http://www.chillingeffects.org/fanfic/faq.cgi#QID302 - Useful. The entire website is useful. As the internet becomes more of a legally liable platform, it's increasingly easier to be put in judicial hot water than it was just five years ago. The lines of internet morality are murkier than ever, however, because really, what is "cyberbullying?" What is "internet terrorism?" What separates a practical joke from the FBI knocking on your door the next morning? Man, the internet is ridiculous now. Allow me to step from my quick soap box to just state this to any lawyers perusing through my public entries:

1) The internet is not serious business. I know from experience that it shouldn't be taken as such.

2) All fanfictions/fan photo manipulations' characters, worlds, scenarios, canonical universe, and plot lines belong to their respective intellectual property owners/creators. I am not trying to turn a profit on some mediocre drabble I wrote at four in the morning in a bus. I am not trying to turn a profit, period. So please tell your worried authors/musicians/actors/artists/etc. that I am not the boogeyman out to get them. If I enjoy something enough to write about it, it means I like it enough to write about it.

3) Everything that I write is AU is probably a portmanteau or juxtaposition of existing characters in an original world/scenario. I still provide disclaimer for the "borrowed" aspects of existing works.

4) All celebrities featured in my posts are those in the public eye. I do not promote paparazzi breaking into people's homes to take a picture of what so-and-so looks like without make-up. I do not post phone numbers, personal addresses, social security numbers --- basically, no information that is too vital or personal to the person. Any information that is public knowledge or in the public domain is free for me to deviate, parody, and fawn over.

5) Images from websites found on Google Images are [typically] in the public domain. If not, I will remove them. It is not essential to my existence, but merely tedious and I am a lazy bastard.

6) I do have a Creative Commons license. (lol, Don't call me pretentious, but it's necessary. I've had my work used without permission for commercial purposes --- I KNOW, WHO'D WANT TO USE MY WORK FOR A PROFIT --- and spread around myspace pages in blogs as the user's own work.)

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial 3.0 United States License.
"This work" = everything. And if I haven't made it apparent before, I do have a (arguably informal, but still effective) copyright. It utilizes not my given legal name, but a pseudonym. To my knowledge, this counts regardless. Here is a pretty blue rendering to state that yes, I do protect my babies:



7) Besides the freedoms given in the license, you may do all of those delightful creative expressions --- with credit. If you decide to use something of my creation, even if it's a derivative of another existing creative work, (My mind just imploded) the credit is necessary nonetheless. But, I have to say I'm quite flattered if you do decide to waste your time on that.

8) I really am not this pretentious/annoying. I'm just a student trying to protect herself from the treacherous red tape of the legal world/loopholes. I'm not looking to do anyone in, really, or steal anyone's stuff. I just like art, plain and simple.

9) If this is the FBI --- I DIDN'T DO IT, LOL. It was my persuasive friends list. 4chan? What's that? I have no association with these chans, YTMND, SA, and live--- OKAY, ASSOCIATION WITH LIVEJOURNAL, THAT'S A GIVEN, but still. It was just a joke? I usually don't involve myself in the activities described as "INTERNET TERRORISM" and I don't enjoy nor condone child pornography. I think it's disgusting, but that's a completely different discussion. Besides, don't you have more important investigations to carry out than a stupid teenager's online activities? Just saying. Don't party van me, please.

If you have any questions, comments, or concerns, feel free to send my account a message.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy, I love bad photoshop!
Comment to be added, or comment if I know you from somewhere to clarify your identity. TYSVM!
Once friended, check out <a href="http://sociologies.livejournal.com/27065.html#cutid1>this entry. </a>

 I decided to write this after thinking about how many deaths have happened this week. This applies more specifically to one person, but it can apply to many, sans the last paragraph. My thoughts are with the families and friends of all those who have passed this week, whether famous or not, and all those who are living, too. Semi-fictional, based on plausible scenarios, anecdotes,  my own life, and overhearing conversations.

When a friend dies, you always wonder,

"Is there something I could've done better? Is there something I should've done? Stopped doing?"
The time seems to slip away from you like sand through your fingers on a timeless, sepiatone beach. Emotion swirls inside of you -- shock, despondency, misery, reflection, regret, anger, and finally, in the last lingering remains you have of that person (the photo albums, mementos, voicemails from months before asking you if you want to get pizza on Ninth and to come to the house to pick up the coat that you left on the sectional, you know, the one with the snaps in place of buttons) peace drifts back into your life. Maybe it wasn't your fault, after all. Maybe the situation didn't really pan out as you perceived it. He didn't die to get away from you; he died on his own accord, when he fulfilled his purpose. Your best friend since fourth grade didn't leave you because she didn't like you, or because she never wanted to deal with you; she just left when the world (read: cancer) took its toll. "It isn't my fault," You chant softly from the inherited, plush crushed velvet armchair you keep out of sentiment, "There's nothing I could've done."

And then that voice creeps up your spine again, wraps around your temple, seeps into your vocal chord, and you meekly mewl,

"...Was there?"

When a friend dies that you don't entirely know, you attend the visitation politely and recall when you were first acquainted. Hands firmly latched behind your back, you quietly work the room and discuss the well-known details of the deceased. The affair started at 7:30, you leave at 8; you felt it was better that you didn't spend too much time there, or you'd feel alienated. People wonder what relation you have to the friend, and if you two were even friends. You do it out of common courtesy, out of support, out of what you feel is sound, logical reason, but you feel a pang of guilt for not getting to know them better. "I was too busy with work." comes to mind, but then there's that same voice, that same split personality inside of you --- every dualist's nightmare --- and it hushes your excuses with a simple: "How selfish." You drive home in an instant and drown your sorrows in the only proven tokens and most effective forms of vice: a pint of Haagen-Dazs and a bottle of rum, to the tune of a Lifetime made-for-TV movie. The pain is distilled by morning, arm-in-arm with the searing pain radiating from your skull down to your toes, but you go back to the arrhythmic flow of your life. "That's that," Pan to your cubicle in an ambiguous high-rise lying on a skyline wrought with anonymity due to the thick polluted smog obscuring any landmarks, "There's nothing I could've done."


When a friend dies that you never got to know personally, you're off-put with news of their death. You're not sure how to feel, as you never got to even meet the person, let alone exchange words. "That news is terrible. Their family and friends are in my thoughts." Is all you can reply with without feeling too close, yet too cold. The situation is spoken of discerningly at the water cooler, the cash register, the dinner table, in a "Did you know?" tonality. Murmurs revealing a painted-on sorrow --- how could someone be genuine without even knowing the person? --- and a thickly veiled confusion arise. The overall atmosphere is like that of watching the news of a war or natural disaster; the death tolls march in, the faces of newly-orphaned children appear, it may keep you up at night (if you're of the empathetic persuasion), you may cry over it, but it won't hit home with you hard enough to make you weep because you're aware of the circumstances, aware of the constantly regenerating cycle of life. You read the obituary for the acquaintance and send your best wishes out into the air, but it's nothing that will break you.


When a friend dies that is so iconic, so well-known, that you felt like you knew them as well, even if it was for professional or artistic reasons, your first reaction is doubt. Doubt that someone so powerful, so ingenious, so remarkable could leave the world for good. Doubt that it would ever happen to an untouchable. Doubt. After doubt comes dismay, around the time you realize how much of an imprint that person has left on the cultural landscape forever. Dismay that there won't be a new product, new work of art, new movie, new book, new album. Dismay. After dismay comes the rest of the typical grieving cycle, but then comes celebration. Celebration for this person's life and accomplishments. Celebration that you were lucky enough to even experience a second of it. Celebration. You feel the utmost joy because you know, you just know that their ethos will live on forever and will be emulated by the next generation. You know that there will be memorials, murals, specials, documentaries, biographies; you know that this person will not slip away into the bleak world of being unknown. Actualizing all of this, you call up your friends immediately. You don a red patent leather jacket, trimmed with thick black lines on each lapel, equally as exuberant red pants, and head to the nearest party. At the party, held in the loft of a friend of a friend of a friend, there is a jukebox in the corner. Your friend, dressed in a cream suit with matching fedora, presses the button to select a certain song. The entire crowd in the room stumbles drunkenly up to dance. Each carefully choreographed move is imitated, albeit drunkenly and giggly, by each attendee. The video starts playing, on mute because the jukebox intervened for audio, on your rather wealthy friend of a friend of a friend's flat screen. The room takes notice and claps. Applause. Standing Ovations. Cheers of the happiest variety. You and your friends clumsily dance with everyone else, taking your best to nail every spin, kick, stomp, march, twist, and turn. You've never had more fun inebriated.

"Cause this is thriller, thriller night
And no one's gonna save you from the beast about strike
You know it's thriller, thriller night
You're fighting for your life inside a killer, thriller tonight."

The music plays out a haunting scenario, contrasting the joy in the room. When the song ends, there is a moment of silence, of reflection.

And then it's back to the celebration again.




Rest in peace, Michael Jackson. You are missed.

If you have a twitter;

PLEASE RT! Vote in the Teen Choice Awards against Twilight. Whatever you vote for (preferably Star Trek) just vote. #twilightcockblock

I'm sorry to those on my friends page that do enjoy Twilight, but I'm awfully sick of this awful franchise. I'm aware of the uphill battle that will ensue in my quest to eliminate Twilight (and have Star Trek, even with its success, come out victorious over 209502950395035 mothers, ~emoshunal~ teenage girls/boys, and souls too prideful for real erotica)  from the Teen Choice Awards, but it'd be a nice change. If you don't have a twitter, blog this on Tumblr and have people reblog this, post this on livejournal and have people forward it around, IM people who this would be in relevant interest to, JUST DO SOMETHING, POR FAVOR.

LIKE BARACK OBAMA, WE NEED CHANGE:


OR LOGIC, THAT'S GOOD, TOO.


UNRELATED - Just finished Michael Jackson post. That'll be up shortly.