We had two really unexpected things happen on our last vacation. First, my husband was walking down the street in Turkey when two big, black, scary looking dogs crossed his path. The first just walked on by while the second decided take a big chomp into his leg. He instinctively kicked the dog in the head and both dogs ran away.

We’re really grateful because even though my husband is 6’4″ tall, if both dogs had decided to stay and fight he could have been in real trouble. But, they ran. After a trip to a Turkish emergency room, a couple rounds of antibiotics and multiple rabies shots (one more left to go!) he’s fine.

The other unexpected thing that happened to us in Turkey was my first real experience with internet censorship. I’m an advice column addict, so when I clicked on my daily dose of Annie’s Mailbox I was surprised to find that it had been deemed a questionable site and was blocked. Now I agree that that site is questionable, as their advice tends to be dumber than Dear Abby’s, which is quite an accomplishment, but I hardly think it needs to be blocked.

In all my world travel, I haven’t run into this before and quite frankly it shocked me.

Now, as my regular readers know, I’m no friend of plagiarizers. As a writer, I value copyright laws. But the current SOPA and PIPA legislation is similar to the dog that bit my husband. There was no need for the dog to bite in order to tell him that this was the dog’s territory. The bite was painful, infectious, and (ultimately) expensive.

Together we can kick back as effectively as my 6’4″ husband did. To learn more about why you should, check out the Wikipedia article on SOPA and PIPA and if you agree with me, please contact your senator and representative.

Because the government shouldn’t have the power to bite like this.

(The photo is of the Circumcision room at Topkapi Palace in Istanbul. Don’t you wish you had a room in your house dedicated to that procedure?)

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12 thoughts on “SOPA, PIPA and Dog Bites

    1. It certainly could have been! We’re grateful it wasn’t that bad. And we’re also grateful that it happened when the kids and I weren’t there. If the dog had attacked one of the kids it could have been deadly.

      1. And also it was in a time when the rabies shots aren’t too bad, unless Turkey does ’em old style. I was quite relieved when I had mine–a lot of them, admittedly, but no more traumatic than regular shots.

        1. He said they weren’t bad. Turkey has something like 125,000 people needing rabies shots every year. The emergency room he went to had a person just dedicated to that!

          The bad one was the gamma globulin one. He’s a big guy so he needed a lot.

          I think he’s down to one more shot. So thankful for modern medicine!

          1. Gamma globulin – yep, I’ve had those, they go by body weight and from what I remember – they feel like a “burning” corn syrup being injected! yikes! Best of luck.

  1. I was bit by a mouse when I was five. I had to have fourteen rabies shots in my stomach. My mom had to pull me out from under the bed after the first one. She sat on my arms and the doctor (who lived down the hall from us) sat on my legs while he gave me the shot. I have stayed away from wild animals since.

    PS I had to get GG shots every three months when I was a Peace Corps volunteer. Everyone else complained that the shots left their buttocks sore, but I had no problems. That is, I had no problems until I lost some weight and the shot went into my muscle instead of into my fat!

    1. Oy. Yes, they are much improved. In the arm now and he said not painful. The worst was the last and that was just because he had a colleague who is an MD administer it, rather than going to a hospital. Makes sense, except that the MD was a pathologist and hadn’t given a shot to someone in years and years.

  2. Wait, what!? TWO EHRL columns with a political bent in one week that I agree with (the teacher pay columne being the other)!? Guess we’d better get ready for the end times!

    🙂

    1. It is 2012, so we know the world is ending. Either that or the Mayans ran out of room on their calendar.

  3. the other scary international agreement is Acta, that has just been signed by 22 countries including the US, canada, Europe.

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