Outfit for Today - 12/24/12

Turtle Neck - Mossimo

Sweater - Guess

Jeans - Guess

Jacket - Guess

Shoes - Nine West

Merry Christmas to all of you who celebrate this day.  Personally I generally celebrate the day, but not in any sort of religious fashion.

In my outfit, I really like the coat.  I highly recommend to anyone to spend some money on a good coat.  My wife has a similar coat in white, but she really likes my black one.  I would like it if I owned both.  Since I don't I am happy with the black one.  It is a very slimming color, which is good for those that are rather broad shouldered, like myself.  I also like the turtle neck top, in black, because it too helps to slim down my neck, which is kind of odd, as it adds bulk.

Today I wore this to the movies.  Jules and I went and saw The Hobbit.  I really had heard next to nothing about the movie before seeing it, which is the way I prefer it generally.  Overall I liked the movie, but was quite disappointed to find out that it is the first in a series.  I am kind of tired of all of the series movies.  Come on Hollywood, give me some originality!

I just love these little booties and had to show them off better.

Love Ya!

I Can't Wait for Tomorrow to Pass

I want to tell you how tired I am of the Mayan 2012 end of the world thing.  I am so tired of all of the tv-shows that keep replaying, over and over.  Today it is absolutely ridiculous, show after show, on The History Channel of all things.  Why is that?  Why does a channel, called The History Channel, show programs that have nothing to do with history?

I don't think that it would bother me so much, if so many people in the general public didn't actually believe them.  Maybe it is just the population that I work with, but I encounter many people that actually worry about if the world will end tomorrow.  I have had some people argue with me that the Mayans predicting the end of the world on December 21st, 2012 is a credible theory.

What this is tapping into within me is that I think many people believe in things that are not always real.  I observe in society a spectrum of people.  People who believe in doomsday prophecies are just at one end of the spectrum, or at least closer to it.  Like the Heaven's Gate Cult, those folks were clearly at the far end of the spectrum, the clearly crazy side.

But really, these people just believe something that not everyone believes.  Is it the number of people that believe something that is what makes it more or less credible?

I think most of us do not really think the world is going to end tomorrow, but I think many of us are worried about things that are just as false, just not as easily seen to be wrong.

The world will not end on December 21st, 2012, just as the Mayans predicted, and the world will not end because I occasionally dress as a woman.

On another note, I have been working back through my blog, removing any picture or graphic that I have violated the copyright.  So if you see some of the pictures on my past posts changing, that is what is going on with that.

Happy holidays, love ya.

Copyright Violation or Admiration

If someone takes what you write and reprints it, should you view it as a copyright violation or be proud that you have written something good enough that someone else would like to reprint it?

Does it make a difference why they reprinted it?  Does it make a difference who their audience is?  Does it make a difference if they are profiting from the reprinting?

I have recently been reading up on copyright opinions.  There are quite a few of them out there.  Copyright means, if you created it, you own it and no one else has a right to do anything with it, other than read it, look at it, or listen to it.  But there are some that feel that the original creator will benefit, and further that society will benefit, from freely copying others works.

On the one hand I agree that copyright is silly, but on the other, I think it is of the utmost importance. 

What if someone takes what you have written, removes your name from it, and republishes it elsewhere that is not associated with you in anyway?  I am not quite sure how that would help the original creator.

If someone wants to copy what I have done, and reprint it somewhere else, with my name on it, really, please do that.  That would be a great favor to me.  You would be helping to get my message out, as well as my name.

But I honestly have a large problem with someone copying my work and removing all identifying information from it.  I don’t care that you don’t put your name on it; I care that my name was removed from it.

A comic creator that I enjoy, Nina Paley, draws a cartoon called Mimi and Eunice.  I think it is super cute and is very well written.  Here is an example:

 Nina believes strongly in freedom from copyright.  She tells people to freely copy her work and distribute it widely.  But can you see closely between the frames?  It is her website address, which could be removed but would be difficult.  Also, she is distributing a fairly original and recognizable product.  What do I distribute?  Words.  Words are not distinctly recognizable as any one particular author.  If you remove the author’s name, you remove the only thing that attaches the piece to its creator. 

It was with great surprise that I recently found one of my posts, word for word, reprinted somewhere else, without my permission.  And more importantly, there was no identifying information printed along with it.  The person who took it, did not try and pass it off as their own, but there was also no acknowledgment made that it wasn’t their own.

Here is what I think – if you want to reprint something from my blog, please ask, I will more than likely agree to it, but you will minimally need to state where you took it from. 

Copying is not always great or a compliment.  If you reprint my stuff in a pro cross dressing publication, cool.  But what if someone wanted to reprint my stuff in something that was trying to prove that cross dressers are evil horrible people that should be crucified?  I don’t think I would want anything that I have written reprinted as a part of that.

What do you think?  Should people be able to freely reprint anything, anywhere, that anyone has done?