A Near Life Experience For Nanny Goats

When I started this blog in 2005 for two or three of you, I couldn't have cared less where I got my accompanying pictures. I'd just search on Google, grab something appropriate and insert it in my blog post, copyright be damned. Also, you were lucky if I posted something three or four times a month. Juvenile, uncultivated crap like, "Oh I went shopping today. It was fun. The End."

In 2008, when my readership soared to an audience of five or six, I figured I should think twice about plagarizing and only put up my own photos or get them from the public domain.

A few months ago, when I revamped my blog, I created the banner above from a picture that I stole found on the internet. It was from a website that was semi-public domain. The author's name was listed as A Aevtrd, or some such nonsense with a bunch of umlauts and Norwegian-looking bits dangling over the letters like left-over mouse droppings. The site said I could use the pictures for my blog and edit them as long as I didn't make money off it. And I had to attribute the author and follow his rules. Well this goat picture didn't have any rules.

Or so I thought.

Meanwhile, my readship continued to grow and I grew to LOVE the banner. LOVE it. I wanted to marry it.

Anyway, the other day, I went back to the original site where I found my little goats and this time I noticed a link for the author's Flickr account. Uh oh. And he wasn't Norwegian. He was American. With an American (well, Irish, if you want to put too fine a point on it) name and everything.

Oh my God! What do I do? "Oh, sorry sir, for destroying your picture for my purposes for the last few months but is it OK that I used your picture and continue to do so?" What if, after receiving my sorry-ass plea, he went to my blog and was mortified at the desecration of his art? And I hadn't asked permission! What if he pressed charges? What if he - GASP! - had me arrested and sent to (OH NO!) Blogger jail!

Have you ever been to Blogger jail? Oh My God, it's absolutely horrifying! First, the Blog Police come to your house in the middle of the night and rip you out of the arms of your loved ones. They strip search your hard drive and confiscate your IP address. They slap handcuffs on you and throw you in the Blog police car and threaten your domain name as they speed down the information super highway to the station.

The next thing you know you're sharing a cell with a bald-headed thug named TurdBot108 who's in for Googling Weenie Man song lyrics. And he hogs all the toilet paper. I'd be forced to eat porridge and fold standard issue laundry with my fellow prisoners: web stats whores and content thieves.

I agonized over whether or not to contact this guy. Maybe he would never find out. But if he did, and not from me, I could be put away for life! I resigned myself to doing the right thing and sent the photographer an email begging for forgiveness, offering my first born child, anything. I HAD to have my goat banner. Nanny Goats In Panties just isn't Nanny Goats In Panties without it.

As I clicked SEND at 12:30am, I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep all night, wondering if, when, and how he would answer. I imagined a vitriolic response, hurling spam and threatening to expose my HTML. He would flame my ass and the goat I rode in on. He would tear down my firewall, leaving behind a pitiful pile of rubble.

I sobbed. I prayed to the internet gods. "Please!" I cried. "Have mercy on a smalltime blogger like me! I'm nothing! Oh, boo hoo!"

Five minutes later I got a response:  "Sure," he said. "No problem."

Woo Hoo!

I would like to kiss the feet (proverbially, of course) of Kevin Collins for betstowing his kindness and downright upstandingness unto Nanny Goats. He is a wonderful photographer - you can catch his stuff on his Flickr page here.

TRIVIA QUESTION: Without cheating, can you guess where the Nanny Goats In Panties banner picture was taken? I'll let you know the answer in the next blog post.


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Nanny Goats In Panties is now listed on Alltop.com under the Humor and Midlife categories. They "help you explore your passions by collecting stories from 'all the top' sites on the web."


NGIP would like to profusely thank the following fellow bloggers for adding Nanny Goats In Panties to their blogroll:

Olga The Traveling Bra - keeping the world abreast of all her traveling adventures.

Feisty Charlie - A shit-kickin' writer from Texas whose birthday falls two days before mine. Yesterday was her birthday, it's not too late to send her good wishes!

Los Cuatro Ojos - where some days you're the dog and some days you're the hydrant.

Musings - A lovely young couple from Paso Robles, California - hey, my great (or is it great-great?) grandmother is buried at the Old Adobe Chruch in Paso Robles!

Honeywine - A ghetto-trailer (her words, not mine) woman working on her PhD. I should apologize to Anna right now for all references I have made and will undoubtedly continue to make about trailer trash.

Laughing Wolf - Author Dave "holds the distinction of looking like Uncle Fester (or a shaved Panda)". Dave also had a birthday this week, so go throw some cake at him too.