Dear Poor Lucky Me,
I was recently dazzled by the various fall pumpkin carving suggestions and designs that I found on MarthaStewart.com. There was an entire photo gallery of Victorian pumpkins with lace, fancy glittered pumpkins, glorious pumpkins embellished with upholstery tacks, and on and on. Simply amazing.
Later, while surfing the Better Homes & Gardens web site, imagine my surprise when I came across several of THE EXACT SAME pumpkin photos.
What the hell is going on?
Is there some supreme pumpkin decorating being that creates these designs then sells them to whores like Martha Stewart and Better Home & Gardens? Is it all just a sham, one big creative commodity that gets ripped off or plagiarized? I rarely say this, but where are the lawyers on this one?
I repeat: What the hell is going on?
Signed,
Gourd Help Me
Dear Gourd Help Me,
Although the internet has changed our lives in wonderful and drastic ways, it has also become a haven for perverts and rip off artists. Actually- rip off artists is a mislabel, because it doesn’t take a lot of art to copy and paste shit.
If so-called professional journalists at the New York Times will happily plagiarize bloggers, why wouldn’t some poor sparkle pumpkin photographer be ripped off all over town? And I refuse to condemn Martha Stewart…I REFUSE. She has suffered enough for petty crimes like insider trading.
I think either her art department has some questions to answer, or Better Home and Gardens is up to their usual subversive shenanigans. Those bastards will stop at NOTHING to compete with Martha, but they’ll never win. No amount of stolen pictures or ripped-off center piece ideas will ever put them in the same category as Martha Stewart. And I’m not saying this because I’m the biggest M.S. fan, I just really respect someone so capable of unobtrusive self promotion. Plus, I like her signature cocktail ideas.
Once I was having an actual hissy fit over a plagiarized-blog-situation. There’s a marked difference between an innocent mis-citing, and blatent theft of intellectual property. A wise friend advised me to try and stay calm. Some one who can’t manufacture their own ideas can’t go very far and they’ll be exposed eventually. And if they’re not exposed quickly, you can try and find out where they live and throw bags of dog poo at their car. Because that’s what plagiarizers deserve.
Sincerely,
Poor Lucky Me
plagiarizing is ever present. PLM, i hope you google your blog entries to make sure no one is ripping you off!