"Smart phone, smart phone, on my wall,
who's the fairest of them all?"
"Not you, you fucking narcissistic arsehole!"
Sorry folks, I've been away for quite awhile, taking a break, leaving my creative field fallow, hoping for regrowth. I went to India as I usually do, to get away from my mundane Sydney existence, experience the exotic, and risk life and limb to have some out of control adventure. And I did, we had a car crash zooming around the narrow roads of the Himalayan foothills, a drunken fuckwit in a large SUV jeep, taking up the whole narrow road, sped around a bend and slammed straight into us. For 3 seconds I thought it was all over, dead at last, for our tiny car got pushed to the edge of the precipice and only the inertia of my mate braking hard and turning the wheels inwards stopped us going over.
But I aged ten years in the process, or maybe I simply have been ignoring the mirror for a long time and believing the delusion that I'll live forever and I can do the same things I've done since I was 25. Yet I'm getting close to 70 and when those 20 something millennials clap eyes on me they turn away disinterested, as if old age is contagious and they might catch it from me. No more sitting at the feet of the old and wise to learn of life's long hard lessons as I did in my youth. The 1960s did have some cool things going for it other than the drugs and the rock'n'roll, such as sharing and respect for the aged; I was apprentice to several old Masters, in yoga and art and learned much that helped me throughout my rambunctious life. Lets face it, we must've done something right to survive all the shit that has gone down since.
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| My mate's poor wrecked car, which he wants me to pay for!!! |
Oh how I love the Himalayas, cruising around and around at high speeds, I admit it's an extreme sport but worth the risk. The natural splendours, the dangerous thrills and always something new to discover, such as the huge Hanuman Temple I was taken to. My Indian friends' prayers to the monkey god must've paid off as none of us were injured in the crash, the girl in the backseat only getting a slight concussion. I was resigned to spending the night on the chilly side of the road except my mate changed the shredded wheel and tore off the ripped-up front sheet-metal so that we were able to slowly chug chug back down the mountain to Rishikesh.
I survived India with no safety rails, made it to Delhi airport with $3 in my pocket, enough for a cup of coffee at MacDonalds. And here in Sydney I'm destitute. A reader of my Blogs must've noticed by now that I've been advertising my novel, Vagabond Freak, on every page, but for all that I've now had 60,000 readers I've not had one sale of the paperback or e-book version of it, not in the whole wide world, via Amazon, though I seem to have a readership in France, Germany, Russia and America!
I suspect Amazon is ripping off most of my royalties, under-reporting the sales, as I've seen that proof of sales from relatives and friends don't match the sales charts Amazon cons me with. Bozo, the Amazon billionaire, seems to have a team of spin doctors paid to bullshit me that my family and friends have been lying to me!!! They assure us suss complainers that the company gets audited every year: how could they audit a zillion transactions and as if THEY couldn't rig it anyway! What a bastard the Bozo guy is, to rip off his suppliers and everybody else. Why? Surely being heralded as the best boss ever would be worth far more than a few extra billion dollars?
(Is it that the cool cats of the world hate Amazon so much they refuse to buy anything from the bastards, monopolists, polluters and slave drivers that they are, and that's the reason there's been no sales of my book globally? What to do, nobody has put me onto an alternative online print-on-demand publisher which doesn't censor or edit any independents. Amazon is an easy platform to access, and ships it to your door reasonably fast.)
I've Googled it and discovered other independent writers also have complained they've been ripped off, (a few sycophants have stated they haven't, they got their fair dues, so it must be us whingers who are deluded); it seems this is how Bozo got his $100,000,000,000, ripping off his suppliers!!! I certainly can never prove how many strangers around the world have bought my book, I'm totally reliant on Amazon being honest. And under corporate capitalism, is commercial honesty possible? America has exploited, raped and plundered the planet for a hundred years and the pace of daylight robbery has picked up egregiously under Trump. As Brad Pitt says at the end of "Killing Them Softly", "America is not a country, it's a business, now give me my fucking money!!"
Troma of New York ripped me off of my film royalties for "Virgin Beasts", (7 years of slave-work) and now Amazon looks like they are ripping me off of all my hard work in writing the book, (30 years of rewrites.) I'm not going to let this shit stop me, I'm nearly finished with my second novel,"Punk Outsider" in my trilogy "The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cat" and somehow I'll publish it in a few months, but not on Amazon. I'm compulsive and passionate enough to keep going even though I'm constantly aware of the position of the artist in Australia, pathetically undervalued and class-ridden crushed. In Europe or America I might've made a living from talent and perseverance and be fetching good prices for my work. Here in Auz I'm penniless, kicked in the arse and told to "exit through the toilet." Oh yeah, I am easily ripped off by American companies as I'm a hobo homo from way down under with no connections and wherewithal. There's possibly been a class-action against Amazon by independent publishers who are sure they've been ripped off but I am not in the know to figure out what's going on.
Obviously I'm quite fucked up and deranged over my existential predicament. Shocking world events reduce my sorrows to zero importance yet I exist at the center of my universe so I can't help bitching about how the world treats me. I'm a flaky loser, I admit, I don't even have an Australian Business Number to chase work and make sure I get paid for it as I have never had the yuppie ambition to run a plastic and stainless steel commercial-arts office. I guess I got what I asked for, sweet fuck all. The myth of the romantic artist certainly went out the window with Van Gogh's ear.
www.amazon.com/author/tobyzoates
I survived India with no safety rails, made it to Delhi airport with $3 in my pocket, enough for a cup of coffee at MacDonalds. And here in Sydney I'm destitute. A reader of my Blogs must've noticed by now that I've been advertising my novel, Vagabond Freak, on every page, but for all that I've now had 60,000 readers I've not had one sale of the paperback or e-book version of it, not in the whole wide world, via Amazon, though I seem to have a readership in France, Germany, Russia and America!
I suspect Amazon is ripping off most of my royalties, under-reporting the sales, as I've seen that proof of sales from relatives and friends don't match the sales charts Amazon cons me with. Bozo, the Amazon billionaire, seems to have a team of spin doctors paid to bullshit me that my family and friends have been lying to me!!! They assure us suss complainers that the company gets audited every year: how could they audit a zillion transactions and as if THEY couldn't rig it anyway! What a bastard the Bozo guy is, to rip off his suppliers and everybody else. Why? Surely being heralded as the best boss ever would be worth far more than a few extra billion dollars?
(Is it that the cool cats of the world hate Amazon so much they refuse to buy anything from the bastards, monopolists, polluters and slave drivers that they are, and that's the reason there's been no sales of my book globally? What to do, nobody has put me onto an alternative online print-on-demand publisher which doesn't censor or edit any independents. Amazon is an easy platform to access, and ships it to your door reasonably fast.)
I've Googled it and discovered other independent writers also have complained they've been ripped off, (a few sycophants have stated they haven't, they got their fair dues, so it must be us whingers who are deluded); it seems this is how Bozo got his $100,000,000,000, ripping off his suppliers!!! I certainly can never prove how many strangers around the world have bought my book, I'm totally reliant on Amazon being honest. And under corporate capitalism, is commercial honesty possible? America has exploited, raped and plundered the planet for a hundred years and the pace of daylight robbery has picked up egregiously under Trump. As Brad Pitt says at the end of "Killing Them Softly", "America is not a country, it's a business, now give me my fucking money!!"
Troma of New York ripped me off of my film royalties for "Virgin Beasts", (7 years of slave-work) and now Amazon looks like they are ripping me off of all my hard work in writing the book, (30 years of rewrites.) I'm not going to let this shit stop me, I'm nearly finished with my second novel,"Punk Outsider" in my trilogy "The 7 Lives of the Punk Poofy Cat" and somehow I'll publish it in a few months, but not on Amazon. I'm compulsive and passionate enough to keep going even though I'm constantly aware of the position of the artist in Australia, pathetically undervalued and class-ridden crushed. In Europe or America I might've made a living from talent and perseverance and be fetching good prices for my work. Here in Auz I'm penniless, kicked in the arse and told to "exit through the toilet." Oh yeah, I am easily ripped off by American companies as I'm a hobo homo from way down under with no connections and wherewithal. There's possibly been a class-action against Amazon by independent publishers who are sure they've been ripped off but I am not in the know to figure out what's going on.
Obviously I'm quite fucked up and deranged over my existential predicament. Shocking world events reduce my sorrows to zero importance yet I exist at the center of my universe so I can't help bitching about how the world treats me. I'm a flaky loser, I admit, I don't even have an Australian Business Number to chase work and make sure I get paid for it as I have never had the yuppie ambition to run a plastic and stainless steel commercial-arts office. I guess I got what I asked for, sweet fuck all. The myth of the romantic artist certainly went out the window with Van Gogh's ear.
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