I regularly download eBooks from the Internet Archive.
In dictionary speak— IA’s a nonprofit digital library, preserving and providing access to cultural artifacts of all kinds in electronic form.
I've found writers I love, Cheever, Parker, Carver.
I’ve been reading The Andy Warhol Diaries—nobody could name-drop like Andy.
Andy was as tight as a tick, throughout the book he documents expenses in parentheses—
In the morning I rushed to Dr. Li (cab $4).
Went to a place with pinball machines and played them for a while ($10)
Got up, packed, (cab to the airport $20, tip to package guy, magazines $8)
He valued money.
I’ve written the oddest stories, the worst of the worst, shit— Chelsea Girls, 15 Minutes, and this, The Brewing Junk-Factor, a few paragraphs.
He scratches himself, paralysed in bed, smoking a Chesterfield King, trying to tune his Grundig radio, scanning the dial for Chicago — scribbling junk-ie poems on a cutting board, writing this,
Andy Warhol, the Brewing Junk-Factor.
Everybody will have fifteen minutes of fame.
The fame inflamed stand for blocks on 231 East 47th Street, it's
snowing, they're lined up like soldiers, hungry, loaded on LSD, and hot saki.
The Gothic crowd's electrified, dancing slowly, close, body to body, leather to leather, grinding it out in the FActory.
On June 1 of this year publishers— Hachette, Penguin Random House, Wiley, and Harper Collins sued Internet Archive for copyright violations— they want their money to boot suing Internet Archives for copyright infringement.
Well-heeled, cry baby authors— Malcolm Gladwell, John Grisham, Elizabeth Gilbert, Douglas Preston, and Neil Gaiman (you see him on Facebook peddling his bogus writing courses), issued a joint statement claiming,
the wholesale scanning and posting of copyrighted books without the consent of authors, and without paying a dime, is piracy.
Oh goodness, the priggish Internet Archive, Blackbeard of the eBook world— a national emergency library founded so school kids good get books when libraries were closed because of Covid.
As you would expect the ogres of the publishing world and the sniveling authors won.
I will miss IA. I lost boxes of books, moving from Milwaukee to Hawaii, and finally Asia.
Anyway, pledging,
I will never rent or buy another book or eBook from the publishing companies who gunned downed IA for a few shekels, and ego.
Why is it that people are dicks when it comes to money?
Jesus's, R A D I C ALism appeals to me, His view on commerce was,
beware, guard against every kind of greed.
Two hundred years ago an anonymous Sioux Elder said,
Life isn't measured by how much you own.
He meant that physic experience is more important than money.
Here's a cute bit written by an anonymous kid,
if we were less greedy the world would be less needy.
And the last anonymous Sioux Elder says,
God gave the Ska-man enough, and yet he wants all. Such are the pale faces.
Breathe outwards rhythmically, do the same inwards.
I don’t hate the rich, they own a peculiar genius and work ethic.
What we see today, rampant hustling for pesos isn't new.
A Brief History of Hustle
Silk Roads 1st century BC to 5th Century AD
luxury products from China started to appear on the outer edge of the European continent in Rome,
besides silk, the Ancient Chinese bring firecrackers, Peking Duck, straw thumb cuffs, and chopsticks.
Spice Routes 7th to 15th Centuries AD
Sephardic Jews in flocks traveling west selling carpets, humous, and what was it? Fenugreek.
Age of Discovery 18th Century
Truly global trade kicked off and somebody discovered America, it’s irrelevant.
Globalization 19th Century to 1914
The Brits invented the steam engine, resulting in the Industrial Revolution, a wretched time for factory workers during the heyday of imperialism— and, a hoot for the Brit aristocracy who was on top for a while.
The World Wars— I and II
massive destruction and millions of deaths drove hustling underground for most.
Second and Third Wave of Globalization
forget it, nothing important here.
The end of World War II
ushers in a new era of hustle, nylon’s invented and plastic becomes the spurious material of choice.
Globalization Four
Where we are now, the computer age, the
internet, the world wide web, where porn is king.
Life intrudes from time to time, things change. It's a crapshoot hanging on luck, it's everywhere at once and nowhere, it resists you mostly.
Nobody here is indispensable and anyone can be replaced. The earth spins with or without you.
If a famous interviewer, say, a Studs Terkel or a Benjamin Fong-Torres asked Henry about his work he'd say,
I write for art’s sake, truth isn't important to me.
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