Oh No You Didn't!!!

Okay, if imitation is the highest form of flattery then I guess I should be flattered to death… Wait until I tell you this one… But of course, me not being the average two paragraph blogger, I have to set the stage for the doozie that I have in store today. But I promise I will try to keep today’s blog rather brief, especially as we are gearing up for the weekend (the operative word in that sentence being “try”)…

Well today, as I was sifting through my Yahoo “Bulk” mail file, as for some reason I am perhaps one of the last people in the free world that still has a Yahoo account… Yahoo – the home the spammers, scammers, online pharmacists (wink-wink) and the Nigerian 419 businessmen that are always graciously offering to allow me to share in their $2,225,000 windfall in return for my assistance with the $2,000 in legal fees. No offense to my hardworking Nigerians - but I am sure you too have received greetings from Dr. Emanuel Udo and his wonderful offer to make you a millionaire. I wish my Dr. Udo would have attempted to send one of these emails to my grandmother. She would have been on the first plane smoking to Nigeria in order to personally slap Dr. Udo bald (or as she would have said “bald-headed”). But I digress.

Anyway, after deleting perhaps the twelfth or thirteenth offer to strengthen, enlarge or extend my penis, I noticed an email from a YouTube account commenting on my new video post… However, when I clicked on to the link to our YoutTube account, I immediately noticed a weird video in the adjacent thumbnail list. I was further struck by the freeze frame image which wasn’t recognizable from footage in our edited videos to date. Now I was thoroughly confused and intrigued. Therefore immediately after reading the comment originally left which basically read “Girls lie – Size does matter!” At this point I was just a little freaked out as the penis theme had begun to follow me through cyberspace. I of course glanced down to scan the old family jewels to confirm that I was still in good shape. Confirmed…

So there it was, this strange unknown video with my name boldly emblazoned across the front and tagged with key words such as Mal Sirrah, Malcolm Harris, blog, etc. I just couldn’t resist – I had to give it the double left click… And there it was - - - in the flesh - - - A BOOTLEG VERSION OF “CUT, SEW AND BLOG”…

This version is so bootleg… There are photos of dresses that don’t belong to me, unapproved footage from “God only knows where?”, and of course, bits and pieces of my original interview that were simply left on the cutting room floor. Light bulb moment - in this new high-tech digital world in which we are living - there is no cutting room floor…

Of course, this is now the part of my rant where I am supposed to say, “I was appalled!!! I got my attorneys and publicists on the telephone and we are getting to the bottom of this… Heads are going to roll… blah, blah, blah…” But to be completely honest – I quite enjoyed it… I really did… I even watched it a few times to compare it to our own… Minus the fact that it is not a cohesive interview and it goes against all the strategic branding of Cut, Sew and Blog, it’s not bad at all. However there was one haunting element - - - the introduction had been stretched and elongated in a very bizarre manner. I immediately connected the dots - this guy undoubtedly had received the incredible and versatile penis and video stretching email spam and he had taken them up on their offer.

All jokes aside, my better judgment knows that it simply isn’t prudent to allow strangers to pilfer your image, dilute your brand and take artistic liberties with your journey… No matter how flattered and intrigued I may have been, I had to send this unknown person a comment via his YouTube account that simply read – Oh No You Didn’t!!! Followed by an email and attachment to his subscriber account of a beautifully crafted legal document with the heading “Cease and Desist”…

But before it is removed from YouTube, I must share it with all of you… Honestly it’s not bad… It’s just illegal…