The Mod Muse

Cruising the Internet for new ways to incorporate vegetables into my diet, specifically beets, I came across a post on a small blog, we will call Power Trip Girl‘s site. That’s not the name of the blog. The actual name is something cuter, meaning: not at all the type of thing I would be interested in reading anyway. But hey, I was looking for recipes! PTG’s blog post included a recipe for beet muffins and a photo of the muffin. Thinking my readers might find it interesting fat chance, I mentioned it briefly, posted a link to her blog and included her image of the muffin.

A couple days later we receive this snip little comment below:

I hope you will give beet a second chance thanks to this recipe, but please do not use my image without my permission. I work really hard on my photographs and to have my copyrighted photos republished without my permission is not fair to me as an artist. Please either take remove the photo or have it link directly to my Flickr image. Please talk to any artist before re-publishing their photographs, linking to recipes is ok.

PTG

Seriously?  Artist? Come on people! Listen. First, a picture of a beet muffin is not art. I’m sorry to tell you this but it just isn’t. You will never, ever, in our lifetime see a show debuting at the Guggenheim entitled- “Beet Study: The Muffin Series”. If you read the post below, it really wasn’t about beet muffins. Rather, an ode to a childhood memory. F*ck beets! I wasn’t talking about beets here!

I understand people who do not want their printed content copied word for word on the Internet. And if it were my photo of, oh I don’t know, let’s say, something IMPORTANT,  I might take offense if it were being used by some d-bag with far right leaning thoughts and theories. Then and only then, I might ask them to take the photo down (but probably not since I know the controversy would drive more people to my site).

And no offense to PTG but it’s not my first spin around the blogosphere.

A recent article announcing,  there are now over 2 million pro bloggers in the United States, has made once humble people, hungry with power. For years jotting down their thoughts in private, they now splay them out on the Internet for any old bugger to read. And that thought, the thought of another person caring about what you have to say, is every shy nerds wet dream.

People want to be adored. Having spent the better part of the 90′s in Seattle playing rock so I could have some of that adoration, I understand completely. You just want someone to care about what you are doing. Even if it’s sitting in your small mid western kitchen making casseroles.

But it’s time for a reality check.

Brace yourself, I’ll do it band-aid quick.

Get over yourself! You’re not special.

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I started a new gig this week at a pet store in SoHo. I pass this big fella everyday at the corner of Spring Street and West Broadway.

So if anyone is reading (Hi Mom and Dad!) you may have noticed my blog’s new look. Since I have moved to Copenhagen I have been obsessed with how many swans they have here! It’s their national bird and you see them everywhere. My friend Camilla officially put me in “Swan Rehab” the first week I was here after an overdose of swan picture taking. But now I am out and like any addict worth their salt I am back on the (swan) stuff.

You can see how many of them there are. I’m not talking about a few swans here and there, I am talking about swans everywhere! And they are huge, massive creatures. You can see their long swany heads from a kilometer away. And when they come in for a landing-watch out! They make a huge splash when they hit the water.  They are not only beautiful but they are mesmerizing to me. In America you may see one or two on a lake and that is something special but here, there are so many of them people hardly give them a second glance. I am sure you can see why I am so fascinated by them. Oh no, I think they call this a relapse, back to swan rehab for me. :>

I was cruising the Internets when I came across a really interesting photo essay on the legendary women of the Asgarda Movement. These band of sisters live and train in the ancient art of mortal combat and medieval weaponry deep within the Carpathian Mountains of East of Ukraine. French photographer Guillaume Herbaut documented the group of 150+  women who belong to the Asgarda Movement.

These are some remarkable photos. I tried to find out more about this tribe of Xenia-like  women but all I could come up with was this quote from Photoshelter:

“Katerina Tarnouska looks at me in the eyes. She is a thirty-year-old blond with a ponytail, wearing a white dress. Time has come to get separated from the men, she says. She dreams of a walled world where women would live among themselves. A world like the one of the Amazon tribes.”

Okkkk. Still I think it’s rather interesting but I am a sucker for unique studies in sociology. Hope you enjoy the cool photos below.

For more photos and information on the project go to the site Photoshelter.

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