Selling Out

As some of you may notice, this blog now has ads.  My friend Jimmy told me about an article he read on Yahoo (like me, Jimmy, too, gets all his news from the only news' source that matters, Yahoo) about how bloggers can make money by placing ads.  I will post the link to this article now http://finance.yahoo.com/news/My-Blog-Is-Also-Paying-My-nytimes-1951716015.html.  Not really sure what the article says, since I didn't read the whole thing; it seemed pretty long.  But I did skim it, and saw something about AdSense, and I recognized that from blogspot's design template, so I added the gadget to the blog.  Now I guess we wait for the money to roll in.  The parts of the article I did read depressed the hell out of me.  Like this line: [M]ost of these self-publishers don’t attract the attention of anyone other than indulgent family and friends (thanks for reading Duane, Angela, and Jimmy!).  And the parts about frumpy housewives getting $350k book deals from Simon & Shuster sorta made me sad too.  The article spends a lot of time talking about how making money works, but for me making money work is like this old Kids in the Hall sketch:

Not exactly expecting to retire from these ads.  Getting about 3,000 hits a month won't quite cut it.  Seems like a quarter of a million is the magic number, so we're a few hits short. But the important part is that I am trying to sell out. Or as my buddy Matt used to say, "I ain't selling out, man, because I never bought in."  I didn't buy in, but only because they won't let me.  If it were up to me, fuck yeah I'd whore myself out.  I have no illusions about integrity or any of that crap.


When I was in grad school, Les Standiford, the director of the program, taught this course on the Hero's Journey, using a Christopher Vogler's dumbed-down take on the Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces.  Vogler's book is called The Writer's Journey.  That's not the important part.  I didn't even take the class.  But I'd hear other grad students talk about it on smoke break, the pompous, highbrow set, who scoffed at the simplicity of "formula" and "genre" being promoted by the institution as a whole, but as far as I was concerned, Les had sold a shitton of books, and so had a lot of other writers who adhered to similar convention, and I have no use for "literature."  Maybe I'm dumb, but I found Infinite Jest dense, overwrought, and unenjoyable.  And I've said it before, I'll take Bukowski over Bishop any day.  Not saying he's better, I can recognize the chops, or lack thereof.  Just that I'd rather read Bukowski because he's real, speaks my language, piques my attention.  Reading takes up a lot of fucking time, and I don't have a lot of it, so why waste it reading something I have no interest in, like novels about tea and tireless ruminations on tree sap and the cosmos?  I had to read Jane Austen in college.  Because my grade depended on it.  I'd rather get tested for the clap again than ever have to read another Jane Austen book.


There used to be a horrible connotation associated with being "commercial" for me.  When I first got to SF, I had to hide my love of Springsteen because he was pop, and everyone I knew loved Fugazi.  Maybe Fugazi held onto their integrity by never granting an interview to a magazine with commercial advertisements, but you know what?  Honestly, who gives a shit? I've never heard a fucking song from them (have fun fixing your bicycles), and I'd much rather be on the radio and have everyone call me The Boss than take some righteous stand.  And with that, I'd like to close with a little Billy Joel...


                   I believe I've passed the age of consciousness & righteous rage
                   I found that just surviving was a noble fight.
                   I once believed in causes too, I had my pointless point of view,
                   Life went on no matter who was wrong or right, ohhhhh.


"Ohhhh."  I think that says it all, Billy.  


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So apparently AdSense picks the ads to place based on words that appear in your blog, like if you talk a lot about dogs, you'll get an ad for dog food or something.  So I think it's pretty funny that the first two ads up are for psychotherapy and how to stop an affair.  


And coming soon, I will be hawking one of my books, which will be composed entirely of stories you can find for free elsewhere on the web, but here it will be all in one collection, with a title, and cost $2.99 and you can read them on one of them Kindle thingies!