I woke up on Thursday as if it were any other day;  after three and a half hours of sleep, I reviewed my agenda, peanut buttered my toast and followed my typical weekday routine.  Nothing seemed different at first.  The silhouettes of living people populated my short commute to work.  The lady walking her dog, the man with the moustache, and the hippie pumping gas all seemed very much alive.  I never suspected them of being husks of meandering zombies, oblivious and blight, but alas, life had been sapped away from the world.

Thursday was the day I was tasked to put on a Twitter Webinar to help businesses utilize the social network.  I had begun to rehearse and revise early that morning when I noticed Twitter become slow and sluggish, and finally, unresponsive.  I shrugged it off, as, like most social network sites, Twitter was apt to the occasional hiccup.  I figured it would be back in 10 minutes.

I was dead wrong.

I moved on, changing my schedule around to accommodate with that which was out of my control.  I began work on another website, ready and willing to place content on it, when I realized it too was unresponsive.  Curious, I ran some tests.

Google works.  Pandora is still playing.  The host?  No.  Several other sites on the same host were working fine.  I checked this very site.  Slow and sluggish, and some pages unwilling to load.  Odd!  I investigated the forums of the CMS of choice, had the host test for php errors, and meanwhile got back to preparing my webinar sans Twitter.

Upon attempting to announce that the Twitter webinar was still on despite Twitter's uncooperative behavior, I came to the realization that something big was going on.  Facebook was struggling as well.

The giant was having difficulty accepting new posts, and sometimes would pull up a 404 or other error.  The world around me began to crumble.  Was today the day that the world would die?

I wasn't ready.  There was still so much to do.  There were people that needed poking, walls to write on, and all I could think about was how I still think I had Dude Where's My Car listed as a favorite movie.  It cannot go down like this.  Not now.

I refreshed Mashable every 40 seconds, hoping an answer would come through.  I left Twitter alone, knowing it would only agitate the system, and I cursed at all of the people and applications who were pinging it every single second.  Rumor was that Live Journal was down too.  Live Journal? If all of the governments in the world weren't banning together to resolve this, then their priorities aren't in the right place.  To hell with your religion, your internal affairs, your values, I can't tell the world what I'm doing.

Neither could the rest of the world.  Humanity was paralyzed for several hours, accomplishing nothing.  MynameisLynk was down due to the lack of Twitter, thanks to the currently hidden Twitter module unable to ping it's source.  I can only imagine what kind of damage has occured to sites that require Twitter to function.

August 6th will always be remembered as the Day the Earth Lost Two Hours.

Two days later, the masses are still regrouping.  I, myself, have lost faith in Twitter, and until this very morning, have been able to see what my friends are doing, since I follow 600 people and could not use HootSuite to display only my friends.  Facebook seems foreign, the same way you feel about a friend who totally back stabbed you to get a one night stand with your sister.

In time, I'm sure my heart will heal, but this was only the beginning.  The Denial of Service attack was most likely caused by Cyber Warfare between Georgia and Russia.  The Nation of The Internet is an odd thing, with no direct boarders and no real geographical location, it plays the middleman between all disputes.  Whether it be local between two high school freshmen girls fighting over the last tampon, or two powerful countries fighting over the last tampon, the Internet always seems to get stuck in the middle.

Citizens of The Internet, I ask you to join me, and stand up against this.  We cannot play the victim any longer.  The terrorist attacks of August 6th, 2009 are only just a sample of what could happen if we let this go on any longer.  If we continue to allow other nations to use our domains as war grounds, we will succumb to them, and our history will be erased from the books forever.  WE MUST STAND UNITED!

I say we Keyboard Cat every video on Youtube from Russia and Georgia.  I say we force them on AOL dialup.  The acts that caused The Day The Earth Lost Two Hours cannot go unpunished!  We will not be stepped on and used any longer.  We will fight, and our choirs will sing louder than ever before.  We are The Internet, and We Will Be Heard!