Fish With Legs #12

Fish With Legs #12
from Blackguard

I'd read good things about this zine so it was about time I got myself a copy. First of all, Eric's writing is so natural and funny it's kind of like reading a really long letter from a friend who writes really interesting and funny letters.
The main story in here is the tale of what happened when Eric got called up for jury duty. At the courthouse, there's a court officer who served in Iraq and never misses a chance to remind the jurors of it, for example when one of them asks where the dunny is, he replies "In Iraq if we were lucky we got to poop in a cardboard box, but usually we'd just crap in the sand. But your restroom is over there." or another time, at the lunch break he tells the jurors where they can eat, "The canteen is downstairs. The food isn't that great, but it's better than we had in Iraq."
Eric also writes about how, because of car problems, he decided to become a cyclist. He bought a bicycle but it was too hard, that cycling stuff, even after three months of riding, it never got easier, so he switched to the bus. I gotta say that Eric has some strange ideas - at the end of the article he says that buses are great, but there area few things that would make them even better. One of those things, he says, is if you could drive the bus yourself. To me, that's crazy. Who wants to drive the bus? You get on the bus and read your book, or zine, or comix or whatever you got, and the bus driver takes care of the driving. Isn't that the whole point?
Then there's five pages of 'Fun Facts'. I like this one... 'Once when trying to fix a stapler I stapled my finger. Once when using super glue I glued my fingers together.'
Then some Reviews. While reviewing The Dark Knight, Eric shares a poem he wrote just after Heath Ledger died. I don't think it would endear him to Heath Ledger fans. I thought it was funny though.
Finally, Eric reviews public libraries and how cool and wonderful they are. 'The best thing about libraries is is that they're one of the very few places where being loud and obnoxious is pretty much unheard of. Everywhere you go you're forced to endure nitwits and shitbrains yapping on their cell phones or just plain yelling at each other. But in libraries people pretty much just shut up and read or use the computers or whatever they do.' Amen to that, brother!
Fish With Legs is my new favourite zine!

[36 pages, digest size, Eric Lyden, 224 Moraine Street, Brockton MA 02301-3664, USA +++ ericfishlegs at aol dot com or eric.lyden at gmail dot com ]