The bill, in essence, would have made it a felony to tweet about civil disobedience or to try to organize protests.  It appears that the main target of the bill was the #Occupy movement in Oregon.

Luckily, enough people realized how outrageous and overbroad this bill was — after just a few hours, the bill died in the Oregon Senate.

And I now can go back to romanticizing Oregon, or more specifically Portland.

It’s that time of the month again.
Victorian Kitty at Sophistique Noir is hosting another blogging event. This month the theme is rings!

Rings (from top to bottom) —  green plastic ring with plastic with tinfoil on inside; onyx ring; skull ring with wedding band, and peridot ring; random ring; snake ring; worry ring; and last, but not least, my poison ring.

Nails:  Illamasqua‘s Muse

Bonus fun fact:

Peridot is a great gemstone for goths.  According to Goth Magick, it is a “creativity crystal . . . for people who feel hampered by the rules of society. . . . [P]eridot is a great boost to personal freedom.  Depressives can also find solace here. . . . Peridot is fantastic for dark wiccans as it can keep them from becoming ‘too dark.’”    Squee!

But when I started to paint my wall, it didn’t look black enough.  It looked gray black, almost –no offense people at Benjamin Moore — like a dirty chalkboard.

So I did what any self-respecting goth would do.  I went back to the store and asked the kind folks to put more black in my “black” paint.  They tried — they put as much pure black as would fit in the can.

I went home and tried again.  But it still wasn’t black enough.   Meanwhile the people closest to me were becoming concerned with my obsession on the many shades of black.

I hate being wasteful, but I decided to start from scratch.  I figured that if I am going to paint my dining room black, it has to be the best black I can find.  So I went back to the store and looked at every available black paint chip.  And I found it.  The most perfect black paint ever – Black.

That’s right.  I don’t need Oynx or Wet Baby Seal Back or Midnight Thunder.  Just plain, old-fashioned Black.

I have seen this manicure a bunch of times so I decided to give it a go. For the matte, I used Knock Out Cosmetics’ Flatte Black. And I used Chanel’s Black Satin for the rest. I feel a little guilty about using Chanel, but in my defense, it was a gift (from me to me, cause I deserve it).

The goth world is divided on whether this shirt is genius or blasphemy.

Liz Ohanesian, writer for LA Weekly, tweets that she thinks “they are kind of cute.”  While Liisa Ladouceur, author of “Encyclopedia Gothica” tweets it is “[w]rong.”

In any event, it doesn’t matter anymore. As of a few hours ago, according to Pitchfork reports, Disney has removed all shirts from its shelves because Disney “became aware there could be an issue” and they needed “to review the situation further.”

What does this mean? These shirts are now selling on eBay for more than $100.

Bonus video:

Tiny top hat tip:  Spence

The bargain we make with copyright owners is this: Creators of content get a monopoly over the commercial exploitation of their works. In exchange, we all get to engage in creative or transformative expression using those works, as long as we don’t go too far.

Got it.  You may wonder what exactly is a creative or transformative expression?  Or, how far is too far?  As of now, it looks like judges can lift copyrighted images for use in their opinions.

This week, Professor Althouse reports that Judge Posner used a copyrighted photograph of Bob Marley without giving credit or getting permission  in a judicial opinion and that Judge Posner reasons that his use of the photo falls within the parameters of the “fair use” doctrine.  Judge Posner explained to a reporter, “[i]t’s not as if we’re selling our opinions in competition with a photographer . . . .Using the photo in a judicial opinion couldn’t conceivably be hurting the copyright holder.”  [source]

The case, by the way, involved an Illinois inmate who claimed that prison officials violated his free exercise rights by requiring him to cut his dreadlocks.  The prisoner complained that officials allowed Rastafarians to wear long hair, but not members of the his religion, the African Hebrew Israelites of Jerusalem.  The appellate court ruled that the prison could not favor one religion over another in its grooming policy.

Personally, the spiked-collar look is a little too NCIS lady for me.

Though some spiked collars can be quite lovely.  Recently, I saw a young art student sporting a three-tiered spiked collar.  It worked for her.  And this link has a spiked collar and outfit I like very much.

“More than five years since the deadly white-nose fungus was first detected in a New York cave where bats hibernate, up to 6.7 million of the animals are estimated to have died in 16 states and Canada, the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service announced Tuesday.”

According to the WSJ,

“A scientist studying the mysterious fungal ailment killing millions of bats across Vermont, New York and other states says the experiences of European bats that have been infected with a similar fungus that they’ve survived could provide lessons in the best way to control white nose fungus.”

Let’s hope the European bats have the cure.  In the meantime, if you notice more insects this summer, you know why.