at least don’t be a fucking idiot about it. As in please recognize the other 29 (30?)(!!!) states that have passed similar amendments, and at least know what criticism is valid.

That e-card from someecards.com with the tagline, “North Carolina: Where you can marry your cousin. Just not your gay cousin.” is an invalid criticism due to the fact that whether or not Amendment One passed, that would still be factual. Either way we would still be unable to marry our gay cousins.

The graph going about which shows a correlation between college graduates in a county and the way it voted is just that: correlation. How about we test for and against votes against a measure, by percentage, of snowbirds living in a county? There are hundreds of things we could test the vote against to view trends in voting pattern, but that is not a clear evaluation of cause.

Making excuses because large parts of NC are rural. That is a bullshit excuse for our behavior. If anything, blame the disability of large groups within our population to strip away their religious beliefs when viewing political matters. That is why this amendment passed, in addition to the way it was set up (voting for it took place during our Republican primaries. Democrats in the state were only able to vote for Amendment One and nonpartisan posts such as county judges, and they were not necessarily informed of the importance of this primary.), and the associated election fraud (since many people were wrongly given ballots without Amendment One on them). I know hundreds of people who viewed their decision as right because they understand marriage as an institution of religion, and not one of government (which it is).

If you have a “liberal” blog, it’s unlikely that the people you offend by posting this type of fallacious evidence are going to be people that voted for the amendment. If you have followers from NC, they probably agree with your line of thinking and abhor the thinking of their fellow state citizens who voted for it. I certainly do. Even though I can’t vote in my state, I do. Those of us with consciences, those of us that are humane, those of us that believe that in the great spirit of our country that all people should be equal, but are too young to vote feel without power in the process and then we come home to be beat again for the failings of our state by tumblr, a place that we associate with acceptance. My fellow citizens who could vote, and voted against feel as if there voices didn’t matter. We lost an important battle, and we are so ashamed of that. We are blaming ourselves because the rest of the world and the country is. We are looking at our actions as a basis for this loss, when it was set up to be a lost cause by the conservatives within our state. We are beating ourselves up enough without the rest of the world ragging on us.

-A Citizen of the State of North Carolina

P.S.: There is a lot of rambling, but I think I covered a lot of our troubles as citizens. If you are a fellow citizen of NC, feel free to add something to this in your post. If you are a person who would like to help us in our fight, please sign the change.org petition to have Amendment One repealed here. Thank you for your time.

trigger warning for something. not quite sure what.

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Music has become a significant portion of my life. When I was young, there wasn’t a lot of music around me, and when there was it was music for people 12.9 and under (scientifically proven to be the worst extant genre of music) or Arabic music (due to both of my parents having emigrated from Lebanon), which I didn’t (and don’t) enjoy. In the car my parents would listen to those cassettes or The Big Talker (ew.). Then I moved to the front passenger seat in fifth or sixth grade, staged a coup d’état for control of the radio, and discovered the wonder of Z107.5, a Top 40 radio station out of Wilmington, and I have listened to it nearly everyday since.From there my love for music has expanded. I recently bought a record player, so I’ve been working through my dad’s record collection from college.

I don’t have a preference for any one type of music. If anything I prefer songs with a fast tempo at the start, but mostly I want something that is … interesting. It’s not necessarily the lyrics that I like, though good lyrics are a nice bonus, but I don’t know how to describe interesting. It’s not the right word, but at the same time there’s not another that can fit the niche.

I like Mr. Roboto by Styx and 99 Luftballoons by Nena (influenced by my dads record collection :P), Andalucia by Mythos, anything by Imogen Heap, Regina Spektor, Lady Gaga, Florence + the Machine, and Disney (movie songs, like Hakuna Matata and I’ll Make a Man Out of You), Lana del Rey’s album Born to Die, Agnes Obel’s album Philharmonics (if you follow me it would mean a lot if you listened to this album in particular. i really love it :D), and a lot more. I have a private spotify playlist with over 500 songs that ranges genres from Dubstep to Classical.

Can I just say that I’m glad that I’m done with this writing for now? I have a lot of interesting, new things in my pictures folder that I’m very ready to finally update.

HAPPY 100TH POST TO ME!

I am, and have always been, an avid reader. My mother taught me to read a couple of years before I started kindergarten, and ignited a lifelong passion. My favorite book as a child was a large book that had all of A. A. Milne’s Winnie-the-Pooh stories. It’s hidden somewhere on the 2.5 bookshelves in my room. I have dozens of Nancy Drew and Hardy Boys mysteries, my first chapter books. These books, while enjoyable at the time I read them, are largely superficial memories. I wouldn’t be able to remember the plotlines if you asked me to.

The first books that made a lasting impact on my life were the Harry Potter novels. Given the release date of the movie adaptation of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, November 16, 2001, and vivid memories of my mother’s refusal to allow me to see the movie if I didn’t read the book beforehand, I had to have read the book during the summer of 2001, between kindergarten and first grade. I remember my mother reading with me for the first few chapters, but I soon grew tired at the snail pace she was able to read along with me at (i’m lucky enough to have two working parents), so I finished the book alone and devoured the others. For years the world of Harry Potter was my escape (it still is thanks to Pottermore :D), and my life. I read other book during this period (ages ~5-15), or what a dreary period it would have been. Other favorites were the Inheritance Cycle, His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia, and, perhaps my favorite books from the period, the Abhorsen trilogy.

I would consider my current period of reading (ages ~15-infinity) to carry on in the same vein as the previous (my genre of choice remaining high fantasy), but moving into the adult novels, and branching out into stories from the past (the “classics” or “true” literature). I’ve finished the current installments in the A Song of Ice and Fire saga by George R. R. Martin, read the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn trilogy by Tad Williams (highly recommend it if you’ve not read it), and am currently starting the Shadowmarch series (it’s been a long process due to schoolwork and tumblr eating up all of my time), but I’ve read Dickens, Austen, Chaucer, Joyce, and plenty of early American authors (from that era during which we created amazing literature, and not Twilight (which is not to say that Twilight is the worst book ever. anything that can get people to read more is okay in my book, and i enjoyed it).

tl;dr: You need to read the Harry Potter series, the Inheritance Cycle, His Dark Materials, The Chronicles of Narnia, the Abhorsen trilogy, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the Memory, Sorrow, Thorn trilogy. Book recommendations for you summer, yay!