Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA)

I've been out and travelling for the last 7 days. and before that, buried in tons of work in preparation for the tour. it was that stressful, arranging travel for 14 adults who work for the government. the red tape is amazing. everything was decided on the last minute. but i will write more on that when i find time. 

in the mean time, here is something for the very important internet news that everyone should read about. this is a direct copy and past  from WIKIPEDIA.

----

The Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA), also known as House Bill 3261 or H.R. 3261, is a bill that was introduced in the United States House of Representatives on October 26, 2011, by House Judiciary Committee Chair Representative Lamar S. Smith (R-TX) and a bipartisan group of 12 initial co-sponsors. The bill, if made law, would expand the ability of U.S. law enforcement and copyright holders to fight online trafficking in copyrighted intellectual property and counterfeit goods.^[2] Presented to the House Judiciary Committee, it builds on the similar PRO-IP Act of 2008 and the corresponding Senate bill, the PROTECT IP Act.^[3]

The originally proposed bill would allow the U.S. Department of Justice, as well as copyright holders, to seek court orders against websites accused of enabling or facilitating copyright infringement. Depending on who makes the request, the court order could include barring online advertising networks and payment facilitators from doing business with the allegedly infringing website, barring search engines from linking to such sites, and requiring Internet service providers to block access to such sites. The bill would make unauthorized streaming of copyrighted content a crime, with a maximum penalty of five years in prison for ten such infringements within six months. The bill also gives immunity to Internet services that voluntarily take action against websites dedicated to infringement, while making liable for damages any copyright holder who knowingly misrepresents that a website is dedicated to infringement.^[4]

Proponents of the bill say it protects the intellectual property market and corresponding industry, jobs and revenue, and is necessary to bolster enforcement of copyright laws, especially against foreign websites.^[5] They cite examples such as Google's $500 million settlement with the Department of Justice for its role in a scheme to target U.S. consumers with ads to illegally import prescription drugs from Canadian pharmacies.^[6]

Opponents say that it violates the First Amendment,^[7] is Internet censorship,^[8] will cripple the Internet,^[9] and will threaten whistle-blowing and other free speech actions.^[7][10] Opponents have initiated a number of protest actions, including petition drives, boycotts of companies that support the legislation, and planned service blackouts by English Wikipedia and major Internet companies scheduled to coincide with the nextCongressional hearing on the matter.

The House Judiciary Committee held hearings on November 16 and December 15, 2011. The Committee was scheduled to continue debate in January 2012,^[11] but on January 17 Chairman Smith said that "[d]ue to the Republican and Democratic retreats taking place over the next two weeks, markup of the Stop Online Piracy Act is expected to resume in February."^[12]

please check this site for more on that.

Because, I am.

Tatay, when i told you i'm out to ruin your world, why dintcha believe me?

----

Keith fixed the fridge's freezer door, 3 candles by his side.
The kid was on shadow play again. he's got our phone's flashlight hovering all over his set of mini heavy equipment.

On our wall, the back hoe looks like a war tank.

I was just 2 minutes into my mission in Starcarft II when the power went out. Now, I'm left to nothing and i do not want to help Keith with the fridge, not in this situation.

"Let us shoot the stars," I tell the kid. He likes stargazing. On clear nights at my parent's place, he would go out and make us name the stars, then bombard us with whatever comes to his mind. We would tell him to count the stars, just so he'd stop asking 10 million questions about everything. About life. Where was he when he was not yet here. When will I die.

I invited the kid join me so he would stay away from his father's fridge mission. So that it would not look like  I do not really care what he's trying to do with the fridge, because if it wasn't for me, he wouldn't have to be doing this, after all.

4 or 5 months before...

That little small button on the thermostat is something. The manual said it's a defroster but nobody in the house never really got to using it. And it is probably the best time to push it.

So push i did. 12 hours after we were 1,800 pesos poorer, with a fridge on it's way to white goods cemetery.

Somehow, after i pushed that little defroster the melted water ended up flooding our kitchen floor. When Keith cleaned it, like secrets that were not meant to be uncovered, he came face to face with places that badly need cleaning. Like the back of the fridge, and so he cleaned it, too. Too much that he tore a hole at the copper tubing of the compressor. To make matters worse, days earlier, my mother stuffed our freezer with 10,000 kilos of fish.

We definitely shouldn't have a night without a running fridge or else.

or else what.

But after that the fridge was never the same again. It never iced the way it did before the repair and the freon refill. No matter how often i clean it the ice keeps on forming like it's trying to re-create the shrinking arctic circle in my freezer. I know what you are trying to do refurbished fridge, you're trying to have all the melted polar ice caps resettled in my freezer. that's not good, not good at all because i never granted you locational clearance and i never will!

what comes next is the unstoppable deterioration.

somehow the melted water took a new route and never drained in the plastic catchment that was meant to catch exactly that--melted water. It's unstoppable; it just wants to flood everything in its way.



The week before the great Frank flood of Iloilo City in 2008, I was looking forward to spending a peaceful  weekend with my then 17 month-old son. But then Keith left his 1,000 dollars worth stainless steel-encased phone (a gift from his mother) on the bamboo living set while he went upstairs to get something. Our son was  still in his exploration stage, testing the projectile abilities of anything he'd get his hands on. Somehow i overlooked the image of a phone-on-the-chair, and absentmindedly put my coffee somewhere near it. Apparently, it is a disaster waiting to happen. My son got his hand on his father's very expensive phone, and my tasty cup of steaming coffee with cream. And then Frank happened. And then we went broke. And then the phone was declared irreparable because the rust has managed to get into the motherboard. And it was my fault.

("And then what happened? Life. Life happened." --> shouldn't that be "shit?") 



In July of 2011, using what i thought was the key, i somehow managed to lock myself in the office. Though i knew it was the least i should do, i was left without a choice: I called Keith. I called him and told him i need him to bring my key to me. It would have been okay if he was in the house, but he wasn't (he was out on a meeting) and it would have been okay if i knew where i last left it (I swore it was in the shelf but the maid couldn't locate it). and so he said,

"How could you have locked yourself in with A key?"
"But is it possible?" because i do not really know. I am not a locksmith.
"No, it is not."
"But i did. Surprise!"
"Why did you have to forget your key? We're almost ready for bed." We--our kid and him.

He was right, it was late and I really am just careless about the things i do; the things that i need to do.



Like the 3 days before Christmas of 2011 when I dropped my camera and it took me 3 seconds late to realize i dropped it. If it wasn't for the synchronized gasps of at least 15 onlookers and my colleague's horrified look, i wouldn't have known.

"How bad is it? Is it still working? What happened?" she exclaimed, frantic.
"Somehow, the bag's handle missed my shoulder," was my sorry replied. I was surprised i still managed to speak after i saw the terrible dent on the rim of the lens. It felt like horrible face slap. It was my only camera and i somehow managed to destroy it, barely a year in my possession. I could never find any replacement for this, in a better condition, for this half-a-century old camera.

I wanted to bawl. right there, in front of so many attendees of the local government office Christmas party.

I never found the guts to tell it to Keith. He only found out about it through facebook. Checking on it, one night, he said,

"Did you know this is one very hard steel, the lens case? How did you manage to dent it?"
"Well, you know me."

Yes, you know me.

I am THE walking disaster.

The thing is.

"Nobody gets it right the first time."

Well, that is comforting. Enough to soothe my sore palms and busted self-worth.

I've recently embarked on yet again another round of non-income generating vocation. There's a slim chance of me turning back.

ArTeacher, same age us I am, keeps a reassuring grin on his face. every time he starts on his instructions for me to draw, i squirm. Then i'll start on few scrawls on the horrifying wide white space of my sketchbook, procrastinate (drink water, open a packet of cookies, go to the toilet), and steal a glance at Keith's notebook.

I will expectedly become more horrified because there will be so many things going on Keith's wide white space while i'm left to few scrawls that i'd try to cover up by shading.

Only to be told that shading is the last thing i should be doing.

"Give me a silhouette before you do anything else. At least give me an outline."

Which is of course very logical. Even in writing it applies--one needs an outline before one could stick conversational lines between those stories. even more so in project management. One has to set the boundaries of the project site before introducing any intervention, otherwise the project ends up with mish mash of half-finished deliverables.

But honestly, at this point in time, i find it easier to hide my mediocrity in shades of black ink (we are not allowed, to use pencils--well, Keith is, but not me). My outlines look no different from the outline of a truck that my 4 year-old has been sketching on the walls of our house.

Which leads me to anther analogy--the modern architecture. The stuffs people call cube houses, which many think are very easy to construct because, y'know, it is just a cube. But the beauty of modern buildings lie in the skills of the builders that make them. Because for one, it is very difficult to hide the lack of mastery of the builders if there are no ornate columns, or beautifully carved baseboards to cover up the skewed lines where the wall and the floor/ceiling meet.

I grab a glass of water, sigh, and pick up my pen. If i make few scrawls my teacher will think i am actually doing something but--

"So let us see what you got there."

BAM.

"Hmm."

Nice thing. This Hmmm. It's so vague it makes me more nervous.

I remember the 20 years of conversation: 
"Daddy, look I made a portrait!"
"Hmmm."
"Daddy, i ran 7 kilometers in 38 minutes. Half of it is uphill."
"Hmmm."
"Daddy, I'm the team captain of the volleyball team."
"Hmmm."
"Daddy, I'm admitted to UP High School."
"Hmmm."
"Daddy, I think I'm failing Math 17 again."
"It's because you do not have an analytical mind."


I'm not really sure where this hmmm is taking me.

And i'm certainly not getting it right the first time. This artS thing. I wanted to learn how to make miniatures. Small replica of my cities. ArTeacher says that, the good thing about sculpture is you do not stop at drawing, or painting. You have to learn to draw, draw well, and then imagine how they would be in 3D. It is not enough that i am good at copying stuffs because i have copied many stuffs. That is how i taught myself to draw. But that is not enough. I have to draw in proportion, in beautiful actions with strong silhouettes, in concepts so persuasive my figures look as if they could jump out of the page of my sketchbook's wide white space and, i don't know, dance in front of me? There are so many things that i still have to learn.

Hmmm.

"What made you so good at wire bending?" Amazed at how easily ArTeacher makes clean curves with the size 16 wire.

"I've been bending wires since 1997, see?"

And he hands me the my awful looking 3D banga wire frame. I yanked the wires that earlier were misbehaving and refused to cooperate with me. 14 years it took him to tame them. 

Yes, I see. I'm finally seeing it.

download brigade

I found this site through my friend Lillian.

I hate the 90's blog also uses mediafire for most of her/his file sharing s/he also has great repertoire of the songs the 90's kid would look for.

here's the links of the ones i downloaded so far:

1. dambuilder's encendeador: in rar
2. dambuilder's ruby red: in rar
3. dambuilder's against the star: in rar
4. school of fish's human cannonball: in rar (josh claytonfelt died in the early 2000 of testicular cancer)
5. school of fish's self-titled album: in rar

that's it!

I'm going back to work, the one that actually pays. hakhak.

my art life is currently at its lowest moment in history. i haven't written anything in months. i haven't done photo projects in weeks. there are 4 rolls of films that need processing, add the one in my camera right now, that makes it five. there are 5 more rolls of negatives that need scanning.
my centenarian grandmother died.
it's almost alfredogs' first anniversary.
this saturday will be my first day in weekend art class.
i hope that will help revive everything.
it's really difficult to be so under-art. it's a lot worse than being undersexxed.