Simon is the Beast!

"If it were not for Jesus, there would be no Christmas." Oh, really? REALLY??

Actually, all the traditions of holidays that children enjoy most (Christmas decorations and presents, Easter egg hunts, Halloween itself) are based off of Pagan traditions. Christians stole their ideas and created holidays around the same time so as to lure people away from the Pagan religions. I mean, if you were a Pagan, and suddenly someone said, no join our religion although that means giving up all the fun parts of your religion, would they really?

Ok, that was entirely in a nutshell, but that's the gist. When you put up your Christmas tree and kiss under the mistletoe, take comfort in knowing that you are partaking in pagan rituals.

Speaking of Pagan (which I am not for the turntable), I got my license plates today for Simon, and it's the standard three letter hyphen four numbers. Well, the first three numbers are 666. Love it! I of course had to change Simon's name. He is now Simon the Beast. It would be funnier if Simon was an SUV or a mac truck.

Also, to continue with today's theme slightly, I was driving behind this car:



I remember in 2004 and 2005, anytime I saw a Kerry bumper sticker, I'd smile. (She has no Kerry bumper stickers, but she has the equivalent because I'm just talking liberal bumper stickers in general.) I live in Northern Virginia, and as much as people here want to believe this is a liberal area, it totally is not. Loudoun County is one of the three most conservative counties in Virginia. We may have a democrat for governor, but that's the exception not the rule. Also, I didn't even vote for Kerry, but I still like to see that there were Kerry supporters driving around this stiflingly republican area. If this was mostly a democrat infested place, I would find the W stickers amusing and the Kerry stickers overkill.

This woman had two of the same bumper sticker. That was my only issue with the rear of her car. Although some of them I did not understand. Overall, it reminded me that 2008 is upon us. You can feel the budding tension in America. Once the new year hits, people are going to go crazy about the election. Some already are but there will be a significant amount more.

In the fall of 2000, it was my senior year of high school, and it was the first time I decided to take an academic class instead of an honors class (I finally realized that honors is not worth it after being burned out by honors history). Wow. Big difference between honors and academic. During one class, my government class had to be the House, while the other academic government class next door was the Senate. We split up into our parties. There were about 20 people in my class. Five of us were "democrats", while the other 15 were republicans. The republicans actually were republicans. The "democrats" weren't democrats at all. One was undecided, one was green, one was libertarian, one was other, and one was a republican trying to infiltrate our party. In that whole class, only the teacher was a democrat. I think he partially favoured the four of us because we didn't say stupid things or become assholes after the election. Also, I didn't vote in that election because I didn't turn 18 until February.

In the fall of 2004, it was my senior year of college. I was living in a two bedroom apartment on campus. There were four girls in the apartment. One was a hardcore republican (she was also a government major), her roommate was an exchange student therefore didn't care, my roommate was a democrat, and I was green (I was the green in my high school government class as well. I'm actually not now, nor did I vote green during the 2004 election). Can you imagine the tension in the apartment between the two rooms? The three of us were all very opinionated. I thought it was kind of funny that everyone voted for someone different. (I wanted to vote green but due to my stupidity and the fucked up voting system, I chose not to. The green party was a write-in ballot for Virginia, and I read up on write-in ballots. There are rules that go with them, and if you don't follow the rules, your vote doesn't count. In one state, you had to write the candidate's name differently. Well, reading this threw me off because when I got to the voting location, I couldn't remember which way was the original way, so I ended up voting for a candidate already on the ballot because I didn't want to write the green party candidate's name down incorrectly and then not have it count.)

In the fall of 2008, I have no idea where I will be. I won't be a senior in anything. I may or may not be taking classes. Who knows? I'm pretty sure I won't be voting third party this time, so there's a good chance you can guess who I will be voting for. Although, I will say this, I have voted for republicans in the past. Ok, so it was in a republican primary vote (Virginia doesn't have party registration, so you can infiltrate the other side), but I think it counts.

And now some more pictures!

I love looking at the sky! Sooooo pretty.


Doesn't the Moon look cool?


I admit, I totally changed the gamma and contrast on this one.


I didn't change this one. The sky was that blue.


Not the sky. This is a broccoli cheddar scone. It smells delicious. It's difficult to finish though. I don't know why. I once referred to it (before trying it) as "the gross looking one" in front of the customer who ordered it.

I also have a video! Steph told me about Any Video Converter, which enables you to compress a video, so I tested out a random video I made to see if I could fit it onto youtube. On Thanksgiving while driving home, I recorded what was in front of me while listening to "Shadowplay" performed by the Killers. The video is kind of boring, I know, but soon there will be JEW ones!