Gift

When I got home from work today and checked the mail I was surprised by a padded envelope addressed to me.  This was inside:

The return address was the manufacturer but I knew who'd sent it to me.

You see, I'm friends on Facebook with several blogger friends and 1 of those friends saw my posting of this T-shirt, along with some silly comment like "I'd love this for my birthday, Christmas, Easter, whatever!"  Well, Sean (who has a Chihuahua name Harvey Milk) commented on the post asking me what size.  I responded "Large" but honestly thought he was just joking.  I didn't expect him to actually send me this shirt, but I'm happy he did!

For most of us our pets are family, and to me Chihuahuas just seem to be a little extra special.  I love my boys Marvin and Walter for their unique personalities and their adorableness.  So I will proudly wear this T-shirt to share my love with the world.

Thank you, thank you, thank you Sean for your thoughtfulness.  Chihuahuas AND YOU make me happy!

Intellectual property

A strange thing happened this week. I was accused of infringing on someone's intellectual property rights.

What? Me???

A few months ago I wrote about a website that allows you to create custom t-shirts, mousepads, visors, and all kinds of gear. You can upload photos and/or you can type text to appear on your items. I created 2 different t-shirts for Spouse and me to wear to Big Ella's 1st vintage car show. Then I listed the items in the Marketplace so that others who like them could order them, too.

The shirts arrived, I loved them, Spouse & I wore them to the car show events, guys at the car show loved them, and all was right with the world. Until Mon.

On Mon I received the following email:
Thank you for your interest in Zazzle.com, and thank you for publishing products on Zazzle. Unfortunately, it appears that your product, Tail fins, contains content that is not suitable for printing at Zazzle.com. We will be removing this product from the Zazzle Marketplace shortly.

The details of the product being removed are listed below:
Product Title: Tail fins
Product Type: Shirt
Product ID: 235761238692587880
Result: Not Approved
Policy Violations: Design contains an image or text that infringes on intellectual property rights. We have been contacted by the intellectual property right holder and at their request we will be removing your product from Zazzle’s Marketplace due to intellectual property claims

We apologize for the inconvenience, a detailed description of the policies are located here. If you have any questions or concerns about the review of your product, please email us.

Regards,
Content Review Team
Zazzle.com, Inc.

The item in question is a black t-shirt with the words "got fins?" on it. I scratched my head for a moment and wondered how in the world someone could claim intellectual property rights on 2 common words found in any dictionary.

So I wrote to the Content Review Team:
I am puzzled by the email I received below, which claims that my t-shirt design's "image or text infringes on intellectual property rights". Does this mean that someone claims to have a copyright on the two words "got fins"? I find this hard to believe. Can you please tell me what a person or company has to provide to you to prove their claim to the intellectual property rights?

Sincerely,
Mark in DE

Today I got the following response to my email:
Thank you for your email. Please feel free to resubmit your designs as they seem to have been removed in error. We apologize for any inconvenience. Thank you for using Zazzle.com.

So, apparently there was some mix-up about my supposed infringing on someone's intellectual property rights. They encourage me to resubmit my design since it was removed in error, yet my design still appears on their website.

I'm still a little confused, but I'm not going to invest anymore time or energy on it. My design is still there for the fin-loving masses or order.

If I were smarter and actually capable of infringing on someone's intellectual property rights I probably wouldn't have thought it so strange. But since I'm not, I did.

Crush du Jour: Marlon DiGregori

The possibilities are endless

In late Sept Spouse & I will be attending our 1st car show where Big Ella will be entered and judged.

I don't care a single bit about the judging part. We've attended this car show before as spectators and to me, that's what its all about: seeing and appreciating these gorgeous pieces of drivable art.

But in order to show your car to car club members and the public at the show, you have to enter your car, and as long as it is entered, it will be judged by the other car club members. Trophies will be given out in several categories, but as I said, I don't care about that part at all.

The car show will be on a Sat, but the car club is having member activities on Thurs, Fri, Sat, and Sun. I thought it would be fun to have some auto-inspired shirts to wear to some of these activities, so I went online (of course) and found this website that allows you to create your own customized gear (mugs, mouse pads, clothing, umbrellas, you name it). You can type in text or upload photos to appear on your items, and the prices were not as high as I expected for this level of customization.

So I created 2 t-shirts to wear on 2 of the 4 days of the event: this one is obviously a variation of the 'got milk?' campaign, and this one which is an actual photo I took of Big Ella. See? Here's my photo:

and here's the t-shirt. I ordered 1 of each t-shirt for me and for Spouse (although we'll likely wear them on opposite days since Spouse HATES it when we accidentally wear matching clothes), and can hardly wait for them to arrive!

Another cool thing about this site is that you can allow the site to list your custom created items for sale to others. So someone else who loves tail fins like me can search "tail fins", see my 'got fins?' t-shirt, and buy it, and the site will give me credit toward future purchases. You can also create your own virtual 'store' of customized products for other enthusiasts to buy. I mean, if you're a creative person you could literally create hundreds of funny or themed items for your virtual 'store' and possibly earn enough credit to shop on the site for free. I think that's pretty cool!

My mind has been reeling ever since with all kinds of funny and/or poignant sayings and slogans I could put on t-shirts, coffee mugs, etc.

You can create a one-of-a-kind gift for the person who has everything: a coffee mug with "ABBA rules!" on it.

Think of how fun it would be to have customized apparel to wear to family reunions: "Phucker Phamily Reunion", milestone anniversary celebrations: "Dominic & Antoinette's 50th wedding anniversary", and milestone birthday parties: "Steve Collins is really, really old". You can really make a statement at a GLBT equality march by having all your friends show up in the same t-shirt with a tag line: "Equal rights, not special rights".

Really, the possibilities are endless!

Crush du Jour: Owen Hawk

Fantastic Ts

I pretty much got nuthin' today, folks. Its raining, I've got a fair amount of work I should be doing, and I can't think of anything interesting to say.

So I'll give you these fantastic Ts. I would definitely buy these and wear 'em if I could!

And for my favorite:

Crush du Jour: Tom Sturridge