The Junk Drawer

For those following the Plastic Bag Adventure, I thought I’d update you with a picture today. I want you to know I’ll do anything for you guys.

I stood on the roof of my building to get a closer shot. Yes, there is a wall that kept me from falling to my death, but that didn’t make me feel any safer up there. I stopped taking pictures when my legs got weak.

Wal-mart Bag: Stuck 47 days and counting

I went a step further and filmed it flapping in the wind. It’s a breezy day here in Eastern Pennsylvania, but that doesn’t seem to be helping our little friend get out of its branchy clutches.

Some of you are out of the running for the contest. I’m sorry, but I warned you it would be a while. I’m still guessing November, 2009, and it wouldn’t surprise me if it took longer than that. Good luck to whoever’s still in the game!

Notice: This post has been edited since its original publish date. I removed the link to the website in question because the person who took my material wrote me last night, made her site private and hopefully removed my stuff. I can’t prove it, since the site is no longer available to the viewing public, but I’m giving her the benefit of the doubt.

However, I’m leaving this post otherwise intact to remind everyone to periodically check for stolen material. Use Copyscape.com, which is free and will scour the web for places where your material has been republished.

Here is my edited post:

This is going to be one mean, angry post.

There is a woman, a fraud, who is posting my blog material to her Xanga website: [LINK REMOVED]

You’ll see on the first page my bathroom story from the other day. If you scroll to the bottom and click through “Next 5,” (bottom right) you’ll see more stories I’ve written (plastic bag story, First Holy Communion, and so on and so on).

She posted no less than ten of my blog posts, some in their entirety, some not, and some edited to make it look like those were her experiences. I also recognize some of my friends’ blog posts there. I’m disgusted and frustrated.

I’ve written her directly, posted to her guestbook, commented on each of the stolen articles and asked her to remove them immediately. I also submitted an email to Xanga to report the violation of their Terms of Use. Is there anything else you guys suggest I do?

What’s upsetting me the most is that she’s getting tons of comments on those posts from people who think she wrote them. As a writer, this is a most bizarre feeling. To have over 30 people comment to her about what a great story she wrote is extraordinarily painful.

It makes me want to give up blogging if people are blatantly stealing my content and getting away with it. This isn’t the first time it’s happened. I managed to get a MySpace page to “go dark” because I outed another thief.

Please, please, please do not tell me I should be flattered. I am not. I am fuming. Tell me something to make me feel better, and if you have any other advice for me, I’m listening.

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Fellow humor bloggers, you might want to see if she stole your stuff, too.

I received a great little item for the Food That Looks Like Stuff collection this weekend. This devilish tomato comes to us from Carla at blah blah blah Blogolicious. She says:

Here’s a picture of a tomato that grew in our garden a few years ago.  We of course adorned it with necessary facial expression.

I don’t know what it is about tomatoes that makes a person want to draw on them, but I did it myself to Weeble Tomato Guy, who was second to appear in the collection.

Anyone who sends me a food that makes the cut receives a Junk Drawer magnet! So please look carefully at your food before you scarf it down. There might be a prize in it for you!

Lycopersicon esculentum diabolus

I haven’t had many brushes with fame. In fact, only two. Once when Mary Hart of Entertainment Tonight was on our campus at work interviewing Lee Iacocca, she drifted into my building looking for the ladies room.

I was coming down the stairs and was shocked by the woman standing before me. Wearing an exquisite deep blue business suit, perfectly made-up and not a hair out of place, she looked like Miss America.

She asked where the restrooms were and I pointed down the hall. Didn’t say a word. Didn’t get a picture. Just helped her empty her bladder.

The more important brush with fame is that I married a movie star, my husband Dave. Ok, ok. Not a star, per se. But he did appear for about 10 seconds in the 1978 TV miniseries, The Dain Curse. That’s him in his movie costume. He appeared as an extra, an officer handling crowd control in a scene outside a courthouse.

Fast-forward 30 years, he still remembers his encounters with the leads in the movie. Not anything remarkable, mostly glimpses of them walking around the set. But he did say hello to James Coburn, who was pacing around reciting lines to himself.

What that means for me is that whenever we see a movie where one of those actors appeared, I get “I worked with him,” or “I worked with her.” We have a little chuckle over his “acting days” and I think to myself Well, you worked with an actor, but I married one!

So does anyone have more interesting brushes with fame to share? Please tell me you did more than show someone the way to the bathroom.

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Everybody’s famous at Humor-Blogs.com.

Back in March I introduced a Junk Drawer logo created with a tool called Spell with Flickr. Just type in your letters and it generates a logo based on images it grabs from Flickr OneLetter.

It’s a very cool tool, but something about it bothered me. The letters it grabs from Flickr are likely copyrighted photos and I didn’t want to violate copyright.

Chances are none of the photographers would notice I’ve used their letters in my logo, but that didn’t make it any less illegal. Since I also plan to use the logo on merchandise, the copyright issue became even more important.

So what’d I do? I grabbed my camera, took my own pictures and now the logo is all mine! I would have been done weeks ago, but I was on a hunt for the elusive Perfect K, which I managed to get last weekend. Thank you, Karl Ehmer Quality Meats!

I want to thank my uber-talented colleague, Jason Slipp, for creating this new logo out of the million letters I sent him. The poor guy.

Conversations during the design phase went like this:

Jason: So how do you like the latest version I sent you?

Me: I found a new E last night. It’s a great E. I don’t like the E in Drawer, can you put the new one in The, and the old one in Drawer? And I don’t like the K. I need a new K. This one’s too thin. And I’m worried about having two brick backgrounds with the U and the D.

Oh, and look at how many uppercase letters I have! There should be more lowercase and I’m not sure if I love the first R in Drawer, but it’s kinda cool with the circle around it. Oh wait, I do like the first E. Can you put it back the way it was?

Jason: You’re killing me, woman.

For the record, he was paid for his services, but probably not enough for the torture I put him through.

It was a chore getting this thing finished, but pretty fun, too. For weeks on end, I’d be driving along and a great letter would pop out at me. Pull over, take the shot, send it to Jason, tweak the logo.

It’ll adorn the comments section and stuff I’ve created on Zazzle for purchase or to hand out as blog contest prizes. Eventually, it’ll appear at the top of the blog once I get my theme perfected.

Another big Thank You goes to JD of the I Do Things So You Don’t Have To blog, who slogged all over her town looking for letters for me. She sent me half a dozen signs and one of them made the cut. JD, your wonderful right-corner R takes its place in blog history!

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In other Junk Drawer news, if you’re following the progress of the plastic bag in the tree, it’s still there, and it’s still driving me nuts. Check out the Plastic Bag Tracker box above my picture in the sidebar, updated daily.