Goodbye Old Paint

“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.”

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Minnesota does this very nice thing where 3/8 of one percent of the state’s sales tax goes to what is known as the Legacy Fund, which is primarily dedicated to clean air and land and water and parks and nature, but which also spends a bit of money preserving the state’s “arts and cultural heritage…

The newly elected Republicans who recently took control of both of Minnesota’s legislative houses, though, are residents of Tea Party America, and in Tea Party America the government has no business spending money on anything besides arming militias, to shoot abortion providers. Take it away, House Majority Leader Matt Dean:

Dean also singled out a $45,000 payment of Legacy money that was made last year to science fiction writer Neil Gaiman for a four-hour speaking appearance. Dean said that Gaiman, “who I hate,” was a “pencil-necked little weasel who stole $45,000 from the state of Minnesota.”

…As Gaiman explained at length, at the time the library story “broke,” he was offered that much money — his regular speaking fee — by a Stillwater, Minnesota, library that had to use the Legacy money (which is meant to do things like bring famous authors to suburban libraries) by the end of the month, or else lose it. Gaiman gave the money to charity.

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“You wish to see the distant realms? Very well. But know this first, the places you will visit, the places you will see, do not exist. For there are only two worlds - your world, which is the real world, and other worlds, the fantasy. Worlds like this one, worlds of the human imagination. Their reality, or lack of reality is not important. What is important is that they are there. These worlds provide an alternative. Provide an escape. Provide a threat. Provide a dream, and power, provide refuge and pain. They give your world meaning. They do not exist; and thus they are all that matters. Do you understand?”

“When writing a novel, that’s pretty much entirely what life turns into: ‘House burned down. Car stolen. Cat exploded. Did 1500 easy words, so all in all it was a pretty good day.”