But my brain has decided it’s not a good time to suck on information.
I think it must be like “hey, isn’t this a great time to feel artistic?”:
Dear brain, you have to change your attitude, really. What about… Just think we’re having something slightly like vacations, with a few days off (which will be exams’ days)! You’d better start taking that as the most vacation-ish thing in the near future, cuz it’s all you’re gonna get.
Ever since I quit facebook, which was around 2 or 3 weeks ago, I’ve lost quite the visitor’s source. The loss is probably around 8 people a day, which could be considered a lot if you figure the visibility of this blog. But I’ve notice I still have another powerful income (?) source: search engines. And people end up here searching for the most hilarious things (one could ask my friend Faa, who constantly gets visits looking for piss-related articles. Like, whaa?).
But I gotta admit the scenario isnt’ as bad as I thought at first. I didn’t lose all that much by leaving facebook and the fact that I no longer upload my blog entries there cannot be considered an excuse for people not knowing when a new post is up, or even forgetting about the blog at all. If one really had any interest in coming here in the first place, it will not be the lack of Doce posts in the News Feed that’s gonna stop them. Saying “but I don’t get yer updates anymore” it’s such a lame excuse, if you ask me.
When you get home after a shitty day and nobody give a shit about your shitty day.
Heck, they don’t even notice. My pokerface’s gotta be the very best!
But then I forgot why I even wanted anyone to notice.
If my lack of artistic activity when it comes to producing manga in the last two years isn’t enough evidence that I’m not into that for the time being, then I’ll let the message clear:
I am not into making manga right now. I do not wish for the moment, neither I think I’ll want in the near future, to participate in any sort of artistic activity for a third-party. I don’t care if it’s more of a playing-contest or anything more official, including physical publications. If I wanted something like that, I’d do my own research and get to know the business. I’ll hop sponteanously. I don’t need anyone spamming my inboxes with this sort of thing, mmkay? If you really, really need to ask me to do so, please, but PLEASE, don’t just send me an impersonal letter with the rules to something I’ve never heard of, as if I had any obligation to comply and join “the fun”. Did I show you I was interested somehow? Because I’m probably not.
Ofc, I can change my mind if I wish to. Polite requests are nice things, obviously. But you should be more careful: an impersnal message which was probably sent to many other people is not a polite request. And it’s also pretty noticeable that you didn’t do any research about the person you’re sending the invitation to. You know what impersonal mail is? SPAM. There ways and ways to approach a person (and invite, if that’s the case). But you look like you don’t even know or care about who you’re addressing, you just want the message to go and another participant to join. Sorry, but if you don’t know who I am, changes are I’m saying no even harder. Do your homework.
Portugal saw the USA’s attitude and found it good. But Portugal couldn’t just do the same, for it doesn’t know much about the internetz. And thus, in order to get a tiny wee bit of SOPA-like awesomeness, it decided to create the PL118.
#PL118 is the name of a bill they’re trying to get passed around here. It’s quite the funny bill and will make lots of people happy. It is only the natural follower of the law we already have had around here for the past 14 years, which stated that a small fee should be payed everytime you buy something where you can allocate data. But the PL is pretty much like an upgrade on the older law/bill. Instead of paying a fixed fee, they’re trying to make the consumer pay around €0,02 for each GB they buy. It is said that this money will eventually help the authors of IP content. And while proteting IP content (I’m not talking about the IP act!) is sort of a good thing, the bill has this funny smell about it…
I’ll tell you why my nose isn’t happy about this.
First things first: it’s a tax we’ll be paying a priori. This means we’ll be paying a fee as a pushiment for a crime we can potencially commit by the usage of saying storage devices. We’ll pay the fee even if we don’t store IP protected material on our disks. It’s like paying child support for a child you never had, if you ask me. This bill just assumes everyone is a pottencial criminal and everyone should pay in advance.
Second: despite the first point, we can still ask how is this money helping authors. Well, it won’t. Not for the most part. Authors are not the direct benefeciaries of this money; they only get a really small share. Where does the rest of the money go? Producers and representative entities. Well, I guess this falls into the SOPA-like awkward thing. I know the consequences aren’t as hard as on the SOPA case, but the cause seems pretty similar: corporations trying not to lose their money due to the internet or file sharing. What these frightened corporations need to get into their “heads” by now is that with the internet, a whole new marketing model arises. There’s no middle man on the internet. You can buy your art/music/files directly from the author. And store them in your disks! What’s the sense of a tax that’s supposed to help authors when I have already payed them for the material? And they don’t get a small share of the money, they get 100% of the money! There’s a different way of thinking here. No middlemen. And now the middlemen are afraid to lose their power and try to make us pay a nonsensical fee.
If they’re trying to get us rid of piracy (aka trying to protect IP), it’s not by adding constrains that the problem will be solved. Piracy is not about content, it’s about service. An extra tax won’t do much for stopping piracy, it will only do worse for those who don’t act pirate-ish. The problem can only be solved by providing better consumer-services, which many authors are already doing by confronting their buyers directly instead of getting middlemen in the story.
End of the year mostly means it’s time to sum up what I’ve done. And while I could yes make a list of the things I have accomplished, I’ve mentioned most of them in my blog by now (also, I don’t feel much like doing a list right now). So, for the sake of bucketing some accomplishments, I’ll let you know about the books I’ve read.
Please note that these piles do not include the books I picked at the Libraby because… They are at the Library. I had to return them! :D But I’m quite proud of my list:
Noticed the 3 piles? Well, there’s one for those I’ve read, those which are still waiting in line for their turn and the comic’s pile. These are the ones I read this year. They’re all mine, except for two of the Assassin’s Creed books, which were actually lent and not returned yet.
Titles are in Portuguese, but I can make a translation for you. The pile includes, top to bottom:
Now for the unread and comics pile:
The unread pile includes two books I’m looking forward: The Origin of Species, by Charles Darwin, and Richard Dawkins’ Greatest Show on Earth. And there’s also Nineteen Eighty-Four, which I already read (as you prolly know). And why is it on the unread pile? Because this is an english version, not the Portuguese one I read (which is on the Library, btw). I thruly wanted to see how the original version looked like, because the translations of Newspeak vary too much.
The comic pile is filled with Scott Pilgrim’s books because those were the only comics I read this year. They’re pretty cool, although I was expecting more towards the end. And I just couldn’t make it to the end of the movie, fyi.
And just as a good-bye treat, here’s the book I’m currently reading:
One of the best books I’ve ever read.
English
Português
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