So I’m sort of, kind of doing National Blog Posting Month. I haven’t made a big deal about it, such as announcing it on 11/1 or putting any badges on my site. Mostly because I totally suck at sticking to things like this. I made it 11 days into Project 365 this year. In my defense, I was stupid, ridiculously pregnant. Logan was born on the 16th and then readmitted to the hospital on the 23rd, where he stayed for 3 weeks. I mean kind of busy there. But last year for NaBloPoMo I made it two days. And it’s not like I just missed the 3rd. I missed the 3rd, 4th, 5th, 6th and 7th. Way to bomb hard.
This year I have more hope, though. Number one reason being I bought Andrew a PS3. We don’t really use consoles in this house, we’re PC gamers. I’m not really a fan boy when it comes to PC vs. console gaming, but the simple fact of the matter is that most console games and the people who play them suck and I hate them. Okay, so a little rage there. Most of it stems from Dragon Age 2. In the past most game developers design a PC game for the PC, then dumb down the interface and controls and port it to consoles. The trend recently has been to save time and money by designing the game once, for a console, and simply releasing that across all platforms. That would be fine, except for the simple matter that PC can handle so much more than consoles, so games designed for consoles are limited, simplistic and frustrating when played on the PC. Dragon Age 2 is a perfect example of this. Dragon Age is a PC game, the franchise was built on a fan base of PC gamers. In Dragon Age: Origins there were a few things you could tell were developed with a console in mind (such as only being able to quick travel, no wide open world there), but it was still an amazing game. Dragon Age 2 was not. Sure, it had pretty graphics, but that’s to be expected of a game in this day and age. Let’s take a look at the DA:O and the DA2 menus so you can see what I’m talking about.
Dragon Age: Origins interface, pretty to look at but still easy to navigate.
Dragon Age 2 interface. What in the fucking fuck?
Ramblings
Facebook’s new Timeline thing is AHH-MAZING! Apparently I joined Facebook back in 2006, senior year. All of these pictures from way back when are just blowing my mind. I miss these people, these places, these times! Warning, this is going to be ridiculously long.
2006
For some reason during this time I was obsessed with resizing and putting a 1px #fff, 1px #000 border on all of my images. My apologies.
In high school I volunteered at a haunted house, we worked all summer to build the maze and rooms (the really old house we worked in had all but the load bearing walls knocked out so we could redesign every year) and then worked all October “scaring the yell out of you”! Proceeds went to local volunteer fire and EMS and playgrounds and keeping the streetlights on in the small town of Greenspring, where the house was located. I miss those days, here I am dressed as an angry teacher, I was more funny than scary in my role for this year.
Ramblings
With the tenth anniversary of 9/11 coming on Sunday it’s no surprise people’s minds are on terrorism, Muslims and New York. I was recently conversing with a friend when our conversation turned to the “mosque near Ground Zero” debate. As I listened to this person I have known for years and care deeply about spew nonsense about Muslims building mosques on conquered lands and how Muslims are savage terrorists I wanted nothing more than to put my fist in her face.
How does this happen? How do we as people allow ourselves to become so clearly and shamelessly bigoted? 9/11 was a horrifying experience, I remember sitting with my classmates and crying as we watched the horror unfold on live television. Something I will never forget are the images of people jumping or falling from the towers as they burned and crumbled. I still feel for the people who lost their lives, their loved ones, their sense of safety in their own neighborhood, but hatred and vitriol will not right those wrongs. Blaming an entire religion for the acts of a few is not acceptable.
When you think of Christians do you think of radical, white-supremacists who advocate for the violent overthrow of our government?
Eric Robert Rudolph, the Olympic Park Bomber worked on behalf of the Army of God. He killed two people an injured 150 in a series of bombings targeting abortion clinics, gay and lesbian nightclubs and the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta. The Covenant, The Sword, and the Arm of the Lord; The Order; The Mountain Church; even the Klu Klux Klan has Christian notions and has been supported by the formerly listed organizations. These are Christians who have taken the words of Christ and twisted them into something hateful that I’m sure would be utterly unrecognizable to Christ himself. We all know this, we know not all Christians hate gays and condemn you for getting an abortion and want to kill and maim and terrorize. It’s a select few, radicalists who don’t know the truth of the words they say support their ridiculous intentions.
Why can’t we see that truth about Muslim terrorists?
I’m very openminded and I don’t feel it’s my place to tell people what they feel or think is wrong, but when it comes to such blatant discrimination I just have to say shut up. Shut up and stop regurgitating everything you’ve seen on TV and start thinking for yourself.
Muslims do not build mosques at the site of victories. They have built mosques in lands they’ve moved into, and even repurposed churches as mosques, but nearly all army forces have brought their religions with them. One of the most common arguments I have heard for this is that the Muslims tore down the Temple Mount after the conquering of Jerusalem to build a mosque. Though a mosque was built on the site, to commemorate where Muslims believe Mohammad ascended to heaven, Persians had occupied Jerusalem almost right after the Muslims and it’s unable to determine who actually destroyed the original temple.
The “mosque” is not even really a mosque, it’s a community center that has a place to worship. It is also going to have a basketball court, 500-seat auditorium and pool and it’s open to all. It’s aim is to provide a community space for everyone, much like the YMCA and the Manhattan Jewish Community Center. Those aren’t called a church or a synagogue.
When the Pentagon – another target during 9/11 – rebuilt, they opened a nondenominational chapel that offers weekly prayer services for Muslims.
There are already mosques near the Ground Zero site. And it’s not a damn mosque!
As the tenth anniversary of 9/11 approaches, all I ask is that everyone stop wasting time and energy and breath on hatred and condemnation, and remember that 2,977 people from 115 different countries were lost that day. It was a grievous wound to all people who love freedom and peace and the perpetrators do not represent the mindset of the second-largest religion in the world.
Ramblings
Pinterest combines everything I love about discovering things on StumbleUpon with everything I love about having all of my bookmarks in one place on Delicious with all of the pretty pictures of Tumblr. It’s like crack for me. I can’t stop pinning. I have 49 Boards and 3036 pins. It’s a sickness! A totally, ridiculously awesome sickness. Like Dave’s Syndrome.
Anyways, to counteract my overwhelming need to pin I’ve decided to stop playing Dragon Age: Origins for the 12th time and actually start doing stuff. That’s kind of the point of pinning a ridiculous amount of recipes, crafts and home improvement ideas, isn’t it?
So I’ve given myself the goal of completing at least 20 pins before the end of 2011. It’s a small goal, and with the holiday coming I hope I’ll blow right by it, but I decided to definitely start small. If I had just gone with my first instinct my goal would be to utilize all of my pins before the end of the year, plus another 3,000 that I’ll probably pin before New Year’s. It’s the type A in me, I want to do a ton of stuff, but my procrastination gene tends to overwhelm all of that.
Behold my Done pinboard. So far home to 6 pins (Okay, so two of them are mine and from this very blog, but I’ve still done them!), I’m 30% closer to my goal.
Right now I’m making our dinner calendar for 8/28 – 9/10 and I’ve decided I’m going to make all new recipes every night for the next two weeks. I’m really excited right now because the 28th is forever away. I’m pretty sure come the 31st I’ll rue the day I decided to be productive and want to just go back to playing Dragon Age. Help me resist and become master (Mistress, technically?) of my pindiction!
Ramblings
My bear got nyan-ified. Because I suck at managing my time wisely. See more of how I waste my time, including more reincarnations of Bear, at my deviantArt gallery.
