Pedalling Uphill

I hate this corporate trend of using animals to identify their brands.  Currently there are two television commercials that really get me going.  One is Mcdonalds with the two large people sitting on and riding a small pony.  Did any one consider how much weight this little animal can sustain? 

The other is Netflix which shows a horse and rider galloping down a highway.  There are plenty of fools out there who will think galloping horses on paved roads is just fine, when in fact it’s totally not and can permanently damage the horse’s hooves forever causing crippling pain. 

And then there was the one with the cute bunnies.  Like the humane societies aren’t already over run with discarded rabbits.  As I said in my e mail to this company…I hope you’re making a generous donation to rabbit rescue groups who will have to end up caring for the cast-offs. 

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I just received a notice that my painting ‘The War Horse’ has been ripped off and reproduced by an L. Hunt and sold on e Bay.  Apparently she has done this many times…it’s very bizarre to see an image that has come out of your head and partly from a photograph I took of a horse while doing my OWN fieldwork and see the exact copy and someone else’s signature at the bottom.

This is becoming more and more common and some days I think I would just like to shut down my website and no longer contribute in any way to the internet.  It’s not the first time I have seen my work copied and signed with someone else’s name.  But mostly they’re students and unfortunately their teachers haven’t taught them to source their own material so they take the easier path and copy another artist’s work.

The internet can be a great tool and a lot of fun, but really, between the spammers, viruses and all the crooks and theives out there, something should be done to protect the consumer who just wants to own a computer and not have to deal with all the endless assholes looking to make a quick buck.  If cars were as dangerous to drive as computers are fraught with problems, there would be anarchy in the streets!

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Lately we’ve been having bad experiences with rebates.  Most recently, we bought something that came with a $50.00 rebate and after waiting a considerable amount of time, no $50.00 was forthcoming so Abe contacted the rebate company.  They said he was listed and they would be sending it shortly.  Shortly meaning ’short changed’.  We received a check for $5.00. 

More time passed.  Abe called back and apparently his name that was previously listed has disappeared and so has the employee that he had spoken to.  So as is becoming more common these days, we are left to mop up the mess and track down the store where we made the purchase, find someone to deal with and spend a considerable amount of our already stretched to the limit time to try and rectify what will probably be defined as a ‘mistake’.  But why does it seem so much like a scam? 

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Not too long ago, Abe and I went to the Campbell Gallery (they carry my work) on Sherbrooke Street in downtown Montreal.  Because it’s almost impossible to park on these busy streets, we always park behind the gallery in a very narrow lane where each business has little offshoots of parking spots reserved for themselves and customers.

After we left the gallery we started driving down the lane to exit onto the street and lo and behold, a smart looking, black, sporty type car is parked blocking the exit.  So we sat and waited for about 10 minutes…nobody came.  Meanwhile I’m starting to stew at the inconsideration of this jerk…what if there were an emergency or something.  So I told Abe to stay put and I was going to find this guy.  There was only one commercial building in the proximity - a bank located across the street and approximately 100 ft away. 

I entered the bank and it was packed.  I started feeling a little shy, so I did what I always do when that happens, I pretended that I was acting in a movie and started going from person to person asking if it was their car parked in the lane across the street.  No, no, came the replies one after the other.  Finally I came to a guy standing at the teller, yakking away on his cell phone…right then I could see this ’schmendick’ was not going to be interested in our petty problem, so a thought occurred to me…I said “excuse me sir, do you own the black car parked in the lane across the street?”  Just as I suspected, he looked at me as if I was a piece of dog poop stuck on his shoe.  So I said “we just hit your car and you might want to come…” I was going to finish the sentence with “and see the damage”, but no need for superfluous words.  He practically threw his cell phone in the air and ran out of the bank and down the street to the lane.  I had a hard time keeping up with him!! His skinny long legs were really moving! 

Of course when he got there he realized he had been had, but I was too wound up to let it rest there!  I yelled “Do you see a sign that says PARKING SPOT anywhere here???!!” and continued to chew him out while he sheepishly climbed into his car and drove away.  After I got into our car and the anger wore off, I had a fit of the giggles and couldn’t help but wonder if maybe he had learned a lesson because all in all, I had a pretty good time teaching it!

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Here it is January 5, 2007 and the temperature in Montreal at this moment is 48 degrees F. and raining - when in fact it should be somewhere around 28 degrees with snow banks.  Our driveway plowing contractor is making out like a bandit!!   Truthfully, I’m enjoying it immensely, but as with everything, I can’t help but think we’re going to pay a big price somewhere along the line.  Time to get over ouselves and put some pressure on our governements to stop beating each other over the heads and get down to some constructive decision making.

One thing is for certain, the world will survive fine without us.  Humanity is but an irritating itch on the surface of Mother Earth…eventually she’ll find a cure for what itches her and that will put an end to our foolishness.  Unfortunately, superior beings that we think we are, we just aren’t bright enough as a species to come together and appreciate all the wonderous beauty and generosity this wonderful earth has to offer.  It’s called ‘biting the hand that feeds you’.

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“Save your mental health…don’t give a computer a good home!”  - Patricia Bourque

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Ever try to find something on the net, only to be bombarded with and having to pick through a thousand things you’re not looking for?!  What ever happened to being direct?  I liken it to chopping through a thick jungle forest to find a single banana - by the time you get there, you’re too exhausted to eat it!

Or trying to use HELP (a misnomer if ever there was) on computer programs…I wrote to Bill Gates (yes indeedy…I write to them all) and told him if he wanted to make a million dollars , he should come up with programs that people with full time regular type jobs that use computers as part of their jobs (but don’t dedicate their lives to them) could use.  I’ll bet there are 100,000 things in most programs that I’ll never use, but try and find the HELP for the things I do need and it’s almost impossible - let alone decipherable when I do.  It’s called ‘revenge of the computer geeks’!

And PLEASE companies…don’t send me hours of reading material starting out with the words…”To make it easier for our customers…”  Either you think we are really dumb, or we are really dumb…but if I had the time and energy, I would drop you like a hot potato and take my business somewhere else.  Too tired, too busy - you count on that.

SIMPLIFY should be the new Mantra for 2007

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Am I the only one who hates this new way of photography in the movies and more and more on television?  Moving the camera in and out and up and down and as fast as the music plays.  Have we become such a pitiful nation of people with such short attention spans that we can’t even watch a scene without being made to feel we’re jumping around and that we have to have movement every second or we’ll lose interest?  Calm down already!

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Hi Miranda,

I had the worst experience not too long ago while looking for Yorkie puppies to photograph.  I contacted someone through a classified ad advertising Yorkie puppies for sale and I ended up at a puppy mill and was too frightened by the very hostile man and the ’skanky’ woman to just make a hasty exit.  So I stayed and took some pictures as quickly as I could so I could get out of there.  But the image of the place and those people has stayed with me ever since.

They were very tough and totally ignorant on top of it.  I could hear barking and yelping in a barn behind their house, but of course I was not allowed to go there.  The woman had already brought several dirty pups into her house by the time I arrived there and that was all I had access to.  Her husband glared at me the whole time and she couldn’t stop bragging about the fact that she had sold over 4,000!!! pups last year.  Can you imagine what’s going on in that barn/shed?

I came home and contacted our SPCA and several other animal welfare associations and they all told me the same thing.  Quebec has no laws against puppy mills and only very weak laws to protect animals at best.  I tried writing to governement ministers, but of course they just pass you around from one to the other until they wear you out.  So today I went on line to get the Quebec Agriculture Minister’s name and e mail address  (pet welfare falls under ‘agriculture’ here apparently) and wonder if you or your friends might drop him (Minister M. Yvon Vallieres) a quick e mail requesting that he put an end to puppy mills here in Quebec.  Isn’t it just common sense?  And doesn’t it seem like anybody with even a little heart might want to put an end to all this terrible suffering?

ministre.mapaq@mapaq.gouv.qc.ca

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