Though I am trying to keep my mouth shut, I’m still angry sad depressed cynical pissed hopping-mad bitter rapidly-aging rabid seething kicked-in-my-imaginary-balls over that house sale f*cked-uppery.
But I will say no more.
Except this:
And excuse the watermark, but I actually spent time modifying that image, so don’t steal it. I need to work on the watermark thing though, so bear with me and get used to it.
In the interest of further experimentation in the art of procrastination, I thought I would check to see if any of my fibery images have been savagely pirated from webworld. I know of one on Pinterest (which I’m largely on the fence about, but leaning on the hate side, or perhaps really really hate side) and I don’t really have many readers here, so I wasn’t expecting to find any gross violations.
So I did some Google Image searches by image.
I started with a pic that I’ve had on ravelry for a few years, and I actually loved the results:
(I won’t get any bigger with these because I don’t want to commit image gankery myself).
What you can’t quite see is my picture of a grey cowl matching images of owls in tree bark, cathedrals, shaggy dogs, rocks, chandeliers, and even a few other faces and knitted items. All of the matches relate to color, texture, and shapes in my image.
Another image that I posted a few months ago – and again, I love the matches:
Golden fall foliage, a fish caught in a net, a Byzantine Madonna.
But it failed to tell me that the picture did exist in webworld and was pinned on someone’s Pinterest board and on this blog. Nothing came up for ravelry either, but I think that has greater privacy settings?
But otherwise, so far so good, no image theft yet.
So I moved on to other images I’ve posted in this blog.
Remember my artsy-fartsy sock monkeys from this post?
Sock monkeys are very popular.
Sock monkeys are everywhere.
Sock monkeys are made with socks and possibly some buttons.
Sock monkeys are for sale.
Sock monkeys are definitely not people (though friendlier).
So why dear Google, did my picture of sock monkeys bring up people!?!?!?!?!
If it’s some facial recognition algorithmic magic thing, then fix it ’cause I’m not buying that the ratios and comparative data and secret science are there.
My initial reaction was that this was horribly, horribly, horribly racist since many of the faces appeared to be from people who are not predominately caucasian. But once I scrolled through more images I saw that it was very much an equal-opportunity free-for-all of people = sock monkeys.
Yes, monkeys are our cousins and they have skulls similar to ours – more similar than that of say a skunk or a horse, but stuffed toys with bulbous mouths that don’t exist in nature? Knitted texture and only three colors? No nose of any dimensions? Eyes made of shoe buttons? Exaggerated floppy ears? No eyebrows, eyelashes, head hair, facial hair, (yes, I know some people don’t have that either) bumps, lumps, wrinkles, pimples, scars, beauty marks, or irises for that matter?
So I slept on it – maybe it was a joke.
The next day I tried the same image again:
More people.
And as a bonus, some soaped up ass cheeks. (It did locate it on my blog though – the monkeys, not the cheeks).
So I tried some more monkey pics – I’ve got oodles of sock monkeys (or perhaps I should call them a troupe or troop).
This was a scan of some vintage monks wearing snazzy outfits made by my great aunt for my brothers:
More people.
At least it picked up on the red.
I had another clearer pic of the same little guys in the first image:
More people.
Though a couple of pine cones add some nice diversity.
So I thought that perhaps anything resembling two eyes and a mouth would always equate human faces and thus I was just making too much of this.
So I searched with an image of a pie with a face:
And I got pies and other foodstuffs for f*cksakes!
So I thought that perhaps there was a sock monkey apocalypse and it will now be up to me to re-populate the planet.
(By sewing of course, not lewd acts with a stuffed sock).
Just to be sure, I searched the term “sock monkeys” in Google Images.
What’s this?
Thousands, perhaps millions, of images of sock monkeys?*
There are so many sock monkeys that you can browse by various categories!
So what’s up Google?
Is this a joke?
Is this an evil plan that only you know about and we don’t and we’re about to become a new of Planet of the Apes Sock Monkeys?
Are we actually just a bunch of stuffed socks?
Is walking on a sock an act of torture and murder?
Should I fear my own sock monkeys?
Should I cut some holes in their box for air?
Please tell me.
*(It’s cool that Rebecca Yaker’s sock monk couture comes up right away).
ASTITCHMATISM 