Casualties of the free market
When I last checked, the wood s lot disaster fund had reached $515, none of which was contributed by the Wealth Bondage team. Candidia Cruickshanks summarized her views on philanthropic activity:
Poor people should ask why they, in the land of opportunity, are broke. Some supposedly brilliant intellectual vagrant named Mark Woods cannot afford even a $500 computer, and I am supposed to give a shit. His kind of Genius will soon be as extinct as the Dodo. I offered him $5 bucks to shine my boots, $10 if he did me with spit, and $25 if he cums, and lets me own the genetic material that he shines into the leather.
Unfortunately, neither Mark Woods nor I reside in “the land of opportunity”. Mark lives in a small town in Canada and I’m in Sydney, Australia, neither of us living in the manner to which we’d like to become accustomed. That’s why I expressed interest (on behalf of Joe Duemer and myself) in taking on a couple of Wealth Bondage franchises, a request that was contemptuously met with the counter-suggestion that I start at the bottom, by taking photographs of Candidia’s boots.
When I read that she’d offered to pay Mark—on a sliding scale, depending on what he uses for polish—I left the following comment:
Give me a call, Candidia, when Mark Woods has shone your boots, so I can come over and photograph them.
Candidia, as is her custom, explained the IP issues in her typically domineering fashion:
Jonathan, I know you really are a fine photographer, so your offer has market appeal. The Venture Capital Wealth Fetish Community would pay millions for the pictures. My boots, Mark’s Literary Genius Sperm. Let’s talk intellectual property. Who will own the photos? How about you do all the work, I own the photos, you market them to my Venture Capital Contacts, and I contribute a $500 piece of crap computer to Mark for Charity, assuming of course that he spends $15,000 setting himself up under US law as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit so I can take it as a tax deduction.
As much as I’d like to take up Candidia’s offer, which would enable Mark Woods to spend the $515 on a printer, scanner, and a few other items, I don’t actually own any of the photographs I take. My former agent at the International Management Group signed away the IP rights as part of a complex tax minimization scheme that I agreed to in the late 80s, at the height of my success as an art photographer. I still retain personal rights to the photographs I take, which allows me to reproduce them on this weblog. However, the proceeds of any sales of my photographic work go directly to the Make-A-Wish Foundation. (Happily, the resulting tax deduction allows me to buy a $500 piece of crap computer every two years.)
Humble Pie Department. Dick Minim sets the record straight:
Wrong! Let the record reflect, I did the full $25 job on Candidia Cruikshanks boots and gave the proceeds all to Mark’s fund. And he wrote me a personal thank you too. Check the facts, Jonothan before you slander hard working people.
What can I do but apologize in the most abject terms? And kiss goodbye any chance of getting my hands on a WB franchise.
The proceeds of your photo sales go to Make a Wish? Jonathon, I guess I'll to say it again: you're one classy act.
You want I should beat up Candidia for you?
Posted by: Burningbird on 29 September 2002 at 11:22 AM