely either be too short, too long, too tight, or too loose.  Something like this has to be perfect.  Oh, and something like this also has to have a big enough pouch to store all those women’s hearts I’ll be grabbing up when they see me looking all fine and whatnot.  So, suggestions?  Maybe an online store that will tailor make a jacket based on the measurements I give them?  Ponder over this some while I move on the the next item on my list:
 

The Watch

 
It’s kinda sad, but I haven’t been wearing a watch for years.  The last watch I wore was a titanium hunk of metal that was given to me as a graduation present from my folks after I finished college, my mother’s reasoning then being that I should have a gift that not even I could break.  She was wrong of course.  The thing gave up the ghost a few short years later, and my wrist still has that pasty white line around it where my watch used to be.  Here’s a tip by the way: just because a watch is made of titanium doesn’t mean it won’t break if you end up dropping it on the street the same day a dumpster truck passes through.

Anyway, the thing that held me back here from getting another watch was that I kind of liked my watches to be a bit.. well,  gadgetry.  You know, one that could tell me the weather, latest sports scores and what was currently showing in theaters.  So I ordered a watch from MSN Direct that looked like it had been lifted off of Dick Tracy’s dead body and thought I was once again the epitome of cool.  The watch would update with all kinds of nifty info and graphics via a radio signal.

The only problem was, I happened to be living in a dead zone 50 odd miles wide between the two areas where the watch could actually get a strong signal.  Needless to say I don’t think holding my watch out the car window as I desperately tried to balance between driving and using myself as a human antenna was quite what the designers had in mind.  Another downside was that the antenna was built into the wristband, and it was about as bendable as a block of steel.  While a lot of thought admittedly went into its design, comfort obviously wasn’t one of them.

So, what to do?  I still wanted a watch that was a bit gadgetry.  And man do they have gadgets watches aplenty.  They even have watches where you can upload videos or watch TV on as well!

Nothing says COOL like a watch that can get Rick-Rolled.

I might be going overboard with this though, especially since I have an online buddy who is convinced beyond measure that if I even think of wearing a monstrosity such as the video watch above, I will never get a girl, never, ever, ever, ever, amen and amen, for the love of all that is good and holy, please, do not sully the human race by wearing such a ridiculous contraption.

Well alrighty then. 

That still leaves the question of what brand and type I should get though.  Obviously I want a good, quality watch that will last, maybe solar powered, small and not bulky, black leather wrap, (to match my black leather jacket of course) built in compass, (I’m constantly getting lost so this is a must), and since I can’t get weather reports, I figure one that can read barometer levels would be a nice alternative instead.  Oh, and it has to light up.  I don’t mean the fuzzy wuzzy neon glow in the dark silliness either, I mean light up nice and bright so that a plane flying overhead could see it.  Seriously, I’m fed up with not being able read my watch because I’m running from the police and the dumpster I’m hiding in makes it too dark for me to tell the time.  It’s just uncivilized.

So, suggestions?     Moving on along in the meantime:
 

The Sunglasses

 
There arew few things in life I’m more finicky about choosing than sunglasses. They’re always too round, too ugly, too rickety, too bulky or too much or too little of some damned thing that I just end up hating it after a while.

With sunglasses this awesome, how could you not want me?

Bottom line though, the glasses have to be polarized.  When you can see clouds the way God probably sees them, then dude, those are the kind of glasses I want.  Only problem is, polarizing sunglasses are rarely mirrored or opaque enough so you can’t see the eyes.  And that just won’t do, especially when I’m checking out a super hot awesome babelicious babe’s umm… shoes.   It’s none of people’s business what I’m looking at anyway. 

I did see one brand that had polarized but completely opaque (none of that ugly brownish tint) at a Mall once, but I never got the name.  Once again, suggestions on brands I could check out are welcome. 
 

The Cellphone

 
I’m with Verizon, which as some of you Verizon users know likes to nickel and dime every bloody damned thing you do on your phone including using the built-in calculator.   Seriously, this is the one network where if you utilized every possible feature they offered you’d probably pay oh, about a grand a month or so for the pleasure.  And just to milk it further, let’s not pay a one time fee to download, say a ringtone.  Let’s offer a SUBSCRIPTION FEE instead where you have to subscribe to a ringtone you like on a $%^&ing monthly basis.  Dude, seriously.  Not cool.

And since I’m using a basic LG phone, it takes me about 10 minutes to dial in complete sentence when texting someone (including Twitter).  I could go Blackberry I guess, but let’s face it, we all know there’s only one solution here:

My hands are manlier.

I’ll have to jump ship and go with AT&T though, and from what I understand of their monthly plans, the costs can get steep ($80 or so for the whole works including unlimited text).   But a coworker let me try out the iPhone just for a minute and it was enough for me to fall in love.    Yep, I definitely wantie, especially when all the favorite apps I use have also been ported for the iPhone.  Heck even my webstats service ported an app for the iPhone.  Mobile blogging and twittering would get a whole lot more fun with an iPhone too, especially if I get caught in a Cat 5 hurricane and want to live blog the experience while sharp debris fly around me.

So for those of you who jumped from your former network to AT&T, was it a real pain?  I was told I can still keep my phone number from Verizon, but I’ll have to find out for sure.  One thing’s certain, I just can’t be a true badass now if I’m not carrying an iPhone. 
 

The MacBook

 
Villains use Windows.  The good guys use Macs.  There’s a reason for this, so who am I to break with tradition?  Besides, I need a machine that removes as many roadblocks as humanly possible between creating multimedia content and uploading it to my blog.  Do I wanna make a video?  Click click, done.  Do I want to create a podcast so y’all can swoon at the sound of my stud sounding voice?  Click click, done.  Photos, Music Composition?  No problem.  They really do make it that simple, at least from what I could tell when I played around with a MacBook for about two hours at Best Buy until they threw me out.  Microsoft?  I don’t know what these people are smoking, but Vista acts more like a virus sent by the Russians than an operating system.  Seriously, how hard can it be to make something as user intuitive and fun to play with like GarageBand?  I’d like to compose some bit of music and videos one of these days, but Microsoft, they like to leave that sort of thing up to third party developers who charge you $500 for the pleasure of installing their bloated craptastic software onto your system, which then proceeds to chew up your memory into bits, cause your hard drive to forget how to spin again and your video card to go blind from insanity.

When I say I want a pimped out notebook, this is not what I mean.

So, it’s settled that a MacBook is a must, especially if I’m going to be traveling a lot and living in dinky (but yet homely) apartments.  I’d love to get one secondhand, but from a cursory look on eBay they’re so high priced even secondhand that I’m probably better off getting it new.  Sad thing, this will probably be my biggest investment, and it’s not one I’m ready to make unless my blog earnings justify it.  So how can you guys help?  Well if you got one lying around, feel free to donate it to the brutha here.  It’s for a good cause.  Or, you could  link to my blog.  No, really.  Adding a link from your site can really do a lot to boost my standings in the search engines, and in return I’ll be happy to link you back.  Lincoln needs some link love, sugar.  

And finally:
 

The Motorbike

 
Yeah, you knew this was coming.  A badass without a bike?  It’s like Mozart without a piano.  Although, I might make an exception here only because I simply don’t know how the hell I’m supposed to go trudging around the country with both a SUV and a bike.  I could get a trailer I guess, but that tends to overly complicate things more than it should.  I already got a sweet ride, so is a bike really necessary?

Well yes.

It’s kinda like skydiving or bungee jumping, one of those things you do once in your lifetime, just to see what it’s like, at which point if you’ve managed to survive the experience you can then go around boasting about what a reckless badass you’ve been (though this is probably something I wouldn’t want my mother to know about.)

Plus, the chicks dig it, which is pretty much the only reason I’d think of getting one (and yet another reason why Mom is better off not knowing.)

Yes, I really am THIS awesome.

There’s crazy though, and then there’s suicidal.  While I’m down with crazy, I definitely wouldn’t get a bike with enough CCs that I could outrace an F-16 fighter jet.  A simple beginner’s bike with 250CCs will suit me just fine, thank you.  Bike enthusiasts will laugh at me, but most people won’t know the difference.  And besides, the chicks dig it.  Though truth be told, I really dug the Harley Fatboy that was used in the movie Terminator 2.  How cool would it be to have a bike you can effortlessly latch an oversized shotgun onto?

Get off my bike, Arnie.

Ok, on second thought, that might be just a bit too much (especially since the bike model Arnie rode on still retails for like $15,000 today.)

No, I think something a bit more sensible might be in order, such as the Kawasaki Ninja 250, which is touted as a great beginner’s bike and only retails for $3,000 or so.  Best thing about it of course is that it seats two. 

In case you haven't noticed by now, black is my thing.

On the off chance that anyone reading this is a bike enthusiast, happy to hear if you have any thoughts to add. 
 

Conclusion

 
That about wraps up all the ingredients needed to realize my lifelong dream of becoming a Super Righteous World Saving Badass.  Ahhh, I could see it now too: waltzing into a Dairy Queen somewhere in Smalltown, USA, taking my helmet off to reveal my studly, tousled, raven black hair, and ordering up the kind of drink only badasses would dare to order:

“Give me a milk…  CHOCOLATE.“

Dudes, who wouldn’t want me? 

BOOYAH!

It’s time to not only celebrate my blog relaunch, but my two year blogging anniversary!!    And dude, the video totally captures the moment here.  I’m talking a blog wrecked to death, only to come back stronger, sleeker, and totally badass with some badass music cranking in the background and leather jackets and cool black vintage cars cruising the highway and let us go have a throwdown and kick some serious scum of the earth hellbags because baby,  I am back!

Yeah, I’m a little excited here. 

But really, what I just pulled off was a miracle that only God could have given me, and I now have the latest version of WordPress along with a new Who-is-your-DADDY theme that is all kinds of awesomeness. 

I still need to work out a few kinks and decide on a new photo gallery to use, but for all intents and purposes the site is now live, with a sleeker, faster look and a few new bells and whistles I think you’ll all enjoy.   For an idea of what’s new, see the little oval thingie jiggy to the right of each post title?  Go give that a click.

Cool, huh? 

In addition, you’ll now be able to edit comments as well.  I also dropped a few plugins, added a cache system and went with a 2 sidebar look again to reduce clutter.  Yes the ads are still there, but they are no longer as obtrusive as they used to be.  To be honest I got tired of having a larded up ad block embedded inside my posts, partly because I couldn’t quote or post any media content on the fly.  The ad would jam it up and I’d have to manually remove it in order for the post to show cleanly.  Not cool.  But I still need the ads though, since the 50 cents I’m making a day is paying for my newspaper, and I just don’t know how I could live without those two quarters a day, ya know?

As for the dark theme, I’m working on creating a white backdrop just for the posts and comments for easier reading (while still maintaining a dark look), so stay tuned there.  I might have gotten it done sooner but the theme kept overriding my color settings.  Regardless, let me know what you think.

It wasn’t easy though, but I got through it, and now I can finally enjoy the fruits of my labor…. except of course, Google just had to rain on my parade by dropping my pagerank from a 4 to a 3 while I was busy upgrading.    Really Google, why don’t you just suck my ass times a thousand?  Dweebs.

But meh, whatever.  I finally made a leapfrog in upgrading without having to spend a fortune to have a designer do it, my sleek black car will get a nice facelift and wax job by the end of the summer, and in a few more months I’ll be out of debt,  cruising the road and enjoying my new lease on life.  All I’ll need then is a weathered black leather jacket, and my life will truly be complete. 

I realize my heathen audience just went “Uhhhhhh???” upon reading that title, but every now and then I like to discuss a Christian topic on my blog, so like it or not it’s par for the course.

One of my beloved readers recommended that I give the “worship artist” Jason Upton a listen, hoping his music would inspire.

Listening to his music did in fact inspire me with hope: hope that he never releases another album. I keed, I keed…. ok not really.

In all seriousness, I think Upton means well, though I was kinda hoping he would be the real deal, another Keith Green in the making, yet when I started giving a few of his songs a listen, something just seemed… off.

And here we go again. As soon as my spirit gets disturbed about something I know I’m about to step into a pile of fecal matter and start knocking over sacred cows, but then again, it’s what I do, and dude, I do it oh so well.

On the surface, Upton’s music and lyrics would appear to be alright and God-focused, but quite a few of his songs also seemed vague and cryptic, their meanings hidden in obscurity. I also noted the absence of any overt call to repentance and living a life free of sin, two of the most common themes found not only in Keith Green songs but in most of the Psalms as well. It might not be a big deal, but Upton’s musical words presented a rather incomplete gospel to me. Curiosity compelled me to do some digging into his background, and what I learned (so far) pretty much confirmed my suspicions about him.

Upton’s musical career began with his album “Key of David,” which according to Wikipedia was a series of prophetic worship sessions, over half of which were “spontaneously inspired by the Holy Spirit.”

Right away I knew some Christian dweeb in love with Upton must have written this. How did they know such sessions were inspired by the Holy Spirit to begin with? Did they ask Him? Did they test the spirit as the Bible instructs us to do? Did they compare their experiences to what Scripture teaches to see if it lined up? Or was it all mushy gushy feelings and since we’re all happy shappy dappy here it must be of God? And what makes his worship music prophetic anyway? Are we insinuating that Upton is not only a musician, but a modern day prophet as well? Sigh.

Things just get more bizarre as the same Wiki entry suggests Upton was able to stop a tornado with his music, and that one of his tracks contained the voices of actual angels singing.

Sure, and I’m Mickey Mouse.

I checked out the lyrics to the song that supposedly had this heavenly choir singing in it:

I declare over you, God has given you the air!
So fly, it’s time to open up your wings,
To shake off the things that hold you down (to leave the things…..)
It’s time to spread out your wings and fly!

Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Do you know what I know?
Do you want what I want?

Angel: (”…undiscernible… I want you to fly …undiscernible… Fly….” )

Do you see what I see?
Do you hear what I hear?
Do you know what I know?
Fly!

And of course, someone from the audience later claims to have seen one or more of these angels, so we can now accept without reservation that a brigade of angels from heaven just decided to go on tour with Jason Upton.

Really people, can you stop taking everything at face value here? There’s no doubt in my mind that fans have now used this as unequivocal proof that Upton is anointed of God. “Never mind what the Bible says. We heard angels sing! That’s proof enough for us!”

One of the failings of the charismatic crowd today is that they rely too heavily on emotions and experiences for evidence that a movement is of God, rather than on what Scripture teaches. So they never test the spirits, they never scrutinize their experiences according to God’s word, and of course the net result is that they fall away to heresy.

Is there anything overtly heretical about Jason Upton though, other than the fact that he seems to be an ignoramus? It’s hard to say. Reading his website, I noted what a pastor wrote about his first album, Key of David:

The Key of David is mentioned in Revelation 3:7 to refer to the absolute authority of Heaven in Jesus’ hands to open the doors that no one can shut and to close the doors that no one can open. But the Key of David is first mentioned in Isaiah 22:22, where it denotes a fatherly authority, a pivotal place of opening up the riches of the House of David-God’s blessing, God’s presence, and God’s glory-to God’s people. I believe the Lord is going to use worship like this to birth whole generations into His Kingdom in fire.

The Youth in our churches and campuses are going to catch fire quickly and intensely, and they are going to take back for God what the enemy has stolen-they are going to take back the churches, the universities and campuses, and the cities that we, the older generations in the Church, have longed and prayed for in spite of the fact that we have not yet seen the widespread, reclaiming revival fires from heaven that we have prayed and wept for.

Again with this fire thing. Fires and revivals, they’re all the new rage these days, and yet I wonder if any of them even know what they’re talking about. When God’s fire is referred to in Scripture, it’s always in the sense that it consumes sin. Fire purifies and burns away all that is displeasing to God, and it is without exception, a PAINFUL experience:

1 Peter 1:7 That the trial of your faith, being much more precious than of gold that perisheth, though it be tried with fire, might be found unto praise and honour and glory at the appearing of Jesus Christ…

Faith is always described as a precious metal that’s been purified by fire (trials), so if a Christian grounded in the Word asks for an anointing of fire, he is in essence asking God to purify his faith (regardless of how painful that process might be). Yet from the quote above it seems readily obvious that such fire is being defined in a different context, that it instead signifies some sort of vague mutinous takeover of churches and cities by today’s Christian youth.

The more I read, the more I wondered, “What the blue flipping dip are these people talking about?” Then I read about Upton’s strong association with yet another “Christian” movement called The Call, which was founded by Lou Engle. You can see a video of Upton performing for Engle here (what’s with this weaving and bobbing crap by the way? What are we, Hassidic Jews?)

As for Engle himself, he’s a bit of a weenie, obsessed in raising up an “army” of young believers who can help turn back the “black moral morass” that has plagued America since the Beatles, mostly by doing lots of praying, fasting and worship (and a wee bit of political grassroots action.) Some of his bizarre antics have been shown in the anti-Christian documentary Jesus Camp, where he gives a sermon espousing on the evils of abortion and the need to have conservative judges on the Supreme Court… to KIDS. Seriously. Because you know, nothing is more important than making sure children understand the need for having constructionist judges on the bench by the time they’re ten years old. Chuckie Cheese? Pffft, that’s for godless atheists. We’re doing God’s work here.

In spite of this flaming stupidity, some of Engle’s rhetoric still seemed to ring true. Here’s a synopsis of what his movement “The Call” is supposedly all about:

TheCall is a divinely initiated, multi-racial, multi-generational, and cross-denominational gathering to corporate prayer and fasting. We believe that our nation is in desperate need of the mercy of God and a great Spiritual Awakening. TheCall is committed to mobilizing people from all across America to gather together to petition God for His undeserved mercy for our nation in 12-hour solemn assemblies. Just as in the days of Joel, we believe that now is the time to blow the trumpet across our land, to fast, to pray, and return to the Lord with all our hearts.

Sounds all well and good right? Until you start delving into Engle’s background and you start to realize, “Holy cow, this guy’s batsh*& insane!”

It seems Engle’s ultimate goal is really to take America back for Christians, and this “call” is basically a hyped up, Promise Keepers style movement based on the notion that if we just pray really really really hard enough, magical things will happen (and the U.S. Supreme Court will instantly be filled by 9 ultraconservative judges who all graduated from Regent University and are diehard fans of Jason Upton.)

Not that there’s anything wrong with getting involved in the political process, but Engle’s problem is that he apparently thinks God specifically told him to start this movement, in spite of the fact that there’s no Scriptural support for doing such a thing.

The Bible clearly tells us what constitutes a true revival:

If my people, which are called by my name, shall humble themselves, and pray, and seek my face, and turn from their wicked ways; then will I hear from heaven, and will forgive their sin, and will heal their land. - 2 Chronicles 7:14

Revivals are a call to individual repentance. It’s not the world God is concerned with in this regard, it’s His people. Any revival movement then should always have this as its primary focus: that we as a Christian community have sinned before God and it’s OUR ways we need to change, not the world’s.

Engle’s movement though is not about that. He makes mild overtures about returning to the Lord and all, but what his movement is really about is changing the socio-political climate of an entire nation. His emphasis is on reforming America, not on reviving the church itself, despite the fact that the Bible clearly indicates things are supposed to get worse, not better, as we move ever closer to the end. He and his followers also don’t seem to realize that before God judges the world, He is going to judge His church FIRST:

For the time is come that judgment must begin at the house of God: and if it first begin at us, what shall the end be of them that obey not the gospel of God? - 1 Peter 4:17

Knowing this, doesn’t it make more sense that we clean up OUR house first before we start trying to save the world? Unless of course, you’re so absolutely mind bogglingly obtuse that you think the church today isn’t facing any serious problems, in which case I’d like to invite you over to my place so I can stomp your face in with my spiked boot.

The fact is, we don’t need a revival in America. We need a revival IN THE CHURCH. The time will soon come when God is going to judge a completely unprepared Christian church before He does anything with the rest of the world. We’re going to be weighed in the balance, and at the state we’re in today, we are going to be found severely wanting.

We are so screwed.

My internet surfing habits seem to be getting stuck in an endless loop lately. First I check the news, then I check my blogging stats, then my ad revenue stats, then do it all over again, until before I know it several hours have passed and all I really did today was… nothing.

Like, eww?

I need a little changeup in the routine here. Oooo, I know, how about I upload a daily podcast of me singing various karaoke tunes, beginning with my very own personal rendition of Mr. Tambourine Man? Maybe I’ll follow that up with Marvin Gaye’s Let’s Get It On.

I think I’m on to something here.