I'd tried to put out of my mind how UNoriginal I was when it comes to cover design, because I still thought myself something of an artiste, like, say, when it comes to photographs. Such as photos like the one on the right, a picture of an American flag I took outside of what used to be Mr F's kindergarten.
I love that picture; it's one of my favorites. I was proud of the way I'd gotten it just right with the sun and the way the flag looks tattered and it's kind of see-through, etc. etc.
This morning I went to read Gawker and noticed that the picture on the top of the story about Greece missing an IMF payment blah blah blah Europe was this picture:
And I thought oh man someone totally copied me. (In this case, the someone is the AP.) But before I dashed off an angry email to Gawker, the AP and Greece (Dear Greece, Please do not place your flag in front of the sun anymore, I have a copyright on that) I thought about that eyeball-cover thing and googled images of flags in front of the sun and realized I'm not the only one who thought of that.
It's actually not that new of a thing, to realize I'm not the only person who thinks something is picture-worthy, but it happened twice in the last 12 hours, so I'm reeling a bit here. We were at the library last night, and as we sat in the teen section (better, comfier seats and there's hardly ever teens at the library plus the teens who do go to the library are generally not the kind that scare me) I noticed pictures on the wall for a photography/art contest. And in that series of pictures by teens were pictures of boats lined up outside the UW down on Lake Mendota, a couple sitting on a pier at sunset, and a bridge in the nature preserve taken from a low angle.
Those are all pictures I have taken, too.
It all reminded me, too, of the kerfuffle over the iceberg picture. Maybe you already heard about this: a woman was accused of plagiarism after her photo of an iceberg:
won a contest, and another woman noticed that contest-winning photo and accused the winner of plagiarism and photo theft.
But it wasn't. Instead, the accusing woman had taken this picture:
Turns out they were on the same cruise at the same time and took the same photo from slightly different angles on the ship. No plagiarism, a weird coincidence.
Also at the library, I walked past a book about a person who died and is now stuck in her afterlife until a guy comes along and offers a way to get her out of there. The details are different but it's sort of the same them as my book the After.
And all this is going on while I have to keep hearing about The Martian, which is a book about an astronaut alone in space, and which is being made into a movie, unlike my own Eclipse, which continues to not be made into a movie despite obviously being perfect for making me rich.
Finally, there's this: I recently (as you may have heard) wrote this book about how a corporation has been cloning people and the clones are roving among society many of them without knowing they are clones, and there's a group of people trying to stop the cloning practice. Maybe I mentioned it before?
Well, I heard about this series Orphan Black and thought boy a lot of people are talking about that, maybe I should hate it before I ever see it? So I checked it out on Wikipedia, and read this:
The series begins with Sarah Manning, a con artist by trade, witnessing the suicide of a woman, Beth Childs, who appears to be her doppelgänger. Sarah takes on Beth's identity and occupation as a police detective after Beth's death. During the first season, Sarah discovers that she is a clone, that she has many 'sister' clones spread throughout North America and Europe, and that someone is plotting to kill them and her. Alongside her foster brother, Felix Dawkins, and two of her fellow clones, Alison Hendrix and Cosima Niehaus, Sarah discovers the origin of the clones: a scientific movement called Neolution. The movement believes that human beings can use scientific knowledge to direct their evolution as a species. The movement has an institutional base in the large, influential, and wealthy biotech corporation, the Dyad Institute. The Dyad Institute conducts basic research, lobbies political institutions, and promotes its eugenics program, aided by the clone Rachel Duncan. But it also seeks to profit from the technology the clones embody. It has thus placed "monitors" into the clones' personal lives, allegedly to study them scientifically but also to keep them under surveillance
Anyway, I'm not complaining even though every single idea I've ever had was also had by someone else and all those people are making millions of dollars and living luxurious lifestyles in tropical islands. HA HA I AM NOT BITTER AT ALL. *looks at desk held together by duct tape* NOT AT ALL.
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