You think Wicca/Paganism is any less total B.S., any less founded on unapologetic lies and misrepresentations, than any other religions or forms of spirituality?

You have to read this.

Four Stars, yeah, but does it have a pool?

In the case of books, experts usually estimate you can use an aggregate of up to 300 words freely as long as it includes attribution.... For magazine articles, 50 words is the maximum (that's assuming it isn't a 500-word filler).

—Tom and Marilyn Ross, The Complete Guide to Self-Publishing

Just got back the response from HarperCollins (England) regarding my request to quote 333 words from Mariana Caplan's moronic book Do You Need a Guru? in my Stripping the Gurus. Their ridiculous conditions for otherwise-free use included:

• The permission is only valid for a maximum of 1000 print and eBook copies.
• That we are sent a complimentary copy of your book on publication.
• That our material does not appear in your book in any negative context.

Well, not bloody likely. The Wilber-admiring Caplan is one of the major idiots when it comes to endorsing the guru-disciple relationship—the only way I'd ever want to use any of her written drivel is in negative contexts!

And a complimentary copy? Get fucking real! I've asked for many quotation-related permissions in my life already, and no publisher has ever had the temerity before to make such an unreasonable demand.

So, I just have to delete 333 - 300 = 33 words and then I don't have to bother with any future publisher's stupidity (and blatant repression of open debate) w.r.t. Caplan.

So, I think I'll delete the passages below, to get it down to around 250:

A committed relationship to a teacher not only bears similarities to marriage, but is infinitely more serious, as the implications of such a commitment conceivably extend even beyond the life of the body.

There are many gurus who come from guru-loving cultures like Tibet and India, and within their own cultures they function impeccably, but they start falling like flies once they come to the West because they can't deal with this culture—the sexual promiscuity, the materialism. People get disillusioned by these gurus.

That second quote is from Ram Dass, who is every bit Caplan's equal in utterly brain-dead foolishness whenever gurus are involved.

I've also been completely unimpressed with Bloomsbury Publishing and the New Times (alternative newspaper) people in California. The former wanted 60£ for 430 words from Vicki MacKenzie's Cave in the Snow. With paraphrasing, I have now quoted only 222 words from that book. Ha! So there!

"[Daya Mata] was a weak and idealistic young girl who was controlled by her mother and who was put in a position that she perhaps didn't really want to be in," says Joan Wight, the ex-nun, who, as a close associate to Durga Ma even after ceasing to be a nun, enjoyed access to the Mother Center until the latter's death in 1993. "[Daya Mata] got a taste of power," adds Wight. "She went to India. They sat at her feet and put garlands around her neck, and she became a figure she never realized she could be."

Likewise for the The Chariho Times, whose brave editor Scott Spitler denied ("We decline your request to use the excerpt from the Chariho Times"), again without explanation, permission for me to use a 72-word excerpt from this 770-word article. So it's now 43 words, of which 25 are quoted by them from a witness under oath, and are thus part of the court record, not something created or copyrighted by Chariho. Thus, 18 FAIR USE words. So bite me, Rhode Island editor-boy; not one damn thing you can do about it.

Ironically, the New York Times, of all places, has a sane and reasonable policy:

It is considered by The New York Times Agency "fair use" in using 2 sentences or less for non-promotional use.

Or this, from the Vancouver Sun newspaper:

If you are using less than 10% of the article, there is no publication fee.

And with even greater irony, the worst example of gouging I've ever had to deal with comes from an individual journalist, stationed in Thailand, who offered me his "lowest possible payment rate," since I'm an individual and not a corporation.

That rate? $2 per word, for a total of $148 U.S. for 74 words!

At $2 per word, I've got "two words" for you, journalist-boy.

That'll be $4.

Well, I don't need 74 words. Half an hour's work, and I'll make do with 21.

Paraphrase THAT.

FAIR USE, buddy. Not $148. Not $42. Zero dollars. Fair use.

You ask for way too much, you get nothing.

UPDATE (10/04/2004): Yoga Journal informs me that my "request does not meet [their] guidelines for granting permission to reprint." I can't tell from what little they sent back to me whether they're referring to this article or to this one. Presumably in time they'll get around to denying me for both of them. In the meantime, how am I supposed to know which one to start paraphrasing?

Random House, semi-reasonably, wants $225 for the first edition of STG, plus a copy of the published book, for 934 words quoted from Martha Sherrill's The Buddha from Brooklyn. (The fact that large portions of Sherrill's book are already posted on the Internet makes that request much less reasonable than it might otherwise have been, however.) But, alas for them, I shall rather use just 248 words from it instead. "Blessings."

Lis Harris wants $125 for quoting from her New Yorker exposé on Muktananda. Nope. No can do.

Oh, and Penguin wants 3 x $50 = $150 for 273 words from David Chadwick's Thank You and OK! for electronic, paperback and hardcover rights. They, too, demand a copy of the published book.

Well, good luck to them in that regard: It was already fair use even before, but it's now an even-fairer 247 words.

What, oh what are these people thinking?

As to the individuals and organizations who never even bothered to respond to my simple, industry-standard permissions requests.... (Included in that shameful list: Elias, Eric Dennis, Salon.com, The Oregonian, The San Francisco Examiner, Stewart Brand's Whole Earth magazine [re: CoEvolution Quarterly], The Richmond Times Dispatch, ReVision, Out Magazine, St. Martin's Press, iUniverse, Palgrave, Syracuse University Press, Counterpunch and Autonomedia.) As someone once said to Buddhist scholar Robert Thurman, father of Hollywood's Uma: "Fuck you, Bob. Fuck you!"

By contrast, real, sincere thanks to North Atlantic Books for making what I'm trying to do with STG easier rather than harder: 1120 words, all editions, no permissions costs, from Stephen Butterfield's The Double Mirror. If such a thing as blessings exist, bless them. So too, to journalist Peter Marin, who did the original exposé of Trungpa's "true sangha" back in the mid-'70s, and who has allowed me to quote extensively from it, for no charge. To them, and to John Horgan, for use of material from his interview with the "pale, imitation, yuppie guru," Andrew Cohen: Thank you.

The Red Sox (i.e., knucklehead pitcher Tim Wakefield) just blew another game.

Cheering for that team is like cheering for Charlie Brown when he's trying to kick the football with Lucy holding it.

Every time you think they just might get it together and finally connect, Lucy (i.e., the Yankees) yanks it away from them, and they end up flat on their backs, staring up at the sky, wondering what went wrong.

Oh well. There's always next year.

Oh no, I'm getting Happy Feet! —Steve Martin

Idea for a Book:

The Seven Habits of Highly Effective Hobbits.

"Don't drop your h's."