High IQ link to being vegetarian. Yeah, baby! :-p

I think I might die in September. If I do, maybe psychic powers/premonition abilities are true. If I come back alive, I’m an idiot and nevermind. Just had to document this. :-) (Update: I’m not dead - yet!)

I turned 24 on Sunday. ;( Ahhhh! (Thanks to everyone who sent me birthday messages!)

(Semi-Spoilers in comments)

Just finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows last night. People like J.K. Rowling and Harry Potter (I believe he exists) are among the beautiful things in this world which give me faith in humankind. What an amazing series, a magnificent story… I adore it.

Not ashamed to say that I cried, too.

And new template, hand-coded over three days. (and still in testing)

I found this on a silly anti-Islam site, which is supposedly a good tool to use to see who is an “extremist”. It’s kind of interesting, given how one-sided it is. I thought I’d publicly “answer” it, and give the other side a nice list of statements to make as well. Keep Reading …

I grew up in SW Virginia in all that silly gun-lovin’ culture. It makes me all the more disappointed that Roanoke (my birthplace) was one of the places that sold a gun to the VT shooter.

Related: Is the Scene of the Crime the Cause of the Crime?

I’m glad Valentine’s season is over. I was getting sick of the diamond and teddy bear commercials…

I have never wanted a diamond, but I am very aware of the pressure from retailers for me to have one. The greater pressure is on men, however. Although retailers are telling me to want a diamond, they are telling men that no woman will give them a second look if they don’t buy her one (or more). As we know, men are usually clueless about how to win a woman’s heart or understand what she wants, so messages like these are especially dangerous.

We see calls to the Suze Orman show asking for advice about taking loans to buy $8,000 engagement rings and other nonsense. Would your wife not love you if you didn’t spend enough? Does the amount you pay reflect the closeness of the relationship?

These things are dangerous not only because they affect people’s financial lives but because they promote a certain type of materialism that strikes on a psychological level as a symbol of “worthiness”. One could go on and on about all the other instances of the attitude that “possessions make you somebody”: you must have a certain size house, the right car, trendy clothes, newest gadget…

We all fall into that loop somewhere and it’s probably impossible to escape it…

for Photo Friday: Peaceful

I thought about using a picture of one of the dogs for this challenge because they are naturally peaceful and mostly calm and always happy. I passed by many photos of my cat Naji because he is almost always sneaky or spiteful, and always unpeaceful. But this photo of him captures one of his quiet moments.

He was living outside before we met. He showed up at the front door one day while I was cleaning the living room with my mom. I heard a meow and went outside to see him walking around trying to peek inside. I called my mom out to look at him and we wondered who he belonged to. “Look, he’s so friendly and nice!” I said…

Of course, I fall in love with every animal I see so I started to pet him and within two strokes he had attempted to bite my hand. I was disappointed. “He’s not nice after all!”

But I started to feed him and slowly bring him inside with me. I wasn’t sure if he was 100% feral or had belonged to someone who just let him wander away. I named him Naji, since I had read somewhere that Naji means “safe” and it seemed fitting for him.

His first trip to the vet was interesting. The vet remarked, “I see he’s been scratching you,” looking at the streaks on my forearms. “Yeah, he’s a little aggressive,” I said. He would attack my arms at night and any other time he felt like it. The vet took his temperature, while Naji made obvious his hatred for thermometers. When the vet let him go, he quickly crawled across the table and pressed himself against my stomach as if to say “SAVE ME!” and I held him close while everyone in the room laughed in amusement at him.

He’s been with us for a long time but he’s currently living with my parents, after putting up such a fight to go back home in the car (he hates traveling, too).

He’s now mostly sweet but it took a few years to get him that way and he is still mischievous at times.

I believe that now, we’re in a particular time in the world’s history where it’s time that people stand up for Islam, that people get more aggressive and radical with how they communicate to the West about Islam. I believe I have a calling: to stand up in a new, hard-core, radical way for Allah. If, in the process, I insult a couple of people or offend a couple of people and have to shake it up a little bit, as long as it is in the name of Islam, as Allah wills, so be it!

Just kidding, I modified a quote by Stephen Baldwin, self-professed radical, hard-core Christian. But somehow it’s not as amusing when spoken by a Muslim…

Errm… yeah.

I’ve never had a job before. Now, at 23, I can finally put it off no longer. I was sort of set for a life of no-job, no-kids, no-worries… But an opportunity came along and I accepted it.

Since my name is on the website, I guess I can say that I’m working for CAIR, Philadelphia branch…

I had to make my first phone call yesterday. Not just a simple one, but one to a prominent anchor of a very big local news show. I just know I sounded like an idiot although I hope I didn’t. [”This is a child, pretending to be an adult…”]

So now I’m part of the big Muslim conspiracy to take over America. Just kidding. But if it’s “with us or against us” and the “with us” includes people like Glenn Beck and Dennis Prager …