Freeday 20 October 2000

Pic of the day: The transition

Into the public domain

I have had another insane idea. (Well, somebody has to have them, and the clinically insane are usually occupied with being miserable.) I want to place myself in the public domain upon my passing, but I am not sure how to do it.

Yes, that is right. My vision is that after my passing, my name and the distinctive likeness of my character will be placed in the public domain. Thus, whenever someone feels like it, they will be free to incorporate my character into any fictional stories they make, or attribute their own ideas to me.

For instance, someone will write "As Magnus Itland used to say: If you start with one ram and one ewe and let nature take its course, you'll end up with quite a lot of wolves." (Of course, you should take care to not do something too out of character, because otherwise my innumerable fans will be mightily miffed and boycott you and throw stink bombs in your mailbox.)

Or you could use me to spruce up your own autobiography. "I remember one time back in 1995, I met Magnus Itland on a railway station. He was heavily drunk, wearing a blue-green pajamas, and petting a rather large hedgehog ..." The possibilities are endless!

And there's a good chance that whatever time you choose, it won't interfere with any events in my real life. Because there were not many events in my real life. That is not to say that I was bored - but you would have been, if you were in my place. I am easily amused. I am very easily amused. But you probably already figured that out if you've read this far ...

***

I'm not sure how the legal status is, actually, by default. Can anyone sit down and write a novel, or a comic, or a poem, incorporating Pol Pot or Curt Cobain? Marilyn Monroe? (OK, that was a fictional name in the first place. Then again, so was Stalin. It means, if I got it right, "Man of Steel". OK, perhaps just "of Steel [male]".)

I'm not a lawyer (for which we all are thankful, I guess) so I have only the vaguest ideas about this, but I feel pretty sure that at least here in Norway it would be a no-no to disturb the relatives of the deceased by incorporating them in fiction. Sort of like blasphemy, only for humans.

But after around two years now of this diary, I doubt that my relatives would be much perturbed by me becoming a completely mythical person. My connection with reality has always been somewhat tenuous. Not so that I'm making up this journal, but then again there isn't much real life in it, is there? I mean, real people have ambition; they have love and hate; they have a family, and probably a career. I have computer games and comics and my own unfinished novels. Perhaps I would fit in better in a fantasy world than I do here.

Not that I'm going gently from this reality, mind you. I like it here, and the food is quite good too.