Toil #4 : Starting Over

40 pages, 8.5" x 5.5", 3 bucks or trade, edited by Kimberlee, Power of Paper, PO Box 27456, Albuquerque NM 87125-7456, USA + powerofpaperzines [at] gmail [dot] com This issue of Kimberlee's work zine has the theme 'starting over'. There are a bunch of contributors who tackle this theme in their own ways, but my favourite is Becky Wolf's 'No More Waiting', about her last day waiting tables in a restaurant. I really like the paragraph about the staff finishing up for the night and hitting the booze. "Waiting tables makes you drink. The schedule, the stress, the pace, the pocket money. Everybody's on the verge of alcoholism." Coming in a close second is teresaiswar's 'Stink', in which she admits to knowing "...the difference between the scent of standard shit and clostridium difficile shit. I know the smell of shit when a person has taken a ton of medications, the smell of the first shit after an elective knee surgery when the GI tract has come out of slumber, and I know the smell of shit when a person has blood in their shit, which I liken to wet aluminium foil on cavity-infested teeth." Also, not a bad cover from that bastard Stratu!