Is it my greatest artwork ever? Certainly not, but the idea is admirable and has plenty of merit, and I don’t mind donating some money to charity to be involved in a great project.

This project hopes to get a million people to each submit their own art piece to a giant quilt/patchwork collaboration in an attempt to raise money for charity and to beat a guiness world record for the largest artistic collaboration.

So if you have some extra money, it was about $6.67 USD when I did mine today, toss in and create your own expression as a part of the One Million Masterpiece.

Technorati Tags: artwork, charity, One Million Masterpiece

I’m a very moderate person, contrary to what many people think, or even what it may seem like from my ramblings here or on my LiveJournal. I’m not a foaming at the mouth liberal, in fact I really dislike radicalism no matter what the flavor or type.

With that in mind, November marks what will hopefully be a pretty notable election day across the country. For us in Virginia our chance to knock down proposed legislation that would write discrimination and hate into our state constitution. I am talking of course about the Marshall/Newman Amendment, which will be question #1 on the ballot.

While the proponents on this Amendment will claim this bill is solely aimed at keeping same sex couples from marrying, what they neglect to tell you is that this bill will destroy many of the rights that heterosexual couples currently have, and possibly endanger unmarried heterosexual couples ability to have legal agreements concerning property or children to protect themselves.

So I’m not going to talk about gay marriage here, because while I think its wrong to tell people they’re evil or bad for loving someone no matter what their sex, that really isn’t the issue here. The issue here is the possibility of denying couples who have been together for a long time, who choose not to marry, the ability to support each other and create legal binding contracts between each other without being married.

Maybe I’m too liberal for your tastes, maybe you think I’m trying to skew you with my evil moderate liberal ways. Well I’m not alone in my choosing to vote NO to this amendment, and many of the other people voting NO are conservatives. Thats right conservatives, because they don’t want to see discrimination written into our state constitution, nor do they want to the harm this will do intentionally or unintentionally to unmarried couples no matter what their gender.

Some Conservative Sense on Marshall-Newman!

One Christian’s View on the Virginia Marriage Amendment

So there you have it, two conversative christian views on this that agree with me, and trust me there are more.

Keep Hate Out of Virginia - Vote No on Ballot Question #1 - Marshall/Newman Amendment!

You can find more information on the marriage amendment and how you can help take action from the Commonwealth Coalition’s website.

Technorati Tags: election, Virginia, marriage amendment

In honor of Dia de los Muertos, this is another recent art piece of mine.

(Click For Larger Version)

Click the image above if you wish to read the poem that inspired this art piece.

Model:Lucias-Stock
Background: Stevesm-Stock

I’ve resisted posting my artwork to this blog, but I’m moving in new directions and want to share it, and well I’m also immensely proud of this piece. This is one of my newest art pieces, currently unnamed, I will be offering prints.

(Click for Larger Version)

Little Girl: Isabeausong-stock @ DeviantArt

So what can I say, its been a busy couple months, summer is now over, the college dreads are back in class, and life is beginning to wind down. And I’m out of my summer hibernation, damn sun.

And of course par for the course, straight into heavy topics. I’ve been reading the past few days over the anger and rage coming out of the muslim world about the comments of Pope Benedict. Thinking at first that maybe he had said something horrible I went looking for the quote itself.

The pope quoted from a book recounting a conversation between 14th-century Byzantine Christian Emperor Manuel Paleologos II and a Persian scholar on the truths of Christianity and Islam.

“The emperor comes to speak about the issue of jihad, holy war,” the pope said. “He said, I quote, ‘Show me just what Muhammad brought that was new, and there you will find things only evil and inhuman, such as his command to spread by the sword the faith he preached.’”

Now correct me if I’m wrong, but I believe almost anyone with common sense would understand the basic point he was trying to make, violence and religion don’t mind. Sure its a bit hypocritical coming from the [tag]Catholic[tag] church, but the sentiments are there.

Understandably not all muslims are violent, or use violence to push their religious agenda, and I don’t think Benedict by using this quote was trying to insist that. Instead I think he was insisting that moderate muslims need to work more with the rest of the world in combating radical Islam.

Now everyone knows me, I’m not good with being politically correct, and I agree with the quote by Benedict, violence should never be justified through religion, though all religions are guilty of it at some point or another. But maybe its just me, but I don’t think that telling people they are doomed, and will be conquered by you in holy war, then require you convert to their religion or die, is exactly the way to prove the Pope was wrong in his statements.

And correct me if I’m wrong, but I think firebombing and opening fire on churchs, including torching a 170 year old church, is also counter productive in proving Islam isn’t using violence to force its agenda. Its called taking responsibility for actions and standing up to the extremists and telling them that violence in the name of any god, is wrong.

Technorati Tags: muslim, Pope Benedict, violence, religion, Islam

Rolling right out of patriotism and into pornography…

I’ve been innudated the past four or five days with TONS of porn comment spam. I mean really, my blog must be pretty popular if they think they need to advertise that much in my comments. But I digress, I’ve seen a lot of porn spam the past couple days and I have to give them credit, sometimes the wording in these adverts really makes me wonder. So here are a few gems:

Sarah the muslim porn star Gay sex movies for free

WOW! Really! Gay muslim pornstar, isn’t that an oxymoron? But hey if some guys are into people pretending to be nuns, maybe some guys are into naughty gay muslim action.

Free mom vs boy Nude tribal picture

Why is it Mom Vs. Boy? Is there some epic struggle I knew nothing about? Is the boy her son? Is this some tribal ritual of becoming a man? Seriously this has to be a pretty niche porn type, I’m almost curious… almost.

18 year free illegal movie old fucking schoolgirl naked horny sex asian blonde teen uniform free

Those naughty old fucking 18 year old schoolgirls sure do enjoy the blonde asian teens in uniforms in illegal movies! And by god its even free!

Defloration sample video

Who said porn couldn’t be educational. I now know that Defloration is the technical term for losing one’s virginity!

Meant to post this yesterday, but again like last year, day late, we lost power yesterday before heading out.

The Fourth of July
By: Raven OrthaeVelve

Tomorrow you will be black and I will be white,
Hispanic or Asian, Native American or Filipino,
European or Indian, African or Moroccan in ancestry
But today we are all Americans

Tomorrow You will be rich and I will be poor,
Dentist or Factory worker, Mechanic or Stockbroker,
Lawyer or Mechanic, Politician or Tattooist in profession
But today we are all Americans

tomorrow you will be a on the right and I will be on the left,
Conservative or Liberal, Republican Or Democrat,
Green party or Libertarian, Militarist or Anarchist in politics
But today we are all Americans

Tomorrow you will be religious and I will be a doubter,
Christian or Sikh, Jewish or Muslim,
Pagan or Wiccan, Hindu or Buddhist in faith
But today we are all Americans

Tomorrow you will listen to Rock and Roll and I to Classical,
Reggae or Heavy Metal, Gothic or Industrial,
Boy Bands or Britney Spears, Techno or New Age in musical tastes,
But today we are all Americans

Tomorrow you will study in College and I in a trade school,
Classics or Music, Accounting or Art,
Languages or English, Philosophy or Comparative religions in study,
But today we are all Americans

Tomorrow I will be fat and you will be thin,
Punk or Yuppie, Gothic or Raver,
Professional or Hippie, Gangster or Skater in appearance and dress,
But today we are all Americans.

Tomorrow we will argue, tomorrow we will quarrel,
About profession and creed, race and religion,
music and appearance, government and politics,
But today we stand together and salute those who have fallen

We salute those who died and those who still suffer or kill,
Soldiers and doctors, paramedics and firefighters,
Nurses and journalists, founding fathers and presidents
for today, thanks to them we are all Americans.