Purely through happenstance, right-place-at-the-right-time kinda coincidence, tonight it was revealed to me that my Squished Frog Productions logo above, designed for me a few years back by my cousin Jeremy, has been appropriated! Pirated! Stolen!

Some dude in Second Life is using that frog image to sell something called "Custom Gestures" through a virtual business called "Frogs Follies." All he/they did was add a tire-track over the pic.

Not sure how to react to this. On the one hand, it's flattering for Jeremy, who draws a kick-ass cartoony logo. But should I be all up in this guy's grill over it? It's not like he's stealing money out of our pockets. But we all know what happens if you don't protect your intellectual property. Eventually, you're a corporation that's fighting tooth and nail to continue copyrights and trademarks on stuff that should have been public domain long, long ago.

Hurm.

The guy who runs it has had the theft pointed out to him politely, and claims someone else made the art for him... hell, maybe it was Jeremy! (Jeremy? Was it? Huh?) But I doubt it.

I was almost set to let it go, but the guy dug in his heels and said something to the effect that he can use any image he wants from the Intertubes, as long as he modifies them. Yes, I'm sure Disney feels that way about images of Mickey snorting blow off a hooker's ass.

I'm not sure on the copyright/trademark issues here. I don't care. Uncool is uncool. Being an asshat is being an asshat. Pure and simple.

Clip art, folks. It is your friend. When in doubt, use it. When not in doubt, you're just a crook.

Remember my bet with the wife? She said in early August she'd have finished reading Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows by the end of the month, or she'd owe me $100 bucks.

We went and saw a play last week called All the Great Books, Abridged and during the intermission, she actually convinced me that she read War and Peace, in high school, on her own, for FUN. I almost panicked, thinking she might actually still read the book.

Ha! Guess what? She doesn't care at all that Hermione Granger was eaten by horcrux zombies, or that Neville and Ron were obviously having some kind of tryst even in the epilogue. So, I get free money! (Actually, I'm getting a professional massage and a big ol' plate of home-made potato chips at my favorite restaurant. But that'll equal one hundred smackers.)

One of the best shows on TV no one watches? It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia. Learn to love the most unlovable and NSFW people on television by watching an entire episode free.

"I'm going to go oil my chainsaw... because drawng a confession out of someone is like doing a beautiful dance. A beautiful dance... with a chain saw."

I've got a new outlet for complaining about technology -- it's called my job! I can actually bitch and moan about stuff my computers and vendors pull, and get paid while I write about it. Sweet. I hope I can make it a habit. My first tale (VoIP Woes: I Can't Get Much Satisfaction) is now live at PC Mag's Appscout.com blog.

PS: Let me know if you want a GrandCentral invite, I've got a few left.

Isn't it nice to be part of something big? That's how I'm justifying the fact that last night I actually watched .... High School Musical 2. It was, according to TVGuide.com, the "most-watched basic cable telecast ever" with 17.2 million viewers.

I was the only person in America over the age of 25 to see it that didn't work for Disney.

Worse, I'd never seen the original, so I TiVoed it on Thursday and watched them back to back. I found it a little annoying that the
characters seemed to always be saying, "I can't sing or dance," and yet
express themselves by breaking out into full-cast production
numbers.

I have to admit, some of the tunes were catchy, tho apparently not catchy enough for me to remember them today. But man, talk about syrupy sweet. Are there enough 10-year-old girls in the world to seriously make this such a mega-hit? I guess so.

In other news, after viewing, I'm now a diabetic.

I've been on the job at PC Magazine for a month, but only as of today my first bylined work has gone public. That's just how things work in the print world, it takes longer. You have to cut down the trees and buy the ink and stuff. Deal. This likely wouldn't be up now either except that it's not in print, it's online! On the Intertubes! What I did was, I wrote blurbs about a number of sites up for our annual Top 100 Classic Web Sites list. You can download the entire list to your own browser's bookmark file if you want.

Check it out. I'm especially proud of my write-ups for Fark and Instructables (one of the few with links). Unfortunately they cut my mention of "Captain TJ Hooker Kirk" from Priceline, but they left the Jedi joke in BeliefNet. Rock.

I'm sorely bummed. Mike Wieringo, one of the greatest comic book artists working today, died this past weekend. Heart attack. Age 44. Jesus Harold Christ, what a world.

I dreamed someday, if my book sells, I'd get the publisher to ask him to draw the covers -- I'd love them to have comic-book-like cover art. I mean, look at how well he draws dogs. And kids. He illustrated the best  Spider-Man and the Thing of the last decade. I would have loved to see him do Shazam! -- he drew Captain Marvel right. He could draw the hell out of just about anything, from sexy women to hideous creatures. An amazing talent, lost.

Ringo, you will be missed. Time to go buy that Tellos Colossal collection.

Joe and I were talking on Skype video chat the other day about spoilers and I showed him one of the trauma's of my childhood. My first spoiler.

I do pretty good avoiding spoilers, and I try not to spoil things about entertainment for other people (the fact that Harry is Voldemort's illegitimate son with Prof. McGonagal, not withstanding.) But I remember with startling clarity the first time a big reveal was, well, revealed to me before it's time.

It's some time in early 1980. I'm ten -- old enough to be buying my own comic books with money I earn just by existing (the miracle of the "allowance.") And well before the May 21st release of perhaps the greatest space opera of all time, I bought the Marvel Comics adaptation of "The Empire Strikes Back."

Inside there is one single panel showing any detail at all of a new character who would become legend. His name was Yoda, and he was colored... purple. And was ugly in a way that would make even the Yoda we know today disgusted. They'd drawn the comic well ahead of time based on original Yoda designs, all to rush the book out ahead of the film. I liked him tho, and I remember making a plush Yoda doll at the time, out of an old t-shirt which I colored purple with a magic marker, then I drew on the face. I quickly threw him out when the look of the "real" Yoda became well known.

I had to wait until it was well known, because I never saw Empire in theaters in 1980. So crushed and horrified was I about the revelation of Luke's parentage, I didn't even go. That didn't stop me from buying the LP featuring music and dialog from the film, plus the novelization. And an original Yoda action figure (green this time, not purple). I was actually a bit obsessed with the Jedi master for a few months... he was the green fairy god-father I wanted back then.

Amazingly, I didn't actually see Empire until it premiered on HBO. Where I probably watched the movie 347 times. I didn't see it on the big screen until the re-release of the special edition in 1997.

I've managed to never make that mistake again, at least not too egregiously. I did know Rosebud was a sled. And I have copped to a couple of things on LOST perhaps, but not enough to make me skip watching. But probably no surprise in entertainment was as big as hearing "No Luke. I am your father." Even when it was said in a comic book.

My wife doesn't read. Books that is. She's not illiterate. She just doesn't make the time or have the desire to read books, which drives me crazy since, at last count, I have over 1,344 tomes (including many with pictures) lining shelves all over the house.

But Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows should have been the exception. She read the last one, Half-Blood Prince, until she got sick. (I always pity those who can't read in the car...its how I spent most of the rides I took between age 10 and 16. Learning to drive has severely cut into my reading time for the last 21 years.) But here it is, a full 2+ weeks since the book came out and she's only read the first few chapters.

So a couple of days ago I bet her $100 she won't finish the book before the end of August. That's right... I'm essentially paying her to finish a god-damn novel that 90% of the rest of the world finished by July 23. But I'm sick of not being able to say [SPOILERS!] that Hermione is Harry's long-lost sister and that Ron and Chewie -- I mean Hagrid -- save the day when the drop the sheild around the Death St-- I mean, Hogwarts.

I probably should have waited to make the bet in September. She wouldn't have finished it by then either, and even she won't be able to ignore the siren call of a new TV season completely. Then again, I didn't think she could avoid knowing that Harry's got a horcrux in his pants, either.