Back in late 2009, I got into a Twitter conversation with Madeline Ashby about geek culture, fandom, and a bunch of stuff like that. Madeline wrote, “While you were reading Tolkien, I was watching Evangelion.” I thought this was an excellent encapsulation of the divide in SF/F/Whatever fandom, and thus took to Zazzle to make little buttons with her quote. I bought a bunch, handed them out at a few conventions, then I had a kid and promptly forgot all about it.
Until today, when Zazzle emailed me to say they were pulling the buttons for intellectual property right infringement.
And guess who complained about their rights being infringed?
I’ve tried to come up with something more to say about this, but I’m too angry and confused and tired to say anything more than I did in the title of this post. Have fun milking your dad’s stuff, Christopher Tolkien!
UPDATE 2/28/11: Zazzle just sent me this email:
Dear Adam,
This email is in regards to the deletion of your button entitled “While you were reading Tolkien,I was watching Eva”. After corresponding with representatives from the Tolkien Estate, it’s been brought to our attention that the design was removed inadvertently due to a miscommunication on our part. We are happy to inform you that your product has been restored and located here: [URL of old button].
We sincerely apologize for this error. If you would like for us to restore your account simply reply to this email so that we can send you a temporary password to access your account.
Again we apologize for any inconvenience, and thank you for being a seller at Zazzle.
Best,
Mike
Content Management,
Zazzle, Inc
So, everything’s as it was, right? We defeated the bad guys, threw The Ring into the fire without getting any digits bitten off, and we’re back in the Shire for a nice cuppa and sweet Hobbit lovin’ with Rosie, right?
Well, no. I’m going to remove the button from Zazzle; I realize they’re a business, and they have to protect themselves, but the way they handled this whole affair pissed me off. I had to dig to find out who had complained, and when I asked to see the actual complaint, Zazzle told me:
With regards to details of the infringement, all legal documents are confidential therefore I cannot release this undisclosed information. But we ask that you do acknowledge the fact that we were contacted by The J.R.R. Tolkien Estate, and at their request to prevent and remove any unauthorized and infringing third-party uses of their copyrights, trademarks and intellectual properties.
Oh, I’ll acknowledge nothing of the sort, bucko. And I’m also not going to do any business with you guys from now on. If I want this kind of shabby treatment, I’ll go to Fry’s.
I hope to make more of these buttons, and maybe a few others, too, though it’ll be a while before I attend another convention (the primary venue for buttons with zippy sayings), so it’ll be a while before I make more buttons.
Thanks to everyone who commented, especially if it was constructive. Thanks to everyone who posted this far and wide. And thanks to Studio Gainax for not being a bunch of dicks.
Some milestones, for your consideration:
Grace’s tooth count: five, with number six announcing itself at four in the morning with a wailing we haven’t heard since tooth number three. I am not looking forward to the arrival of her molars.
Time it takes Grace to crawl from one end of the house to the other: about thirty seconds, provided she doesn’t get distracted en route.
Solid foods Grace now eats: peas, green beans, chicken, carne asada, rice, salmon, furikake, sweet potato, yam, squash, carrots.
Word count on the novel revision: 15,344.
Word count I was supposed to hit by today: 90,000.
Chances of making that by the end of the day: Ha. Ha. Ha.
Cost of back waxing: forty bucks, apparently.
Video will be forthcoming. Happy November.
This post was written on my phone. That is all.
Note: the filling works really, really well as a side dish. You can also toss some sweet potato in if you like.
Second note: this takes some time, so either do it in two parts (filling one night, ravioli the next), or make it a group activity.
And now: the food.
Last year, I cracked open Joel Friel’s Cyclist’s Training Bible to design a training schedule. The first step was to define goals for the season. They had to reasonable and reachable. I chose finishing mid-pack at Brentwood and the CBR finals and doing the state ITT in 1:05.
Yesterday was the CBR finals, and I got dropped like a bad habit on the second lap. I was in the front with the mighty Ian Grimstad and tried to get a few wheels back, and I just couldn’t muscle my way into a gap. I wasn’t dead last, but I certainly wasn’t in the middle of the pack. Same thing happened at Brentwood, and my ITT time was 1:06.
On the other hand, I now have enough starts to upgrade to category 4, which is supposed to be smoother sailing. And I’ve got all winter to train.
Right now, I feel completely shagged out from this morning’s ride (and still a little squicked out by the elderly Irish gentleman who sat near us; he started out by talking about cycling and Oscar Wilde, and then began downloading his life story of travel, illness, and celibacy, including his longing “to hold a nude woman to my penis,” which he pronounced pennis. There are some things man was not meant to deal with before nine in the morning when the coffee hasn’t had a chance to kick in), and I’ve got a mountain of work to climb (starting with editing Windswept; now that it’s time to wade into it, I’m a wee bit frightened). The tomatoes have given their last fruit, and the weeds are threatening to make inroads in the roses, and I still have no goddamn idea what kind of creature is laying these monster turds by the composter…
And that’s a season. And this is a life. And I wouldn’t trade it for anything.
Except a morning free of that Irish dude. shudder
…it is my policy to correct spelling, punctuation and grammar. In this day and age of instant messaging, sending Tweets and cranking out notes with T9 predictive text, I think it’s important that we all strive to be as clear and concise as possible. I know that when I get an indecipherable email from someone whom I know to be a) educated and b) not dyslexic, I immediately think, “This person is a lazy dumbass.”
I’m not perfect. I don’t always edit, and I let the occasional comma or capital letter slip away, and I feel like a lazy dumbass after I catch my mistake. However, I am still fully qualified to write the following to the person who left me a drive-by trolling last night:
Dear Adam Smith-
Thank you for your email and congratulations on your nom de web. I’m assuming you’re writing me in regards to my various Tweets and Facebook messages about my personal boycott of Whole Foods in light of John Mackey’s editorial about health care in the Wall Street Journal. Using the name of the father of economic theory in a drive-by flaming about economics? Well done!
However, my joy was short-lived when I saw the various grammatical mistakes in your email. I write, so words and the way they’re used is very important to me. I wanted to give you some corrections so you’d be able to express yourself clearer in the future.
First, it should be “cock-breathed liberals.” Note the dash between “cock” and “breathed”; it turns those words into a compound adjective, which is what you intended to do.
Second, you meant to say “You are such losing cock breaths,” not “cock breathes.” Since your implication is since that liberals engage in fellatio on a regular basis, the whiff of one’s partner’s penis is always on one’s exhalations (see the first correction above). What you wrote here implies that the penis is a respiratory organ, which would be a neat trick. My backstroke would greatly improve if I could use my cock for a snorkel.
So, if we put those corrections in, plus a few more for punctuation, capitalization and missing words, your email should have read like this:
Dear Cock-Breathed Liberals,
Stop feeding off of hardworking union members and successful business owners. Move to wherever your fucking paradise is (ie Canada or France).
You are such losing cock breaths. Take your ass out of the USA.
Fuck off!
Adam Smith
See? Clear, concise language. Granted, it still doesn’t make any sense, because my understanding of the Great Liberal Conspiracy was that liberals worked hand-in-hand with unions to bring down said successful business owners. But, hey, baby steps. We’ll work on thesis statements and backing them up next week. Good luck!
Love and kisses,
Adam Rakunas
Wednesday
1020 Arrive Montreal-Trudeau Airport
1025 Find first Montreal bagel and inhale it
1200 Arrive Palais de Congres
1205 Find first Montreal smoked meat sandwich and inhale it
1300-Onward Engage in wild orgy of meals at Au Pied de Cochon, pints of Fin du Monde with old friends, maybe attend a few panels.
(I do very much want to see Melissa Auf Der Maur’s Out Of Our Minds on Friday night, and I know Jetse de Vries and Daryl Gregory will be holding forth on some Very Cool Stuff. But otherwise, I’m going to try and soak in as much of Montreal as I can while making sure Andrew Tisbert doesn’t destroy my liver.)
Saturday
1500 Leave Montreal-Trudeau
2100 Arrive LAX
Sunday
0745 Rock the Brentwood Grand Prix with the Triathletix 4/5s
0830 Collapse