Audrizzle

So, the other day Laura and I were at the Mall of America in Minneapolis on July 10, checking out this store called Metro Park. It was a pretty sweet store, cool urban clothes that were a little bit too pricey.

Oddly enough, we stumbled upon this t-shirt:

(Pardon the shoddy quality, after taking a photo with Laura's camera, one of the employees told us no photography was allowed in the mall before we could get a decent shot with mine.)

How clever... Someone's FINALLY taking note of the fact that this political revolutionary has become an icon of capitalism, thanks to Hot Topic and others.

But wait. What's that look on my face? Disappointment, annoyance, even anger? Why's that, Amanda?

Well, because I took note of that particular irony almost 9 months ago.

I don't know if any of you remember that I used to post on Conglomoblog before one of its users (and one of my previous friends) Tommy Parker took facist control removed me and most of my posts due to his inability to get revenge on another of my (and his) previous friends. At the time, his only way to get back at her was through me. Anyway, enough with the high school drama. The short story is, due to no fault of my own, I was removed from the community blog. And while we're on the topic of plagiarism, the conglomoblog site refuses to remove the image in their header from their site, which I created from a photograph that I took. I don't really care too much, though, because no one even goes to that site anymore.

Back on topic... The reason seeing the shirt pissed me off so much was because I posted almost the exact image on conglomoblog in october of 2004. Somehow, Tommy didn't manage to delete all my posts, so on this archive page about 5/6 of the way down you can see my post. In case it decides to stop working at some point (and I imagine it will, knowing my luck), here's a screenshot of the post.



click here for full size image
I think it's even more ironic that the only explanation I give to that image is that it's "mine", as in, I created it without influence from anyone (or anything) else.

Over the gestation period between October and July, I didn't think about the graphic at all. My manager at work mentioned his annoyance at seeing a fat kid with many stuffed shopping bags (i.e., the paragon of capitalism) wearing a Che shirt, at which point I considered mentioning my graphic, but didn't. Oddly enough, this was about a week prior to my trip, which included my outrage at having my idea stolen.

Now, I know I'm not the only one who has had this idea (just google 'Che Guevara capitalism shirts') but still, the fact that I have not been able to find any variation of this shirt online now or ever really makes me think that foul play is at hand.

I'm not going to sue, of course. I guess it's my fault for having a decent idea and not, ahem, capitalizing on it.

Again, here are the two images.

My idea:

My idea, slightly revised, totally ripped off:

One last bit of proof that I came up with this before they did.

Feel free to check out the directory yourself for the "Last Modified" date.

So, the moral of the story: Don't have good ideas, post them online, and then not expect to be taken advantage of.

we gave snowy a bath.








in other news, i saw Sloan in minneapolis which was really fun.

I'm too exhausted to do anything else right now though.