SOPA (or) Why the Internet is Dark

If you are on the internet today, you will find a curious thing occurring. All over the vastness of the interwebs, sites small and great are making a point. Some have blacked their logos, some redirect to a dark site, some have changed their front pages to a noir-styled declaration. All of this, the color of black, the non-functionality, the inconvenience... it is all to make a point. A simple point.

This is the internet of SOPA.

Wikipedia, Facebook, YouTube, Google, DeviantArt, WordPress, Livejournal, all the sites you know and love can be taken from you with a simple accusation of copyright infringement. The words can be stripped from your own posts, left to rot in the caches of uncleaned histories, never to be seen again. Images you create because you love a character in a book or film can be torn away from the world. All melodramatic, yes, but true. The internet will be dark and a dark place with no information or ideas, no sharing of art and thought, even the trolls would find themselves adrift.

To some, it may seem a small thing. To some, it may seem out of proportion. Perhaps, perhaps. However when you look at something, anything, that involves the internet you cannot simply look at what it is doing, what it will be doing and what it can be doing. You have to look at how it will make things change and evolve and you simply cannot predict the ways in which the internet can react. The people that make it up ARE the people of the world and as such are as varied and vast as human beings can be.

America is a country of freedom. The internet is pure, concentrated freedom. If you wanted to you could create a world of your own. We cannot give up our freedom, not with the rules SOPA has laid down. SOPA is censorship, it is anti-freedom. If you do not make your voice heard now, you may not HAVE a voice. Take pride in your freedom and protect it with everything you have.

Wonderful Little Moments

Last night we were laying in bed. Krissy was asleep and I was reading a new book. The window was open to let in a cool autumn breeze, enough to freshen the air but not enough to shake the glass.
It felt like a moment I'd lived a thousand times, curled up in awkward positions, pillow stuffed under my chin, a hot cup of tea at hand, engrossed in a Valdemar tale. There was a difference though. Every other time before this I had been alone.
I glanced over at Krissy and watched her for a moment. Almost as if to confirm to myself that she was really there, I reached out and stroked her cheek slightly. Even in her sleep she smiled.
What a wonderful moment.

A Time for Change

Emma Watson cut off all her hair.

It seems like such a simple act, a haircut. Even a drastic haircut. Going from a tail to a bob or a buzz. But this girl, this woman, has been defined by her hair and the role she played for the last decade.

Imagine, being forced to maintain an identity that is not yours through the years where every other person is trying to find their sense of self. Trying to find who you are while finding who your character is, and without once changing your body, your looks, from what that character has.

Ms. Watson could never have a haircut Hermione Granger did not, she could not gain weight, nor lose it. She could not get a piercing or a tattoo that could not be hidden on camera. She could not get pregnant or scar or damage herself. Her body was not hers. It was Hermione's, and nothing changed Hermione on the outside.

What would you do, if from the time you were 10 to the time you were 20 you could not change a single thing about your appearance. Did you ever fall and scar yourself? Did you get your nose pierced? Did you get a tattoo? Did you once, from the time during that decade, get your hair cut from the style you decided on at a mere 10 years old?

Realize what choices you have, what changes you can make. The simple power to decide what happens to your own body is something we all take for granted.