Before anything else, to everyone on the East Coast, particularly in the NYC area, go to http://theidproject.com/gl_bwarner.htm for further info about my upcoming talk there on August 27th. I have two other area gigs which are as follows:
• Bluestockings - New York, NY - Author Event - Sunday August 26, 2007- 7 pm - Contact: Brooke -for info at Brooke@bluestockings.com
• Barnes & Noble - Greenwich Village - Author Event - August 28, 2007 - 7:30 pm
I just got back from the San Diego Comic Convention where, among other things, I had a lovely time at the Suicide Girls booth with lovely Bee Jellyfish and Cake. Bee said that the interview I did on her radio show is one of the most talked about interviews she's done.
Now I've previously said here in this blog that you don't need to subscribe to Suicide Girls to see my stuff on there. And you don't. They offer it for free to anyone who wants to look. But you know what? If you like what I write there you should probably think about subscribing to Suicide Girls. And here's why.
I'll bet dollars to donuts a whole lot of you out there either subscribe to or buy certain Buddhist magazines on a regular basis. And those mags may tell you great details about the Dalai Lama's latest comings and goings, who's been seen out on the town with Thich Nhat Hahn and what the Instant Enlightenment Roshis are selling this month. But they don't have articles every week by me in them. I guess that sounds obnoxious. But if you're reading this I assume you're a fan or at least you love to hate what I write. In either case you might want to support the people who are publishing it.
Bizarrely enough the folks at Suicide Girls actually pay me to write a column there. The money they send me each month has helped defer the costs of running our weekly Zazen classes at the Hill Street Center (I pay for that space) and helped me go out and do talks in far flung places. I wouldn't have even been able to go some of the places I've gone in the past year at all except for spending what I get from SG. I plan to use more of the dosh they send my way to do more Buddhist stuff in the future, including retreats and all kindsa things.
No matter what you think of their business, the people are Suicide Girls are supporting the Dharma. This is an amazing, wonderful and valuable thing. Naked girlie pictures are making it possible for lots of people to hear about Buddhism who would never have been exposed to it in a million, billion years otherwise. I don't really understand it myself. But these folks are making real Buddhism available in an area that had been heretofore untouched by anything of the sort. This is an incredible and mysterious world we live in.
Look. Even if you subscribe, no one's gonna make you look at the nudie pictures. That's up to you. They don't make me blush. It's really pretty tame stuff by today's standards. Then again I spent 11 years in Japan where the attitude towards such things is wholly unlike the Puritan inspired attitudes most Americans hold. When you live for a few years in a place where one of the top kiddie songs is all about tits it kinda makes you more at ease with things like the Suicide Girls. (See You Tube thing below. This is not late-night adult oriented anime. It's a kid's show called Zatch Bell)
Besides the nudie pix, if you subscribe to the site you can post comments right there under my articles instead of posting about them here.
No one at SG is telling me or even encouraging me to try and get you folks to subscibe. I don't get any bonuses for new subscribers. But I've just been thinking about it a lot lately and wanted to say this. For $4 a month you get 4 installments of my writing. I put in a lot more than a dollar's worth of work into those bastard things every week.
Anyway, you don't have to subscibe to get the articles. That's true. If you can't afford it, no problem. Or if you just don't want to, I'm not gonna try and make you. If it creates a big moral dilemma for you, maybe you should avoid that. Or maybe you shouldn't. It's up to you. But if you can I think a few more of you should subscibe.
