Thursday, June 07, 2007

Disclaimer: June 2007

Given the circumstances, I should have gotten somebody to translate this into Polish for me. As it stands, however, everyone here has been pretty busy over the last few days, preparing for the Corpus Christi holiday this Thursday. And on my end, I'm slowly preparing for my return to Manila in the wee hours of Friday morning.

I fear for myself. I'll essentially be arriving back home with two weeks' worth of displaced time on my hands. I've received little or no news during the time of my business trip (save for what little information I gleaned from those phone calls at 2:30 am), and my "surprise me" attitude does little to help. It's as though I got abducted by aliens who ended up not liking my obvious sense of cluelessness.

What's more, I've been remiss in updating this blog. I blame the fact that an Internet connection around here costs an arm, a leg and part of your left lung, and so far I've only been courageous enough to spend for it twice. This, as you've obviously deduced, is the result of this second blow to my financial senses... and I'm using it to post a monthly disclaimer.

Our conclusion, you ask? What this means is that all those potential plagiarists out there had better pay attention. I'm only going to say these once before I start toying with this monthly feature again.

Everything written on this blog is entirely original, except where noted. These posts, essays, short stories and other assorted writings are the product of the twisted mind of Sean, whose profile appears somewhere on the sidebar to the right, currently represented by a bewildered-looking stuffed penguin. Sean reserves the right to represent himself as any other stuffed creature, up to and including monkeys, meese, porpoises, chinchillas, lobsters and platypuses. Do not claim that these original works ever existed before this blog; I'll have a merry day playing around with your maladjusted logic.

The only exceptions to this "originality" thing are those works that I reference from other sources. These items are all clearly marked wherever they occur; I try to acknowledge not only the author in these matters, but also the title of his work and any relevant details that might be interesting to note. I also try not to misquote or delve past out-of-context boundaries, but if any author feels that he or she has been misrepresented here, then they are welcome to notify me so that I can remove the offending mention.

I frown heavily upon those who quote me completely out-of-context, come down hard on those who misrepresent what I try to say, and leave behind the smoking corpses of those who appropriate my own work and put their own names on it. I devote a significant amount of time to this writing, and I'm not going to give up the fight just because some young turk out there decides to be lazy. If you want some good work, then you can pull it together yourself, because you know you can do it without having to resort to petty theft.

With that said, I am open to the use of my work as long as the right permission is requested. I will most likely only ask for a link to this blog in return; Otherwise, well, you can just ask. I don't bite.

There's a Creative Commons License somewhere on the lower part of the right-hand sidebar; I would suggest reading through its terms and conditions to get a better idea of what I'm enforcing. The long and the short of it, however, is that I fully encourage you to write your own works while discouraging you from stealing them. If you follow the former, then I shall be a very happy man. If you follow the latter, then I shall be the leather-clad bounty hunter who kicks down your door, rearranges the furniture, and takes out the garbage.

That's it for another month, I think. Now, I've got to get to packing. Enjoy your weekend, everyone.

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