Oh crap

I wish Queer Dewd, formerly known as Prince, I mean, Bitch|Lab, weren't up to her eyeballs in a new job and moving, because she would understand this completely.

One of the things about being a graphic artist is that you do a ton of crappy advertising meant to sell cheap plastic shit to people who don't need it because you need a job to pay the bills.

BUT, you can, if you choose, use your skills for politically important work. I've been doing that for years.

On occasion, however, my efforts can be sabotaged when a "client" -- i.e., an important, valuable cause, -- is represented by people who have ... um ... let's call it shit for brains. Sometimes those ShitForBrain people screw up royally. If they reach the professional level of ShitForBrain-hood, the next step is to try to blame their fuck-ups on the graphic artist. That would be me.

That happened to me last night. I'm still pissed about it.

I agreed to help out an organization by putting together a booklet of ads from people who support the cause. I was not selling the advertising. I was not contacting the groups. I was not designing the ads. I was simply putting together the book: laying out the ads and making them pretty and printable.

Last week I got about half the ads. Some were 8.5x11 inch fliers that I was supposed to condense into a 3x4 inch ad. Some of them were scraps of paper or printed ads torn out of a newspaper or magazine.

Well, call me chump ("Chump!"). I went ahead and accepted the crap, fixed it up, did some research, found some art I could use, etc. Fact is, I did hundreds of dollars worth of design work I had not agreed to do.

In addition, I gave the client a list of ads for which I had received no art or copy.

I hear nothing all last week. I hear nothing over the weekend. I hear nothing on Monday.

Monday evening I get a phone call from the director of the organization asking where the hell were all the ads and why was I making everything late.

Now the director is a woman who happens to be a friend. She is someone I respect and admire. And yet she somehow believes it when shitforbrains tells her I'm the one who dropped the ball.

As far as I can tell, shitforbrains decided that it was my responsibility to create from whole cloth any ads that were not delivered to me last week. Which I wouldn't have done even if it had been suggested. But it wasn't suggested. It was somehow assumed. Now why the fuck would anyone assume that?

Is it because I was a chump and went ahead and made ads from the damn scraps of paper that were sent to me last week? Did I convince them somehow that I could create art out of nothing?

But even so, if they seriously thought that was what I was doing, why did NOBODY call me? Why did NOBODY respond to my e-mail?

What really made me angry was the fact that this person who decided that I was supposed to create these ads and then decided that I was lazy in not producing said ads, did not call me or write me directly.

Instead, he chose to go behind my back to my friend, the director, and ask her to leave a rude fucking message on my phone machine.

Screw this. I'm outta there.

10:30 pm - editing to remove all those nasty typos that I create when I'm PWA (posting while angry)