I work with technology constantly. I was born and raised in a time where I remember cassette tapes and saw their evolution into MP3 players and how music is nothing but bit and bytes stored in multiple places today.

I watched the rise and fall of Napster. I watched iTunes become the prominent platform for music purchases. I watched TVs go from tubes to flat to Plasma to LED. I have watched computers become smaller, faster, better. I have seen floppy disks evolve to 3 and 1/2 inch disks then going to CDs, and then flash drives and to DVDs and to Blu-Rays.

I have watched the demise of print as a viable medium of information for my generation. I have watched cellphones that once were bricks now act as small computers.

All of this, and countless other advances in technology sit on the idea of the Internet. The idea that I can send, share, download, upload, find, research, read, listen, watch, post, like, comment on, reply to, update, add and subtract to anything on the Internet.

The Internet was first created so professors could SHARE information. Information that inherently belonged to their respective institutions, however, they knew at that time that sharing information allowed for a larger public discourse about the information.

SOPA/PIPA looks to curb online piracy. This is in a year when record sales have gone up for the first time since 2002. Movies continue to costs millions and make millions on ticket sales, DVD sales and products sold in unison with the movies.

But what SOPA/PIPA could ultimately become is a kill switch to websites.

Currently, if a website such as Youtube is hosting material that infringes on copyright law, the person who posted the video in liable for any fines or charges. The site is not held accountable for material that infringes on copyright.

Under SOPA/PIPA, websites would be held accountable for ACCUSATIONS OF INFRINGEMENT, and would be shut down accordingly.

There is a lot wrong with that, and I am certain I hardly have to go into details to further progress the point I am trying to make.

The one thing I keep coming back to is this, the Entertainment industry thinks it is a massive contributor to the Internet. It can be, when done correctly. Sites like Netflix and Hulu leverage the Entertainment industry in order to provide content for the Web users.

However, the Entertainment industry continues to stifle innovation. They dump millions of dollars into Congress, just so they can get their way, a dying way.

These are the death knells of giants. The Entertainment industry is lazy. They don’t want to innovate. They don’t even want to evolve their products they are selling. Shitty music and shitty movies are the same now as they were in the 60s. Shitty.

People who download torrents of whole albums or movies are still going to do this. China censors its Internet, the outcome of that? Some of the best hackers in the world, and they are concentrated in one country. Why? Because when government builds walls, the people will dig wholes. And when the government pours concrete in the ground, the people will build wings. And when the government builds turrets to take down flyers, the people will use dynamite.

Instead of attempting to box people in, the Entertainment industry should allow for innovation. It should welcome change, and the Internet.

The Internet helps original and creative content. For instance, “The Hurt Locker,” which won Best Picture at the 2010 Academy Awards, was the lowest grossing movie (at the time it won) to ever win an Academy Award for Best Picture. It was also one of the most illegally downloaded films. Think about why it was downloaded first.

The film was constantly in limited release, so unless you lived in certain locations you may have never seen the movie. This allowed for public hype of the film, and allowed for the those who did not download it, an attempt to listen to their peers. Once this dialogue occurs, people are more likely to buy/go see certain entertainment.

Did it hurt it? Sure, but DVD sales put the movie into the green for revenue, and the movie cost around $11 million to makes, grossing a theater total of $13 million and grossing a DVD total of $35 million.

Thus, drawing a profit (excluding marketing, packaging, and distribution costs) of $37 million. Taking into account the expenses, it would wind up making around $15-20 million (estimate).

So, one of the highest illegally downloaded movies of 2010 made a good bit of cash. Could it have done better with SOPA/PIPA? Could it have done worse with SOPA/PIPA?

There is always a bump in sales for Best Picture winners. That accounts for some of the sales of DVDs for this example. However, the downloading cannot be ignored as a contributor to the spread of word about this or other types of entertainment.

So, what do you do? Do you shut down websites because they allow for this kind or thing to occur? Do you embrace it and watch your company go bankrupt because you give away everything for free?

Or do you innovate? Do you create, as oppose to destroy? Do you build growth, or do you stifle competition, simply because you have more money than the common man? It is funny, those who claim to have busted their ass to get somewhere in life, simply rest on the laurels of days gone by. They shouldn’t have to innovate, or create anything anymore. They can just throw money at the problem. They just become content and lazy.

That is my biggest issue with SOPA/PIPA. It makes an industry that is so vibrant, so amazing, become so God damn lazy.

One of the staples of Facebook, other than completely indulging people’s narcissistic and voyeuristic tendencies, is to point out to the world that you are, in fact, in a motherfucking relationship. Pointing out indefinitely to all those relationship-less losers that you found someone who thinks you are at least semi-attractive enough to be associated with on the Internet. Boo-yah, asshats.

I have never been a proponent of publicly displaying my relationship status on said social media platform. There is no real logic to it, just not my style. If someone on the street asks me, “Do you have a girlfriend,” I would think they were crazy, but answer with the affirmative. So, no logic, just not my thing to post relationship statuses on social media.

However, I was the sappy asshole who would post videos to love songs and quote ridiculous lyrics or lines from songs, poetry, books or whatever I thought inclined me to believe I was with “the one.”

And I am not talking about “the one” as is Neo kicking Agent Smith’s ass up and down the street for days with an over-inflated and relatively ineffective Kung-Fu fighting style. I am not talking about “The One,” that awful Jet Li movie. And I am not even referencing “the great one, Wayne Gretzky.

See, the implications of a relationship are many. But the one thing that always happens is everyone mistakes infatuation for attraction and attraction for interest and interest for respect and respect for love. This is a stripped down version of the mess we call “a relationship” but I feel it to somewhat close to the truth.

And that is the thing. relationships are never simple. They are never clean and easy. They can be fun, they can last a long time, but they take work. They take effort and sacrifice and compromise. They take arguments and love-making. They take every idea of the human condition, all the ones you are good at and all the ones you are bad at, then make you try to share those things with someone else.

And it isn’t your family, people who have known you since you were born. It is someone you have an idea of, you barely know. They present their best intentions to you and you to them.But you haven’t been in the trenches with them. You haven’t had those knock down drag out fights where your love is truly tested. You haven’t grown with the person at all.

Which is why I get so fucking annoyed when (usually is just) women, and these women seem to handle relationships like a turnstile, post crap about being the “happiest I have ever been” and “my life is so perfect” and “my boyfriend completes me.”

Little secret ladies, odds are none of those things are true. And, considering your tendency to implode your own relationships frequently enough that no one knows it you are ever truly single or with someone, you should know it is true by now.

No one should complete you but you. No one should have to make you happy but you. No life is ever perfect, and that is the way it should be.

Your significant other should compliment you, assist you, guide you when you are lost. They should offer suggestions, not solutions. They should never be your everything, but always something that is there.

If you have been on this planet longer than 20 years, you should get head out of your ass about love. Love doesn’t last forever, nothing does.

What does last forever is realizing you cannot even love someone for a month if you do not love yourself. And filling the void of self-hatred and loathing with someone else’s time and energy is selfish, idiotic and insecure. Once you do that, then you have the ability to love someone until you cease to be. Which may not be forever, but it is good enough for me.

It is funny, how you read the words of your mentor, your idol, and see that you use the same language, the same flow, the same syntax. Fuck, the punctuation is the same. And the swearing.

It is funny how you see yourself in his place, and him in yours, and you wonder what he would do. And you know what you should do.

It is funny how you can hear him say, “Go for it, son.” You can hear him say, “You shouldn’t do that, son.”

It is funny how those word will always give you the courage to do the right thing.

“The right thing is rarely the popular thing,” he would say. And you will find yourself reminding this god that exact same notion.

It is funny how you can understand so little about a man, yet know so much.

It is funny how you can see the man he is and the man you want to be.

It is funny how you try to be better than him, and will always fall short.

It is funny how you can strive to be perfect.

It is funny how you know he that is not, and yet, if you are a fraction of that idol, you will be everything you wanted to be.

My father is what I want to be, but I want to better. Not that he isn’t great, he is a near perfect father. Flaws and all, he is the man who I strive to be.

He wants me to be better. He wants me be quick to listen and slow to talk. He wants me to have more guts, more brain and more brawn. He wants me to be better than him and his father and my grandfather’s father. He wants me to be better than anyone to bear the name that is my last name.

It is funny to realize, that your god, your idol, your role model looks up to you.

I missed posting this on his birthday, but Happy Birthday Dad.

And challenge accepted.

Inflection, enunciation, grammar and syntax are things of beauty. They are also things to be revered, respected, studied and practiced. I write how I talk, which has a certain flow to it.

I talk quickly. So, I write in manner that can be read easily and quickly. However, the written word is different from the spoken word. Focusing on the someone like Shakespeare, you can see how spoken word can appear so differently on paper.

Reading Shakespeare in your head is daunting. Saying the words out loud as you read is to hear eloquence, even if your delivery is nowhere near Kenneth Branagh.

But, it is the word that makes the difference. It is how we use the word, where we place the word in sentences, and how we place punctuation around the word. The word is spoken throughout the world. We organize sentences differently, we use different pronunciations, dialects and language.

We, as humans, may use all of these things differently, but we use them all for the same purpose.

But I will get there.

Several cases of self-destruction have popped up into the media recently.

Watching Herman Cain’s message machine fumble about is entertaining, but watching Rick Perry fumble over the English language is embarrassing.

The debacle at Penn State is just outright disgusting. In that situation, it was one man’s actions that led to countless other men’s inactions, which has led to several cases of self-destruction.

The thing about the Penn State issue, once you see the full path to where it is now, it isn’t hard to comprehend how it got so out of control. It isn’t hard to comprehend how men could be filled with so much cowardice. But man is a fickle being.

The up-and-ups were watching their own skin. They did not care that a potential predator was on the loose. They did not care that, according to the court documents, eight victims will forever be traumatized by one man. They did not care that all of this happened under their watch.

They cared about how things looked to those who had no idea. They wanted a secret to remain in the shadows. They wanted icons and athletes to still come to the university. They wanted prestige.

I understand mistakes, and I have made plenty. I have made situations worse by trying to help. I get that people aren’t perfect.

However, JoePa and the like, while trying to potentially save the name of the university all those years ago, simply began then to drag it into the ground.

People think his legacy of success will rise above it, and for him, that is probably true. But what child is going to go to this school now? What parents will send their student-athlete to a program that knowingly hid allegations of child-molestation?

This isn’t buying cars with booster money, or trading rings for tattoos, or taking athletes out for fancy dinners, or bending all the NCAA rules to recruit athletes. This isn’t a university padding grades or offering incentives to faculty to let their athletes have a little slack. This is a university that hid criminal allegations of child molestation. Paterno was involved, the coaching staff was involved and the top-tier of the university was involved in hiding this information. They all knowingly did this.

What they unknowingly did was destroy themselves. And they deserve it.

I tend to not write with creative syntax, hate the idea of ridiculous punctuation and I tend to not enjoy waxing poetic with lengthy sentences about mundane topics (such as the description of a room, how many people are in it or what maybe on the television).

But, what I was and am good at it taking something else someone wrote and making better.

And I guess that is my issue, as I am constantly rewriting the words spoken and written by me. What’s the phrase? “The Revisionist, never gets it perfect. Never gets you perfect.”

I have spoken and written my history, who I am, so many times even I can feel how unoriginal it is.

I am trying to figure out what I am practicing for. But I guess we all do this practice. We all have our set lines, our static data to share with people we just met.

We display the image of us to who we want to see it, because odds always are, when we show people the real image of who we are, they run away. People aren’t perfect. They have vices, horrible personalities, foul mouths, bad drinking habits, violent behavior, lazy attitudes.

So we coat the finish of a rough exterior. We shine and shine, until all those sentences make perfect sense, until all those words fall into the perfect place.

We revise, and revise, and revise. We make edits, we use red ink everywhere, until the whole story is looking like a fading sunset.

In honor of the time past let’s just go over some items that have happened, and/or what I have thought lately.

1. Walking tacos are a joke, especially the ones I had this weekend.

2. Wind is overrated, even for kite flying.

3. My big project is complete, for the most part. Relieved does not begin to describe how I feel.

4. I haven’t talked to my older brother in more than a month. I bothered with this statistic.

5. I talk too much and say very little all at once. Another statistic I am having issues with these days.

6. Chuck Taylor’s are great shoes, but awful for a day of walking.

7. Music will and forever be a refuge for me. I should probably learn to play some instrument soon.

8. Occupy Wall Street is a great movement. I need to go to Occupy Chicago. This is the fight of our lives for my generation. Standing together is the only option these days, at least that’s how it feels.

9. BG’s football team will always disappoint. All Ohio sports teams do this, actually.

10. I miss candid conversations.

11. I miss the wind on a flat piece of land. So, maybe wind isn’t that overrated.

12. I don’t miss wind burn or dried out lips though.

13. I have successfully twice ignored talking to THE ex. Proud of myself for that statistic. (As I typed this out, she tried it again. Funny how she knows I am talking about her.)

14. I want a road bike. And I want to cruise through the city.

15. I find that I prefer a place where no one knows who I am. I also find that I don’t necessarily need company to enjoy a place.

16. I prefer company though.

17. I need to find a beach, and sit there for about a week. I like the idea of lots of drinks with little, dorky umbrellas

18. Maintaining your image is important. Maintaining you is more important. Maintaining others is the most important thing you can do as a man.

19. I miss writing, and need to get back to my routine. I think a short story is due.

20. Twitter is better than Facebook. There, I said it.

21. Live shows of bands will always be the best way to consume music.

22. I am getting older. While I am ok with this in theory, my body seems to be telling me lately, “This kind of suck dude.”

23. Running is awesome, and I miss cruising through my area of my city. Wherever that is.

24. I forgot how good of shape I use to be in, and hopefully, I will be in better shape soon.

25. I hope heaven looks like Bowling Green. Of course, I am making the assumption here that hell would look like Toledo. Or worse, Detroit. (shivers)

26. My dad is one of my heroes and challenges me to be better than him every day. He doesn’t explicitly say this, but I know him. And he is just daring me to do better. My brothers do the same and are heroes to me as well.

So, those are just some of the things I have been meaning to spend 250-500 words on, but did not get the chance to. I will try to get on this more, as I will no longer have the free time I once had. So, if I want to get back into this, I have to just do it.

So, I am in my apartment minding my own business. This is how the dream starts. I could be flying the high skies, exploring worlds unbeknownst to man, but no. I am in my apartment. Way to go subconscious.

Suddenly, a large spider appears. It could have been crawling down the wall or simple slide down its rope of doom onto my coffee table.

I simply saw it as it just appeared.

I don’t have anything to kill the creature, so I arm myself with Febreeze and an aerosol air freshener can. We are set to do battle.

I spar the creature, and get a direct hit. The spider goes berserk and begins rolling about the room, covering itself in its own web. Then, this is when the shit gets real.

As it is rolling around, I notice that the beast is actually growing in size, making the red hour-glass marking on its body much more visible.

I am dealing with black widow.

The eight-legged freak of nature rolls around my apartment, looking for cover. As it covers itself in its own web every time I nail it with my weapons of choice, its grows ad break its temporary confinement.

It hides under the sofa, and I flip the furniture hunting the hunter. It is the size of a small dog now. It hurls itself around the room, attempting to make contact with me.

I realize this back and forth can not on much longer, because the creature will become far too large to manage in any winning manner.

It jumps past me, and armed with my dual cannons of fresh scented awesomeness, I hit it with what I have left, and walk toward it, keeping it pinned in the corner.

I step on the creature and it splits in two. No more jumping, no more spinning. Just death.

Suddenly, I realize I am doing this prior to going to work. So, I rush around and put on some shorts, a polo, socks and shoes and go, leaving the carcass as a reminder to all the other insects of the world.

I show up to work, go about my business. We have a large outdoor meeting. It is an auditorium. And I am presenting today. And it is dress up day for the company. Shit.

In frantic fight for life and death, I forgot I had to dress up for the day. So, I tell a co-worker I need to go, because I left a lot of my presentation at home. I mean, I am not one to point out my own mistakes, even if it was because I was fighting a deadly spider who kept growing as I tried to kill it.

The dream breaks down as this point into parts I can’t really remember. But I did learn something from the dream.

Tomorrow is the day the company said we have to stop wearing jeans, as our casual wear.

Hopefully no spiders appear tomorrow morning. But just in case, I am going to the store, buy some Febreeze and aerosol air freshner cans. You can never be too sure.

I was recently asked if I would make Chicago my home, forever. After watching videos like this, I have no doubt in my mind that future generations of the glorious Volenik clan will be raised, here, in the glorious city known as Chicago.

I have talked to countless people here, and you know what Chicago is?

It isn’t East Coast coldness. It isn’t West Coast stuck-up. Chicago has hardness. This city is filled with people who have paid their dues.

However, the people here are nice. They don’t put on a front, they don’t act like they are anything other than what they are.

I want to take my children to the park, and play in fountains at Grant Park. I want them to see culture without having to see it on the Internet. I want them to not be afraid of the world we live.

People are afraid of big cities, and I get that. They are scary, they have crime. But these negativities that exist, have nothing on the benefits of a metropolis.

I was asked recently if I would make Chicago my home, forever. And I have no doubt in my mind as to what my response will forever and always be.