Technically, it's not the same thing, but it's part of our government's agenda to stop piracy.

I remember talking with my family how the business’s supporting PIPA/SOPA were pissed about Internet Blackout Day. One of the accepted facts about the American government is that big businesses bully the government into getting whatever they want. That’s why they have so many loopholes and less taxes and if you live in America, you know if, if you don’t I don’t know if this is going over your head.

Basically, we let these big business do what they want, and they are happy. They let us go on with our lives. But we put our foot down, and didn’t give them what they wanted because they asked too much. They can’t deal with the answer being no. So now they’re playing dirty to get what the want. Thing is, I don’t know how much of what they’re doing is legal, and how much is gossip and speculation. It’s not transparent beyond “we took down Megaupload.”

And of course, other file-sharing sites followed.

Animetake shows the currently standing.

Now take away all my DDL sites. Since the guys responsible for this shit think anyone who knows how to use the internet is a nerd, I doubt they know what a torrent is. Plus, there’s still another way to “pirate” stuff. It’s called the library.

But it’s crippling in another way that pisses me off. I play a lot of The Sims 3. The only way The Sims 3 is playable is with mods, and there’s a lot of custom content that makes the game more exciting. How do users get this content? Direct Download is the main source. Not to mention other computer games custom content.

And it goes beyond that. I could list other things, an unknown artist putting a free download, etc. In truth, it seems to me that taking file sharing away from the internet takes away a lot of creativity from the internet rather then successfully stopping pirating.

Plus, we’ve shut down file-sharing for most of the world. Which hasn’t really made anyone happy. It’s a good thing Kim Jong II died, or we would have been nuked for keeping him from his newest megavideos.

But it’s all worth it as long as the business’s win, right? Because it’s all about reminding us who’s really in power? Even if they’re in the wrong, and we’ve told them what they’re doing won’t work, that doesn’t matter one bit.

On that note, this has really inspired me to pirate things just because I’m so pissed. I’m such a rebel. And not going to last in prison.

Perusing /a/ today, one might noticed people are well, they are as pissed as usual, their pissiness is sorta in one direction. If you peruse other places on the internet, there’s outrage there as well, although it may be slower to sink in.

Seems Megaupload go shut down. Even though nothing has passed yet.

Can’t say that Megaupload going down affects me much. I didn’t use it for anything beyond downloading Sims Custom Content. Which really…wasn’t illegal.  But who cares.

What is disturbing about Megaupload going down is that it shows they’re serious about this SOPA/PIPA shit. They don’t know what they’re doing, but despite the American public hating it, proceeding just as planned. It feels like a big “Fuck you” to us, the voters, and makes me wonder if any amount of protest would stop the bill.

On the other hand, yesterday’s blackout has sent a message to Capital Hill. Politicians are scaling back or taking away support completely.

There’s the question of whether what happened to Megaupload is really a sign of what’s to come, or if Megaupload slipped up in a way that allowed themselves to be caught, and this would have happened no matter what.

Just have to wait nervously for what happens next. Meanwhile, the feds have to deal with the angry internet. Have fun with that.

I hate to say this, and I mean  really hate to say this, but stopping piracy isn’t necessarily  a bad thing. But SOPA/PIPA isn’t the way to stop it.  Here at Black and Blue Socks, we’ve been against SOPA/PIPA since it’s been introduced, and will be making a statement against it as long as I can.

The two big problems with SOPA/PIPA.

1.) It’s basically has the government saying “We want all this power pretty please, and we promise not to abuse it.” Yeah, and the government is good on keeping it’s promises.

2.) It’s so vague. Theoretically my and other American blogs could be in trouble for using copyrighted images. I think? It’s really really unclear. The people who wrote the bill know nothing about the internet. The Daily Show was having fun calling out the people who wrote the bill describing people who know this stuff as nerds.

It’s been funny watching the government try to make the people fall in love with the bills. There was a commercial on tv talking about how wonderful the bill was. It was pulled in less then a day. That’s special.

PS: Sherrod Brown, guess why you’re not getting my vote? For supporting PIPA.

Here’s my favorite internet created media about SOPA/PIPA, Hitler on SOPA

Article which includes The Daily Show SOPA/PIPA Segments

http://gothamist.com/2012/01/19/jon_stewart_sopa_will_drive_us_to_t.php

Except in the United States, with the exception of the world cup.

The last time I watched a soccer/football anime, I didn’t watch beyond the first episode due to illness. I’d like to go back and finish it someday, as it ended up with mostly positive reviews. Already having one soccer(I will use my lame american terminology) anime to watch doesn’t make me excited about the prospect of picking up another.

But I heard some good things about the manga, so I figured I’d check it out.

The first thing that hit me was when the episode opened was the main character was gushing about soccer, I had no idea what he was talking about. I’m no avid sports fans, but I’ve heard people gush about baseball, football, basketball, hockey swimming, and even lacrosse on a regular basis. I know what people like and respect about particular sports. Never heard that about soccer.

I don’t know if other places in the United States have the same view, but in my region, soccer just doesn’t have much respect. If you play soccer, you do it to get exercise, social reasons, or to help make the college application look good and maybe a scholarship. It’s thought of as a fun game, but not something serious.

With Giant Killing, it was easier to get in the groove as the team wasn’t respected, and the goal was to turn the team into something that could be respected. Here, to have respect right off the bat, is just hard.

I did like the show though. I found the character conflicts to be interesting. We have the two characters, the star soccer player in Japan, and the younger brother who became manager after something happened.  I’m not really sure if it’s because he can’t face the sport again after failing once, or a little PSTD, if  it’s more complex then that. He may really believe that he lacks the skill to make pursuing soccer a viable life choice, and believes it’s a better use of his energy to support his brother. One thing is clear though, our main character isn’t happy with the selfless thing.

What’s certain is that our main character believes when it’s him against his brother, he can’t win.

The main character’s unhappiness, and choice to quit soccer pisses big brother off. He believes that his brother should be playing soccer, and thinks that the only thing going on is he’s running away from his problems.  This has caused big bro to resent little bro’s efforts to help him and raised tensions between the two. However big bro might also being doing a tad of jumping to conclusions about little bro.

Get all that Bro?

Yeah. Anime where there’s depth to the main characters rather then them being standard cliches, and I actually have to think about it. That’s enough to get me hooked.

Otherwise, wow this felt like something from the oo’s. When I went and found out that the manga had started in 2006, I wasn’t surprised at all.

Also…

Hell yes!

I could keep it short and sweet. Gay guy finds his sexuality challenged when he’s put in the position of taking care of his sister’s kids. They will take care of him and place him in all sorts of hilarious and supposedly titillating situations until he’s straight. The hot college chick he met will step in as the mom, and he will learn the joy of having a family, until someone calls child services and explain to him that being a dad doesn’t mean getting turned on by your daughters. (Some of this is true. Some isn’t. Unfortunately, it’s the parts you wish weren’t true.)

It’s a wish fullfillment anime for the guys who enjoy that sort of thing.

I'm sorry, but if you're spoonfeeding/being spoonfed by your roommate, you're either deathly ill or there be something more going on.

But I came across this review on MyAnimeList went I went to record this anime as forever dropped, I found something that described what the viewer was in store for far better then I ever could.

I hope this is a joke. If not...at least he's a good writer?

According to my psych class, it’s considered false that one can repress their memories as it’s never been proven. I hope in the case of this anime, I can repress my memory.

Damn you Willis.

Willis has a special talent for posting comics when they’re most likely to punch me in the gut, I feel like. I have being scared of guys issues, as most readers of this blog know, and for the most part it’s getting better. However, something happened that caused the problem to get a lot worse again in November, and that’s all I’m allowed to say. Right now, I have good days and bad days. Today was a bad day and my first day of school, I was late to class, and all the seats in my Sociology class had me sitting next to a guy I didn’t know.

The face in the final panel was exactly how I felt. It was one of those “Oh God.” moments.

But as life would have it, I’ve also ended up with a lot of guy friends through gaming and my sister who after about a year I’m finally starting to open up to some degree. I remain optimistic that at some point I won’t be so scared.

On other note, I really like Dumbing of Age, I think it’s easily Willis’s best comic.

I sorta thought it would be more exciting to hit year 3. I’m also not really sure that I deserve to be called “alive”. Due to my long breaks, then a posting spree, I feel like I’m a zombie blog, neither dead nor alive.

Part of it is I’m developing my own life and going in my own direction. I have a life beyond sitting around all day, watching anime or doing whatever I do, and talking about it. I’m developing a social life, I have two jobs, and I’m in school full time. Not to say I’ve quit watching anime completely, but I don’t have time like I use to. I could stay home and blog if I wanted, but it’s fun to go out and play Shadowrun or D+D or just chill with friends and watch old Godzilla movies.

And part of it is with health problems, I’ll disappear for months, come back, and everyone else’s lives have moved on. There was a time I felt close knit with the blogging anime community, now I know few of the people left due to people coming and going, or building relationships with others when I was on the billionth sick leave. And I’m okay with that.

I use to obsessively keep up with everything online, now I barely even use Twitter or My Anime List. My life is moving beyond socializing through the internet.

So I may be here next year, or I may not. I’m going to take it as it comes.  I’ll blog whatever I feel like blogging. I’m not sure who’s still reading, but if you are, thank you for sticking with me so far. The one thing I’m sure of is while I may not be able to keep up with a twitter or anything else, I’ll probably have something to say here every so often for another year or so. Whatever direction year 3 goes, well the only way to go with Black and Blue Socks from here is up.

I like Derpyhooves

On Day 8, I got 8 initial bachelors and bachelorettes. While everyone else took an arrow to a knee, I checked out the newest Harvest Moon and gave up adventuring for farming. Bitches love farms. While reviews are mixed, it’s my favorite Harvest Moon game yet.

On the Ninth Day of Christmas I got a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. I was woken up by my mother, shocked to hear about the earthquake which hit Japan and the tsunami which followed. The media enjoyed hyping up the fear of a nuclear meltdown in Japan as nuclear plants were hit hard.  Everyone banned together from the blogging community to the government to send aid to Japan during this time.

Yesterday, they were hit by a 7.0 earthquake, but seem to be okay.

On the tenth day of Christmas, I got the tenth episode of Madoka. The tenth episode not only answered the mystery behind Homura, but was, by itself, a fantastic and moving episode which demonstrated just how much could be done in only about 23 minutes. In my opinion, the episode is just as memorable as the series itself.

It would also be last episode the anime community would see for months.

On the 11 Day of Christmas, I got 2011 ending with two bills by my very own government to limit our internet use. An upsetting move, it made transparent how corrupted Congress is, with the fact that most of the country is against the bill and it violates the first amendment, but with two big industries pushing for it, it’s an uphill battle to keep it from passing. I think it was Conan who said that messing with a country’s internet is the stupidest thing you can do back in 2010 or 2011. People will put up with endless shit until you threaten their ability to play Angry Birds.

The current argument is everyone against the bill is a pirate, but when that means accusing the Human Rights Committee of being a pirate, your argument falls a little short.

With the bills fate still in limbo, 2012 opens up to a year with political drama (and not the lulzy kind from the Republican nomination race) in the air. Congress is the one who needs to be convinced, as even if the president vetoes it, a veto can be overturned.

On the 12 Days of Christmas, I got 12 people fighting to the death. Future Diary is an interesting show in that it constantly gives the finger to logic, but everything is so over the top and awesome, it makes it forgivable. It’s a dark show, but I enjoy that this focuses more on having fun with the premise. In a weird way, I wish more shows didn’t take themselves seriously, as this one does, yet still focused on delivery an entertaining product.

And I will finish the 12 Days of Christmas. Techinically the 12 Days of Christmas are after Chirstmas…and basically, I want to finish it.

Anyway, hoping everyone had a nice one!

Pokemon has always functioned on the fact that the story and setting was really immature and didn’t really make much sense. With each generation it did get better, but at the same time, the cheesy nonsensical story was part of the charm.

Then Black and White came with fleshed out setting and story. Perfect? No. However it was a whole different level from what Pokemon had been. Rather then being a side note, the story integrated well with the game, and addressed the moral issue of battling with Pokemon.

Pokemon Black and White was a gamble. It was meant to be a return to the feel of the original games, and as such, the only Pokemon players could catch before the National Dex were fifth generation pokemon. The experience system and graphics were drastically changed, and there were other tweaks. At the same time, it did keep the charm of the old games, with touches like the bad teams being dressed up in knights outfits.

Yet the gamble did pay off, and Pokemon Black and White continued to keep the franchise popular.