19 January, 2012

and then you look up, and see a million stars

[Help] PLANKT0N: AAAAHHH I can't get the bottom chat box to expand on this toon. anyone have any idea?

Reminder to self: this is nothing I need to become enraged, embittered or upset about. It's like a disability. He can't help that he's stupid and uses "toon" over more acceptable forms of address. I don't need to worry about this.

(Eventually, I'm sure, this will become reflex, but right now it's still that inhale of breath, instant contempt, followed by telling myself to breathe and relax. It's just a word. I can let this go.)

In the meantime, I am currently giggling over the vast and perplexing variety of silicon ice trays available on Amazon. Just as a small sampling, if I wanted to purchase (and had the budget for purchasing) more ice trays, I could get:
and those are just the ones found on Amazon, and I didn't cover all the ones they had there. Let alone specialty stores, or local kitchenware supply places.

In fact, at home, right now, in our freezer, we have:
  • pumpkins
  • skulls
  • tiki masks
  • stars
  • bones and severed fingers
for ice trays, and packed away in boxes, we have two trays that pop out wee goddess ice cubes. There's no end to potential creativity, I suppose. And yeah, I don't know why this is relevant, but there you go.

ne day after the scattered protests over SOPA (both online and off), we have some results. For one, according to Fight for the Future:
And, as of this writing, there are now thirty-five Senators who've gone on record as publically opposing SOPA--and that's up from just five last week.

Slowly, the tide is turning. I'm beginning to feel an infinitesimal measure of dim hope.

The link I sent out yesterday is still valid, I believe--and if you didn't read it then, please read it now. And Mashable has some good life after SOPA pictures on their website.

In the meantime, Representative Lamar Smith is not backing down. He's scheduling a markup session in February to see if there are any sections that Congress really seem to object to that can be neatly "trimmed out"--or revised, or rewritten, or even fucking rephrased in more arcane language--because he truly believes that this will be what saves America and corporate copyright protection.

The man is an idiot. Unfortunately, he's an idiot with a certain amount of power.

Mashable also listed (on the 17th) the sites pledged to go dark yesterday. Most of the companies on that list--and others that at the last minute decided to join in--actually went through with it. Amusingly, there were some folks on Twitter who just didn't understand why this was happening:
"I find it really fucking annoying that I can't even use Wikipedia because of the stupid fucking government."
~HeartCoreHannah (I really like her background, though)

"OMG! Stupid Wikipedia is on strike!!!!! Cant do any research! -/-"
~NamNguyen29

"What's up with this Wikipedia blackout bullshit? #confused"
~JConti566

"Why the hell is Wikipedia blacked out? \(!!!˚☐˚)/"
~BakaTuna

"Don't see why sopa is such a big deal... who gives a fuck about wikipedia"
~WestonKirk

"The government is working on shutting down twitter Facebook Wikipedia google etc"
~russianisback

"I will cry if they shut down Wikipedia forever.. :'("
~TermiteAcid

"Without Wikipedia, all human knowledge will be lost forever."
~GlassInThePark_ (BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA)

"I CANT USE WIKIPEDIA. This is bullshit, someone call whoever this soap guy is and tell him to stop being an ASS."
~Logan_Deckard

"uhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh WTF WHY ISN'T WIKIPEDIA WORKING I NEED TO DO MY HOMEWORK!"
~TieMyShoeDude

"Wikipedia needs to stop fucking around. I've got books I haven't read."
~Ashley Bennin

"Wait wait wait why did they close Wikipedia?"
~Alayne_Felix

"why tf is the govt cancelin porn and wikipedia"
~ChecksNotChicks

"WHY IS EVERYTHING BLOCKED ON WIKIPEDIA...........AND GOOGLE..........WTF"
~HassanGtc19

"WHY ARE THEY BLACKING OUT WIKIPEDIA?!?!!? and how in the world am i going to FINISH MY FREAKING HOMEWORK!! darn it!"
~trishacarpio (I like her background too)

"OMG so pissed Obama shut down wikipedia!!"
~Ted_Zepplin

"wikipedia thanx for getting me through ALOT of my classes the past couple of years, ill miss u #RIP"
~curryNfries

"Oh No FUCK DAT! I Was Looking Some Shit Up And Fucking Wikipedia Stopped Working. Suck My Damn Dick Congress."
~Brook_LynCarter

"WHY THE FUCK IS MY WIKIPEDIA BEING A BLACK ONE I DIDNT WANT THAT OH GOD IM SO MAD"
~Lo_Pan

"WTF WIKIPEDIA ISNT WORKING WTTTFFFFFF, I BLAME OBAMA!!!"
~Ilyas_Mohamed

"WTF!? The Congress and shit are going to take down Google/Wiki/Yahoo/AOL. WHY!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!? #thatsmylife"
~SenorDannyBoy

"why does wikipedia not work and why is there a black bar over Google??!!"
~8907_Andrew

"Who shuts down wikipedia before exams? #purestupidity"
~veeejh

"GOOGLE'S NAME IS BLACKED OUT AND WIKIPEDIA IS NOT ACCESISALBE! OBAMA PLZ FIX THIS =O"
~SwagLikeSchmidt

"NO! CIERREN TODO MENOS WIKIPEDIA! WHY LORD WHYYYYYYYYYYYYyyyyyyYYYYYYYYY"
~KimeraG

"why the fuck did they shut #wikipedia off? how am i gonna do chemistry now?"
~14perdal

"OMG PLEASE DONT GET RID OF WIKIPEDIA!!!!! i will definitely fail school"
~lauraw0923

"Anybody want to explain in real people words what this SOPA thing is all about? I would just Wikipedia it but it is shut down.. #confused"
~legaedtke
And I'm not even quoting all of them. There's a lot of uninformed people in the world, unfortunately--a scary number of which, apparently, relying on the publically-accessible, infinitely-changeable world of Wikipedia--who has always freely admitted that it can be changed--for actual facts to use in school reports, exams, homework, experiments, and, gods help us all, reading comprehension.

If the doddering old men comprising the Congress we have now scare us, how much more fear should we feel about a coming generation who, in forty years, will be in Congress? Tweeting away, unable to spell, unable to retain attention on anything for longer than twelve seconds, obsessively checking Facebook statuses, and whose entire understanding of world history and domestic procedures come from Wikipedia?

I don't know about you, but friends, that's a horror story. My only dim rays of hope come from the children of friends, who are smart articulate people, growing up understanding the traps inherent in advertising and political discourse, making life deals like Wall Street traders by fourteen, jaded by romance before they're sixteen...but, they're also on the internet, laughing at lolcat videos, having their eyes bug out at new forms of pornography, and sending pictures of themselves handcuffed to things holding whips to boys and girls they like in school.

Does make the head reel a bit.

2 comments:

Icterus Dagger said...

I just wanted to note that the ice cube trays listed as your 5th item are not silicone, but TPE and not BPA free. Carry on.

And don't forsake hope for the coming generations. Most of the inarticulates you cite won't be going very far in life. There are plenty of smart, caring and articulate people out there, and besides, you'd be surprised how many of those people will grow up and get a smacked by a clue-bat.

-iD

Emilly Orr said...

I think I've found a replacement, and thanks for the catch!

As far as the coming generations, by the time we get that new Congress of young minds, I'll either be dead or that that cane-waving, get-off-my-lawn stage, so I'll be the old lady who doesn't get it. Or who knows, maybe I'll be the old lady that does, and who occasionally volunteers for candidates she likes, and shows up with burgundy hair with tattoos and wrinkles. :D

But yes, as Miss Jameson will doubtless remind me as well, there is hope for the coming generation. The smart ones are just that, smart, and also savvy from media saturation. There's both good and bad in that, but I'm genuinely hoping they find community more important than consumerism, and identity more important than maximizing profits. There's a lot of good kids growing up, we just have to let them do that. (And not try to over-control everything they do; already, we're having them go to institutionalized structures closer resembling jails than schools--that's not good for them, either.)

hide away, they say, 'cos we don't want your broken parts

Yeah, so...remember that thing I was recovering from? You know, last year ? Yeah. I did it again. So this is Em Faw Down Go Boom part ...