If the World Was Fair...

If everyone was a bit more like me the world would be a worse place
if everyone was a lot more like me this place would be total rubish

Harrison Bergeron

When Piracy Makes the World a Better Place

This email just made my day:

I'll be totally honest with you. I'm from Argentina, and here u$s 79 are like u$s 237 for you. It's a great country, but our currency was devaluated a few years ago, and buying things which are priced in american dollars is not easy at all. On the other side, if something is really worth, you may do the effort to afford it anyway.

So I'm the kind of person who likes to try before buying. I know you have a guarantee policy, but I would not feel comfortable asking for a refund anyway. So -even if it's wrong from your point of view- I've downloaded your book from a P2P network (EMule) and printed it.

After the page number 10, I knew it was worth buying it. So now I'm on the page 80 and five minutes ago I sent you the money (bought the book from your page).

The only reason for this mail, is to tell you that your work is so great, that I'm still flabergasted. I really really really thank you for doing such an incredible job, and you deserve the best. I'm glad (even if it's a lot of money in Argentina) to "cooperate" buying your book, supporting your work and letting you continue to make great stuff like this one.

I have been getting a bunch of feedback like that lately...so cool!

Carl Sandburg The People Yes Excerpt

Bruce Sterling read the following poem at SXSW.

The people yes
The people will live on.
The learning and blundering people will live on.
They will be tricked and sold and again sold
And go back to the nourishing earth for rootholds,
The people so peculiar in renewal and comeback,
You can't laugh off their capacity to take it.
The mammoth rests between his cyclonic dramas.

The people so often sleepy, weary, enigmatic,
is a vast huddle with many units saying:
"I earn my living.
I make enough to get by
and it takes all my time.
If I had more time
I could do more for myself
and maybe for others.
I could read and study
and talk things over
and find out about things.
It takes time.
I wish I had the time."

The people is a tragic and comic two-face: hero and hoodlum:
phantom and gorilla twisting to moan with a gargoyle mouth:
"They buy me and sell me...it's a game...sometime I'll
break loose..."

Once having marched
Over the margins of animal necessity,
Over the grim line of sheer subsistence
Then man came
To the deeper rituals of his bones,
To the lights lighter than any bones,
To the time for thinking things over,
To the dance, the song, the story,
Or the hours given over to dreaming,
Once having so marched.

Between the finite limitations of the five senses
and the endless yearnings of man for the beyond
the people hold to the humdrum bidding of work and food
while reaching out when it comes their way
for lights beyond the prison of the five senses,
for keepsakes lasting beyond any hunger or death.
This reaching is alive.
The panderers and liars have violated and smutted it.
Yet this reaching is alive yet
for lights and keepsakes.

The people know the salt of the sea
and the strength of the winds
lashing the corners of the earth.
The people take the earth
as a tomb of rest and a cradle of hope.
Who else speaks for the Family of Man?
They are in tune and step
with constellations of universal law.
The people is a polychrome,
a spectrum and a prism
held in a moving monolith,
a console organ of changing themes,
a clavilux of color poems
wherein the sea offers fog
and the fog moves off in rain
and the labrador sunset shortens
to a nocturne of clear stars
serene over the shot spray
of northern lights.

The steel mill sky is alive.
The fire breaks white and zigzag
shot on a gun-metal gloaming.
Man is a long time coming.
Man will yet win.
Brother may yet line up with brother:

This old anvil laughs at many broken hammers.
There are men who can't be bought.
The fireborn are at home in fire.
The stars make no noise,
You can't hinder the wind from blowing.
Time is a great teacher.
Who can live without hope?

In the darkness with a great bundle of grief
the people march.
In the night, and overhead a shovel of stars for keeps, the people
march:
"Where to? what next?"

Poem via http://glenavalon.com/peopleyes.html. Listen to Carl Sandburg read the poem here or hear Bruce Sterling's reading toward the end of this file.

Sneaky Snuckers

Many sites suck because they are wrote without a legitimate interest in the topic. I often do get bored and frustrated when it seems like I stop learning. I think you always have too keep learning or you are dead.

I want to learn programming, affiliate marketing, and graphic design, but am struggling with all the other things I am doing. It really is a tough balance learning and tracking things while keeping a functional content based business model in a hypersaturated market.

Recently I have been writing far more than I have been reading...and the learning has slowed...and I think I sense that I am becoming a worse writer out of it as well. Lucky for me Danny has some good writing tips, like sneaked versus snuck

Book Publishers

If you give a book author a quote this is the type of thing publishers want you to sign:

I hearby grant to __________ (the *Author*)who is interviewing me and (video- ) taping the interview, and Publishing company my permission to use the interview and/or material from the interview, including name, likeness and picture, in a book tentatively titled _____________ (the *Work*), and I hereby waive any rights to view such material before it is published or to receive any compensation for its use.

In addition, I hereby grant to the Author and Publisher the right and permission to edit the interview. In addition, I hereby grant to Publisher during the full term of copyright and all extensions thereof the full and exclusive rights comprimised in the copyright in the interview and any revised editions, including but not limited to the right, by itself or with others, throughout the world, to print, publish, republish, and distribute the Work and to prepare, publish, and distribute derivative works based theron, in English and in other languages, in all media of expression now known or later developed, and to license and permit others to do so. I understand that Publisher shall have no obligation to submit subsequent uses of the interview to me for my approval.

I hereby release and agree to indemnify and hold harmless the Author and Publisher and their respective successors assigns and licensees from any and all claims of any kind that may be asserted against them based on the interview or anything contained in the interview. My heirs, executors, administrators and assigns shall be bound by this release.

This release shall be governed by, construed and enforced in accordance with the laws of the State of ______ without reference to principals of conflicts of law.

I have read the foregoing release, authorization and agreement, before affixing my signature below, and warrent that I fully understand the contents thereof.

You give them a quote. They offer no pay, but want you to give up all rights (including the right to modify it - and perhaps even slightly change the meaning). Years later when your statements are no longer true what happens if someone acts on a misquote of you and it damages their business? The only right the publisher lets you reserve is the right to legal liability.

Sounds cool. How about not.

Preface to Animal Farm

Orwell's Preface to Animal Farm

Lyrics, Poetry, & Writing

I love these lyrics:

My heart is broke
But I have some glue
Help me inhale
And mend it with you
We'll float around
And hang out on clouds
Then we'll come down
And have a hangover

My mom said that I told her in high school that I wanted to be a poet, but genuinely I now recognize that I have about 0 skill on that front...and even less when I am not suicidally depressed.

Then I grew old and bitter and didn't want to write or do or think about anything. Now I write daily.

Weird getting a book offer from a major publishing house, as I don't recall ever viewing myself as the type to be a book author. I guess ebooks and blogs count for something though, but it surely would feel weird reading a book I wrote knowing it was published by a major publishing house.

Hardcover Softcover Books

Ever notice that many times on Amazon.com the hard cover version of a used book is cheaper than the softcover.

Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions

Flatland is a kick ass funny book about multi dimentional space.

Some of my favorite quotes from the book:

• in every family of position and aconsideration, "back motion" is as prevelant as time itself; and the husbands and sons in these households enjoy immunity at least from invisible attacks. (p 12)
  
• A Male of the lowest type of Isosceles may look forward to some improvement of his angle, and to the ultimate elevation of the whole of his degraded caste, but no Woman can entertain such hopes for her sex. "Once a Woman, always a Woman" is a Degree of Nature (p 14)
  
• you are not a Man, but a feminine Monstrosity with a bass voice, and an utterly uneducated ear. (p 46)

A bookmark for later

I just recently finished Rebecca Blood's "The Weblog Handbook." While looking at the 2004 Bloggie awards I noticed her site was listed. On her site she listed this link as the weblogers manifesto...I will read it later. IV. Essays. Self-Reliance. 1841. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. 1909-14. Essays and English Traits. The Harvard Classics

Buy Books Cheap

Compare book prices @ isbn.nu

What it Feels Like to be Syndicated

When you are going about your business on the internet chaos breeds an environment where risk takers become successful.

As I search around the web I find posts like this one, which refere to my text as the answer. A person I do not know told another person I do not know who then broadcasted me to the world with "I Found It"

The search engine expert at Google answers is refering to a different one of my documents as his definitive source of pertinent information. He is randomly distributing my artlicle to the world.

I am not sure if I am going to eventually become big headed if I get successful. I honestly do not think I am capable of it.

I just hope those people keep spreading me about!

The First Book

My Best friend's sister got her first poetry book published. I talked to Jennifer, the publisher. She covered it on her blog

Here is her publishing site Wordpainting Poetry Publishing Company

I actually want to write a book soon. Perhaps I should learn How To Write a Book Fast

How To Write a Book Fast

My end goal is to be an author. Today I do not think I could be a great one. Some self help packages are on cue, but something makes this one smell fishy.

I am not sure if its the 3 free bonuses, the limited time sales price, or the $19.95 shipping charge as "the package is huge."

How much useful information can I disseminate while still finding the time to write a book in the same 14 days? How To Write A Book in 14 Days

Why Me?

This blog is going to be a personal public blog about all things me. When I am happy, you will know. When I am pissed, you will know. If nothing else this will give me a place to display my open affection for peanut butter.

some of my other websites

Drugs, Depression, and Antidepressant Drugs
Reform Blog
Search Engine Marketing Info
5 HTP (5 Hydroxytryptophan)
Navy Nuclear Power and Navy Nuclear Submarines