Rolling...

I saw an interesting thread tonight on the /x] board at 4chan. 
Someone posted this picture:

The rules are simple enough, you post once to "roll" and the last 2 digits of your post number is what you write about.

My first roll I got 68: Aphenphosmphobia (Fear of being touched)

not sure where he came from
chasing me
musn't let him touch me again
my skin, it burns 
it cracks 
peels
blisters
i cant stand the touch, cant stand the feel of 
fingers
hands
dirty
disease
germs so so many germs
why is he chasing me, what did i do?
i keep to myself goddammit,stay away from all of the
dirt
infection
germs
germs
germs
so many germs
running, running so fast, trying to get away before he grabs me
i can feel the hands behind me, reaching, straining
wanting to touch
touch me
please dont touch me.


my second roll I got 78: Mirror


They think i cant see them
But i can
They're there, just beyond my eyes
Hiding in the shadows and the corners
They don't realize i figured it out, that they can only be seen in mirrors.
But I'll fix it,
I have all of the pieces laid out in front of me.
Everything is filed down to fit, there shouldn't be too much pain.
Soon.
Soon they won't be able to see me, my eyes will be their reflections.

I won't be quitting my dayjob anytime soon, but this was fun. 

#Titanic2012

With the 100th anniversary of the sinking of the Titanic looming on the horizon there has been a load of television,books,movies about that fateful night making the rounds. I'll fully admit that the Titanic is one of my favorite historical "things". I'll watch almost any show about it on History or NatGeo Channel, I had a brief obsession with the movie (Give me a break, I was like 18 and went to see it with my boyfriend...there's a metaphor for our relationship in there somewhere.) I am thoroughly enjoying the James Cameron special airing on NatGeo right now and am looking forward to the Ballard special airing tomorrow night.
On the lighter side of things (yeah I know it was a tragedy, dont lecture me) the hashtag Titanic2012 was trending on Twitter tonight and I literally laughed myself to tears over a few of these tweets.
It is basically the sinking of the Titanic/Movie! Titanic if it were to happen in our tech savvy always connected world today...

Here's a few of my favorittes, and my 3 contributions:

@ErinPatricia: Congratulations! You just unlocked the Hypothermia Sticker on Get Glue! #titanic2012

@ErinPatricia: KingofDaWorld, RichGirlRose just ousted you as the Mayor of Floating Door! #Titanic2012

@ErinPatricia: string quartet on deck, wouldn't play Freebird. Lame. 4/10 Would not recommend. #Titanic2012

@maureenjohnson ‏ YELP REVIEW "Trip ended before arrival in NYC. Water very cold. Many fatalities. Terrible buffet. Would not recommend." #titanic2012

@maureenjohnson I just ousted the Giant Sea Serpent as the Mayor of the North Atlantic Ocean on @foursquare. #titanic2012

@brandg: Don't worry. Ice can't cut metal. I saw it on Mythbusters! #Titanic2012

@SVAllie: Allie just checked in at N. Atlantic ocean with 2563 other people. #titanic2012

@ebonyMckenna stupid Google maps, telling me to get to promenade deck via back stairs. Hello, gate is locked!!! #titanic2012

@SVAllie: This life boat doesn't have a recharge station for laptops or phones??? Omg. So 1990s. Lame. #titanic2012

@EbonyMcKenna Rose DW unfriended Caledon Hockley #titanic2012
@EbonyMcKenna Titanic just friended Carpathia #titanic2012
@EbonyMcKenna Can I get wifi on the lifeboats? I need to keep tweeting this. #titanic2012

@BlakeMP WebMD diagnosed my symptoms as "bouncing off a propeller on the way down." I KNEW it. #titanic2012

@literaticat Klout says I'm influential about Icebergs, Life Rafts, Survival. I say I'm influential about Elbowing a Bitch Out the Way! LOL. #Titanic2012

@BlakeMP NOBODY PANIC. Google+ will save your pictures automatically. #Titanic2012

@ixtumea You mean I can't get the internet out here? #titanic2012

RT @itsapear "@maureenjohnson Siri, where is the nearest lifeboat? #titanic2012"

@missapples22 The Titanic Broke in Half (Taken with Instagram) #titanic2012

@maureenjohnson Terrible valet service. I think someone had sex in my car. #titanic2012

@BrittaniMai "Is it so hard to make a decent salad on a damn boat? I repeatedly asked for Romaine Lettuce but all they had was Iceberg. " #titanic2012

@Whitnage Yelp Review:Class divisions not strictly enforced. Lost my fiancée,diamond necklace,&coat to a 3rd class chap.Do Not Recommend #titanic2012

There are about 100 more...search the hashtag if you wanna read them all :)

The Great American Firewall.

Taken from GIZMODO.COM

(Original article with embedded links can be found here...go...read...educate yourself and do something about it.)

What Is SOPA?

If you hadn't heard of SOPA before, you probably have by now: Some of the internet's most influential sites—Reddit and Wikipedia among them—are going dark to protest the much-maligned anti-piracy bill. But other than being a very bad thing, what is SOPA? And what will it mean for you if it passes?

SOPA is an anti-piracy bill working its way through Congress...

House Judiciary Committee Chair and Texas Republican Lamar Smith, along with 12 co-sponsors, introduced the Stop Online Piracy Act on October 26th of last year. Debate on H.R. 3261, as it's formally known, has consisted of one hearing on November 16th and a "mark-up period" on December 15th, which was designed to make the bill more agreeable to both parties. Its counterpart in the Senate is the Protect IP Act (S. 968). Also known by it's cuter-but-still-deadly name: PIPA. There will likely be a vote on PIPA next Wednesday; SOPA discussions had been placed on hold but will resume in February of this year.

...that would grant content creators extraordinary power over the internet...

The beating heart of SOPA is the ability of intellectual property owners (read: movie studios and record labels) to effectively pull the plug on foreign sites against whom they have a copyright claim. If Warner Bros., for example, says that a site in Italy is torrenting a copy of The Dark Knight, the studio could demand that Google remove that site from its search results, that PayPal no longer accept payments to or from that site, that ad services pull all ads and finances from it, and—most dangerously—that the site's ISP prevent people from even going there.

...which would go almost comedically unchecked...

Perhaps the most galling thing about SOPA in its original construction is that it let IP owners take these actions without a single court appearance or judicial sign-off. All it required was a single letter claiming a "good faith belief" that the target site has infringed on its content. Once Google or PayPal or whoever received the quarantine notice, they would have five days to either abide or to challenge the claim in court. Rights holders still have the power to request that kind of blockade, but in the most recent version of the bill the five day window has softened, and companies now would need the court's permission.

The language in SOPA implies that it's aimed squarely at foreign offenders; that's why it focuses on cutting off sources of funding and traffic (generally US-based) rather than directly attacking a targeted site (which is outside of US legal jurisdiction) directly. But that's just part of it.

...to the point of potentially creating an "Internet Blacklist"...

Here's the other thing: Payment processors or content providers like Visa or YouTube don't even need a letter shut off a site's resources. The bill's "vigilante" provision gives broad immunity to any provider who proactively shutters sites it considers to be infringers. Which means the MPAA just needs to publicize one list of infringing sites to get those sites blacklisted from the internet.

Potential for abuse is rampant. As Public Knowledge points out, Google could easily take it upon itself to delist every viral video site on the internet with a "good faith belief" that they're hosting copyrighted material. Leaving YouTube as the only major video portal. Comcast (an ISP) owns NBC (a content provider). Think they might have an interest in shuttering some rival domains? Under SOPA, they can do it without even asking for permission.

...while exacting a huge cost from nearly every site you use daily...

SOPA also includes an "anti-circumvention" clause, which holds that telling people how to work around SOPA is nearly as bad as violating its main provisions. In other words: if your status update links to The Pirate Bay, Facebook would be legally obligated to remove it. Ditto tweets, YouTube videos, Tumblr or WordPress posts, or sites indexed by Google. And if Google, Twitter, Wordpress, Facebook, etc. let it stand? They face a government "enjoinment." They could and would be shut down.

The resources it would take to self-police are monumental for established companies, and unattainable for start-ups. SOPA would censor every online social outlet you have, and prevent new ones from emerging.

...and potentially disappearing your entire digital life...

The party line on SOPA is that it only affects seedy off-shore torrent sites. That's false. As the big legal brains at Bricoleur point out, the potential collateral damage is huge. And it's you. Because while Facebook and Twitter have the financial wherewithal to stave off anti-circumvention shut down notices, the smaller sites you use to store your photos, your videos, and your thoughts may not. If the government decides any part of that site infringes on copyright and proves it in court? Poof. Your digital life is gone, and you can't get it back.

...while still managing to be both unnecessary and ineffective...

What's saddest about SOPA is that it's pointless on two fronts. In the US, the MPAA, and RIAA already have the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) to request that infringing material be taken down. We've all seen enough "video removed" messages to know that it works just fine.

As for the foreign operators, you might as well be throwing darts at a tse-tse fly. The poster child of overseas torrenting, Pirate Bay, has made it perfectly clear that they're not frightened in the least. And why should they be? Its proprietors have successfully evaded any technological attempt to shut them down so far. Its advertising partners aren't US-based, so they can't be choked out. But more important than Pirate Bay itself is the idea of Pirate Bay, and the hundreds or thousands of sites like it, as populous and resilient as mushrooms in a marsh. Forget the question of should SOPA succeed. It's incredibly unlikely that it could. At least at its stated goals.

...but stands a shockingly good chance of passing...

SOPA is, objectively, an unfeasible trainwreck of a bill, one that willfully misunderstands the nature of the internet and portends huge financial and cultural losses. The White House has come out strongly against it. As have hundreds of venture capitalists and dozens of the men and women who helped build the internet in the first place. In spite of all this, it remains popular in the House of Representatives.

That mark-up period on December 15th, the one that was supposed to transform the bill into something more manageable? Useless. Twenty sanity-fueled amendments were flat-out rejected. And while the bill's most controversial provision—mandatory DNS filtering—was thankfully taken off the table recently, in practice internet providers would almost certainly still use DNS as a tool to shut an accused site down.

...unless we do something about it.

The momentum behind the anti-SOPA movement has been slow to build, but we're finally at a saturation point. Wikipedia, BoingBoing, WordPress, TwitPic: they'll all be dark on January 18th. An anti-SOPA rally has been planned for tomorrow afternoon in New York. The list of companies supporting SOPA is long but shrinking, thanks in no small part to the emails and phone calls they've received in the last few months.

So keep calling. Keep emailing. Most of all, keep making it known that the internet was built on the same principles of freedom that this country was. It should be afforded to the same rights.

Schadenfreude:

–noun
satisfaction or pleasure felt at someone else's misfortune.

example: finding a mugshot on Google of someone you know, and laughing your ass off about it while sending certain other people the link.

I'm such a Geek.

I just watched 4 seasons of The Guild.

This show makes me want to play World of Warcraft...and also makes me really happy I don't.

It's complicated.

Give it a watch, its just a funny webseries about a group of gamers who decide to meet IRL, and the randomness that springs off from that meeting.
And all 4 seasons are available on Netflix streaming.

Plus, it's got Wil Wheaton. So, its a win.

Pictures From One Of The Best Weekends Ever

Ear Candy: My iTunes On Shuffle

11:20pm

aaaaaaaand GO!

Orestes -- A Perfect Circle
On Saturday -- The Clarks
We Are All On Drugs -- Weezer
I'm Goin' Down -- Bruce Springsteen
Friends Don't Let Friends Listen To Rap Metal -- 2 Skinnee J's
The Perfect Crime #2 -- The Decemberists
Spookshow Baby -- Rob Zombie
Here's My Love -- Voodoo Babies
Campus -- Vampire Weekend
Anticipate -- Ani DiFranco
The Question Song -- Tom Wilson
Anthem #2 -- Jackalope
Skullcrusher Mountain -- Jonathon Coulton
Red Line Season -- These Arms Are Snakes
In This Twilight -- Nine Inch Nails
Red Tide -- Neko Case
La Vie Boheme -- Rent Orig. Motion Picture Soundtrack
Watcha Say -- Jason Derulo
Shut Up And Let Me Go -- The Ting Tings
Come Join Us -- Bad Religion
The Undertaker (Renholder Mix) -- Puscifer
Mambo Italiano -- Dean Martin
The Times, They Are A Changing -- Bob Dylan
Burnout -- Green Day
Summertime -- DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince
Teeth -- Lady Gaga
Ten Days Late -- Third Eye Blind
Piazza, New York Catcher -- Belle & Sebastian
Never Give Up -- Melissa Ferrick
Goodbye Horses -- Q Lazzarus & Garvey
Time Is Running Out -- Muse
Like This -- Girl Talk
One Night In New Orleans -- The Povertyneck Hillbillies
High Plains Drifter -- Beastie Boys
Cape Cod Kwassa Kwassa -- Vampire Weekend
The Boy In The Bubble -- Paul Simon
Homecoming -- Kanye West feat. Chris Martin
88 Lines about 44 Women -- The Nails
Pulling Mussels (From The Shell) -- The Squeeze
My Freeze Ray -- Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog
A Drunken Night In Dublin -- The Mahones
Two Times -- The Blakes
With Teeth -- Nine Inch Nails
Killing -- The Rocketz
Fuck The Pain Away -- Peaches
Hoist That Rag -- Tom Waites

annnnnnnd STOP! 2:20am.

So there you go.


The list is as eclectic as what I was doing online during that time...Email, AIM with Blake, Facebook, 4chan, Wikipedia, a few different message boards, Twitter, Amazon, and some random Stumbling.

Youtube is stupid (#18.1)

Because its been "processing" my two, no longer than 3 minute videos, for a few hours now.

SO part 2 will have to be whenever they decide a couple of videos of cats arent full of porn or terroristic activity.

So yeah.

Youtube sucks.

Things I'm Currently Enjoying...

Think McFly! Think!

Bonus: Fun with soundboards

Happy VD!

Ahhhh, Valentines Day.
That wonderful time of year when super sickly sweet couples gross out other normal couples and single folks.
I don't have Valentines Day, I'm just not into it with my SO being 1000 miles away. Don't get me wrong Id love to be able to spend a V Day with him, but until that happens I'm pretty much MEH about the whole thing.

So.

Here's some lonely hearts from Craigslist for you all to read/mock/pity/be afraid of.

YAY! Its Multiple Personality Time!!

Can I lie on my Resume?

He's at the Sheetz in New Alexandria, beating up the paper towel dispensers.

EWWWWWWW! And an extra EWWW cause I'm thinking I might have worked with this person...

Ummmm....I got nothing...

And for a special treat, since I will be heading to New Orleans for Mardi Gras (read: being with my Bear for a whole week!) I present to you

STRANGE UNUSUAL OR FUNNY ADS FROM THE NEW ORLEANS CRAIGSLIST!

He probably should of given those pictures more thought...

Also known as "Creepy old pervert looking for plastic gold digging whore"

POWER TO THE PEOPLE!

Cause WalMart sometimes isn't creepy enough...

I'm a rogue male, and I don't play well with others


Happy Valentines Day all!

You can't make this stuff up...

Craigslist scares me...
I figured Id scare you all too.
And yes, I stole this idea from PittGirl.

((SOME OF THESE LINKS ARE NOT SAFE FOR ANYONE! You have been warned))

He sounds like a catch...

Ummm....EWWWWW

I...I'm pretty sure I know EXACTLY who this is.

How is "Built like a Coke Machine" a good thing?

*shudder*

Do you want Catch-up with them fries?

I'm back.
I knew if I bitched about my power cord that it would show up sooner.
This Christmas...Sucked.
Seriously.
Hard Core and Big Bad. Im glad it's over and it's just another reason for me to hate the holiday.
New Year's...Can't wait.
Heading out to Dormont to hang with Matt, Natalie Janelle and not sure who else. Going to go to the Apple Inn, then back to Nat and Matts place for fun and eventual passing out.
Sunday night we took the girls to see the windows downtown at Macy's. Pictures are forthcoming.

NaBloPoMo Posting!

To the people who never ever believed me that these commercials existed....
BOOYAH!!
I TOLD YOU SO!!

Soooo...

Im trying to do the NaBloPoMo thing...

Since Blake is on his third year of
nanowrimo I figured why not.
Im not the wirter he is, but I can (try to) put up a post once a day this month.

Maybe.

I make no guarantees on Wednesday...thats my drinking night.


Or any drinking night actually.

Ear Candy Don't Let's Start They Might Be Giants.

Something smells bad in here...

The current storyline over at one of my favorite webcomics has me wrinkling my nose in disgust.
Its apparantly Fart Week over at PVP.
When will grown men grow up and realize farting is not the highbrow humor they think it is.
Seriously.
Scott Kurtz, are you still in 7th grade?

/me ranting.

In other news...Pens lost.
Sigh.

What I'm surfing...

I figured Blake has the "What I'm Reading" entrys down pat, so I'd leave a lttle note about what the hell I do all night on the Internets.

Kso, here you go, all three of you who actually read this (thank you tho)

Evertime Realms
My Boyfriends website.
Blake puts all of his stuff here: Random thoughts, Ongoing novels (Summer Love, you should be reading it ok?! Go. ) Movie, book, comic and TV reviews. He also links to his Comic's podcast here, the 2 in 1 Showcase.
And you know what...Im not just putting this here first cause I luff him so.
Before Blake and I got together I was reading his old ER site, as well as his book Other Peoples Heroes, I liked the way he wrote, and if we had not of gotten together romantically I can guarantee you his site would still be near the top of the list.

The Dak Tower.com
A long time ago, in a land far far away there was a little site called thedarktower.net
It was a happy place for fans of Stephen King's Dark Tower series. A place to talk about the 4 books that were already out, and to guess as to what would become of Roland and his Ka-tet, and shortly after I found it, a place to wait, breathless with anticipation for the last 3 books in the series to be released.
It is also the place where I met a blue eyed guy named Blake.
Fast forward to now, tdt.net is a memory.
BUT some of the folks who used to frequent that site have created thier own.
thedarktower.com is a wonderful site, bursting with info about the Dark Tower books, as well as other King stuff, message boards, collectors forums, a DTbay and Towerwiki.
If you are a fan of The Dark Tower, or Stephen King, you should go check it out.

Comixtreme.com
I'm a Geek. I'm pretty open about that. Movies and books and comics and Batman (he gets his own category)
I am not as big a geek as some of the guys here though lol (and thats not a bad thing either)
Do you like comics. Then you should be here.
Reviews, discusions, original colums and articles.
Ever wonder who would win in a fight: WonderWoman or Aquaman? You'll find it there.

2 in 1 Showcase on Comics
Blake and Chase argue about Comics and pop culture every week.
Occasional drive by appearances from the other Super Buddies: Mike, Kenny,Jenny and Myself.
Its golden, trust.
Listen in.

Twitter!
I'm addicted to twitter.
Short, simple answers to the questions:What are you doing/What are you thinking right now.
Look for me...www.twitter.com/erinpatricia

The Bathroom Wall.
Erin's OLDEST internet site.
I doscovered TBW in college, in 1996.
I still post there, though certainly not with the regularity I did 12 years ago.
Wow. 12 years.
Its just a place to virtually write something on the bathroom wall.
Though over the course of 12 years a few friendships are forged :)
Keep it clean though please.

LOL Cats, Fail Blog, Graph Jam, Look Alikes, Pundit Kitchen, Engrish is Funny
Funny stuff.
I check in here for a laugh.
LOL Cats rule, and from them were born the other sites listed
Links to all at the top of the lolcats page.

DListed.com
I'm snarky. I like reading snarky stuff.
Snarky ripping on stupid celebrities...even better.
The only gossip site I read since Dont Judge Me went dormant(rip)

Deciever.com
Maybe I lied above...can this be considered a gossip site.
Anyhoo, I hate hypocritical people.
This site turns a big old spotlight on em.
Especially those nitwits from PETA

PVP
Player vs. Player
The only Webcomic I really read on any kind of regular basis.
The life and times of the employees of PVP magazine.
I love it. Try it out.

PostSecret.
"PostSecret is an ongoing community art project where people
mail in their secrets anonymously on one side of a postcard."
I love this site.

Found!
Almost a sister site to Post Secret
"We collect FOUND stuff: love letters, birthday cards, kids' homework, to-do lists, ticket stubs, poetry on napkins, telephone bills, doodles - anything that gives a glimpse into someone
else's life. Anything goes..."

I'm thinking this is gonna be a part one...I'm sure the second I hit publish I'll think of more sites to add. Till then, click around and find somewhere new.



Ear Candy...MIA Paper Planes