A new podcast: a reader writes in asking about a specific jealousy issue. No lawn-gnome jokes in this one, for some reason Monk and I got off onto a weird "sex with robot chickens" tangent.

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Edit, Noon: Because of the persuasive words of you, my readers, the image has been removed. Have I mentioned how much I love you guys? I am, however, leaving this post up so that I can refer to it for future situations like this.

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And from the Annoying Person Department: this woman refuses to remove my photo from her site. (EDIT: Link removed, since she has now done so.)

I sent her the email I send everyone, which just says, Hi, that's a picture of me, and I actually haven't given you permission to use it, so would you take it off your site, please? Her replies are as follow, edited down slightly.

I'm sorry to inform you that i recieved that picture from the front of a greeting card that was sent to me years ago. Everyone I know has that picture. Also if you look on the picture that you sent me.. there are no copyright signitures or watermarks at all. Once you put a picture over the internet you have to stamp them with your mark or they are anyone's to take....(snipped for incoherence)... Do you have the copyrighted picture or negative? I will look up the copyright and authenticate and also then apologize to you and my readers... It is not my intention ever to hurt or steal from anyone. That goes way beyond anything I'm actually capable of.

Yes, I'm aware everyone you know has that picture. It is one of the great regrets of my life that I ever put that damn picture online. And why is it that no one who's stolen it ever has it on a cool, intelligent, interesting site? At least this is better than the last guy I had to speak to about it. He had a page for a "Christian D/s" social group. No, you do not use my naked body to promote Christianity, thankyouverymuch.

I sent this person a reply stating again that yes, it definitely was a picture of me, and asking again that she take it down. She responded:

This picture is not of you. I found the owner and the site it's displayed on... Again.. I'm sorry for your trouble though you've been through it .. it seems to me "a million times" as you said that's how many times it's been stolen. I see this photo all over the place.. it's on greeting cards .. and on a million profiles.. and erotic sites.
Again,, if you still believe this photo is yours please send me the copyrighted number to be authenticated and i will take it down.... Im not trying to steal and am certainly not making money off of the picture. But the site i got it from is a FREE site. Please do your research and take it up with them I do not want to be involved in your battle with them.

She then blocked me from sending her any more emails. So much for being all loving and open.

I don't know why she thinks I'd say it was me if it wasn't. I can assure you, I do not get off on emailing strangers to ask that they remove a photo from their (badly designed and rambling) websites. I don't find it so entertaining that I'd do it just for kicks. Given that she's also displaying the complete text and images from, "The Little Prince, " I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that she doesn't understand copyright.

Or at least pretends not to understand it. But for those folks who do - here's the original image from my camera. (Note: really big file!) No one else can produce this, because I never posted it full-size anywhere. But I suppose you could enlarge a tiny one and try to smooth out the jagged edges, so here also are two other (big) images from the same shoot. One, two. It's the same set, lighting, camera angle and model - me. No one else can show you these images without the red edits, because I have not posted them anywhere before now.

It pains me to have to present my work defaced with the cutouts and X's, but it's obviously the only way. I don't expect that this woman will get it, but now that I've posted it, I can link back to this post in future emails to similar image-thieves.