It's more than nostalgia. It's wanting to believe again, but not being able to. It's the feeling that what we don't know could hurt us. Bad. Would be more than we could take. Where Ground Zero equals Childhood's End. How many of us have taken the hit directly in our personal lives? Absorbed the full impact of America's broken heart? Which didn't happen three years ago, but continues yesterday and the day before. Today. We want to believe all those things we learned in school about America the Beautiful. But that simple faith has been betrayed and we can't get it back by wishing, clicking our heels and repeating "There's no place like home..."

Heavy City, yeah. But what more can you say? How much less? It's part of the background radiation at this point, and even if your Geiger counter's going crazy, how you gonna wrap your head around something like that? No way. But images carry the day, contain affects too early to unpack; call the bomb squad. `

This started out last night as a thing about where to get images for your blog. For my blog, to be more precise. For CBO. Because my old practice of lifting anything I took a fancy to off Google Images doesn't set too well with certain notions of intellectual property law. And who wants the Kopyrite Kops to come calling, yo?

A white man in Boulder, Colorado, for whom the term "middle-aged" has become a euphemism for a let's just say less shiny truth, hopes the irony of that "yo" is not lost on you, Gentle Reader. That man would be me. However, here's the workaround. Pay close attention here, because this is an advanced technique of Capitalist Zen, which I studied for years at the Advanced Level in several occult Fortune 50 societies. And the secret, as such arcane matters often turn out to be, is simple. Sell out. Why, you may even find yourself ripping yourself off. And it's all perfectly legal -- as long as you're selling something. Society understands sales. Oh yes!

Even though that clip is from "my" book, it still says I can't copy the bit I've copied. So technically, I guess I'm breaking the law. It's a moot point, though, because Perseus, my erstwhile publisher, would never complain -- especially since, if you click the grafik, you can buy the thing. Me, I'm way past any illusion of earning royalties on this one. But it doesn't matter. I get to legitimately use the images of the books I'm <cough> selling here. Society may not understand the "winning though worst practices" bit, but that doesn't mean you can't. And note that this works for anyone, for any book. And it doesn't just work for books.

Take, for example, the Manhattan Dawn grafik at the top of this post. That's from art.com, of which I'm an affiliate. Go ahead, click the link. You see? You can buy the print for a low-low $21.99 -- or have it mounted for just $75.98. Personally, I couldn't care less if you buy it or not. That's not the point. The point is that I can drive home my deeper point about America's heartbreak by offering you a piece of the action. In fact, this method doubly underscores the "subliminal" message. Don't you think?

Marketing. I been trying to tell you all this time: it's an art.

This magical Koan des Kapitalismus also works great for all sorts of dorm wall decorations, via allposters.com. Once again, you need to become an affiliate, but that's a piece of cake. And once you're street legal, so to speak, you can "sell" (i.e., display) things you might otherwise get busted for -- like say, this richly detailed suitable-for-framing photo-illustration of the knucklehead pitch. Beauty, ay?

But of course the all-time winner source for pictures of just about anything you can think of -- and a lot a stuff you never imagined -- is good ol' Amazon. Do you really think I link to all these books because I expect anyone will buy them? You're kidding me, right? Bloggers? Buy books? Never happen. You should see my Amazon Affiliate reports. This last quarter I made maybe 30 bucks. Quarter before that it was 15. Oh yeah, this is the get-rich-quick scheme of the century I'm runnin over here! Funny thing is, when I ran an e-zine (for those of you who arrived online last week, that's a sort of email newsletter), I made hundreds of dollars every quarter. Sometimes thousands. No lie. But blogging put an end to all that right quick. Something about the general level of blog-O-sphere literacy, I suspect. Or IQ. But I've gotten over it (and you know, Velveeta® and Spam® really aren't all that bad), because look at all the pretty pictures I can still get!

Mati Klarwein was an artist who, among other things, created album covers. This one was first released in August 1969. He also did the cover for Santana's Abraxas (below), originally released in September 1970. Pictured on both covers is the now-infamous Black Magic Woman. However much time has elapsed since then, she still comin to get ya.
This image is from the back cover of The Art of Rock: Posters from Presley to Punk. Just going by memory, I can tell you the artist is (now, sadly, was) Rick Griffin, the king-hell holy modal rounder of psypadeelic cartooning, bar none. I mean, Crumb is good. Crumb is an art god, no doubt of it. But Rick "a puff of kief in the morning makes a man as strange as a hundred camels in the courtyard" Griffin could put your head in a whole nother place, even if you happened, due to circumstances beyond your control, to be straight for a second.
A O X O V O X O A

But it ain't all just high kulchur and hippie dope paraphernalia out there, Bubba. Soon's I can save up, I'm gonna get me one-a these babies. You best believe it!

from: Powerful radio rocks on job site! by Tom Sockel
source: New Equipment Digest, 1 August 2002
via: HighBeam™ Research
Copyright © 2002 Penton Media, Inc.

Tough enough to withstand an 8-ft drop to concrete, Job Site Radio (Model 49-24-0200) also boasts audio power and clarity, plus unexpected convenience features such as auxiliary audio input, weather band, 12-v port for CD players and cell phone charging, and "pass-through" plug with extra outlet. Great sound comes from separate woofers and tweeters, 3-stage Punch EQ bass boost, and high-end digital tuner.

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