 Mesothelioma
If you are interested in the medical or legal aspects of Mesothelioma, see below, but as is my habit, I'll not be talking about mesothelioma here, but about something mesothelioma made me think of, which is not about mesothelioma.
As you probably already know, mesothelioma is a lung disease brought on by exposure to asbestos. Mesothelioma is also a legal phenomenon, as a major class-action lawsuit surrounding mesothelioma brought out a whole herd of mesothelioma lawyers. Mesothelioma then became a fascinating Internet "mesothelioma" phenomenon, as mesothelioma lawyers bid up prices on search engines for the term "mesothelioma.". At one point, "mesothelioma" was a keyword law firms would pay search engines upward of $85 per click on the lawyer's mesothelioma ad, and shady webmasters published vacuous mesothelioma websites to draw clicks on mesothelioma ads. Mesothelioma has become an entire multi-dimensional mesothelioma phenomenon.
Perhaps you're sensing where I'm going with this column on mesothelioma (which isn't about mesothelioma, but something mesothelioma made me think of, which is this whole "mesothelioma thing").
The Hazel Street Mall is not about the title of this column; it is about writing, and about living the life of a writer. We believe that writing is fundamental to human civilization. Writing, and the authors who craft it, have created civilization as we know it, and have done so throughout the ages, and continue to do so today. I state our belief in these terms in the hope you will understand how seriously we regard our work here.
Hazel Street is also about "living the life of a writer". It's about writing 2500 words, for five bucks, for a publisher who will lovingly ink it onto paper that the consumer will use to wrap fish with. It's about writing, rewriting, critiquing, editing, and yes, more rewriting, usually for years, until you can entice an agent, who might interest a publisher to put your novel into print, when you can finally get down to the real work of trying to sell it.
And sometimes writing is just about putting it on paper so it'll get out of your head.
It's also about submitting your work to a little website for nothing but the bragging rights, "Hey, did you see my column is up on Hazel Street?" It's about hours of editing these submissions, and getting the %$@*&B javascript code to work on the website, and paying hosting fees, and rebuilding computers when they suicide from overwork, and dealing with clients who think all this is easy to do,'cause "it's just like paper". If Hazel Street Productions actually paid Carol and I for the hours we put in, HSP would be in serious conflict with the minumum-wage laws.
But we do it because we love you, and we believe in you, and we know you're doing something important.
"Living the life of a writer" is also about finding some way that your writing can turn into something that can support itself. It's fine to drive a taxi while writing the Great American Novel, but there are few who would say that is ideal. My day job at Yahoo! pays pretty decently, and Carol's work with writers brings in more funding, but it would be nice if the Hazel Street Mall could start pulling its own weight.
We have avoided putting advertisements on Hazel Street for years. This is a bit disingenous, really, since everyone has to confront the realities of life sometime, and living off the charity of Carol and I may actually be harmful to Hazel Street's health. So we have started experimenting with the commercial aspects of the website business. You will begin to see advertisements on Hazel Street, powered by Yahoo! and Google. We would never suggest that you to click on these ads to support our website. Honest. You see, clicking on the ads would send money to us, and we could get rich! So we'd never suggest such a thing. Actually, it would be a violation of the terms-of-service of both Yahoo! and Google to even ask our readers to click the ads to support us. Sounds outrageous? but think about it. It is not incumbent on Yahoo! and Google advertisers to underwrite HSP expenses, with no expectation of return. More importantly, if the ads are not enticing to our readers by themselves, then we don't want our readers to be bothered with them. We hope, ultimately, that ads will be a small enhancement to the experience of the Hazel Street Mall. The more relevent the ads are, that is, the more that they present offers that are actually attractive to our readers, the better it will be for all of us.
So if you hate them, fine. We'll try to keep them out of your way. Just don't brag that you never click on ads, though. My "pretty decently" compensated day job is financed by millions of people who do click on ads. They don't do that because they hate ads.
Hazel Street is, also, experimenting with putting our own ads on other people's websites to draw readers, and writers, to us. In just the past 24 hours, our advertisements have brought one-hundred new viewers to Hazel Street! It cost us about fifteen cents each. I hope these people didn't click on a Hazel Street ad because they hate us!
Speaking of lawyers, that brings us back to "mesothelioma", of course. Commercialism can tend to warp any artistic endeavor. I think everyone would agree that the first three paragraphs of this column are pretty bad writing. Yet this is the kind of writing you would see if we worked to get readers to click on that $85 ad. At Hazel Street, we will work to make sure that such distortions do not happen to our website. We remain committed to supporting writers, in every aspect of their craft, and will strive to have our advertisements inspired by our writings, rather than the converse.
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