Venting blog 25Million: Copyright

I am so frustrated right now.

The other night we all went down to the music building and jammed. We do this many nights. It's what we do. I even jammed; I brought my ukulele.

At some point, I handed my Flip camera to this woman who was hanging out. I asked her to take some video once we got playing, and she happily agreed to.

At the end of the night, as we all packed up our instruments and started heading back to our rooms, one guy, let's call him Rajesh, stopped me.

"You got some video?" he sounded excited.

"Oh, yea, I asked her to film some."

"Well can I see it?" still sounding excited.

"Of course. I'll put it on the internet --- that is, of course, unless you'd rather I didn't. I know some people are funny about that."

"Right. I'm one of those people. I'm funny about that. I'll need to see it before it goes on the internet."

Admittedly, I've thought myself into a box here in terms of video sharing. "But in order for you to see it, it will have to be on the internet."

"Can't you play it from that right there?"

I took out my camera and played him the last clip. Rajesh held it up to his ear and commented that it sounds great, and to put it on the internet. This was Sunday.

No one stayed out Monday because of the late Saturday and Sunday nights, so I stayed in and finished editing my Travel Vlog. I thought about uploading the stuff from the music building, but I didn't get around to it. Just not high on my priorities.

Today (Tuesday) at dinner, he comes and sits next to me. Not sitting next to me to eat dinner with me, but sitting next to me with his jacket on and nothing in his hands, like he wants to tell me something. I assume he's going to say something about bringing some instrument to the music building tonight, something like that.

"Oh, hey. Did you put those videos on the internet yet?"

"No, I haven't had a chance."

"OK, because I'm going to need to see them before you do."

At this point, something inside me snaps. Interacting with this guy is usually pretty awkward, as he sometimes takes things too literally. I'm going to do that annoying thing and say that I think he's on the spectrum.

Little tiny fencers start jabbing the insides of my brains. I want to smack this guy.

I stare at him in disbelief.

"I'm sorry, the other night you told me to go ahead and put them up."

"Yeah, but now I'm thinking about it, and that was a bad idea."

"I don't know how you are going to see them large format without me putting them on the internet."

Now he's frustrated with me. "You just have to go get a cord and plug your camera into a computer. This place is like, computer-central."

"Fine."

He sits there staring at me, not sure if my 'Fine' was a consent. I start to tear little pieces off my buttered roll and shove them into my mouth.

"So...are you going to?"

"Yeah, but right now I'm going to finish my dinner. And to be honest, I'm really frustrated because you gave me your yes the other day. What if I had put it on the internet already?"

"But you haven't, so it's OK."

"Whatever."

"It might be whatever to you, but it matters to me."

"Yeah, but what if I had already put it up?"

"Well, then, maybe I'd ask you to take it down."

For another five minutes he sort of stared at me while I ate, repeatedly asking me in different ways whether or not I was going to be posting this without his approval. I asserted that indeed, I'd show him on the computer after I was done with my dinner. Finally, he went away. I wanted to scream, but all I was afforded was raised eyebrows at someone else sitting with us.

After I put my dinner things away I began heading toward the computer lounge, and I ran into him right outside of the dining hall. It took a lot of energy to formulate a nice way to speak to him.

"Um, if you have a minute, I can show you this on the computer. I've got some time now."

He was standing with another one of the people we play music with. Let's call this other guy Carlos. "OK" and to Carlos: "let's go watch this."

The three of us make our way into the computer lab, and to be quite honest, I have no hope for these videos actually playing. Yes my camera plugs into a USB port, but I had tried to watch some videos on YouTube earlier in the residency, and while the sound was fairly consistent, the picture was extraordinarily jumpy.

As the computer recognized my camera and I opened the first file, he said "Alright Carlos, let's check this out."

Not "let's check this out" like when I say: "hey, check this out! This is awesome!" No, more like when an overfed pasty policeman spots a young black male duck into an alleyway. There was something faux-authoritarian and accusatory in his statement that really grated on me.

I tried to play the video files straight off my camera, but the sound cut in and out and the picture was jumpy, even worse than the YT videos I had tried to play earlier. I tried to copy the files to the desktop, and as the time for them to copy was about 9 minutes, Rajesh decided to check his e-mail at another computer.

I started to explain to Carlos my two YouTube accounts, and how I would be uploading this to my second account, where there are only 9 subscribers, and I upload whatever crap I want. Rajesh looked over and said, "let's just try to figure this out right now." As though, somehow, my killing the 9 minutes was wasted time, but him checking his e-mail was completely acceptable.

The pinwheel of death indicated to me that I should 'Force Quit' Finder, and then I found myself trying to explain to Rajesh that it wasn't that there was a problem with my video, but that this computer just didn't seem to be able to handle playing them.

I finally copied one of the files to the desktop and opened it with little hope for it to play smoothly. My expectations were met. It played just slightly better than when I attempted to play it straight off the camera. I internally cringed a bit because the woman who filmed this for me had used the zoom, which makes the poor-quality footage (a side effect of low lighting) even worse. Rajesh asked me to just let the video play, and I tried to explain that I was, that the computer was making it jumpy. Frustrated at not being able to hear it all the way through, Rajesh said, "why don't we just say 'don't'? It is amateurish anyway."

The quality of the video was such that his likeness was barely recognizable, and he was one of maybe 7 musicians contributing to the sound, one of two musicians playing his particular instrument.

I couldn't help it. I had to pry.

"Is it because you don't want your likeness on there? Because you can hardly see you anyhow."

"This is how I make my living and I can't have anything like this out there."

"I wasn't going to attach your name with it anyhow."

"Either way, I don't want it on there."

"OK, that's fine, but you should know, I may use a clip that just shows me playing."

"No, because that still has me on there. You can't put that on there without my consent."

"I don't understand. It won't have your name attached, no one will be able to see your face, no one will know it is you playing. It could be anyone playing."

"Just because you bought a $100 camera does not give you the right to post videos of my art on the internet! What gives you the right to say it could be just anyone? It is my creation and you do not have the right to put it on there."

"I'm not trying to argue property laws with you. I just don't get why you don't want me to put it on there. I don't understand how it would be detrimental to your career if your face and name are not associated with it."

"It's just that I want a say at what things I create do and do not get put on the internet. I've had to ask people to take things down before."

The anger started to become audible in my response. "Fine. Then I'll put the footage of me playing with the sound removed. Your face won't be in it. Your playing won't be in it. Nothing of you!"

He stared at me. Just stared like he was doing at dinner. Stared like he didn't believe me. Stared like he thought I was just telling him what he wanted to hear and that I was going to go do what I wanted.

I returned his stare with an exasperated, pained expression. "I DON'T BULLSH%T!"

This seemed to satisfy him. Not only that, but it also seemed to put him in a cheery mood. "Thanks!" As he walked out of the computer lab, I looked at some other student trying to convey in my glance that my head was about to explode. Rajesh stopped in the doorway and looked at me before walking away.

I usually don't ask permission when I record. I try to not record anything I think people would be upset about, and I would of course comply if someone asked me to remove something. The thing is, my scope isn't really large enough for people to get upset. I understand that Rajesh has the right to say whether or not his stuff goes on the internet, but his reasons were bullisht. It isn't going to ruin your career if NO ONE COULD KNOW THAT IT WAS YOU. I don't even know his last name. I would understand if he was singing, but he was merely contributing a small amount of the instrumentation. NO ONE WOULD KNOW.

What else is ridiculous? So many people are desperate for their video to reach many people, and this guy is upset about the probably-less-than-9 views this video, uploaded on my second channel, would receive.

I made this angry music playlist for times like this.

I guess I should have gotten a Ford Fiesta

So I took this extravagant road trip, and my only hope for my car was that it would return me to Troy, NY. It did that, certainly, but along the way....let's say somewhere up the Hollywood Hills I realized that my car was dying. Then, somewhere in Pennsylvania, I realized that my car was going to die soon. Since my car is technically my father's, I let him know this. He didn't sound particularly interested. I tried to convey the severity of it, but his interest still wasn't piqued. Since I can't afford it now, I asked if I could borrow their spare car between the time when my car finally kicks the bucket and when I've saved enough to buy a new one. This seemed fine to them, but somewhere my dad went on a rant about not buying me a car. This was confusing to me, because of course, I never asked him to buy me one.

So I'm not anywhere near ready to think about buying a car, I have only worked one half a day so far, and I need to pay my rent (and soon my Healthy NY) before I can think about such extravagances as...a means of transportation...you know, to work. (Though I could just work only in Troy and walk / ride my bike / the bus.) For some reason, my dad started looking for a car for me. I think he kind of enjoys doing this sort of thing. On Friday, the first day I actually worked this school year, I received a call from my mom. There was apparently some sort of parking-lot-car-sale which I've affectionately dubbed car-garage-sale. When I pulled up, my parents were standing near a 200(6?) Suzuki 4cl Station Wagon. Silver. I took it for a spin around the parking lot, everything seemed fine. As this was a car and a deal that apparently isn't oft found, it was decided to purchase it on the spot. I suppose I'll be making payments to my father. It was assumed that I would be trading my car in, and when our dealer guy, Russ Frost, wrote down $100 for my trade-in, I knew I no longer liked him. When my first Saturn broke in half, a guy name Guisseppe paid me $300 for it, and I think he had to tow it away. Three hundred, and I would have said OK. My car needs transmission work, but everything else seems find.

We discussed when to pick the car up, and I made it a big deal that it had to be after Monday. This shouldn't be a problem, considering that it was just Friday. The reason I needed my weekend undisturbed was that I had to finish my packet for grad school. It was due on Monday, and now that my advisor is in Canada, e-mailing is the only option. So, they never tell you a time Monday, so I figure, before it is Tuesday, earlier is best. After working all weekend on this, I wake up Monday to my alarm clock and my cell phone ringing. I should have been able to get my packet in by dinner time. On the phone was my mother, who had called to say that there was suddenly no option for picking up the car later in the week, it absolutely had to happen that evening. "Are you kidding? I was serious about not being able to do it today?" She promised it wouldn't take too long, and that they'd be down about 5:30 to pick me up.

At like, 4:45, there was a knock on my door. Seriously? Out of all the times I invite me dad to come hang out with me, and he isn't interested, the one time I need to be alone and working, he shows up 45 minutes early. My mom is apologetic. Apparently, she was aware of this, but he wanted to get going. We arrived at the dealership 10-15 minutes earlier than our appointment, and immediately located Russ. He was walking around with some papers to copy, and he said he would be with us in 5 minutes. 15 minutes later, my father went to glare at him. When we sat down, I signed a million papers with gritted teeth. At one point, Russ turned to me: "Are you excited??"

"Quite honestly," I told him "I have a 15 page paper due for grad school, like, right now. I really don't have the time to be doing this today. This is why I said NOT TODAY. So....no, I'm not excited. My mind is elsewhere."

When he went to put plates on my car, he said he had to wait because it was being detailed. I used to work for Hoffman's Carwash, my job title was Detail Technician. I did this for a year. For making us wait so long to bring the car out (like, another 10 minutes)...the car wasn't detailed. It wasn't thoroughly vacuumed, some of the cup holders weren't cleaned out. The part that got us most, however, was the brand new dent. My dad has x-ray dent eyes, and he and my mother had scanned every exterior inch of this car before even asking to test drive it. This dent was new.

So I apparently have to make an appointment with them to suction out this dent and re-detail it. They could just give me $100 and I'd live with the dent and detail it myself. But this isn't the most annoying part. By the time I'm finally able to go home and resume work on my packet, it is several hours later. And I didn't finish until 12:30....which is Tuesday...which means that had I been listened to, I would have been able to finish my packet, you know, around dinner time. ARGH#$*&#($&*#$!!!

And afterward, I watched RHPS because I was too wound-up to go to sleep. Such a good movie.

This is the first time in my life that my car has not existed on the blue-green continuum.