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If you're a writer, you need to know your copyrights -- and your copyright myths.
Copyright myths are surprisingly abundant, even among writers, publishers, and other wordsmiths. They tend to be based either on out-of-date facts, or simple confusion with somewhat different concepts. In this article, we'll take a close look at five myths about the magical copyright, and reveal the truth about each.
From cross-eyed bears to cross-eyed babies, we've got more great myth-heard song lyrics for you to groove to in this, our second helping on the subject.
In this article, we once again sing the praises of myth-heard song lyrics. Why? Because after all these years, there are still a few of us who cheerfully sing about "Gladly, the Cross-Eyed Bear" in the classic church hymn "Keep Thou My Way." In fact, Ed McBain once wrote an interesting novel with that very title.
Most of us realize it's really "gladly the cross I'd bear," even as some of us wonder why we sing "For he's a jolly good pharaoh" when the honoree's not even Egyptian. But that's okay -- it adds a little much-needed spice to life. We all make these mistakes, now don't we? We're sure you've got some of your own to share.
If you've always wondered why John Fogerty sang, "There's a bathroom on the right" in that famous Creedence Clearwater Revival song, then this article's for you.
Most of us have our personal tales of myth-heard song lyrics -- and those of us who don't simply won't admit it. Use of language may be one of the defining aspects of humanity, but, well...when it comes to musical stylings, it can sometimes be hard to understand even our nominal mother tongues.
So here's to everyone who's ever wondered why the Weather Girls and Ginger Spice extolled the virtues of Raisonettes (the real lyric: "It's Raining Men"), or why Jimmy Hendrix excused himself while he kissed that guy ("excuse me while I kiss the sky"). And that CCR thing? It's actually "There's a bad moon on the rise."
"Myth-quotations" are more common than most folks realize, due as much to fallible human memory as to bad pronunciation. A few months back, we told you the truth about five famous misquotations; here's the story on five more.
"Myth-quotations" are inevitable in a Tower-of-Babel world like ours. Even in societies with a common language, you can't count on a message being passed from one well-meaning person to another without it getting garbled. Add the uncertainties of memory, and the trouble mounts.
If you feel like "somebody set us up the bomb"* by the time word trickles down to you, you're not alone. Here are five cases of well-known quotes from popular media that just ain't so -- including one from the most popular book of all time, the Christian Bible.
Are video games really corrupting today's youth? Well...probably not. Here's the truth about those scary video game myths.
There's no doubt that some video games can be outrageously violent; but if you believe the video game myths spread by the media, they just may portend the end of civilization as we know it. Of course, people have said the same thing about those foul-mouthed eight-year-olds on South Park.
Apparently, the pundits have forgotten that despite things like bear-baiting, cock-fighting, professional boxing, football, rugby, and even Britney Spears, our civilization is still chugging right along just fine. So in this article, we'll cut through some of the hysteria about video games, and calmly present the facts.
Pithy aphorisms or movie lines, we all have "myth-quotations" we know and love. In this article, we're going to burst your bubble about some of your favorites.
Misquotations -- or as we prefer to call them, "myth-quotations" -- abound in our culture. Despite the much-celebrated human ability to communicate, we tend to get things wrong almost as often as we get them right.
As Yogi Berra once pointed out, "I never said half the things I said." The same is true for other famous people and their fictional counterparts. Whether through bad memory or deliberate editing, certain quotations tend to get mangled in translation. Here are five famous misquotes, and the truth behind each.
It's a myth as old as Walt Disney himself: the famous creator of Mickey Mouse had his corpse frozen and hidden in his theme park.
Fans of Walt Disney have long maintained that the famous man not only had himself cryogenically frozen, but secured his frosty body beneath Pirates of the Caribbean. Can you believe it? Well, you shouldn't! Here's the truth behind this silly, but long-lived, myth.
