Railroad Semantics #1

Railroad Semantics #1: Eugene, Portland, Pocatello, and Back! 
By Aaron Dactyl / Microcosm Publishing

14cm x 18cm, 64 pages

Cost: offered as part of Microcosm Publishing sliding scale pricing $5.95-$9.95

Semantics is a branch of linguistics concerned with changes in meaning. Railroad Semantics - apart from being just a great sounding and looking zine name - is concerned ultimately with American railroads, and their place and meaning, both within a subculture and the wider cultural expanse. 

As Aaron explains in the introduction the zine is:

"a compliment to the off the grid lifestyle train hopping represents". 

Railroad Semantics is mostly comprised of first hand accounts documenting Aaron's journeys across the vast landscapes of America riding cars of huge freight trains - complete with near misses, and close calls - accompanied by his black and white photographs of landscapes, graffiti, and fellow riders. Interspersed are newspaper clippings of related interest - train disasters, train fanatics, and a fascinating piece about a town called Bill. And of more cryptic origin, handwritten letters from a fellow rail traveller. 

The content overlaps and shifts the ground, almost like sifting the mythology of the great American railroad through a fine grid. Earlier this year I reviewed Adam Void's zine about riding the American railroad, this zine has obvious parallels, and if you like that zine, you'll love this one too.

The production and design quality of Railroad Semantics is fantastic too, right down to a soft matt finish to the cover. 

Even if the closest you'll get to jumping the rails is being crushed while standing on a late running daily commute, Railroad Semantics will help pull focus on the cultural landscape of the train. I can't wait to read other issues. 

Buy Railroad Semantics #1 here: microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/3620

The first four issues are even available as a box set (there is something I find deeply satisfying about that): microcosmpublishing.com/catalog/books/6478


Review by Nathan Penlington

Shelf Life #2 - Adventures in used book hunting

Shelf Life #2 - Adventures in used book hunting

44 pages, digest

Card stock cover

$7 U.S. (delivered)

This zine is for bibliophiles. Written in a friendly travelogue style, Annie and Tim chronicle their adventures searching for used books, reviewing in detail used bookstores, library sales, etc.

Promo copy: "This issue is jam-packed with stories of shelf-combing galore. In "The Pleasures and Perils of the Book Sale" we introduce you to the weird, wonderful world of library book sales and the sometimes fierce competition that can be found there. In "Bibliophiles in Beach Read Country" we tell a tale of jonesin' for better book stores while on vacation in Chincoteague, Virginia. We review a number of stores and sales in Westchester, NY and Fairfield county, CT and describe our favorite finds there. Plus, our experience at one store leads to a meditation on compulsive hoarding. Our "foreign correspondent" Patti Moore (Tim's mom) reports from Venice, Italy on "The Most Interesting Bookstore in the World." And lastly, we share our thoughts on Greg Farrell's graphic novel "On the Books," an account of labor organizing at the Strand Bookstore in NYC... Lots of original photographs and illustrations."

Shelf Life is well written, lovingly crafted, and a lot of zine for the money assuming you are the target audience.

My younger (life is one long road trip) self would have loved this. My grumpy old (stay home and take a nap) self wasn't overly interested. My favorite part was about the people who have no love or appreciation for the books themselves, who come to sales armed with scanners, looking for stuff they can resell on Ebay for a profit.

While I think this is of value to bibliophiles, it has a more limited general appeal. If I was on a long trip I'd rather have three $2 perzines to read.

Order:

https://www.etsy.com/listing/232429684/shelf-life-zine-issue-2-the-pleasures

Interview:

http://www.quietlywritten.com/post/117893409430/interview-with-annie-tim-of-studiumpunctum

Review by Jack Cheiky

Bring on the Dancing Horses

By Shaun
PO Box 1282
Fullerton, CA
92836, USA

Bring on the Dancing Horses is another zine by the author of There is a Danger, which I reviewed last month. It covers much of the same material as that zine (bicycle trips, exploring, abandoned buildings), but is much longer, and perhaps because of this is able to have more of a narrative in places.

Specifically there's a lot written about a giant squat Shaun stayed in while in New York City, the people he met while he lived there, the adventures they had, and how they were eventually evicted. As a person who enjoys abandoned buildings, urban exploration, dumpster diving, and adventures, this stuff really appealed to me, and Shaun's accounts of hiding in dark rooms filled with junk while the police walked by, or sleeping in a cleaned out elevator control room successfully managed to paint pictures in my mind.

I read Shaun's zine at a very specific time when it may have had more of an impact on me than even a week ago. I have a full-time job I find to be (while somewhat worthwhile) incredibly boring. My plan was to work until August, visit some friends and family, and then start a new chapter of my life in another city in September. I have recently discovered that this new chapter will not be what I had planned, but will instead be something currently entirely mysterious to me. While some find this liberating, I've spent the last seven years of my life feeling fairly rudderless, and had hoped to have a goal slightly longer than "pay this month's rent". While I can work my boring job if I have something to look forward to, I now wonder why I should even bother with my job, and whether I should, like Shaun, give up on the capitalist society we exist in, and become more outside it than I already am, rejecting societal norms, and existing as a scavenger. This was only cemented by the sudden onset of spring, and days with 20 degree weather (to all the Americans that read this remember that I live in Canada, so this is actually warm).

PostScript: Included with Shaun's zines I received a letter that described what his zines were about. One small piece really stood out to me. It was about how part of this zine was about "a girl (always a girl...)", and really, that's kind of true. For a certain type of person, there is always a girl. One that you find, one that you leave behind, one that you remember.

Excerpt (I don't usually do these, but thought I should for this zine):

I woke up early and set off into the building, flashlight in hand and a feeling of vertigo from the sheer size of the labyrinthian halls, the multiple wings and adjoined church left eerily empty and bathed in dust and stained-glass light, and so much detritus from its past lives as a community center. On the third floor was the main room, lined by open windows whose glass had been removed, now letting light, noise and breeze flow lushly throughout the room. Most other windows in the building were boarded up, allowing in only a small sliver of light through the triangular wedges cut from the bottom of each plywood sheet. This made nearly every room dark, menacingly silent, and possessed of so many odd and curious details of which one could mine a litany of scenarios and theoretical explanations for.

On the lower floors were the large performance theater and basketball court. Chairs were scattered about the floor, a painted set remained standing on the stage, and a tall laddered-platform on wheels sat in the middle of the room. It was hard to know if these all were left in carless [sic] abandonment or if they were the remains of some squatter-party, as Bowery Manor at once appeared both the elegiac remnants of a once-bustling community space forced out by the city of New York and a boundless playground for those who stumbled upon the shell, determined to breathe life back into it. Unfortunately, the building being closed off meant that it was illegal to be anywhere on the property, and anyone coming or going or inside Bowery Manor had to be ware of any police of HPD presence around the building. Thus, besides the metal door installed by the kids and secured with chains and padlocks, the first floor also had a large metal beam wedged between the stairs and the rollgate, the only accessible entrance to anyone who did not want to squeeze through the sledgehammered hole beneath the tarp or climb through a second story window.

Debris lined the floor nearly everywhere you looked - phone books, paper, clothes, boxes full of completely useless objects, nearly any imaginable functionless item could probably be found somewhere on the floors or shelves or in the drawers or in any of the other nooks and crevices in the building. In some rooms, you were not stepping on any floor at all but on the slippery and unstable mountains of old magazines, computer equipment, kitchen tools, CD cases. The swimming pool in the basement was filled to an even six inches below the brim, not with water but with junk.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Bring on the Dancing Horses

By Shaun
PO Box 1282
Fullerton, CA
92836, USA

Bring on the Dancing Horses is another zine by the author of There is a Danger, which I reviewed last month. It covers much of the same material as that zine (bicycle trips, exploring, abandoned buildings), but is much longer, and perhaps because of this is able to have more of a narrative in places.

Specifically there's a lot written about a giant squat Shaun stayed in while in New York City, the people he met while he lived there, the adventures they had, and how they were eventually evicted. As a person who enjoys abandoned buildings, urban exploration, dumpster diving, and adventures, this stuff really appealed to me, and Shaun's accounts of hiding in dark rooms filled with junk while the police walked by, or sleeping in a cleaned out elevator control room successfully managed to paint pictures in my mind.

I read Shaun's zine at a very specific time when it may have had more of an impact on me than even a week ago. I have a full-time job I find to be (while somewhat worthwhile) incredibly boring. My plan was to work until August, visit some friends and family, and then start a new chapter of my life in another city in September. I have recently discovered that this new chapter will not be what I had planned, but will instead be something currently entirely mysterious to me. While some find this liberating, I've spent the last seven years of my life feeling fairly rudderless, and had hoped to have a goal slightly longer than "pay this month's rent". While I can work my boring job if I have something to look forward to, I now wonder why I should even bother with my job, and whether I should, like Shaun, give up on the capitalist society we exist in, and become more outside it than I already am, rejecting societal norms, and existing as a scavenger. This was only cemented by the sudden onset of spring, and days with 20 degree weather (to all the Americans that read this remember that I live in Canada, so this is actually warm).

PostScript: Included with Shaun's zines I received a letter that described what his zines were about. One small piece really stood out to me. It was about how part of this zine was about "a girl (always a girl...)", and really, that's kind of true. For a certain type of person, there is always a girl. One that you find, one that you leave behind, one that you remember.

Excerpt (I don't usually do these, but thought I should for this zine):

I woke up early and set off into the building, flashlight in hand and a feeling of vertigo from the sheer size of the labyrinthian halls, the multiple wings and adjoined church left eerily empty and bathed in dust and stained-glass light, and so much detritus from its past lives as a community center. On the third floor was the main room, lined by open windows whose glass had been removed, now letting light, noise and breeze flow lushly throughout the room. Most other windows in the building were boarded up, allowing in only a small sliver of light through the triangular wedges cut from the bottom of each plywood sheet. This made nearly every room dark, menacingly silent, and possessed of so many odd and curious details of which one could mine a litany of scenarios and theoretical explanations for.

On the lower floors were the large performance theater and basketball court. Chairs were scattered about the floor, a painted set remained standing on the stage, and a tall laddered-platform on wheels sat in the middle of the room. It was hard to know if these all were left in carless [sic] abandonment or if they were the remains of some squatter-party, as Bowery Manor at once appeared both the elegiac remnants of a once-bustling community space forced out by the city of New York and a boundless playground for those who stumbled upon the shell, determined to breathe life back into it. Unfortunately, the building being closed off meant that it was illegal to be anywhere on the property, and anyone coming or going or inside Bowery Manor had to be ware of any police of HPD presence around the building. Thus, besides the metal door installed by the kids and secured with chains and padlocks, the first floor also had a large metal beam wedged between the stairs and the rollgate, the only accessible entrance to anyone who did not want to squeeze through the sledgehammered hole beneath the tarp or climb through a second story window.

Debris lined the floor nearly everywhere you looked - phone books, paper, clothes, boxes full of completely useless objects, nearly any imaginable functionless item could probably be found somewhere on the floors or shelves or in the drawers or in any of the other nooks and crevices in the building. In some rooms, you were not stepping on any floor at all but on the slippery and unstable mountains of old magazines, computer equipment, kitchen tools, CD cases. The swimming pool in the basement was filled to an even six inches below the brim, not with water but with junk.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

There is a Danger

PO Box 1282
Fullerton, California
92836
USA

This is kind of strange thing to review, because it’s not one complete narrative, or a number of distinct pieces. Instead it’s brief pieces of writing, usually only a page or two, about travel. Not that these are traditional travel stories with a starting point and final destination, but rather they are mostly about the trip itself.

The writer travels by car (both driving and hitchhiking), train-hopping, bicycle, and even boat. The fact that this is just about the process of travel is interesting, and there are stories about, and by, fellow travellers, people met upon the road, and even people who pick you up while hitchhiking (is there a word for people that pick up hitchhikers? Apart from “nice”).

These stories really indicate to me how the creator of this zine has a very different personality than me, as he seems to be able to slip into conversations with total strangers incredibly easily. This is something that I’m not so good at, and has led to long silences during some of my own hitchhiking escapades.

There are also pieces about some of the small towns and places that you pass through while travelling, and how they never seem like a destination, but only a stop along the way.

A couple of bits stood out to me. There are a couple of references to breaking into buildings to sleep at night, which is a story idea I really enjoy. The idea of being somewhere you’re not supposed to be, while the owners don’t know you’re there appeals to me. Unfortunately this isn't explored as much as I'd like it to be.

The other was his account of cycling across a bridge from Washington State to Oregon. At first I thought he was writing about the same bridge I crossed on my bicycle trip in the area. His description of the bridge was very similar to my own experience. But then I saw that the bridge he crossed was considerably longer than mine, and as terrible as the bridge I crossed was, it could have been worse.

The whole zine is kind of strange, and is written in a style that uses thoughts and descriptions in ways that don’t usually appeal to me. Actually, they still don’t, and for the first few pages of this zine I kind of dreaded reading the whole thing (it’s quite long!), but I continued, and eventually I got used to the style the author used. I didn’t enjoy everything in here, and I think I would have enjoyed the stories more if they had been written in a different style, but I still found enough to enjoy here that I could recommend this to people that enjoy reading about the process of traveling to other places.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Neckmonster Seven

By Cheyenne Neckmonster

I spent about two years living and traveling through various countries in Asia, and my brother has lived in either Taiwan or China for almost three years. So I have some knowledge of Asia, and am interested in reading other people’s experiences with the continent.

In this issue of Neckmonster Cheyenne writes about the six weeks she spent in China studying as part of a program offered by her university. It’s kind of strange reading this, as the Cheyenne involved is different (and six years younger) than the one that I became friends with. I haven't read all of her zines, but her voice seems a bit different here.

I enjoyed reading Cheyenne’s account of her trip, even if, or because of, some of it was like my own experiences in those countries (I also missed Mexican food). Of course Cheyenne got to go to some places that I never saw (I am totally jealous that she got to see the Terra Cotta warriors), and I laughed at her crappy experience at the Great Wall of China (pro tip, don’t go to the nearest section, it’s worth sitting in a cab or whatever for another hour to get to a part that isn’t filled with tourists).

I liked the part where she wrote about trains, as they're a form of transport I still find faintly exotic. (I've spent most of my life living in places where trains didn't exist at all, and large parts of the rest in places where it's not really a functional form of transportation). I especially liked the bit where she wrote about watching people and places flash by outside the windows, and the tiny glimpses into people's lives that you got.

In some places I really enjoyed Cheyenne’s word choice (even if the fact that she never used capital letters kind of annoyed me). I liked how she described the "bleak landscape of roast duck and warm beer", when talking about being a non-drinking vegetarian in China.

Overall this wasn’t what I expected from an issue of Neckmonster (if Cheyenne ever told me she’d spent six weeks in China I’d clearly forgotten), but I enjoyed it nonetheless.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

The Breveteur: Cycling in and Around Halifax, Nova Scotia (Second Edition)

By Sarah Evans

This is a zine about possible bicycle trips you can take in the Halifax area. There are directions (that make no sense to me, as I haven’t lived here that long), blurry photocopied photos, hard to read hand writing and….

Wait, all of that makes it seem as though this zine is terrible! But it’s actually pretty neat. There are awesome fold out maps showing the routes you can take, brief snippets about historical sites of interest, anecdotes and stories about bicycle trips along these routes, and recommendations on various restaurants to go to.

Admittedly it doesn’t cover the sort of bicycle trips I’d be interested in, as most of these are all about just going for a ride in all that lovely nature (bleh) and most of the goals for people to cycle to are things like beaches (double bleh) and places to go swimming (blurgh).

As much as I love cycling, I love using it as a mode of transportation. I want to go from point A to point B, and whether Point B is five minutes away or hundreds of kilometres doesn’t really matter to me, but the idea of cycling a 100 km loop just to look at trees or whatever is entirely unappealing to me. (I’m not that big on “going for walks” either, although I enjoy walking and walk pretty much every I go.) I’d much rather have a guide to urban bicycle trips that could be planned. I know Halifax isn’t that big, but there must be some neat hidden things in the city that I haven’t seen!

So yeah, if you live in (or are planning to visit) Halifax, and want to go on some bicycle rides through the surrounding area you should check this out. I think I'm missing the second edition addition though. I'm not sure what's in that, or if it's just updates so owners of the first edition don't have to buy the whole thing again.

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

When You Can't Stand Yourself Walk Outside: Ten Foot Rule Journal Comix Spring 2007

By Shawn Granton
PO Box 14185
Portland, Oregon
97293-0185
USA

I’m pretty sure I’ve read this issue of Ten Foot Rule before, but if I did I didn’t review it for this site (or at least I can’t find it). So here we go!

Granton’s diary comics are about cycling, travelling, travelling to cycle, writing about cycling, and going to lots of zine and small press events. He seems to do a lot of things, and makes me feel kind of lame for spending too much time playing Mario Kart (that is part of why I haven’t been writing reviews of late…).

I really miss cycling. I haven’t owned a bicycle since I left Vancouver a few years ago, and the last time I remember spending any significant time (ie. more than an hour) on a bicycle was getting lost while trying to find an art gallery outside Copenhagen in 2010. Reading Granton’s comics make me miss cycling even more. Okay, so maybe I don’t want to be cycling at exactly this minute (it’s cold! And it is raining or snowing frequently), but the general idea of cycling appeals to me. Hopefully in the spring time.

I like how enthusiastic Granton is about cycling, and how he makes it a major part of his life. I also liked the comics about tabling at comic and zine events. That’s something I generally don’t like doing, but it’s interesting to read another person’s thoughts on the process.

One neat thing Granton does while traveling is write postcards to himself. These are included here and are nice little snapshots of what he was doing on the day he sent them. Plus it’s interesting to see what postcards he chooses to send. (Gosh, can you tell I’m a mail nerd?)

Daily diary comics are interesting in that you are able to see what is going on with someone’s life over a long period of time. However, there are lots of limitations with the format. The short nature (most that I’ve read are only three panels) mean that they give a skewed view of what’s going on in the person’s life. They can focus on the macro (“I went to work.”) or the micro (“I ate an orange.”) and it’s only by reading lots of them that you start getting into the head of the person creating them. When a major life event can take up the same amount of space as a day when you stayed in bed and played video games you start to see the limitations of the form. Yet, I still enjoy reading them and getting a peek into other people’s lives, no matter how limited it may be.



(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Oblast #11 - Places I have Slept January 1st - August 28th, 2011

By Matthew Murray

Last month the Roberts Street Social Centre held their 6th annual 24 Hour Zine Challenge. I participated, and this is one of the two zines I made during that time. (I've actually worked on it a bit since then, and changed the cover slightly, but this is the version that physically exists at the moment).

It features manipulated photos, and stories and information about the the 25 places where I slept between January 1st and August 28th this year. Check it out!

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Secret Spots Halifax anti tourism tour

I was super pumped when I found this zine in the Anchor Archive Zine Library. Things to do in Halifax! I've just moved here and don't know where there is anything to do. Plus: maps! I love maps! Sadly, this zine is something of a disappointment.

While it's totally cool that all the information in here is bilingual, it does mean that there's less space for locations to be included, but that's not a big deal. The actual list is a bit disappointing too, though it's not really aimed at me. There's a number of islands and lakes and stuff included, which aren't really things I have any interest in going to see, though I can understand other people finding them interesting, and there _is_ some stuff I thought sounded cool.

However, the real problem with this zine is the map. It's just photocopied from another source with numbers placed on top. It is not designed for the page, and is so dark I can't find where anything noted actually is located. Since the text refrained from including any addresses this becomes an "anti tourism" guide in that it tells you about places you cannot visit, you can only imagine them in your mind. Which, in some cases, might actually be an improvement. I mean, how cool can that lost overpass be?

(Originally written for 365 Zines a Year.)

Sowing and Dawning #4

Sowing and Dawning #4
128 Pages, Digest
$4

This is an impressive piece of work by Rick Visser. 128 pages split into two volumes and nestled in a fancy pouch, all of which are stamped with prints and stitched on a sewing machine, (one of the volumes has started to come unstitched.) Inside is old school cut and past prose that goes on forever, peppered with odd, random bits of pages from magazines, textbooks, maps, sheet music, some homemade paper, and there are several illustrations drawn on velum making interesting visual effects.

The content is primarily personal reflection. The prose is verbose and flowery, which normally I'm impatient with and end up skimming over. Here it's just interesting enough to make me slow down from my hurried mindset and want to give it the time and attention it demands. For this reason, I'm only able to read small amounts at a time. I have not finished it yet. So far it is mostly about Rick's experience moving around, (Portland, Connecticut, New York,) and the changing landscape both without and within.

 

---------------  Ordering Info ---------------

Carnet D'un Sauvage

By Nye Wright

I love traveling, I love writing about my own trips, and I love reading about other people's trips too. If it's somewhere I've never been to, I get to live vicariously through them; if it's somewhere I have been to, I get to compare what they did to what I did, wonder why they didn't go to that awesome place I found, and feel dumb for not doing that awesome thing I didn't even know about.

This zine takes the form of a sketchbook that Wright made during a trip to Europe. He tries to draw something every day, and in the margins writes about what he's been up to. It's a format that allows him to show the people he met, the different types of architecture that he saw, the food he ate, and other random things.

Wright's art certainly manages to capture snippets of what he experienced, and I enjoyed the drawing of him exhausted from traveling (after only a few weeks, the amateur!). However, the text is considerably weaker. Some of his lettering is really nice, and I enjoyed the titles that he did, but the longer pieces of text are harder to read.

The text also suffers from it not being a complete account of what happened, so the reader isn't sure of everything that's going on in the trip or why certain things occur. There's also some unfortunate xenophobia and general weirdness stemming from Wright being an American. However, he does at least point out these faults in himself, so it's not that distasteful.

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Anarchist New York 2010

By Michael Duckett
http://wemakezines.ning.com/profile/MichaelDuckett

I really love traveling. Exploring other cities, going to events, meeting new people: all of these are fun (if scary) things to do, and I do them as much as I can (and then make zines about them!). When I can't, I like reading about other people's trips. I love looking at incredibly old guidebooks, and one of my favourite types of zines are those that are about other people's adventures.

I love seeing cities I've already been to through other people's eyes, and I love reading about people experiencing cities I haven't been to (yet), so I was looking forward to reading Duckett's zine about his trip to New York.

The first thing you notice when you open up this zine is that the extra piece of paper that tells you this is an (accidentally) interative zine. It seems that it got stapled in the middle (as you would expect zines to be stapled) by accident, and so your first task is to pry them out, flatten the zine, and then find something to tie the whole thing together using the supplied holes (I used sparkly ribbon stuff from a present or something that someone sent me).

While this format is certainly neat, it does create a few problems, namely that at times the text of the pages goes all the way to the edge, and you can't actually read everything without difficulty.

Of course the greater problem regarding reading comprehensibility is the journal style used by Duckett for this zine. The pages combine illustrations, hand written text, typed text, collages, and photocopied text and images from other sources. There's a lot of information here, and at times it can be hard to figure out who's talking, and what bit you're supposed to read next.

This is a problem I had with Duckett's last zine, where the haphazard way the material is all collected at times just confused me. This one is certainly more coherent, and the asides about anarchist history in New York are both relevant and interesting (though it does assume you already have some knowledge of who some of these people are and why they're important).

One bit I really enjoyed, and this is incredibly nerdy and stupid, was when Duckett just recounts the plots of various Marvel comics in between other pieces of history, treating them as though they really happened.

During a battle between the mutant team X-Factor and their enemy Apocalypse on board the Super Villain's flying head-quarters, the ship struck the Empire State Building, causing the building's antenna to fall off

Stellar! Overall Duckett's zine is definitely interesting, and gave me some new information, but I sort of wish it was laid out in a less cut 'n' paste style.

(This review was originally published on 365 Zines a Year.)

Sentiments of Space Travel

Sentiments of Space Travel
48 pages, Pocket Size
$2 or Trade

Beautifully produced. "Lately, self-help magazines and television shows have led me to the lofty goal of not allowing fear to run my life. So I'm letting go, I'm getting tattoos where-ever I please, I'm changing my name. I found an apartment in Eugene and I'm moving there with my cat in September. I only work when I want to, I'm not trying to compete, I'm allowing summer breezes to sweep across my arms in the dark walking home. Across town, I bought a pink iPod off of Craigs List and laughed when I didn't get lost. I drove my friend to the airport last night where her plane is taking her to Germany for an entire year. I'm writing this zine, I'm reading fiction for fun, and checking out comics from the library. I try not to be afraid of global warming, nuclear war, or my own mental illness. I try not to be afraid for gay rights or future generations. In the past three years fear has been consuming me. Not only had it built a house on fine real estate, in those juicy gray curves of my brain, it also left my mouth and controlled all my limbs. It lived in my intestinal tract, an undiagnosable form of irritable bowel syndrome - uncomfortable and embarrassing. It cramped down on my social skills. It wouldn't let me break up with my ex-girlfriends, it addicted me to SAT courses and colleges out of fear that someone would find me out of fuck me over. I can't wait any longer for it. I can't tense up my shoulders and close my eyes and wait for someone to jump out and attack. fuck it. I hit the gym. four or five times a week. it was the only way for me to sweat fear out of my system..."

Sentiments of Space Travel
Jazz McGinnis
405 E.14th Ave #7
Eugene OR 97401,
johnny sees stars at gee mail