Live in Dreams- Wild Nothing
Sitting on the cigarette butt front porch I could ask you “are you dead like me?” Call me what you will, but call me.
Charles Bukowski (via henrycharlesbukowski)
Reblogged from henrycharlesbukowski with 260 notes
I Wrote This For You (via papercrushed)
Reblogged from teachingliteracy with 116 notes
my father always said, “early to bed and
early to rise makes a man healthy, wealthy
and wise.”
it was lights out at 8 p.m. in our house
and we were up at dawn to the smell of
coffee, frying bacon and scrambled
eggs.
my father followed this general routine
for a lifetime and died young, broke,
and, I think, not too
wise.
taking note, I rejected his advice and it
became, for me, late to bed and late
to rise.
now, I’m not saying that I’ve conquered
the world but I’ve avoided
numberless early traffic jams, bypassed some
common pitfalls
and have met some strange, wonderful
people
one of whom
was
myself—someone my father
never
knew.
(Source: writersalmanac.publicradio.org)
Reblogged from henrycharlesbukowski with 192 notes
Sonia Choquette (via paperlover)
(Source: coloursplashedsoul)
Reblogged from teachingliteracy with 370 notes
When the web started, I used to get really grumpy with people because they put my poems up. They put my stories up. They put my stuff up on the web. I had this belief, which was completely erroneous, that if people put your stuff up on the web and you didn’t tell them to take it down, you would lose your copyright, which actually, is simply not true.
And I also got very grumpy because I felt like they were pirating my stuff, that it was bad. And then I started to notice that two things seemed much more significant. One of which was… places where I was being pirated, particularly Russia where people were translating my stuff into Russian and spreading around into the world, I was selling more and more books. People were discovering me through being pirated. Then they were going out and buying the real books, and when a new book would come out in Russia, it would sell more and more copies. I thought this was fascinating, and I tried a few experiments. Some of them are quite hard, you know, persuading my publisher for example to take one of my books and put it out for free. We took “American Gods,” a book that was still selling and selling very well, and for a month they put it up completely free on their website. You could read it and you could download it. What happened was sales of my books, through independent bookstores, because that’s all we were measuring it through, went up the following month three hundred percent
I started to realize that actually, you’re not losing books. You’re not losing sales by having stuff out there. When I give a big talk now on these kinds of subjects and people say, “Well, what about the sales that I’m losing through having stuff copied, through having stuff floating out there?” I started asking audiences to just raise their hands for one question. Which is, I’d say, “Okay, do you have a favorite author?” They’d say, “Yes.” and I’d say, “Good. What I want is for everybody who discovered their favorite author by being lent a book, put up your hands.” And then, “Anybody who discovered your favorite author by walking into a bookstore and buying a book raise your hands.” And it’s probably about five, ten percent of the people who actually discovered an author who’s their favorite author, who is the person who they buy everything of. They buy the hardbacks and they treasure the fact that they got this author. Very few of them bought the book. They were lent it. They were given it. They did not pay for it, and that’s how they found their favorite author. And I thought, “You know, that’s really all this is. It’s people lending books. And you can’t look on that as a loss of sale. It’s not a lost sale, nobody who would have bought your book is not buying it because they can find it for free.”
What you’re actually doing is advertising. You’re reaching more people, you’re raising awareness. Understanding that gave me a whole new idea of the shape of copyright and of what the web was doing. Because the biggest thing the web is doing is allowing people to hear things. Allowing people to read things. Allowing people to see things that they would never have otherwise seen. And I think, basically, that’s an incredibly good thing.
"
Neil Gaiman on Copyright, Piracy, and the Commercial Value of the Web (X)
(Source: roominthecastle)
Reblogged from teachingliteracy with 16,907 notes
[Image Description: Background is several triangles in a circle like a pie alternating from true red, scarlet and black. A robin is sitting on his perch looking to the right.
Top Text: “Customer says you look bored.”
Bottom Text: “Yes, because ringing you through will bring me endless joy and entertainment.”]Of course I’m bored. But ringing you up will not relieve the boredom.
Reblogged from fuckyeahretailrobin with 223 notes
Neil Young, Old Man