feeling ranty (or am i a woman yet?)

i'm feeling a little ranty (i blame caitlin moran).  so avert your eyes.

rant #1:  i'm still fuming over the far-too-expensive ferry ride we took on mols-linien from ebeltoft to odden a week or so ago. as any of my FB and twitter pals know, due to my obsessive photographing of it, there is a rather large bridge (18km) that takes you to the devil's island (sjælland), but for fun, we thought we'd take an alternate route. mols-linien had been bragging in their ads about how if you took them you'd skip fyn (the island in the middle) and how they had cheap tickets over kattegat. turns out those cheap tickets that compete with the price of the bridge (220DKK or about $42) have to be ordered at least 7 days in advance. so much for spontaneity. and so much for truth in advertising, because that's definitely not clear in the ads. nor are any of the prices clear on the mobile version of their website. which i found worrying as i tried to check departure times/prices as we got closer to ebeltoft. turns out if you don't book in advance you pay the OUTRAGEOUS sum of 775DKK ($147) for the hour-long crossing. and this doesn't come with anything. you then have to pay 3 times the normal price for a sausage (every ferry ride must include a sausage) and a coke, so they are definitely adding insult to injury. my advice?  AVOID MOLS-LINIEN like the plague. there is NO value for money. none at all. and their little high speed ferries are ugly.   take that, mols-linien.

rant #2:  as you know, we live out on a country road. it's paved and the speed limit is actually a shocking 80km/hour.  however, most of the people who are going past (i don't have a radar gun, so i can't prove this) are going at least 120km/hour. it's INSANE. there are people out for a run, or walk or bike ride and the cars scarcely even slow down. in fact, most of them don't slow down. someone's going to get killed and i hope it's not me, my family, our cats or our hedgehog. i do, however, hope there is a fiery crash where one of those speed demons rolls multiple times and i can stand and laugh.

rant #3:  as you gathered, i continue to read caitlin moran's how to be a woman with a mix of the fascination one would feel to see the aforementioned crash and indignation at how in one breath she can claim to be feminist and then refer to women as chicks.  and then i fall a little bit in love with her when she says that lady gaga is the most exciting pop artist since madonna. so i'm torn by her. her writing is like rock 'n roll - it's loud, it's in your face, it makes me feel hyper (and ranty) and it's just really good. but a lot of this shit she's saying is just pissing me off.

ok. ranting over. for now.

EDITED:  wait a minute, hold everything, i totally forgot to rant the main rant!!!

rant #4: getty images. grr.  last week, was pleased to receive a flickr mail telling me that the good folks at getty images had selected a number of my photos and would like to license them. they're mostly ones of the old kitchen, the blue room and sabin's two bedrooms, plus one of my rainbow snail. so, i made haste to the getty images website to sign up. the sign-up is all very official and of course, asks you a lot of questions about your details - address, paypal account, where you pay taxes. and because i live in denmark, i was not able to sign up as anything other than a non-american. i've run into ameri-centric sites before (hello there, eBay and yes, i mean you, best buy), but none that actually wanted me to commit perjury in order to complete the invitation that THEY sent to me. after three days of going back and forth with several different "customer support" people, i finally agreed to commit perjury. yes, i wanted to sell my photos THAT badly. but seriously. i must not be the only expat american living abroad who has ever licensed their photos through getty images. and i think it's downright bogus that i had to pretend to pay taxes somewhere else in order to accomodate a faultily-crafted website. boo. hiss. getty images.  that said, get to selling my photos, will you?

and now i'm done ranting. for now.