Holy Apology, Batman! I haven't made a religious blog in a while. Time to remind myself exactly why.

One thing I hear often is that religion (I'll stick to the one I give a **** about, Christianity) was created for the power involved in being the "Voice of God." How does this formula work? Simple: come up with a bunch of crazy crap, throw in the word "God" somewhere, find a mass of uneducated drones and ta-da! You're now the Supreme Leader of Some Tribe Nobody Cares About.

While this can work with some religions (and has--*coughScientology-even-though-it's-a-cult-and-not-a-religioncough*), I fail to see how this works with the Bible, and here's why:

The authors of the Bible got the Holy Shaft everywhere they went.

Let's start with Moses, the man that the authorship of the first five books of the Old Testament is traditionally credited towards. Now, did Moses write all that stuff so he could get a nice comfy position in the big tent at the head of the Israelites? Let's think about that.

Moses was put in a floating basket by his mother so he wouldn't be killed like all the other newborn males among the Israelite slaves in Egypt. His basket floated down the Nile until it was discovered by the Pharaoh's wife (I think; it may have been a servant girl). Anyway, the wife takes the baby to the Pharaoh and, attributing the baby's arrival to a sign of the gods (lol, irony) that they should have the child, named him Moses (which literally means "From the water").

Notice anything about that?

Moses was a prince. Of the largest empire on Earth at the time. When the current Pharaoh croaked, Moses would have been king--and, according to Egyptian tradition, heralded quite literally as a god on Earth.

That begs the question: Why would Moses, in the pursuit of power, think up some commandments on stone and make himself the ruler of a tiny nation of slaves when he already was next in line to become Mr. "God on Earth" over the very same slaves AND the most influential kingdom on the planet?

Of course, you could say (as some do) that it somehow happened by accident. Okay. . . so why was Moses so against heading back to Egypt, where he would have been King of the World, when the slaves wanted to go back, as opposed to forty years walking in circles?

And then you could say (as some do) that Moses in fact DID NOT write the first books of the Bible, but rather some anonymous dude did it. Why is the aforementioned dude anonymous? If he went to all the trouble of writing up on what was probably very expensive parchment at the time a gigantic creation story about some guy in the sky and a man and a woman and an ark and some nut who wanted to kill his son because he thought he was a lamb and so on just so the aforementioned dude could become the ruler of an insignificant country, you'd think he'd at least go "Oh, and remember to put my name in there when you got a minute."

The same idea applies to pretty much the rest of the Bible, except perhaps the parts King David wrote, though he got the shaft of a spear from his stepdad because, hey, he was actually a good politician. The Apostles got no power from their writing of the Gospels (nor did the anonymous people who wrote them, if that's what you think actually happened); in fact they got killed in some of the most violent ways you can imagine (with the sole exceptions of John and Judas; the former was exiled for the later half of his life on an island with pointless work and the latter killed himself for some obscure reason).

Perhaps they intended to get power but instead their plans backfired? Possible, I suppose, if you want to consider the fact that, just like Moses, most of these people had power before they ever wrote anything in the Bible and, just like Moses, a grand chunk of them lost most of that power once they wrote it, and never got it back in the same way.

I mean, I'm not saying "You're wrong, therefore the Bible's true!" (even though that's true OH NO HE DI-IN); rather, I'm saying that if you want to claim that the authors of the Bible did what every aspiring politician does and went completely against the social norms and popular trends in favor of an obscure piece of writing that they themselves wrote just so they could get a nice life, you have to admit that the vast majority of them had it come back to bite them in the ass.

Remember how I said I'm terrified of tornadoes? That's still true, but I just learned about derechos, and I gotta say, "Holy ****, I just peed myself."

LOOK. AT. IT. It's a freaking WALL of freaking WIND! It's like a tornado that travels vertically instead of in a funnel!

They can last for days; just one storm after the other, at wind speeds of over 100 miles an hour!

Here's a video of an approaching derecho.

LOOK AT IT!!! It looks like those clouds from the spaceships in Independence Day!

These things have been hitting the South a lot lately. . .and I live in the South. :cry::cry::cry:

Where have you been when frost came in
Where did you spend your days in fading light
Where colors turn to grey in grey
Alone I roam these frozen lands
I fear your track is covered under snow
Your signs of life all lost and gone

Winter has come with mourning
Promised by fall one day
This coldness kills the flame inside
Life it ends in white

The sky is grey and northwinds blow
Sunlight hides behind a veil
That somehow blurs my sight, how can I ever find you?
Snowflakes like needles on my face
Pray for the wolves to go their own ways
At least for one last time
Last time

Winter has come with mourning
Promised by fall one day
This coldness kills the flame inside
Life it ends in white
Winter has come with mourning
Promised by fall one day
This coldness kills the flame inside
Life it ends in white

Winter has come with mourning
Promised by fall one day
This coldness kills the flame inside
Life it ends in white
Winter has come with mourning
Promised by fall one day
This coldness kills what you could save
But you are all too far away

N b4 "fairy" joke. >_>

Anyway, yesterday I was registering for the summer school term (yesterday was the last day; I had huge complications that would take too long to explain hampering me from registering sooner) and when I would try to pay my fees (which are going up. . . . . .), the computer wouldn't let me (fees are paid online). I called somebody and they told me that it was afterhours, so I'd have to wait until after midnight to pay my fees, but since that was the last day of registering, I may not be able to register at all.

Well, I waited. And at about 10:30, I checked the status of the cIass and it said that my cIass has already been paid for. I confirmed it by checking to see if it would let me buy the book (which it only lets you do if you paid for the cIass). I can.

I thought it was a glitch that would fix up, but it's now 11:00 AM and it still says paid. Nobody in my family paid for the cIass. :|

Why? Why is this anime recommended by everyone whenever an anime thread shows up? It doesn't matter if you prefer family friendly anime and faint at the sight of blood; Elfen Lied is for you!

All it is is a bloody mess of random gore that would make Marquis De Sade blanch mixed in with half-assed psychological theories to explain everything bad about the characters in the story.

We have a girl with split personality disorder who's a cute little angel one second and a sadistic psychopath the next. People are sliced up in the most beautifully rendered ways I've ever seen--oftentimes for no reason.

Did I mention the completely BS love interest?

The music is cute. Nice and relaxing and happy. Unlike the anime itself, which from the very start is a swirling mess of blood, gore and boobs. No, really, the first ten minutes of the pilot is absolutely nothing but a girl leaving some kind of facility, completely naked and covered in blood as she cuts through every person in her path with her invisible "energy arms." Why? Who cares! Boobs!

This does get explained eventually, and then the 13-part blood orgy ends. No, really.

Seriously, Elfen Lied is a disgusting, sadistic mess that makes blood and gore and child abuse and wacky psychobabble into the weirdest, most unfulfilling story I've ever seen. STOP RECOMMENDING IT TO ME, DAMN IT!

Three of my four cIasses of this semester have ended, with two A's and one unknown grade (will at least be a B). That just leaves one cIass:

Math.

I do progressively worse with each math cIass I take. I've done horribly this semester, but if I can get at least a C on the final, I'll pass the cIass.

I rather like it, though it keeps screwing up at the "God!" line. :x

My Internet has been out for the past couple of weeks, giving me very limited access. But now I have it back, *****!

What was wrong with my van was my slamming the brakes broke some tube that my brakes need to function correctly, so that got fixed.

Semester's about to end. Won't be long now and I'll have my Bachelor's degrees!:D:D:D:D:D:D

Yesterday was a pretty good day. I got some papers back (all A's),I had a decent run with a math test, I aced a couple of quizzes, and actually enjoyed my lunch.

On my way home from school, it was raining pretty bad. So I pulled into a local Wal-Mart and hung out until the weather settled down. I bought a cord that lets me play my iPod in my car; now I don't have to hear the crap on the radio.

When the weather calmed, I left Wal-Mart and headed home. The rain was better, but it was thundering and lightening the entire way, which makes me uncomfortable.

As I got near a train track that's near my home, I heard a loud rumbling.

It wasn't the train.

A mother****ing tornado was in the mother ****ing road in front of me. My car was suddenly pelted with the hardest rainstorm I've ever seen. It was dark, so I couldn't even see the thing until I saw the lightning in mid-air light it up. My car bounced.

It ****ing bounced. The tornado lifted the car off the damn road.

Did I ever mention that despite never actually being in or near one, I have an incredibly irrational fear of tornadoes?

You do not know fear until you think your car is being lifted a hundred feet into the air by the hand of God before plummeting to your death. My first reaction: Scream. My second reaction: Put the car in reverse and turn the hell around. My third reaction: Call my mom and tell her I'm gonna die. I turned the car, drove over the median to get on the right side of the road (because traffic safety is always important, kids, even when you're thirty feet from a giant spinning wall of wind that can send a piece of straw through a tree) and literally floored it for the first time in my life. You're not supposed to try to outrun a tornado in a car (it'll win, and if it picks you up, you're dead), but I wasn't about to get out and run.

There was a chain of stores nearby, so I drove over the median again and drove on the wrong side of the road (I was the only car on the road; don't worry) and flew into the parking lot at 110 mph. I ditched the car and ran to the store's front door.

They were closed.

I ran to the store next to them.

Closed.

And here's something freaky: you know how in the movies where the guy is being chased by something menacing and as he runs by lights, they go out? That was what happened with me. :| As I ran by closed grocery stores and pawn shops, their lights flicked out. As if I needed the extra drama. I was yelling into my phone to my mom, who also panicking.

I finally found a bar that was still open and I ran in. There were about five people in there, and every one of them was staring at the soaked and panicking guy who just burst in.

I tell them I'm running the hell away from a tornado and they get on their phones. One couple's mother had just been hit by another tornado not thirty minutes before. Everybody got back as the weather picked up outside; we heard it, but we didn't see it. I think they thought I was on something; I was shaking and couldn't maintain a sentence. I stayed there for about an hour.

When I left, I found out I left my car lights on, thus draining the battery to nothing. I guess I didn't think about it when I ran for my life. But I did think about my keys! At least there was somebody with a jump cable.

I drove home at about twenty miles an hour, cold, shaking, and scared to death.

When I got home, smoke came from my car. Now I need to get that fixed. Joy.

Well, I've been tagged by Teenaged, which I guess means I need to make up ten interesting things about me and pretend that they're facts so I can garner your admiration. :roll:

1. Despite living in America my whole life, I was actually born in Ireland; my parents were on vacation and I arrived earlier than they expected.

2. I used to want to be a lawyer. Then the real world hit and I found the people running the justice system to be completely full of crap.

3. I have a baby face and do not look 22 at all. People often think I'm still a teenager when they first see me.

4. My natural hair color is blond; it became dirty blond and brown as I got older and then I dyed it silver.

5. If for whatever reason I had to give up my current majors for something new, I'd pick psychology.

6. I accidentally discovered how to. . .ah. . .Do It Yourself when I was seven. A mosquito managed to bite me in just the right spot, and when I was scratching the itch. . . . this was years before I learned what sex was.

7. I'm ambidextrous, favoring my right hand and my left eye.

8. When I was 19 I was hit by a drunk driver while I was crossing a street. The accident broke almost all my ribs on the left side of my body and my left femur (the longest bone in your body, in your leg). It literally hurt to breathe for weeks afterwards, and even now I limp slightly on my left leg.

9. I hate mustard. A lot. It is freaking disgusting and should be vaporized.

10. I didn't get my first job until I was 20.

Now I'll leave you people to wonder if what I said at the beginning about making **** up is true or not. I tag btaylor, Domatron23 and battlfront23.