When You Were Here Before

by Sarah Pegram 

He rested his head on her shoulder as she studied his journal from 10 years ago.The pink exercise book with a collaged cover, phrases that must have meant something at the time, tattered pages and old love letters hidden inside. Maybe it was awkward, having someone read the words and secrets of your sensitive, wallflower 17 year old self. She ran her fingers over the words on each page, and felt her heart breaking as she kept her tears at bay and read on. He was scared, quiet, unsure, dominated. She wanted to cry for the lost boy in the past, the boy that still echoes in the man beside her. She took a deep breath as she set the book aside and rested her head on his. She took his hand and whispered 'I wish I had known you then. I would have been your friend'. She would have saved him.

Amazing, Zany Zine Reviews! Yeah!

By Tina Armstrong

(tinathehyena (at) gmail.com)

Hello world, I am here to review your zines! Feel free to contact me by e-mail to get my address to send me your zine. All submissions will be reviewed. In the meantime I will start reviewing zines I already have that have found their way to me. I promise I'll be gentle...unless I really hate it.

Purge #1

Find it: on Etsy and tumblr

Author: Marta Lapczynski of Fat Heart Press

A nice half-size zine with around 40 pages. No cut and paste, but the layouts are clean and easy to read. I love that there's an “obligatory trigger warning” but that she rounds out that opening paragraph with “but let's continue to learn good coping mechanisms while we work toward a better world, shall we?” Sold.

Inside she talks about impulse Pez-buying, starting her own publishing company, and leaving an abusive partner. I think what I love most about this author is her brutally honest quipping about her inability to keep having sex with steady partners(“I can't fuck, because I'm too fucked up, because I've been so fucked.”)to her childlike innocence when she asks the question “What does it look like to transcend?” It's all written beautifully in perzine fashion. A definite must-read.

***

Mini Majellan-Found Things

Got it: from a friend, but you can find it at www.shelbyville.com.au

Cute little zine with a big focus on layouts, visual aesthetics, and images rather than words. There's maybe 100 words in the whole thing. While it does look pretty, I tend to be more partial to zines with a lot of substance in them or that are somewhat word-heavy. It does make up for that a little by adding a “found” thing on the front cover of all it's zines. Mine was a button.

Monsters



by John Callaghan, PhD

I slapped Frankenstein in the face
while the Wolfman tore
my clothes to shreds.
I pushed my Freudian Mommy
into the dusty slow moving Mummy.
ARGHH! Skreet!
BROWL! Skreet!
Just another stupid Zombie.
Well you know,
there’s only so much
you can take from these
Monsters after all.

Jesus, Super Fetus in The Devil Went Down to Georgia


by Robert Bowen

It was the kind of night that cliche horror directors dreamed of. Dark and wet like a freshly extinguished burn victim. The clock on the wall was nearing 11, and Jesus, Super Fetus, Aborted Hero of the Second Coming Detective Agency had just called it a night. The familiar closing ritual already in progress. As he finished off the contents of the glass and set it clumsily next to the bottle that would soon be refilling it, the phone rang...and with it came a feeling.

Even though the abortion left Jesus’ five major senses stunted and underdeveloped, his sixth sense sprouted strongly like it was injected with Miracle Gro. Which it may very well have been, given the restricted access to safe abortions that gripped the nation in 2022 causing his mother to try a number of unsuccessful means to bring her unwanted pregnancy to an early end.

A second ring from the telephone smashed through the propaganda stirring in his mind. ‘No time for morality messages’ Jesus thought as he reached the phone, trying hard to ignore the feeling of doom and gloom that burned in his gut like the burritos he regularly punished himself with from Sam & Ella’s Lunch Truck.

His hand hung hesitantly over the phone’s receiver, the proverbial devil on his shoulder winning the argument with its calls for after hours apathy...but the feeling. He just had to know if he was right. And he was.

As he picked up the phone and placed it to his ear, the eager voice on the other end stinging with panic didn’t even wait for a greeting of any kind before it rang out.

“The devil went down to Georgia!!”, the voiced spat before drawing a deep breath that showed the person it belonged to was completely out of air. “I repeat, the devil went down to Georgia!”

There it was. The one coded message Jesus had earnestly hoped he’d never hear after it had been decided on years before. The one whose very utterance changes everything. The nervous voice desperately spoke again.

“Jesus, are you there?! I say again, the devil went down to Georgia!”

Jesus’ good eye drifted to the window as a bolt of lightning shot across the sky like the UFO’s and the truth he knew was out there. The rain slapped against the window like a wave seeming angry at the shoreline.

“This account’s voicemail box is full.” Jesus robotically replied.

He hung up the phone, grabbing up the bottle and tipping it with reckless abandon towards his glass. The caller’s words echoed in his head, “The devil went down to Georgia!!” He swallowed hard as the whiskey’s burn joined the one in his belly.

“Too bad it’s fucking raining,” Jesus said in to the empty room, “I don’t do shit in the rain.”

So I thought I would a few minutes out of my day to share some facts that are just things I think everyone should know.

by Samuel Joseph

Alcohol doesn't kill germs, ever, period. Which means that those instant hand sanitizers are actually making a better breeding ground for germs by giving them what all life craves, moisture (water). Next time you see them in a hospital or doctors office, remember that. If the active ingredient is alcohol, you're being ripped off and scammed.

If we piled up all the US currency in bills in existence today there would be approx. 3,000$ per citizen of the US. That's only a one-time payout of 3k, and then it's all gone. This includes the amount (which is actually the bulk of all the currency in circulation) being held in foreign banks. Bill Gates, the richest person in the US is currently worth an estimated 59 Billion dollars. That means Bill has approx. 20 Million other citizens worth of money. That's more people than NYC, LA, and Chicago combined. Looking at the top 30 ranking on Forbes wealthiest Americans list (including ties, which means a few more than 30 people) you'd see that their combined total is roughly equal to 190.4 million other citizens. That is more than half of the entire population of the United States. That's just the first 30, the list is 400. That means two things. First, everyone who isn't on the Forbes list, is just passing around someone else's money. Second, it means that most of the wealth in existence is nothing more than an electrical signal stored in a computer.

Marijuana was a vital part of our country winning the Second World War. However, it was made illegal later after a large immigration of Mexicans to the States thereafter.

Sears once sold heroin, in fact it's a large part of why they were successful. Heroin was also legal because most Americans still felt that it wasn't up to the government to tell people whether or not to medicate, or how to do so. The difference between legal and illegal drugs in this country has been determined more by political donations and corporate interests than by science, health, or medicine. Legal drugs have consistently far outnumbered illegal drugs in fatalities in the U.S. and the numbers are rising.

The single largest drain on an individuals wealth, a nations wealth, and on our environment, is a motor vehicle. This, however, is only because of their reliance on fossil fuels. Vehicles have already (numerous times by different people) been created which are cost-effective and use alternative sources of energy, including water. The water fueled car exists, it's simple. Electrolysis separates hydrogen and oxygen (that's simply running electricity through a tank of water) the hydrogen is then burned as fuel. The waste is oxygen and water vapor.

The laws of thermodynamics you were taught in school are wrong, both energy and matter can be created and destroyed. They are regularly and constantly within the universe even in our solar system, and all around you on this planet. This means that free, clean, reliable energy is not a myth, it is not a scam, and it does exist. The fact that you are paying an electric bill, and other utility bills is not a reflection of the correctness of the assumptions of these laws veracity. It is a reflection of the billions of dollars that a few people are making from continuing to get you to pay those bills, and how much they spend every year to make sure that elected officials continue business as usual. Why do I think they're wrong? Well, if matter and antimatter meet, what happens? Also, it stands to reason that if nothing can be created or destroyed, then nothing would exist in the first place. So, there's that.

There really are two types of people in the world, Sociopaths and Empaths. Both of these are genetic variations and have physiological differences. Both of them are evolutionary reactions to the environment. The difference? One predisposes a person towards the formation of social connections as a survival mechanism while actively connecting their emotions and well-being to the emotions and well-being of those around them. The other predisposes a person towards the formation of social connections as a survival mechanism while removing their emotional connection to the emotions and well-being of those around them. The results are all around you. The next time you wonder why something isn't simple, or kind, or correct, remember that Sociopaths are all free to do as they please in the world. In fact, they are more free than you, since they do without ANY of the emotional (and thus moral) qualms that you have. The highest concentrations of Sociopaths are currently in Business (with the predominant concentration being in executives and large corporations), Politics (again the highest concentration is at the National level, not the local or regional level), Law (especially business, corporate law, international law, less often found in the less financially rewarding legal branches), and lastly Prison. Prison is not the place with the most total Sociopaths, though the concentration is high, there are more Sociopaths out free in society and citizenry than there are locked up. Without a national health care system, and thus without a national mental healthcare system, there is no really easy way to know the exact numbers. For more on this, Google Sociopath or look up the disorder in the DSM-IV.

Edward Bernays was the Devil. At least, I'm fairly certain. If you've got a different view, I'd love to hear it. Pretty sure it's a fact, Jack.

And finally, Corporations in the United States are required, BY LAW, to not consider anything before earning more money. By law, they cannot consider the environment, the health and safety of their employees, the livelihood of their employees, the needs of the community, the legal/ethical/moral implications of their actions, before they consider their profit. By law they must put making a profit before anything else, including and most especially, you, your wants and needs.

You probably already knew all of this, but your friends might not.