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Christmas 2011 is winding down, and I have to admit, it turned out to be much more enjoyable than I thought it would 26 hours ago. How sad is it that the high point of this bitter December has been the fact that one day wasn't as bad as I thought it would be?

A lot has changed since I last posted here on the Goon Squad. I don't really want to try and cover all of that business here, but there is one thing in particular that I am going to share, primarily because I feel the need to vent a little. Kinda fucked that I am using this normally happy place to air dark, brooding thoughts. A little disclaimer before I get rolling here, though: I hate when I visit blogs and read this kind of garbage, but tonight...I just don't give a damn.

I've been single now for a little over six years. That little fact has never really spent much time in the fore of my thoughts, but over the past couple of months, it's settled itself there like a leech. I don't like having to acknowledge this, but now it consumes most of my thoughts, and let me tell you: as a 27 year old man, it's particularly brutal. Looking back over those six years and really analyzing them, I realized that this whole ordeal boils down to one simple thing.

I have always wanted something that I cannot have.

There has been plenty of options over the years, but I always turned them down in pursuit of the ones that I knew were never going to work out. This realization was like hitting a brick wall while going Mach dammit, and brothers and sisters, let me just tell you, it hurt. What hurt even worse, though, was when I realized that I'm pretty sure that I'm depressed. Another disclaimer, before I continue: I've always felt that depression is a bullshit diagnosis. Life is just never that shitty. Having said that, allow me to continue.

Depression has nothing to do with being sad. Hell, I'm a fairly happy person about 90% of the time. No, it is another beast entirely. Depression is, simply put, a vast emptiness. This realization began creeping in around 1:30 AM Christmas Eve morning, and really settled in for the long haul about 4:00 PM that same day. There were numerous factors that got the ball rolling on this, and for the sake of not coming off too much like an emo bitch (granted, I already do with EVERYTHING I've said up to this point) I am not going to discuss any of them except for one: fucking Facebook.

I've contemplated deactivating my Facebook account for awhile, but always managed to talk myself out of it...but no, the time has come. It was while checking it during that period that I decided that I had had enough. There were just too many statuses and pictures full of a Christmas cheer that I haven't felt in half a decade, and I absolutely DO NOT begrudge a single person that happiness. In fact, I'm glad to see it. But I can't deal with it...not right now. It just served to emphasize that emptiness on my part.

Not being a part of Facebook for a little over two hours now has actually been kinda nice. I don't find myself randomly checking it just because I can. It's almost as if an obstacle has been removed from my life. And hell, it'll be there whenever I want to give in and rejoin, if I decide to go that route.

I'm sorry for this lousy post, everyone. I really shouldn't even post it, but I feel like not doing it would make the past hour of my life a complete total waste, so fuck it. I do hope that you all had a Merry Christmas, and that the New Year is an awesome one. Be safe this coming week as the celebratory mood heightens, and hopefully my next dance on here won't be such a downer.

It's that time of year

to get that special someone a great gift. This is what i'm getting the rest of the Goons.

Childish Gambino - Bonfire

Big Brother Comes Home for The Holidays

If your reading this right now then you obviously have access to the internet be it through whatever device a smart phone, laptop, etc. And if you’re any thing like me you spend a great deal of time online, in fact the average American now spends an average of thirteen hours per week online. To give you some perspective that is the same amount of time we spend watching television.

Beginning in the mid nineteen nineties the internet started to become an economic boon in the United States, the geniuses of Silicon Valley had came up with an entirely new realm of business opportunities. As the internet has became common place in American life, the profits online business are able to bring in have skyrocketed, the U.S. commerce department has reported that Americans spent an astonishing $165.4 billion online in 2010. That is a major slice of the economy, the new automobile market in the U.S. accounts for $141.5 billion.

There is no denying the internet as an economic force and that its share of the market is here to stay. However there are many internet users, myself include, that see the internet as something more than just a way to make a profit. Many people see it as beacon for free speech, individualism, and creativity, a market place of ideas one that allows the world to interact on a scale never seen in the history of mankind. Yes it has its flaws from email scams, malware, and pedophile predators to the depraved dregs of comment sections. But nowhere else can one so freely traverse through a plethora of content, be it an obscure sexual fetish (for more on the topic see Lucky_Man) one minute to a thesis on quantum mechanics the next. The world is now literally at your fingertips, but recently that access to information has come under threat.

Just in time for the holidays our good friends in Washington on Thursday , hearing the cries for help from some of Americas largest media firms, (you know the same people who cashed in on a share of that record $165 billion) claiming that their copyrights and profits are being unjustly infringed upon by internet piracy. Have introduced two shiny new gift wrapped bills one in the house along with one in the senate, the House Stop Online Piracy Act and the Senate Protect Intellectual Property Act. These bills and their amendments would expand the ability of law enforcement and copyright holders to shut down any site that host pirated content, which either advertently or inadvertently accounts for a huge swath of the content available online. Civil liberty groups, engineers, and many of the largest internet entities (Google, Facebook, and Wikipedia) have come out against the bills citing reasons from censorship and privacy down to engineering and technical issues. Google founder Sergey Brin opined on Google+ Thursday “Imagine my astonishment when the newest threat to free speech has come from none other but the United States. Two bills currently making their way through congress -- SOPA and PIPA -- give the U.S. government and copyright holders extraordinary powers including the ability to hijack DNS and censor search results (and this is even without so much as a proper court trial),” Brin wrote. “While I support their goal of reducing copyright infringement (which I don't believe these acts would accomplish), I am shocked that our lawmakers would contemplate such measures that would put us on a par with the most oppressive nations in the world.”

I happen to agree with him; in my opinion these bills are another step in the continued corporate and government takeover of the individual and our rights. There is a reason the founders opened the bill of rights with the freedom of speech, it is one the most important rights we have, allowing us to be able to express ourselves and be heard while hearing the expressions of others. Freedom of speech is essential to democracy; it combined with a reasonable expectation of privacy make our society a better place. These bills however will accomplish quite the opposite. All you have to do is look to Iran, China, and their like to see what censorship and the prying eyes of government can do to a society. If you share these sentiments take to the web, write your representatives, and sign one of the many online petitions making their way to Washington. I think our first President and hero of the Revolution said it best “If the freedom of speech is taken away, then dumb and silent we may be led, like sheep to the slaughter”, I know I am not a fucking sheep, are you?