Colorless green ideas sleep furiously.

PROTECT IP Act Breaks The Internet from Fight for the Future on Vimeo.

BoingBoing.Net -- The MPAA, RIAA, Hollywood knows that they have been flying in CEOs of as many companies as possible, recruiting people to get petition signups at malls in California, and here's the big point-- they know they have gotten their message through to Congress -- the worst bill in Internet history, the one where government and their corporations get unbelievable power to take down sites, threaten payment processors into stopping payment to sites on a blacklist, and throw people in jail for posting ordinary content is about to pass before the end of this year. The only thing that is going to stop Hollywood from owning the Internet and everything we do, is if there is a big surprise Internet backlash starting right now.

PROTECT IP (S. 968)/SOPA (HR. 3261) creates the first system for Internet censorship - this bill has sweeping provisions that give the government and corporations leeway and legal cover for taking down sites "by accident," mistakenly, or for NOT doing "enough" to protect the interests of Hollywood. These bills that are moving very quickly through Congress and can pass before Christmas aim to give the US government and corporations the ability to block sites over infringing links posted by their users and give ISPs the release to take any means to block peoples' sites, including slowing down your connection. That's right, some say this bill is a workaround to net neutrality and is bigger than net neutrality.

This is the worst piece of Internet legislation in history - the lawmakers who have been sponsoring (Leahy, Lamar Smith, Conyers) this bill need to be shamed by the Internet community for wasting taxpayer dollars on a bill that would break the very fabric of the Internet, create an Internet blacklist, kill jobs and great startup companies, huge blogs, and social networks.

How this affects you, personally:

EFF.org -- Let’s make one thing clear from the get-go: despite all the talk about this bill being directed only toward “rogue” foreign sites, there is no question that it targets US companies as well. The bill sets up a system to punish sites allegedly “dedicated to the theft of US property.” How do you get that label? Doesn’t take much: Some portion of your site (even a single page) must
be directed toward the US, and either
allegedly “engage in, enable or facilitate” infringement or
allegedly be taking or have taken steps to “avoid confirming a high probability” of infringement.

If an IP rightsholder (vaguely defined – could be Justin Bieber worried about his publicity rights) thinks you meet the criteria and that it is in some way harmed, it can send a notice claiming as much to the payment processors (Visa, Mastercard, Paypal etc.) and ad services you rely on.

Once they get it, they have 5 days to choke off your financial support. Of course, the payment processors and ad networks won’t be able to fine-tune their response so that only the allegedly infringing portion of your site is affected, which means your whole site will be under assault. And, it makes no difference that no judge has found you guilty of anything or that the DMCA safe harbors would shelter your conduct if the matter ever went to court. Indeed, services that have been specifically found legal, like Rapidshare, could be economically strangled via SOPA. You can file a counter-notice, but you’ve only got 5 days to do it (good luck getting solid legal advice in time) and the payment processors and ad networks have no obligation to respect it in any event. That’s because there are vigilante provisions that grant them immunity for choking off a site if they have a “reasonable belief” that some portion of the site enables infringement.

At a minimum, this means that any service that hosts user generated content is going to be under enormous pressure to actively monitor and filter that content. That’s a huge burden, and worse for services that are just getting started – the YouTubes of tomorrow that are generating jobs today. And no matter what they do, we’re going to see a flurry of notices anyway – as we’ve learned from the DMCA takedown process, content owners are more than happy to send bogus complaints. What happened to Wikileaks via voluntary censorship Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation will now be systematized and streamlined – as long as someone, somewhere, thinks they’ve got an IP right that’s being harmed.

Stop the Internet Blacklist Legislation

Say you're into reading blogs. Now, say you're into reading blogs about SERIOUS TOPICS. Still with me? Okay.

Now, say you're going to read a blog about the health effects of environmental change. Yes, the dreaded Global Warming. Shit yeah, I did just drop the GW-words. (I'll give you a pause here to consider what kind of boring hippie activist that would make you in real life and the possibility of whether or not you would also wear ironic hipster glasses sans prescription)

All that done? Good. Now take a second to answer some questions for me.

What are you interested in?
Do you want statistics?
Are you looking for future projections?
Obviously you want to know what's going to directly affect you - not the five million starving kids in Africa or wherethefuckever amirite - but what do you want to hear about otherwise?

Would you rather have in-depth information on the usual suspects (skin cancer, smog) or would you like to learn about risks you might not otherwise have considered?

What are your personal concerns regarding global warming?

Answers in the comments much appreciated for this one, guys.

The day has finally come for me to head off to visit the peeps down in Oz. I have packed many wondrous treasures, excluding all but the most magical and delicious of items as my cats looked on in rapt fascination.

I believe that somehow they've begun to ken just exactly when I'm about to leave on my little jaunts. All of them have been hanging around my packing area all morning, despite the fact that the rest of the house offers substantively cooler temperatures. It is possible that they wished to accompany me, actually; at one point Cleo climbed into my suitcase and laid down as if to impart that she were claiming the space for her own mysterious feline passtimes. It was sadly not to be, however- my suitcase is quite large, and she leapt from within before I could pull the zipper closed.

So mates, you'll have me but not my kitties. Alas.

I do have a three hour stop at Vancouver airport while I wait for the lovely people at Air Canada to ready my illustrious vessel, so drabble requests are your perogative, ladies and gents.

I'll attempt to amuse myself with them on the plane, if nothing else.

If you're around the neighborhood, don't hesitiate to shoot me an email or leave a comment. I'll be staying with Wrat and Leareth in Sydney and hitting Cairns for some diving around about the 23rd of August.

See y'all in a month!

I got a new short sleeved dress(?) shirt (Well, more casual really. Got a shoulder pocket for a doobie and isn't exactly something you'd wear to the office, but I digress.) that I'm planning on wearing in Ecuador. It looks hot and fits great, and.... has a picture of Fidel Castro on it with the words "REBEL LIBERATOR OR DICTATOR?" emblazoned above it.

For the last half hour I've been on google making sure it doesn't offend anyone in the country I'm going to.

SEE TITLE, WTF.

I got RE5 today. And didn't have time to play more than a few hours of it since Ari has to work tomorrow and I have class at 1:00 but but but

HHHHHHHHHHHHHNNNNNNNNNNNGGGGGGGGGHHHHHH NGH NGH OH GOD OH YES OH GOD.

Argh. Lesson learned. Never preordering from Amazon.ca again.

Delivery estimate for RE5: Mar 26 2009

Edit: lol you guys. The comments for this entry, in order, read, "Ouch. NO BALLS. D: "

Put up Main/Shinji fst. Go take a look if you're so inclined.

..And even if you're not, I promise you'll get some good music out of it.

It's been a while since I've had to come out about anything.

The last time I did, I was about fifteen or sixteen. I was coming out as bisexual, and it wasn't an ordeal; I let it be known to a private circle of my closest friends, and let people react as they would. It was well-recieved, and to date I've never had a problem regarding people's knowledge of this fact.

Now that I have to do it again... it feels the same. Like I shouldn't (and I shouldn't need to) make an announcement for the entire world. I should just go about my life as I always do and let people find out about me on their own time... or perhaps never find out. Ideally, that is what I'd do, and sadly life isn't ideal. I can't just settle in this time and have people gradually warm up to me, because on the internet there are those of you I've met and I've talked to who know me as someone different from who I am. Those of you here can't see me in real life- either often or at all. You can't recognize changes in me and react accordingly, simply because you are not here to witness them.

For you, I need to come out.

I am agendered. Not male or female, but both and neither. The person I see in my mind's eye is not the person I see in the mirror.

What that means to me, at the moment, is that I'm going to endeavor with whatever resources I have to make the me in my head match the me on the outside. It means I currently bind my chest in public. It means in the future I'm probably going to start testosterone injections. It means I'm considering chest masculinization surgery. It means that in the future I might ask you all to refer to me as "he".

What it means to you is that I don't want you to refer to me as female anymore.

I'd appreciate it if you will all try - and I know it's a difficult thing for me to ask of you - to avoid pronouns for now. I'd be immensely grateful.

Thank you.

Ugggh. In horrible pain and unable to eat. Just going to go die now.

First comes love, then comes forgiveness...
But a widowed military man struggling during the Depression doesn't have much faith in either, until he meets fiery Raido Kuzunoha in New York City at the boardinghouse they share. He's an international jet-setter who could love his boy and heal his own heart- but how can Shohei Narumi trust a adventurous man in the profession he blames for his greatest loss?
Raido Kuzunoha understands Shohei Narumi's pain. He has his own secret anguish, and believes his dreams of a husband and child are beyond reach. Still, he can pretend when he asks him to play his temporary fiance to protect his son. And if Yatagarasu would grant him one miracle, he knows exactly what his adventurous heart is yearning for....

lol

davethebrave made me.

Your attention please.

Those of you involved in rp communities here on lj have likely already noticed that there has been a rash of serial adders under different journals of late. These users, for example, may have been popping up to add one or all of your character journals, as well as many of your friends'. This usually occurs once or twice and may involve all or part of the members of a community. This is an alert that these journals are likely promoting a pyramid scheme and should be reported to lj abuse immediately. [ http://www.livejournal.com/abuse/report.bml ]

Please copy and paste this message into your own journal or on your communities to inform others. The offer these journals are promoting is a scam, with the intent of preying upon younger or more naive livejournal users, and it is a violation of the terms of service.

Thank you.

When you see this, post your favorite poem in your journal.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;
Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,
And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.
I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I-
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

- Robert Frost, The Road Not Taken

Black coffee, a half melted chardonnay truffle, and thin crust pizza dough rising on the stove.

Cleo is sitting on the windowsill while I read my biology textbook.

"Sea stars, sea urchins, and other echinoderms... may seem to have little in common with phylum Chordata, which includes the vertebrates- animals which have a backbone. In fact, however..."

...in fact, however.

IN FACT, HOWEVER.

If I come out of the sciences with my grammar intact, I am going to consider it a miracle.

I was about to post a big growly post about how I'm tired and bawwwww life and sundry, but I just found a loonie on a chair.

Loonie. :3

* * *

People watching is one of my favorite things to do, and I've got the best setup going on here in my corner, sequestered away by a vending machine. People purchase coffee every now and again, and construction workers are sitting down to lunch. Two girls walk toward the lounge clutching beverage cups, their eyebrows raise, and they turn straight around again in perfect unison with their noses tilted up ever so slightly. Too crowded.

A heavyset manboy with facial growth - who wears a hat that you might imagine on a hobbyist lake fisherman - walks with an uneven, tilting gait, down the full length of the lobby. It's like his gut is propelling his entire body forward. He looks furitively around him as he goes- as if on some level he's aware that I'm watching him. I notice that he favors his right leg before he passes from my line of sight.

Everyone who enters from the side door at the opposite end of the hall (coming in from the old Elliot wing) paces around with alert expressions. Their eyebrows pull up and crinkle their foreheads, and their mouths open slightly as they glance up, down, to the side in quick motions. They look perpetually lost, but walk fast to cover it; this is a new building after all.

I and every other guy in here look up when a pretty girl gets up to leave, our eyes all centered in the same concentrated effort to see as much as we can of her ass before she rounds the corner.

We resume our business as soon as she is gone.

Brokencyde - Freaxxx (Music Video) from Eat Cake Films on Vimeo.

I have never seen better performance art, yet sources claim these fellows are serious musicians. Either way, the comment list on the website is the clearest litmus test for over and under 13 that I have ever seen in my life.