As per usual, during my procrastination-nation homework breaks I go on facebook.com and find someone I hadn’t seen or spoken to in awhile and stalk them. Yes, stalk them. And by stalk I mean look at their wall and their tagged pictures. Don’t judge. We all do it. How do I know? Because I’ve seen you and you at the library scoping out a random person’s page and then minimizing the screen when someone began to walk up behind you.

Nonetheless, Facebook stalking is not the issue at hand, instead it is what brought me to a realization.  As I was Facebook stalking my cousin who lives in the UK (see now it all makes sense), I found a link someone else posted on her wall that was of particular interest to me. The link was to a BBC documentary on the Sikh Diaspora. Naturally, as a member of the said Diaspora, I was interested. However, when I clicked on the link what I received was the dreaded black screen with white lettering: sorry, this clip is not available in your location. Don’t kill the messenger.

I didn’t think much of it beyond a few seconds of feeling sad that I couldn’t see the documentary. Then I moved on.  I was only able to let this insult slip because it was not all that frequent. I am in the privileged position of living in the US and as a result, (hate to say it, but it’s true) we get a lot more of the programming than those in other countries. Frankly, if I lived elsewhere, I would BitTorrent the hell out of my favorite shows. Imagine going to see TV show after TV show and getting that dreaded message? Now that’s insult to injury. Putting salt on wounds. Rubbing it in. Ripping a scab open.