Whale Oil Beef Hooked

I’m not good with being bad. My first recollection of doing something bad in the world outside my home happened when I was about 5 or 6 years old.
My primary school was a small country affair, with less than 300 pupils. Every year we would have a sports day, and for lunch all the parents would all bring a plate of food for those who participated. I knew my Mum brought along coconut ice slice, and I showed my 4 year old brother where it was on the table. While we were hungrily admiring the cake we both decided to take a slice - after all it was our Mum’s cake and therefore, by some strange twisted five year olds logic, OK to take. At that very second my 1st grade teacher Mrs Noll yelled out from afar “Jennifer Aniston [*1], what do you think you’re doing?”.
Well... I grabbed Paul and we both took off. Mum and Dad found us hours later hiding in our play hut, under the pine trees at the end of our section. Nothing was said about the cake incident, I guess the trauma was plain to see.

Years, or perhaps what feels like Eon’s later, I still hate being caught out. I remember how my clean slate was sullied, and I really hate that someone can still make me feel that way today. Maybe because of that moment, I’ve lived a pretty tame existence? Perhaps, if I was more of a shit growing up, this feeling would have disappeared by now; maybe I wouldn’t feel so bad about being permanently suspended from You Tube.

Yep - It’s a bit of a stretch from the post traumatic stress inducing “cake incident”, but my ejection from the famous video hosting site, handed down yesterday for posting that 1 minute 40 second clip of Stargate SG1, imparted a similar feeling of woe; well through to at least morning tea.

It seemed that I pissed off MGM.

You know, If you think about that a bit, you could really start to worry; but hastily moving along, I was asked via email to remove the “offending transgression”.
OK - The geeky traumatized 5 year old cake thief in me promptly tried to log on to delete the clip, only to find my account had been permanently blocked. Like the cake incident I could not undo the wrong I had inflicted - I had been given my scarlet letter, and on me it was to be well and truly stuck.

I was, actually, in point of truth, in the wrong, and totally screwed.

After morning tea I got angry. As if 1 minute and 40 seconds of video really mattered. I mean, it wasn’t even porn!
I was angry because I was trying to illustrate a point with that bloody video - and it wasn't about how tricky it was to create the clip either (which it fucking well was, by the way).
These corporate bully boy laywers have recently taken on You Tube, so I don’t blame them per say for ejecting me, but i think it’s slightly hypocritical when you think of all the other Stargate clips (and other stuff) that is still there now. Why pick on me?

I cant help but wonder just how long You Tube would be in existence if they removed every last vestige of copyrighted material from their servers?

Imagine it....

We’d be logging in to watch crappy home movies of people we didn’t know, doing things we didn’t want to see, in places we never intended going. What a sad bunch of arses we’d be watching that Trifecta.

As my old mate [*2] Dylan Thomas used to say..

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.


I would have said it with more brevity, and a lot less tact.
Fuck the fuckers - and that's all I'll say about that.



[*1] Not my real name.
[*2] Didn't know the man.