Exchanges with People that Make Your Brain Hurt

[VorFemme]

My friend was telling me this one. She and her husband had seen The Hobbit on a date night. I'd seen it twice already so we started talking about it.

She said her brother had seen it too. He told her all about it in a rant about how they had just "ripped off LOTR" and how it was the "exact same story" and "how could they get away with blatant copyright." Apparently the fact that some of the same actors were in it and all the hinting toward the events of LOTR wasn't enough to clue him. She gently explained to him that the books had the same author and that The Hobbit was something of a prequel to LOTR. "Ohhhhh...." 

I still remember some clueless person in 2002 complaining about the LOTR #2 being a reference to 9-11 - The Twin Towers & The Two Towers.....

I might have been the first but I should't have been the only poster letting the OP know that the book that the movie was based on had been in print for decades before the events of 09-11-2001.  For some reason the site closed later that same day.

I could scarcely believe that anyone over age six with internet access to start a blog didn't have the forethought to compare publication dates...until after reading the ravings on that web blog.....

I remember reading Nelson DeMille's "Lion's Game" not long after September 11th, and there's a scene in which an Arab terrorist, leaving New York City, turns around and looks at the Twin Towers and mutters something like, "We'll get you next time."  (His terrorism goal was something else.)  I immediately checked the copyright date and was astounded to realize he'd written it before September 11th!  I thought he was rather cleverly prescient until I mentioned it to my dad (I was like 21 or 22 at the time) and he pointed out that the towers had long been a goal of terrorists and there had been another attack years ago, etc., so it was logical that the author would have considered that the terrorist would *want* to take them out even if his assignment was something else in that particular book.  I felt rather let down afterwards. 

On the day - I was sitting at my desk, watching the managers crowd around the tvs tuned to the developing story (car insurance company - tvs were usually used to track weather conditions that might impact car insurance claims - hail, wind that broke off large branches that drop onto vehicles, tornadoes, ice storms where cars skid off the road, and so forth).  I was thinking that the terrorists had read one Tom Clancy's then recent Jack Ryan books....the one where a pilot lands a plane in a governement building...which doesn't do much good to the building when it is a large passenger jet.  The "real world" terrorists used somewhat smaller airplanes (and they weren't empty - the fictional pilot "stole" a plane being ferried unoccupied from one location to another).

[rose red]

I was at a used book sale and a teenage girl held up an old book and said to her mother "Twilight.  This guy ripped off the title from Stephanie Meyers.  She should sue."  Her mother rolled her eyes and told her that book is old and way before Stephanie Meyers.  The girl then said Stephanie Meyers should copyright "Twilight" (yes, the word) so nobody can rip her off.  The mother just walked to another table.

eta: I debated on buying that book just so if anybody ask what I'm currently reading, I can say Twilight.  Then watch their faces when I whip out the old book.

[Elfmama]

I was at a used book sale and a teenage girl held up an old book and said to her mother "Twilight.  This guy ripped off the title from Stephanie Meyers.  She should sue."  Her mother rolled her eyes and told her that book is old and way before Stephanie Meyers.  The girl then said Stephanie Meyers should copyright "Twilight" (yes, the word) so nobody can rip her off.  The mother just walked to another table.

eta: I debated on buying that book just so if anybody ask what I'm currently reading, I can say Twilight.  Then watch their faces when I whip out the old book.

I'm not sure that titles are copyrightable.  Search Amazon for "Circle of Stone" and see how many different authors used that title, for instance.

ETA: And YAY for fellow posters who know that the term is "copyright" and not "copywrite!"

[Amara]

Titles are not in fact copyrightable. They are all up for grabs.

[rose red]

Titles are not in fact copyrightable. They are all up for grabs.

That's why it made my brain (and I think the mother's) hurt  .

I was surprised she just walked off without educating her daughter though.

[BB-VA]

The trouble with expecting online readers to recognize tongue-in-cheek postings is that no matter how over the top they are, there's someone, somewhere, who would say the same thing for real.

True, there probably is someone, somewhere who believes all this stuff (hint: it's my MIL and she forwards EVERY SINGLE ONE OF THEM to me).  That doesn't mean the rest of the world has to censor their jokes to the lowest common denominator of understanding.

Now, if it was something potentially harmful...like 'Don't bother seeing a doctor for persistent chest pains...just eat onions!' then yes, that wouldn't be good.  But silly jokes like vestigial wings on buffalo I think are fine.

Now I have to tell one on myself: years ago, the Energizer battery company ran a series of commercials.  Each one started out looking like a regular commercial, although if you paid attention you could see it was a parody.  Midway through, the bunny (the Energizer mascot at the time) would come on thumping his drum and the 'real' battery commercial started.

I  was completely taken in by a parody commercial for a foreign film called 'Dance With Your Feet', to the point that I mentioned to my husband that I'd have to watch for it in the theater.  Then came the bunny...

The one with the "Airedale" air freshener almost got me. 

I had the opportunity to meet one of the producers of the spot, and he told me that by the end of that one (where they were actually spraying air freshener around the set) everybody in the cast and crew were wishing they had gas masks.

[BB-VA]

My friend was telling me this one. She and her husband had seen The Hobbit on a date night. I'd seen it twice already so we started talking about it.

She said her brother had seen it too. He told her all about it in a rant about how they had just "ripped off LOTR" and how it was the "exact same story" and "how could they get away with blatant copyright." Apparently the fact that some of the same actors were in it and all the hinting toward the events of LOTR wasn't enough to clue him. She gently explained to him that the books had the same author and that The Hobbit was something of a prequel to LOTR. "Ohhhhh...." 

I remember coming out of Fellowship of the Ring and hearing a girl behind me ranting about the "lousy ending". When her companion explained it was a trilogy, she snorted, "So, they're trying to rip off Star Wars, are they?"

I heard someone rant after Return of the King that they just "copied the spider from Harry Potter. LAME!"

And all the people who told me they didn't want to see John Carter because it was just ripped off form Avatar. I wanted to cry.

And it was panned for being "old-fashioned".  Yeesh.

I have yet to read the book but my husband did and passed them on to my daughter.  So I am culturally literate enough to know what was going on, and who John Carter and Dejah Thoris were.   LOVED the movie, and I hope it will do a lot better in DVD sales.

Plus it was nice to see Juni Cortez all grown up.

BTW, around our house, the opthalmologist who treated our daughter's diabetic retinopathy is knows as The Warlord.  He is John Carter, MD.

[Midnight Kitty]

I reads tons of misinformation or spin in my job as a lawyer - of course I don't take everything as absolute truth and this is in legal documents!

No joke!  My husband's worker's comp insurance carrier filed papers (the day after his therapy horse died) charging him with fraud.  There is a statement in there "he kneels down to groom the horse."  My friend asked me, "How do they know?"  I said, "They don't know.  They made it up.  He can't kneel."  Typical legal assault:  Throw a million allegations and see if any of them stick.

[phred246]

I finally got one for here!

Last year a company hired me, contingent on them winning a government contract, and my getting a DOD security clearance. They hired and paid me for five hours of filling out paperwork for the clearance, as you have to be an employee of the company paying for the clearance check. They didn't win the bid (so I was told, two weeks after the contract was to have started), I don't know if I got the clearance, but the company has enrolled me in their 401(k) plan, tried to get me to sign up for health insurance, sends me company newsletters, etc., even though I haven't done any work for them in seven months! So today I got a letter stating that they were reducing my hours, therefore I should consider signing up for COBRA, as I was no longer eligible for their health insurance plan! How can my hours be reduced below zero?

edited because I can't spell!

[mmswm]

I have extremely thick, curly, nearly waist-length hair (and today I wore it down).  I went to the mall today (several of them, actually), and one of the little kiosks we passed was for hair care products.  The sales guy's pitch to entice me to stop was saying that his product would help my hair grow "thicker and longer".  Ummmm, really?  Did you even look at my hair?

[Piratelvr1121]

That reminds me of a Hair Cuttery stylist who asked me if I wanted my hair straightened.   It's already straight! I actually wouldn't mind having some curl to it but I wasn't about to say that because then she'd try to talk me into getting a perm.

[Margo]

The trouble with expecting online readers to recognize tongue-in-cheek postings is that no matter how over the top they are, there's someone, somewhere, who would say the same thing for real.

I once ran into a clerk in a bookstore who suggested looking for an autobiography under "Fiction". I thought she was being funny. Then I realized she wasn't, as she dragged me through the fiction section for half an hour trying to find it.

I have no idea if the following is true or just a joke but someone told me that a public library in Australia moved all the books about a certain bicycle rider who quite recently admitted to doping from the non-fiction section to fiction.

It's not true that the library moved the books. A library patron put up a fake notice in the library, to that effect, and photos of it went viral. ( very entertaining, though!)

I once heard someone (who enjoyed reading fantasy novels) explaining that he didn't like 'Lord of the Rings' because it was 'derivative'. He could grasp the fact that although *he* read it after reading lots of other fantasy, it was actually *written* well before the things he thought it was ripping off...

[Yvaine]

I have extremely thick, curly, nearly waist-length hair (and today I wore it down).  I went to the mall today (several of them, actually), and one of the little kiosks we passed was for hair care products.  The sales guy's pitch to entice me to stop was saying that his product would help my hair grow "thicker and longer".  Ummmm, really?  Did you even look at my hair?

Ha! Yes, I'm sure Merida from Brave is shopping for Extra Body shampoo as we speak. 

[cabbageweevil]

I once heard someone (who enjoyed reading fantasy novels) explaining that he didn't like 'Lord of the Rings' because it was 'derivative'. He could grasp the fact that although *he* read it after reading lots of other fantasy, it was actually *written* well before the things he thought it was ripping off...

A bit like the guy who said he thought Shakespeare was overrated -- he couldn't have had a very original mind: his plays are full of all these famous quotations...

[that_one_girl]

That reminds me of a Hair Cuttery stylist who asked me if I wanted my hair straightened.   It's already straight! I actually wouldn't mind having some curl to it but I wasn't about to say that because then she'd try to talk me into getting a perm.

In her defense, my hairstylist does wonders to my already straight hair (to get it to curl takes hours and an entire can of hairspray, and even then it only lasts a short while) with a straightener.  Using the straightener somehow helps beat my individual hairs (they like to part a certain way) into submission and gets them to all lay in the same direction!
Though if you live in a dry area, the dry air probably acts as a straightener