Hmm, Maybe I Should Run for Governor

First of all, over at Pith, I promised that, if I became Governor, I would stop using the word “cooter” and start using the term “vulva.”  That’s sure to please some folks.

And second, I am helpful to my neighbors.  When I came home from work today, my neighbor and her friend were struggling to put together some raised beds and I went over and changed the direction on their drill and tada!  They were able to put their beds together with ease.

That’s got to be something Tennesseans can get behind.

And, shoot, if Woods is right and women should succumb to the magical powers of my ovaries, I can take photos from my last ultrasound and flash it around the state in order to garner votes.

Gaze upon my cysts, Tennessee, ringing my ovaries like a very tiny pearl necklace, and find yourself irresistibly obligated to vote for me.

“Suspicious Bag of Rhubarb”

I have to report that someone in my building just called the cops because someone left a “suspicious bag of rhubarb” on her desk.  My co-worker is now out there trying to convince the police that they could just give the rhubarb to her, since she likes it.  But the police cannot hand the rhubarb to her.  They appear to be offering to leave it in a trashcan where she could then recover it.

Coincidence, I’m Sure

On International No Diet Day, on the day Kate and them’s book is the best seller at Powell’s, the thing screaming from Yahoo is how Kirstie Alley is fat again, but so, so, so, sorry and ashamed of herself and she will, by god, get skinny again.  P.S. Please love her.

“New” Indian Tribes

So, this is interesting.  The state is moving to recognize six tribes in Tennessee.  This is pretty significant for a lot of reasons.

First of all, because we often behave as if the state was pretty empty of people when white folks got here and completely emptied of indigenous people when the Cherokee were relocated.  Of course, such a story presumes that the lines between “Cherokee” and “white man” were easily distinguishable, but, if you read any good history of Tennessee, you begin to see how the Trail of Tears was not about relocating people separate from you, but about having a legal means to evict your neighbors from their farms and steal their land.  And, of course not everybody left because not everyone could be found (even now trying to locate all Tennesseans is difficult and we have roads) and not everyone who considered him or herself Cherokee was, for whatever reason, recognized as such by the people making the decisions about who to evict and who not to.  So, recognizing that there are still people here who are the same people who were here before matters, just in terms of getting history right.

Second it matters because there are ongoing fights about Native American burial sites in the state and often, when developers or TDOT wants those remains relocated, Native American groups, even the Oklahoma Cherokee, find that they cannot get recognition in court as being the descendants of those people.  Having the state legally recognize Native Americans who are here as being “legitimate” Native American tribes should, I would think, aid them in protecting the historic sites of their ancestors and allow them legal standing to fight grave desecration.

It’s also interesting, just from an outside perspective, to note this:

A week earlier, Dr. Richard Allen, speaking to the same subcommittee on behalf of the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma, opposed the bill and questioned whether the groups seeking recognition are true descendants of Indian tribes.

As you’ll recall, the Cherokee Nation of Oklahoma a couple of years ago tried to kick the descendants of Freedmen (who were also of Cherokee descent) out of the tribe.

Anyway, hopefully these folks will get the legal recognition they desire.

I Have Questions

1.  Is Hank Fort still alive?

2.  Cornelia Fort’s sister or cousin?

3.  If we all listen quietly, can we hear the clatter of the keyboards of a hundred angry residents of Columbia, Tennessee writing Microkhan?

Hierarchies Re-establish Themselves

I’ve been around the internet long enough to remember when (and honestly, it may feel like it now, for people who are getting into it for the first time) it felt like some kind of wild frontier where anything was possible and everything was going on and anyone could find a niche and make a name (no matter how small) for herself.

But now/and now it seems like the same old same old.  Celebrities show up and are just as popular as they are in real life.

I had been thinking about this in terms of Huffington Post, where it seems that any fool who can spell science can be considered a science blogger, if people recognize their names.  And I have been growing more and more irritated about the Huffington Post, because no one who writes for it gets paid, but on the backs of their unpaid labor, certain folks become “important people” the media feels it should take seriously.

That irks me, the idea that what you write for free can be used to further the careers of the wealthy.

So, you can imagine that I about fell over when I read this at Coble’s yesterday.  But I went to the website and I read through their fine print and lo and behold:

All content submitted to truuconfessions.com becomes the sole property of True Media Inc.  We reserve the right to publish confessions at our own discretion. We also reserve the right to use and modify confessions as standard procedure for True Media Inc. When you confess on any of the truu confessions channels, you are granting us the right to a royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, fully sub-licensble, exclusive right to use, reproduce, modify, translate, adapt, publish, create derivative works from, distribute, perform, display, and delete such content in other works in any form, media or technology now known or hereafter developed.

Wow.  See especially that last sentence.  When you write something on their site, they own it.  Not only do they own it, but they’re claiming that they have the right to reproduce it, modify it, publish it, and create derivative works from it and to stop others from doing so.

What does this mean in practical terms?

Say you have a husband named “Rope.”  (And I’m picking “Rope” because I don’t know any men named Rope, so the chances of there being a man named Rope who fits the following scenario is slim to none.)  Okay, so you have a husband named Rope and he’s in the military overseas and he likes for you to dress up like Santa Clause and read Walt Whitman to him over webcam and you come to find out that he’s letting his buddies watch and at first you’re embarrassed and then you kind of find it funny.

And you confess to this on their site.

Now, five years later, a movie comes out, maybe called “Cable,” about a guy overseas whose wife dresses up like Santa Claus and reads Walt Whitman to him and his buddies and it turns out to be the The Dead Poets’ Society of the decade.  Teachers take their kids to watch it.  English majors start hitting on ROTC guys.  The actor who plays the spunky wife, i.e. you, goes on to win an Oscar.

And you?

Get nothing.  It’s your story, but after you tell it to them, they can do what they want with it.  They don’t even have to pretend like they’re not ripping you off, because you gave them the right to do that.

Usually, frankly, your intellectual property isn’t worth much, if anything.  But it’s still yours.

And there are folks who like to make a living off of other people’s work (it shouldn’t surprise anyone that the woman listed as the “author” of True Mom Confessions: Real Moms Get Real writes for the Huffington Post).  Don’t make it easy for them.  Your words belong to you and you have a right to benefit from them before anyone else does.

Read the Terms of Service on places.  Make sure your words stay your own.