THE ALEHEADS BLACKOUT TO PROTEST SOPA/ PIPA

This yoga position is known as "Commander's Repose"

Since you are an Internet dweller, by now you have no doubt heard of HR  3261, or SOPA (Stop Online Privacy Act) and PIPA (Protect IP Act). If you care about issues like this, I don’t need to explain that these bills were crafted by entertainment industry lobbyists to make file sharing more difficult for foreign websites hosting copyrighted material, but if enacted would for the first time regulate the United States Internet, making it unlawful to even link to an “offending” domain, breaking the model of an open Internet and putting us on par with some of the most restrictive governments in the world. If you don’t care about these issues, I just explained the gist of it in the previous sentence.  Thousands of websites have vowed to “blackout” tomorrow in protest of these proposed legislation, including some of the largest and most innovative in the world: Wikipedia, Reddit, and Tumblr. Others such as Google plan to display links to protest information on their main banner.

But for us here at Aleheads, this is just not enough. No, we’re not going to blackout our website in protest… because frankly, we are whores for pageviews and if the rest of the Internet is shut down, we could end up having a banner day, with folks reading such fare as The Top Ten Most Offensive Beer Labels and Comparing 90’s Rock Bands to Breweries. Nay, our work is just too important to withhold from the public. Plus, we’re not that technically inclined and don’t understand Javascript and stuff, even when the whole procedure is explained in a way a ten year old could understand and implement it HERE.

No, we’re taking our outrage a step further. Tonight at midnight, in protest against SOPA and PIPA, the Aleheads will begin consuming copious amounts of high gravity craft beer and home brew. We are all aging men of varyingly unimpressive alcohol tolerances, but one thing is certain- as we continue to drink across this great country, one by one we will begin to Blackout.

If you’ve never blacked out, imagine being in the middle of the best night of your life: you are handsome, charming, and bulletproof. The world is an incomprehensible swirl of sensory emotions, all telling you” “YES! You are God-Emperor of All That You See!“. You raise another Imperial Pint of the Imperial IPA/ Barley Wine Black and Tan you just invented (destined to become the defining beer cocktail of your generation) and toast Fritz Maytag, Ken Grossman, Valhalla, and the guy who wrote the screenplay to Strange Brew…

The next moment you awake in a puddle of your own fluids. What time is it? What DAY is it? What happened to January 18th, 2012???

BLACKOUT!

It’s like a hunger strike, only drunker. It is a huge sacrifice to make, but we are martyrs for our beliefs. So, if you’re an employer or family member of an Alehead tomorrow, please be understanding. Don’t question them when they’re washing down some Eggo’s or Chex Mix at breakfast with a Flander’s Red from the cellar and pouring themselves another sour beer Mamosa. But of course DO NOT trust anything they say, promise or commit to tomorrow, for they are not in a coherent state of mind. And please, please, please take a second to tell a friend and/or shoot off a quick email or phone call to your congressman and tell them you disagree with SOPA/ PIPA in any form. After all, this country’s corporations and the politicians on their payroll have already instituted an unsustainable social and economic paradigm based upon a faulty model of infinite growth that has led us pretty damn far up the path to mutually-assured destruction…

We’ll be damned if we let them take away our Internet too.

Protest SOPA/ PIPA in your own way tomorrow. Have a beer, harass your congressman, close down your website, tweet, post, like, blog, or just scream it out the window. If it’s gotten our attention and it’s not related to good beer, it must be pretty goddman important.

This aggression will not stand, man. This aggression will not stand.