-Sigh-

You know what? I'm tired of constantly fighting with my router and ISP for access to the internet.

Seasonally Appropriate Post

Well, my New Year's resolution is to brush my teeth twice a day in an effort to appease my dentist without resorting to mouthwash (gross!) This is in place of my usual resolution to stop cussing so damn much. Because we all know all those years of not muttering obscenities under my breath at people pretty much made my "appropriate speech patterns" widget explode violently under the strain.

I distinctly remember a time when I didn't curse at all, and now sometimes I surprise myself. Like, "where did that come from? When did this become a regular part of my speech???" (I think it was sometime around high school.) Maybe that was when I stopped caring what people thought (though, to be honest, I can't remember ever really caring in the first place but THIS WILL BE MY EXCUSE FOR NOW, PLEASE DO NOT QUESTION.)

Anyway, mouthwash, I hate you with a passion. You make my mouth taste weird and my dental flora and I get along just fine without you crashing the party. I AM STARTING TO THINK MY MOUTH MIGHT BE DISGUSTING BUT WE WILL IGNORE THIS.

DAMN YOU, DENTIST, I HAVE ALREADY MADE THE CONCESSION OF FLOSSING OCCASIONALLY, DO NOT ASK MORE OF ME!

And YOU, DENTAL HYGIENIST, I'm ONTO YOU, don't think I haven't noticed your perverse pleasure in making my mouth bleed with your excessive rough flossing! And STOP ASKING ME ABOUT MY SCHOOL GOALS WHEN YOU HAVE YOUR HANDS IN MY MOUTH!


Ohgawd, when's my next dental exam...
-runs off to brush teeth again-

SOPA Rant

I'm not sure why the government is trying to break the internet so much, but I find it terrifying.  I feel like it's a short step from the Stop Online Piracy Act to full-blown censorship (not that SOPA isn't exactly that, but I'm sure they'll have something else to censor.)  I keep hoping SOPA will be shot down and never pass, but it seems to have some amazing regenerative resurrection abilities.  Supposedly SOPA will protect copyright holders from foreigners infringing on their copyrighted material and support and expand American creativity and protect the people from dangerous pirated websites yadayadayada (if you want the whole story do the research instead of letting me tell you about it.)  However, it will make companies responsible for their user-generated material that may reference, link to, or involve copyrighted material.  Said companies will be responsible for pulling that post/comment/video (as they already do once they're notified by a copyright holder that infringement is present) or all their ad revenue will be pulled and their domain blocked from access by the average user.  (Of course, Firefox has a few addons already that are intended to circumvent SOPA should it come to pass.)

What does that mean?  Well, some companies (Google, YouTube, Reddit) have already said that maintaining that kind of stringent supervision with their websites would be financially unreasonable and they may have to shut down.
No more free Internet, in both definitions of free!
Either sites with user-generated content (Facebook, Wordpress, Blogger, Twitter, eBay, Etsy, Amazon, Netflix, Mozilla, Tumblr, DeviantArt) would have a subscription fee to help cover the costs, or shut down, or be forced to change the way they're run, including removing comments sections and forums.

Even IF, (and this is a BIG IF,)  SOPA does exactly what it's supposed to do and stops US citizens from accessing pirate websites, it will be a huge financial drain on everyone involved.  IF SOPA is only used properly, for it's original intended purpose (that is ill-defined in the actual bill,)...
How long will it be until someone gets the bright idea that SOPA could be bigger and better and stop all piracy on the internet, whether foreign or domestic?  Someone like...someone like the RIAA, who already has too much lobbying power and proven itself to be a heavy-handed executioner of those who "pirate" music?  Or the MPAA who does the same?  Or any of the thousands of lobbyists who could benefit by this act while the people are censored and sites are blacklisted?

I see SOPA, and I see the death of the internet as we know it.  I see 1984 coming true, or Brave New World, or V for Vendetta, or your choice of bleak futures.

Corporotopia by Alexiuss

(P.S.  This blog would not be possible under SOPA)

Hmm...

So here I am posting at 4am because I have no life or something.
I'm sitting here thinking I'm kinda hungry and I don't remember what I had for lunch (or if I had lunch really.)
I think I need to fix this.  Yeeeeeeeeah.

Someone find me another job so that when I'm not working 6 days a week I can...be working 6 days a week?

DOOOOGS!!!

I hate you dogs. Really I do. Yesterday they caught a opossum, today another skunk. So now I think there are at least two more skunks. Apparently the dogs, they do not learn. Why don't u learn, dogs? Why u do this to me?

It's too cold to be washing dogs outside but we did anyway.

Tomorrow the groomer!

They were just starting to smell normal from the last time too.

This skunk was grosser; it was trailing about two feet of intestine, ewww. (At least the intestine hadn't split yet.)

I hate the dogs. I think, if the garbage people don't hate us yet, they will tomorrow...sorry, garbage-men. I'm so sorry.

The Tally So Far

Seriously why do things even live in our yard anyway. Go find someone that doesn't have dogs.

Audiophile

I would just like you to know;

Everything sounds fantastic with my new headset.

Thank you, that is all.

Halloween!

It's my favorite day! Sadly, this is the worst Halloween ever, being on a day I am scheduled to work and also a weekday when everyone else works/goes to school/whatever, which means I can't dress up. If I was working as receptionist tonight I totally would, but it happens to be a tech-training day for me and I think dressing up would be a bad idea (although if I dressed as a zombie I could get some very "realistic" blood spatters >> but you didn't hear that from me.)

I realized the other day that I stopped doing all the fun stuff to my blog, which makes me sad. My tablet hates my new computer so I stopped drawing, more or less, and I'm too lazy to keep my playing with HTML intact, so I stopped doing alt texts and junk.

I have too much free time and also not enough free time. I think I zone out a lot in my free time cause I'll suddenly realize it's been three hours and I have to go to work and/or it's 4am and I should go sleep considering I don't remember what happened between the hours of midnight and 4am.

I demand, since I didn't get to dress up for Halloween, to go to the Renaissance festival or something, to get my dressing-up-but-people-don't-give-you-weird-looks-for-it quota filled.

(Hello, one random reader in France!)