PSA

The following is written by Deborah K. Moss.

Friday, August 28, 2015

PSA

I have officially de-sistered my sisters. 

Rachel, Becki, and Becki's husband James spent the entire week of our father's funeral glancing at their cell phones and mentioning things I had said either in the confidence of my mother or alone.  Apparently, my mother's cell phone was recording and broadcasting our every intimate conversation without our knowledge.  As a non cell phone owner and user, I am not the authority on these manmade devices; thus, I still cannot explain this to my mother. 

I want to inform everyone of this type of organized harassment.  A majority of my family members present at the funeral participated in this bizarre form of exploitative  abuse.  They said things on topics I had mentioned over a month earlier as if they had been practicing memorized lines for a play designed solely to creep me out.  I had blood relatives lying to my face about our shared history. 

What do you do when you are thrown down someone else's rabbit hole?  The best I could do is live through yet another odd circumstance. 

I am under 5' tall, which, when coupled with my approachable face and introverted personality, has made me physically vulnerable.  I am the type of person who does the best to avoid abuse and when it finds me it is because of proximity.  Once I recognize it, I attempt to nip it in the bud, but it is often like talking to the creepy old man oddly out of place at a concert or club full of twenty-somethings.  He generally just sees you as a child who doesn't know what you are talking about and approaches when the mature sisters or friends leave to buy a drink or go to the toilet, attempting to corner you.  He does not take you seriously. 

Art Heist, Repeat

Our letters included our idiosyncratic markings and sentence structure.  We can both glance at a page and tell whether or not it is the original, like we might if we were trying to identify a painting.    A maker's mark?   A wobble of a brush stroke?  Which factory did this come from?  Created by the artist's studio or the master himself?

If your original writing is shared using your academic e-mail address, would the university be owed profit off of the selling of it, if it is thieved?

Let's bring Canada into this conversation.

In the Van Gough episode the writer cleverly combines characters.

A French-Canadian, real-life, former friend of mine, from the Gainesville era, is combined with his arch-nemesis, the postcard salesman.  The original story is, of course, a humorous autobiographical tale of a professionally trained academic writer.

The thieving of my writing and that of several folks one-degree of separation from me might just be part of the greatest art heist of the past quarter of a century.  Unbeknownst to us, we became slaves of the film and television industry.

Every single student who was in an English class with me in Mississippi public schools from grade 7 on should have the skill to be a professional writer.  Writing is subjective, as all art forms are, but once something is thieved it is automatically given worth.

Yo-Yo Virus

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Art Heist