Thursday, December 19, 2013

Art and the Artist -- UPDATE



Once upon a time, way back in the Year of Our Lord 2009, I created this post:

Oompa Loompa Sprayontan Dude

I've got another puzzle for you
Oompa loompa doompeda dee
If you are wise you'll listen to me

Who do you fault when your Party's insane?
A shrieking, bigot-riddled daisy chain?
Rabid from a diet of paranoid lies
Peddled by demented teevee guys?

The
Gutless
Party
Leadership

Oompa Loompa Sprayontan Dude
Letting his Party come completely unglued
A laquered corpse, irredeemably screwed
Like the Oompa
Loompa
Sprayontan
Dude

It was fairly popular.  People liked the rhyme and loved the graphic.

Then, as near I can figure, a short time later some clever dog thought that the graphic -- ingenious as it was -- had one major flaw:  my signature.

Today, my defaced original artwork showed up at Wonkette.

A little detective work revealed that my defaced original artwork was up at Mike Malloy's site as far back as 2010 (not that I think Mike had anything to do with it.)

I'm one of the last single-shingle sites out here.  There are no interns.  There is no research staff. There are no other writers.  I make my own original artwork, write and edit my own essays and do my own research, and since I do not have ads or "sponsored content", my only source of revenue from this site comes from irregular, voluntary and much-appreciated reader contributions.

Since I don't have a byline in any newspaper or magazine anywhere, and am rarely linked by any large website sites (even the ones I haven't pissed off :-), exposure and word-of-mouth are my only means of increasing my readership.

Borrow my art and words as you wish.  But deliberately scrubbing my signature off of my work is unacceptable:
Who steals my purse steals trash; 'tis something, nothing;
'Twas mine, 'tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.

UPDATE:  Being mensches, the good people at Wonkette emailed me a nice note and kicked a few bucks into my tip jar.

The system works!


3 comments:

OBS said...

I never understood why people do that. It's sadly all too common in the internet age. Here's to hoping you get all, and I mean all the credit you deserve!

Cinesias said...

DG!

You need to start copyrighting your stuff!

It doesn't take a whole hell of a lot, and it gives you control over your own work if and when people start stealing it.

Tengrain said...

Drifty -

That scared me. I have a similar bit of art, but mine I have Weepy's eyebrows white. I'm not sure if they are from the same era (probably), but I can swear on a stack of King Jameses that I did not copy yours.

Creative Commons, my friend. It applies to art. Flickr can help you organize that. I host (almost) all my art there.

Rgds,

TG