Merry Christmas

....I missed this dog.

December Advice

Merry Christmas

"The charming aspect of Christmas is the fact that it expresses good will in a cheerful, happy, benevolent, non-sacrificial way. One says: “Merry Christmas”—not “Weep and Repent.” And the good will is expressed in a material, earthly form—by giving presents to one’s friends, or by sending them cards in token of remembrance . . . . "

-Ayn Rand,
The Objectivist Calendar, Dec. 1976

We Run This Mother

Basic Translation? YOU GOT DIS GURL GO GET UM

"There is no more despicable coward than the man who deserted the battle for his joy, fearing to assert his right to existence, lacking the courage and the loyalty to life of a bird or a flower reaching for the sun. Discard the protective rags of that vice which you call a virtue: humility—learn to value yourself, which means: to fight for your happiness—and when you learn that pride is the sum of all virtues, you will learn to live like a man."

Home In 61 Hours :D

ALL The Things!!!

Colouring Books, Part Deux

Promise I won't post any more of these. But I had to post some (and their subsequent commentary).


This one I did normally; I just liked it :) I always loved The Little Mermaid (I know I have a very embarrassing photo of five-year-old me dressed up as Ariel, splashing away happily in the tub) growing up...and Eric is every girl's sweetheart! (Of course, he would be better if his name was spelled with a 'k,' but we all know that).


I love(ed) Sleeping Beauty, too. (Dragons!) Changed the color schemes on the above drawing to better suit my tastes though...and of course, I posted the one below yesterday, but I've made some changes. (And my mom, in a completely uncharacteristic move, told me if I brought it home she'd put it on the fridge. Not sure how much of that is sarcasm; after all she did swear that nothing would ever get put on her fridge!) Also, the picture (below) and the way I did it, for whatever reason, really reminded me of this song. And thus it makes me sad...but I'm not sure why. :/


I also looooove Tangled. It's just a cute, sweet, fun movie. Love it.

He's so pretty.


"Way to awkwardly encourage my bondage fantasy, Disney."
Okay, I'm sorry...but who puts that image in a children's colouring book?!

Quotes That Get Me Through The Day

"To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to suffer
The slings and arrows of outrageous fortune
Or to take arms against a sea of troubles
And by opposing end them. To die, to sleep--
... No more--and by a sleep to say we end
The heartache, and the thousand natural shocks
That flesh is heir to. 'Tis a consummation
Devoutly to be wished. To die, to sleep--
To sleep--perchance to dream: ay, there's the rub,
For in that sleep of death what dreams may come
When we have shuffled off this mortal coil,
Must give us pause. There's the respect
That makes calamity of so long life.
For who would bear the whips and scorns of time,
Th' oppressor's wrong, the proud man's contumely
The pangs of despised love, the law's delay,
The insolence of office, and the spurns
That patient merit of th' unworthy takes,
When he himself might his quietus make
With a bare bodkin? Who would fardels bear,
To grunt and sweat under a weary life,
But that the dread of something after death,
The undiscovered country, from whose bourn
No traveller returns, puzzles the will,
And makes us rather bear those ills we have
Than fly to others that we know not of?
Thus conscience does make cowards of us all,
And thus the native hue of resolution
Is sicklied o'er with the pale cast of thought,
And enterprise of great pitch and moment
With this regard their currents turn awry
And lose the name of action. -- Soft you now."

-Hamlet


“Oh, Jake,” Brett said, “We could have had such a damned good time together.”
Ahead was a mounted policeman in khaki directing traffic. He raised his baton. The car slowed suddenly pressing Brett against me.
“Yes,” I said. “Isn’t it pretty to think so?”

-The Sun Also Rises

Why You Don't Buy A Coloring Book Before Finals

It's two am, and I have a 5-page Shakespeare final paper due at 10.
I've written a half page.

However, I have done these.

BECAUSE COLOURING BOOKS ARE SO F*#KING GREAT.

My director said he'd "always remember me as that little mermaid"....so he better get this.

I snapped a picture of this one and sent it to my mom, entitled 'My childhood finally caught up to my teenage years!' She'll doubtless see it and cry, but it's true.
I loved Sleeping Beauty when I was a kid- not only was Aurora reeeeeeally pretty, but her dress changed colors. You can't understand what that means to a four-year-old. Also, Maleficent suuuper cool (like seriously, super cool) but she turned into a f*cking dragon. What four-year-old wouldn't love that?!

And of course, my teenage years were spent like this:



So.....yeah. I have a bunch of other pages that I've colored too, I'll put 'em up at a later point. (Maybe even on Art From The Backseat, which I feel super bad about abandoning, but....all my stuff sucks, so...).

"How Mormon Is Mitt Romney?"

I got this email this week. Made me laugh.


How Mormon is Mitt Romney?

Last week, Florida evangelical Christian leader John Stemberger endorsed Rick Perry’s campaign for GOP presidential nominee. According to Stemberger, Perry was more “trustworthy” on social conservation issues like abortion rights.

On Romney, Stemberger said: “The issue not that he is a Mormon. The issue is that he wasn’t Mormon enough. If he had been consistent with traditional Mormon values his whole career, that would make me feel a lot more comfortable about where he’s coming from.”

Mitt Romney. Not Mormon enough? Yeah, right.

Stemberger’s ludicrous assessment of Mitt Romney’s Mormonism inspired an eighteen-hour-stream of “Mitt Romney is so Mormon jokes” on Twitter The best are reprinted here…

So, just exactly how Mormon IS Mitt Romney?

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s related to the other Mormon presidential candidate as well as half of his own campaign volunteers.

Mitt is so Mormon… his campaign bus is a pioneer handcart.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d call 19-year-old boys to serve as US ambassadors.

Mitt is so Mormon… his Israel policy will be centered on Jackson County, Missouri.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll make the income tax a flat 10% and collect fast offerings to fund Medicaid.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll ask the Senate to “sustain” his appointees by manifesting with an uplifted hand.

Mitt is so Mormon… he doesn’t do regular Pilates, he does golden Pilates.

Mitt is so Mormon… that his campaign “oppo” team has done all the other candidates’ genealogy.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s organizing his precinct walkers in pairs to knock on doors with a very special message.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d make the Book of Mormon required reading at the Bureau of Indian Affairs.

Mitt is so Mormon… that if elected, the “First Lady” will be known as the “First Wife.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll choke up during his inaugural address and then say, “I told myself I wasn’t going to cry.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he will commission a presidential motorcade entirely of 10-passenger family vans.

Mitt is so Mormon… he will actually hang the Constitution up by a thread, just so he can save it.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s concerned about joining the Tea Party because of Doctrine & Covenants 89.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll start the State of the Union with the words: “I wasn’t going to come up here, but the Spirit just carried me off of the bench.”

Mitt is so Mormon… his campaign biography begins, “I, Willard, having been born of goodly parents.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll ask members of Congress to go home and pray about his economic plan.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d ask the Elders Quorum to help move him into the White House.

Mitt is so Mormon… his first act will be to make July 24th a national holiday.

Mitt is so Mormon… he asks donors to stack chairs after fundraising dinners.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll award Ty Detmer, Steve Young, and Jimmer Fredette the Congressional Medal of Honor.

Mitt is so Mormon… his campaign slogan is “What do you know about Mitt Romney? Would you like to know more?”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll reroute the Freedom Trail through Palmyra, New York; Nauvoo, Illinois; and Winter Quarters, Iowa.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll rename the “Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms” the “Word of Wisdom Squad”.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d do an ad for mormon.org stating: “I’m a husband, father, and leader of the free world. And I’m a Mormon.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he isn’t as concerned about getting American youth jobs as he is about getting them married.

Mitt is so Mormon… he tried to convince CNN to let him bring a visual aid to the debate so he could turn it into an object lesson.

Mitt is so Mormon… that he refers to Congress as “The Great and Spacious Building.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll end every address with “hope you’ll all get home safely, without any harm or accident.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll assign a friend to every new member of Congress.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s already picked out a room in the White House for his year’s supply of wheat and beans, and he’ll require the White House Chef to rotate the food storage.

Mitt is so Mormon… he doesn’t campaign. He “fellowships.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s having two basketball hoops installed at the Inaugural Ball so there’s a place to hang decorations.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll change the name of “Cabinet Meeting” to “Correlation Meeting”.

Mitt is so Mormon… if he gets elected all of the White House 9x13 pans would have a piece of masking tape on them with the name “Romney” written in Sharpie.

Mitt is so Mormon… he has four cats named 1st Nephi, 2nd Nephi, 3rd Nephi, and 4th Nephi (4th Nephi is the smallest).

Mitt is so Mormon… late last night he snuck out to put 5000 plastic forks in the lawn of Jon Huntsman. And after that, he heart attacked Rick Perry.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’s going to rename the 101st Airborne as “The Stripling Warriors.”

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll rename FEMA the Federal Relief Society.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll start his acceptance speech with “I never said it would be easy, I only said it would be worth it.”

Mitt is so Mormon… the Marine Band will play “Praise to the Man” when he enters a room.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll appoint Lavell Edwards as Secretary of Defense.

Mitt is so Mormon… he won’t allow advisers wearing non-white dress shirts to participate in cabinet meetings.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’ll rename the weekly presidential address “Politics and the Spoken Word.”

Mitt is so Mormon… his cabinet would consist entirely of unqualified, yet enthusiastic, volunteers.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d convene a Munch-N-Mingle after cabinet meetings, with refreshments blessed “to nourish and strengthen our bodies”.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d hang a copy of the Proclamation on the Family and a picture of the Washington, D.C. LDS temple in the White House.

Mitt is so Mormon… he has volunteers combing through old GOP voter rolls for less actives he can reactivate.

Mitt is so Mormon… he’d put everyone in his stake on the inauguration invite list. Just because.

Mitt is so Mormon… he will add the phrases “every fiber of my being” and “beyond a shadow of a doubt” to the presidential oath of office.

Mitt is so Mormon… the Inagural Dinner will be Ham, Funeral Potatoes, green Jell-o, and red Kool-aid.

"Weekly Sermon From A Godless Heathen"

"'Dagny, we can never lose the things we live for. We may have to change their form at times, if we've made an error, but the purpose remains the same and the forms are ours to make.'"

-Atlas Shrugged, 615

Mama Told Me True

I've been thinking a lot about the interplay of love, relationships, and sex the past week or so. As much as I liked to pretend that I was in an adult world before college, I really am in one now. There is so much more of a focus on meeting 'that' person- I mean it's still college, so it's not like it's a pressing matter, but it's there- and I feel like love and heartbreak are that much more poignant, more potent.

I was holding a crying friend this morning (it hurts me that I have to do that as often as I do. Of COURSE I don't mind, but I hate to see them hurting...) and as I was trying to find the words to reassure them, I was struck by the validity of what I was taught about sex growing up. (I'm not going to go too deep into personal details here, because a) nobody wants to know that, and b) it is being posted on the internet.) I also don't want to give any details about my friend, because I wouldn't in good conscience be able to call myself their friend if I did that.

But I was taught that it was special, not just for anyone. And that if someone really did love me, they wouldn't push for it. 'You don't want to do it too early,' I'd heard. 'It loses its' meaning.' 'It should be special.'

How smart I thought I was! Of course I knew better.

But I realized this week...of course I didn't.

"You can't just have the sex," I heard myself say this morning. "Because then it doesn't mean anything. I've gotten so jaded by this point that it doesn't matter....but it should."

Oh, my God.
Was my mother right?

"I just want love," the cry came from my shoulder, their tears streaking down my arms.

Oh, sweetheart...I wish I could sew your heart back together for you.
(And kill the bastard who broke it, but that's impolite so I won't say it).

I'm not too sure what my express purpose is in writing this. I don't want to be preachy and bitchy and tell people to wait or whatever, because that's not my style. But sex, love, relationships- they're two-way streets. Even if it means nothing to you, it could be everything to the other person...don't break their heart. Having someone else there, keeping you warm and safe while you sleep, smiling at your face in the morning, who cares for you and goes out of their way to make you feel good, loved, wanted- that's the most powerful feeling on the planet. Don't throw it away.

Happy December!

I have a lot of posts that I wanted to do, but there were 22 posts for November (and Galt gave his speech on November 22) so I didn't want to ruin it! More are coming, so...beware. :)