Mitchell Surprenant

Sometimes, I forget there are liberals and Democrats in this town. I mean, i do work in Campbell County. Courtesy: WaPo

When I moved to Lynchburg in June, I used to talk up that I lived in Chicago, because most people were generally interested. It’s new and exciting to meet people not from the next county over.

When I told one old woman I was from Chicago, she smiled and asked if I had voted for Barack Obama. When I told her that I had, she smiled harder. This woman told me then that she was finally proud of the vote she had cast in November for Obama. “I think he’s finally going to change something.”

But that woman and people like her are few and far between, so when I find them, it makes me all warm inside.

A woman came up to me at about 8:30pm tonight (Monday), and demanded to speak to a manager. It’s common for customers to ask, so I paged the manager on duty to the front of the store. While she waited, I turned away from my conversation with a co-worker and asked, “Is there anything I can help you with?” “No. I need to talk to a manager.”

When the manager arrived, the woman huffed, “I need to speak to you outside.”

“Uh, ma’am,” the manager replied, “I’m the only manager on duty, and we’re not really supposed to leave the store if we’re the only ones here.” This woman was not having it, and demanded that he come outside. There was quite a bit of commotion, but I couldn’t make out what was being said.

Another woman, already in the store, had started to give her view to the manager as well. “Oh,” said my coworker, “they’re talking about my car.”

Indeed, they were. That’s the “Don’t Tread on Me” sticker and a bumper sticker for Liberty University. (On an unrelated note, what does LFFL mean?)

The other woman had come back in to the store briefly, and I heard the first woman yell, “If that’s an employee’s, I’m going to take my business elsewhere.” She continued to chew the manager’s ear while I turned my attention back to the coworker. The manager was trying his best to calm the obviously irate woman down.

Not being the kind of person who steps down on political issues, my coworker yells, “Well I guess they’re the kind of people who are okay with living in a totalitarian society.”

“Dude,” I mutter to him, “don’t polarize at work. It can’t end well.”

The second woman rushed back to the front door shouting, “I now know whose that is, it’s an employee.” Both women left, and didn’t spend a dime. They probably went to CVS across the street, where politics won’t be shoved down their throat.

The manager took the coworker aside and I don’t know what they talked about, but it probably wasn’t good. Apparently that manager called several other managers to ask about specific company policy. Nobody knew it, but I intend to track it down. I’ll keep you posted.

This coworker then came up to me and stated that it was his belief that if they (Walgreens) forces him to remove it, he will get the Liberty Council to sue the company.

I tried, in vein, to explain to him that his First Amendment rights do not apply in this case, as he was AT WORK and, contrary to popular belief, Walgreens is NOT the federal government. What is it about conservatives and misinterpreting the first amendment? (Sorry, but it’s sometimes too easy to pick on Sarah Palin.)

If, then, he explained, it is to come that on Walgreens property he is not allowed to display his political beliefs (which, by his own admission was just to piss people off), he will fight to remove:

1. A coworkers “Darwin” fish (which he claims was just there to piss him off)
2. Another coworker’s COEXIST bumper sticker (which he says he fundamentally disagrees with)
3. Another coworkers Confederate flag window cling (for which he had no ill comment)

(images pulled via a google images search, exact urls coming)
The most polarizing I am at work is a button I wear that says “Save the Internet.” But what do I know? I’m just a liberal.

As I noted in a previous post, I went nuts when I realized that one of my photos had gone un-attributed for months.

Well, my efforts to rectify the situation proved fruitful. Twitter is probably my favorite tool when it comes to communication, and that’s how the problem was solved.

Does this work for you? http://tr.im/zb92 I put the same notice on my website: http://tr.im/zb9z Let me know! (link)

Followed by:

I completely understand where you are coming from- it’s so easy to get images and forget to give credit, that’s the last thing I’d want to do to another artist! (link link)

So yeah, that works for me. Copyright crisis averted, but maybe I’m not going to have as much luck as next time. Thanks for clearing the whole thing up, Delia, and you’re more than welcome to use those awesome photos in the future, provided a link is given.

Yes, it’s true. One of my photos was stolen!

When Kari Byron came to Eastern Illinois on September 26, 2007 (not 2006 as the EXIF data implies), I had use of a Canon Rebel XTi from the school. I took this opportunity to use the camera to take lots of photos of the Mythbusters star, and uploaded them to FlickR. All of that set can be found here.

I didn’t think too much of it till I tried (in vein) to get a few of my shots uploaded to Wikipedia’s article about her. I did the same thing for Jim Edgar. At least that one stuck.

Stumbling around the internet as I often do, I came across a website called Current.com and an article by an enthusiastic writer going by the moniker “Delia the Artist.” I was floored to see my photo accompanying the article. But i was even more floored when I quickly hit Ctrl+F to search for where they had attributed my work back to me. They hadn’t.

The article linked back to Delia’s webpage and, sure enough, under Interview Archive was my picture again next to the article. (Scroll down or just search for “Kari”)

/facepalm

So, I comment on the current.com article and @reply her on Twitter (@DeliaTheArtist). Still awaiting a reply, and not wanting my plight to go unnoticed, I also used the contact form on her website.

Delia,

As a photographer, I’m proud of the work I do. I work hard to make my work desirable. But I tend to get really pissed when someone takes my work out of context and presents it as their own.

You’ve done just that with your interview with Kari Byron. I read the interview (http://current.com/items/90091857_interview-with-kari-byron.htm) and actually rather enjoyed it. But, unfortunately, I’m not here to compliment you on the article. The photo you used for your interview is MINE.

I’m more than allowed to defend my own copyright for the photo of Ms. Byron (on FlickR: http://tinyurl.com/laqguo), as it was not a work-for-hire. I uploaded that whole set to FlickR knowing that it would receive lots of views and more than a few comments.

What I didn’t expect to was to have the photo stolen and used on a website without attribution (which is where the Creative Commons license comes in ).

There’s not even an attempt to link the photo (on current.com or your own website) back to my FlickR profile. The photo on your website is hosted on TinyPic.com. Thanks, seriously.

Now, I like to think of myself as a nice guy. But I worked pretty hard to make sure people knew that photo was taken by me. Whenever anyone on FlickR wants to use my photo, they send me a message, and I’m more than happy to oblige, with attribution.

I believe that your intent was not malicious, but I’d like to remedy this as soon as possible.

I wanted to make sure I contacted you in as many ways as possible so my message was not ignored. I’ve commented on the current.com article, @replied you on Twitter and have (now) used the contact form on your website. I don’t want to send a DMCA notice to your host, but that’s the next step I’ll take if I don’t hear from you soon.

Regards,
Mitch Surprenant

http://www.mitchsurp.com

I’ve also contacted TinyPic about getting it removed from there, so I guess we’ll see. I now know what content creators get so frustrated about when it comes to copyright.

I’d like at the very least attribution in the article and website and acknowledgment of wrongdoing. We’ll see what I get.

Update: Drama averted.

I’ll say one thing about my job: I like going. I really do. I don’t get paid the most money, and I’ve got to deal with a good number of terrible people, but I like going to work.

I like that I get a paycheck every two weeks because I go and do the best that I can.

When I go to work, I try to keep the politics to a minimum. I have discussions on and off with other photo techs and some of the managers, but I’m VERY careful to keep my mouth shut around customers. In God’s town, you’re red, or you’re a commie.

Working in a drug store, the customers talk about this health care reform bill a lot. I went back to the pharmacy, and heard a woman complain about the huge price she was paying for her prescription drugs, “but I still don’t support this whole health care bill.”

I bit my tongue. Didn’t say a word to her. I could have used that opportunity to be an informed citizen and asked her why she opposed this bill if it would force the insurance companies to lower their costs. But I didn’t. Because like my job.

Then, there was today.

But first, some back story: Walgreens is “promising” flu shots for anyone who comes in from 10am to 4pm, and they plug that it’s covered by Medicare part B, and may be covered by your insurance.

Well, to promote it, we’re offering the employee discount on purchases (15%) to anyone who gets the shot.

A woman in clearly poor health came up to my counter, buying Ramen noodles, some laxative and Altoids. She got excited when she saw the 15% coupon, and asked how she could get the discount. When I explained, she sighed the biggest sigh I’ve ever heard. “I don’t have insurance…” she sadly mumbled as she opened her wallet to pay full price.

Right there. I knew I could have converted her and her close circle of friends to support at least the public option. But I didn’t say a word. I bit my tongue. Because I like my job.

:-/

Go ahead, keep your kids home from Obama’s speech today. Clearly, you’ll be sending a message to, uh… the school district.

You sent your political message, though. You made your point.

But you’d better start watching your kids’ internet usage. Because all the kids with regular (read: normal) parents are going to be talking about how cool it was to see the president tell them to stay in school. Your kids will probably just watch it later on YouTube, or MySpace, Facebook, Twitter or hell, lets still make believe that people go to DailyMotion.

But you made your point. You kept your kids from that socialist, fascist Obama while they were in school, right? You made a difference, didn’t you?

There’s probably a good chance you’re going to want to keep the TV off for a few days, too. Even your beloved Fox News will be covering the faux outrage and replaying the damning video evidence.

Your kids are probably going to be teenagers at some point. Your kids will probably rebel against you, and remember that you made them stay home during some speech that, had you not said anything, probably would have been forgotten in less than a year. Heck, they may even start supporting *gasp* LIBERAL and PROGRESSIVE causes.

But you made your political point. You kept your kids from being indoctrinated with those socialist agendas such as, “Stay in school,” “pull yourself up by your own bootstraps,” and that terrible, awful socialist doctrine, “create the next Google, or eBay.”

You made this out to be a bigger issue than ever. Your children are going to see this message whether you like it or not.

I was absolutely floored by a customer today.
He had come in to get some pictures printed. As with most customers, he wanted a quick quote of what it would cost him.

“Uh… Thirteen… times…,” as I fussed with the calculator, “$5.07, not including sales tax.” That’s something I always say, just because I’m too lazy to figure out 5% of non-food and 2% of food and add it to the total.

“Ah,” the old man smiled, “that’s the Obama tax.”

Quick on my feet, I defended, “Actually, that’s the Virginia state tax. Been that way for years.” I smiled in hopes that he was joking. He didn’t smile back.

“Pretty soon, there’ll be an Obama tax,” he warned.

Then it struck me– this guy actually believed that Obama could get away with a huge increase in state sales taxes. At this point I imagined Obama in the White House, picking random states and numbers, laughing evilly the whole time.

“A ha ha ha, 10 percent Obama tax for Oklahoma. 1 percent Obama tax for Ohio.”

The concept of an Obama tax is frighteningly hilarious and hilariously frightening.

In this town, I think it’s safe to be a conservative and maybe a conserva-Dem. I want to be neither.