The Mod Muse

My friend Emmy and I have been “working” from my apartment this week. Emmy is newly unemployed and is missing what I like to call the “coworker experience”. I discovered I also miss that experience and I get a lot more done when I have a friend to hang out with in my home “office”. Emme has started to call us the Micheal Scott Paper Company (if you are an Office fan you know what we are referring to if not catch up here) because of our goofy antics and questionable work ethic. We also take long breaks (Emmy refers to these moments as our Cafe Disco time) and make pancakes (not paper shaped).  We have also succumbed to a nap or two during the work day (ok just once but we’ve only been doing it for a week).  We have yet to make a delivery (again an Office reference) but we think with enough work (no naps) we may be able to pull a client or two from the competition. We’ll keep you posted!

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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Was walking home from a sunny day in Chinatown and saw this pink unicorn in atop a mound of junk. It was so odd and out of place, I had to take a picture of it. It kind of looks like a hippo. Can hippos be unicorns?

Well pretty much acclimated back into city life again.  But I have to say it is still feels strange.  I miss my Copenhagen life but it’s OK because I have some Danish friends who are living here till the summer so it kind of tricks me in to thinking I am back in DK. My friend, Ben and I are hosting a party at my place on Saturday night.  We’re throwing it for our friend George, who is leaving for Miami for a year. I invited  some of my friends that I haven’t seen since I left so it will be good to see everyone.

I am doing my best to put on a happy face today. Feeling a little under the weather. Woke up with a bit of a headache and it’s only gotten worse as the day drags on. Still I managed to meet my friend Jes for a coffee. Normally I try to avoid cheesy happy crap but since I am trying to lift my spirit a bit I don’t think it will hurt to put it up.

A wise woman knows her limits, but a great woman knows she has none.

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I was riding my bike to Nørrebro  (the northern district of Copenhagen) yesterday to meet a friend, when suddenly I saw a group of children dressed up in costumes and smacking the hell out of something that looked like a wooden box. Being a seasoned New Yorker, I am used to seeing people on the streets dressed in all sorts of costumes and sometimes wearing nothing at all , so I quickly forgot about it after a few blocks or so.  Later that day as I was when I enjoying some hygge with my roommates at home, I mentioned to them what I had saw. They explained that Sunday is the Danish children’s holiday, Fastelavn, similar but not entirely the same as our Halloween. Fastelavn is actually on Sunday the 22nd of February but the kids also celebrate at school, just as American kids would if Halloween fell on a weekend.

I found a brief explanation of Fastelavn on wiki here it is:

“Fastelavn occurs seven weeks before Easter Sunday and is sometimes described as a Nordic Halloween with children dressing up in costumes and gathering treats for the Fastelavn feast. The holiday is generally considered to be a time for children’s fun and family games.Traditional events include slå katten af tønden (“hit the cat out of the barrel”), which is somewhat similar to a piñata, except that there is a wooden barrel, which is full of candy and has the image of a cat on it. Historically there was a real black cat in the barrel, and beating it was superstitiously considered a safeguard against evil. After the candy pours out, the game continues until the entire barrel is broken. The one who knocks down the bottom of the barrel (making all the candy spill out) becomes kattedronning (“queen of cats”), the one who knocks down the last piece of the barrel becomes kattekonge (“king of cats”).”

Poor cats!  Actually, felines are no longer the sad victims of Fastelavn festivities. Instead of putting the cat in the barrel, children are now satisfied with a painted version on the side of the candy-filled barrel.

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