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ZINESTER
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REVOLUTION #9
THE IRREGULAR JOURNAL
OF POST-REALITY SOCIAL COMMENTARY,
SPECULATIVE FICTION, ART, POETRY,
ANARCHISM & ELDRICH FANZINE MADNESS
Featuring the Writing and Art of:
Isaac Asimov
Christopher Barnes
Ray Cathode
Dave Dugan
Blair Davis Gauntt
Leigha George
John Gill
Tona Hamishige
W. Joe Hoppe
Susie Kahlich
Klipschutz
Ricardo Obsolete
Ursula Pflug
Qojak
Andrea Shriver
Steven Taylor
Craig Volesky
Dedicated To:
Steve Marsden
1947-2015
This zine is a production of the
OBSOLETE! PUBLISHING EMPIRE
PO Box 72, Victor, IA, 52347
obsolete-press.com
[email protected]
2
CONFESSIONS OF A
We’ve learned a lot about publishing since
we put out “Abstract Youth” in 1982… Maybe.
A.Y. was our attempt at hardcorepunkart,
but in fact, it was just a collage of clippings from
Thrasher, Hustler, the Weekly World News and
photos taken at local punk shows, along with
some drunken gobbledygook manifesto plagiarized from Marcel Duchamp and Jello Biafra.
Luckily, only one copy of A.Y. remains…dogeared, beer-stained, at the bottom of a battered,
army-green filing cabinet... where it will stay.
During the hiatus since OBSOLETE! #8, I’ve
given a lot of thought to the motivations behind
putting out a zine in the era of digital media. For
some zinesters, it is a rejection of digital culture.
The handmade object is what it is about. For
me, making a zine is still about being a fan. It’s
like making a paper mixtape and sharing it–by
hand–with members of my tribe.
There is a direct line from the science fiction fanzines of the 30’s to the punk fanzines of
the 80’s, to the personal zines of today. Most
of them, regardless of “quality” are lost to time.
That’s okay! Pop culture, music, teen angst…
it’s not good for every bit of it to be digitally archived. Facebook is selling your family photos to
advertisers. Your greatest moment goes viral and
becomes yesterday’s news. Memories are cheapened. Myths are smothered in their cribs. revolutions are slaughtered like veal. Ideas, stories,
styles, stripped of context and imagination, are
forced to march into eternity as zombies, awaiting their turn to be rebooted– strung up like a
marionette, reanimated and resold as the latest
thing.
To make and share a zine is to say that no…
we didn’t make this for everybody in the world.
There is no comments section. Dialog is hard
work. If you hate it, you must physically dispose
of it. If you like it, you can share it with one other
person. Or toss it in the bottom drawer of the
filing cabinet...
3
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POST-REALITY
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“Post-Reality…
capitalism that murdered their dreams, not Joe Chill.
This past winter, an unholy alliance of mormons
and meth victims, high on Jesus, the constitution and the
smell gunpowder, occupied a lonely Oregon bird-watching sanctuary, acting out their own brand of cosplay, this
time LARPing a redneck reboot of King Leonidas and his
300 Spartans. But, there are no six pack abs there. Beer
guts and bad hips, Walmart Realtree® camo and “Molon Labe” meshback caps. Unlike their Comicon cosplaying cousins, these ammosexuals favorite fetish is not realized without real firepower, in the form of cheap AR15
Bushmasters or Chinese Norinco Mac 90s, purchased at
county fairground gun shows for a small roll of wrinkled
twenties. They too seek vengeance. Their super-villian is
also a straw man, a black/mexican/jewish/transgender
golem, so sexy and confusing that they must kill it before
they succumb to its powers.
what the fuck does that MEAN?”
The world has gotten so…meta.
In 2006, Oxford Professor Alan Kirby described
the post-postmodern world like this: “This pseudomodern world, so frightening and seemingly uncontrollable, inevitably feeds a desire to return to the infantile
playing with toys which also characterises the pseudomodern cultural world. Here, the typical emotional state,
radically superseding the hyper-consciousness of irony,
is the trance – the state of being swallowed up by your
activity. In place of the neurosis of modernism and the
narcissism of postmodernism, pseudo-modernism takes
the world away, by creating a new weightless nowhere
of silent autism. You click, you punch the keys, you are
‘involved’, engulfed, deciding. You are the text, there is
no-one else, no ‘author’; there is nowhere else, no other
time or place. You are free: you are the text: the text is
superseded.”
For some, the present looks sweet, like a chocolate/vanilla soft-serve ice cream cone. The past and the
future swirl together into an even mixture of delicious
chocolate optimism and comforting vanilla nostalgia. For
others, the present is just a turd between two slices of
Wonder Bread. As William Gibson wrote, “The future is
already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed.” For
many, work is no longer taking place in reality. People
are not pipe-fitters or nurses or short order cooks. They
are “foodies” or “gamers” or “Lakers fans” who have
their chosen reality interrupted by soulless hours of editing code or slinging lattes for Uber drivers.
Call center workers break away from their digital doldrums and cosplay at Comicons, becoming their
favorite CGI super hero, donning foam rubber six-pack
abs and wielding absurdly outsized war hammers and
blasters. Who are these people? Many aren’t even comic
book nerds. In years past, they would have been hockey
fans, but now, that brand of spectacle simply isn’t potent
enough anymore. Big budget streaming hi-def media
labs have cooked our beloved superheroes down, distilling away the impurities of pathos, benevolence and
justice, and creating a high-octane crank of pure vengeance. But what are they seeking vengeance for? It was
Magick(sic) is “…the science and art of causing change
to occur in conformity with will.” By Crowley’s definition,
language is Magick (or a virus, according to William Burroughs.) Hacking is Magick. Virtual reality is Magick, 3D
printing is Magick. Bitcoin is Magick. Social media is Magick. Genetic engineering is Magick. Financial instruments
are Magick. Capitalism is Magick. Pop music is Magick.
Advertising is Magick. We few, we unhappy few, we band
of post-postmodern Terran humanoids, have left reality
for the Magick Zone. We are entering post-reality… the
age of sigils. Our lives are ruled by conceptual semantics
and calculus. We no longer live in the territory, but in the
map of the territory. The singularity already came and
went. It was not a mighty wind blowing techno-utopia
into the lives of all humans, but rather a giant, collective
Red Bull fart, blown silently into the cushions of a million
cheap Staples office chairs by an army of Halo players.
Although information technology has lead to a democratization of access to information and the ability to
express ideas, it has also created a class of screen serfs,
living, working, shopping and socializing within the digital environment. The expression “meatspace” illustrates
the contempt that techno-utopian post-realists have for
the realm where real fighting and real fucking happens…where real tragedy and triumph happens. Where
real people become real heroes, not by killing zombies
or overthrowing the federal government, but by putting
the well-being of someone else’s “meatsack” above that
of your own.
Fuck Transhumanism (h+)…
Let’s shoot for Transhumanitarianism (H++).
Where in the hell has reality gone?
There was a time when cons and cosplay were
the realm of misfits and nerds who sought solace from
the daily abuse they suffered at the hands of “Norms.”
Conspiracy Theorist koo-koo land was an equally exclusive confederacy of dunces. Schizophrenics, acid heads
and smart-ass activist college kids got together for an
occasional game of intellectual chicken. Now both brands
of fantasy are popular, mainstream, commodified and a
whole lot less fun. These people aren’t in it for laughsthey think it’s all REAL. Being a cosplayer or conspiracy
nut is now a viable career path– no more or less valid
than being a “financial analyst,” peddling debt-backed
securities.
The term “post-modernism” came into popular use
after the first World War, as an attempt to reject the cold
totalitarian regimentation of modern society, industrialization and the social structures of the “Greatest Generation”. However, the post-modernists succumbed to their
own irony and narcissism. Despite the effort to open
up western culture, the opposite was the ultimate result.
Hippies became yuppies, and America dove farther into
Reaganist social stratification. Now, we have passed
through photorealism and hyperreality is the norm. VR
is here and abstraction is a thing of the past. Everything
is now black and white, brought to you in Ultra HD 4K.
According to the great occultist Aleister Crowley,
4
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Qojak
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MillerMatic 130’s Inferno
w/ thanks to Diana Dalberg
by w. Joe Hoppe
It’s best when you’re on your back
vulnerable, except for
your big gloves, welding mask, and
a welding blanket wrapped around
so as you lie there
in the sparks and occasional
red hot metal drip
your body goes somewhere else
as you pull yourself
along with the weld
across a molten metal hellscape
where you have the torch the
wand the complete power and
you feel like the brightest of
angels heat and light within
your hands—
Lucifer, bringing light
Prometheus, bringing fire
Steven Taylor
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Reviews from an over-the-hill fanboy.
Three paragraphs. No more, no less.
I’m 53, for fuck-sake. I’m even too old to
qualify as a man-child. I’m a pentagenarateen.
I still write “top ten” lists, watch German SF
serials from the 60’s, read indie comics, go to
small-town SF Cons and VFW hall professional
wrestling shows… and read books.
I recently responded to a Craigslist ad to
buy some vintage SF pulps, only to find myself
meeting a pale, white-bearded man named
“Marcel” on a bench at a mall skating rink because, he said, “that is where I meet customers.” It was so very worth it- I scored a first
edition paperback of A Clockwork Orange
along with some early Ballard, Burroughs (William AND Edgar Rice) and more. He agreed to
meet at a coffee shop next time.
Why do reviews in a zine? It’s all out
there, in the endless, uniform blandness of the
web. I know you can read reviews of any of
this stuff on 100 different websites. But “zines”
began as “fanzines”. Although fandom has
reached the mainstream, fen have not. The
desire to transcend the mundane lives on. If
you are reading this zine now, in the era of
the Trumpazoidz and the Zika virus, to you I
say…”Gabba gabba, we accept you, we accept you, one of us.”
Flickering Lights
The Netflix Marvelverse
While Joss Whedon Inc. churns out
the majority of the Disneyfied Marvel superhero pablum, Netflix has apparently been given
the task of managing the “cultural diversity”
requirements for the franchise. Netflix has,
so far, released seasons of shows based on
Daredevil and Jessica Jones (with Luke Cage)
and Iron Fist is on the way. Strong female
lead with substance abuse and co-dependence
issues? Check. Hot interracial super-couple?
Check. Handy-capable hero? Check.
Is it just me, or is it weird that they decided to relegate all of these non-blonde heroes into the dark, gritty world of subscription
TV noir? Why can’t Luke Cage crack wise like
Tony Stark? Why does Jessica’s tolerance for
alcohol seem to be her dominant super power?
Why is Rosario Dawson a kind-hearted nurse
and not Electra?
8
Despite Marvsney’s ghettoizing of the misfit heroes, Netflix has come through. Episodic
TV is far superior to movies for comic book
adaptation, allowing for the true soap-operatic
story-telling that just can’t happen in a 2 hour
blockbuster. The stories are very personal- no
major world-saving. World-saving is just too
exhausting. Dealing with guilt, resentment and
anger is heroic enough, thank you.
The Final Programme AKA
The Last Days of Man on Earth
This 1973 movie adaptation of a novel by
Michael Moorcock was not what you would
call a box office hit. At all. Even Michael Moorcock hates to talk about it. I read in a review
somewhere that this movie is “what people
who hate Ken Russell movies hate about Ken
Russell movies.” I think that’s a pretty good
description- except I LOVE Ken Russell movies.
Moorcock’s Jerry Cornelius was sort of
a psychedelic Sci-Fi James Bond, the hero of
the four novels that make up the “Cornelius
Quartet.” Great books (if a little dated) but
sadly, the failure of The Final Programme as a
film prevented any more Jerry Cornelius movies from being made. Or, any more Moorcock
books from being made into movies, despite
perennial discussions about an Elric movie.
Anyhoo, here are just a few reasons to
watch The Final Programme. 1. Sterling Hayden
is in it. Watch any movie Sterling Hayden is
in…you won’t regret it. 2. If you grew up on
Doctors 1-7, you will like it. 3. If you love “The
Prisoner” you will like it. 4. If you smoke loads
of weed, you will like it. 5. Hawkwind is playing in the background in one scene. 6. Sterling
Hayden is in it…..
Readin’ Paper
All the Birds in the Sky
Charlie Jane Anders
Ms. Anders delivers one of those “Y.A. fiction” books that needs to be read by a lot of
NOT-Y “A”s as well. Unfortunately, most “A”s
gave up reading anything but facebook posts
and self-help books long time ago.
Charlie Jane Anders is a wonderfully
post-gender post-genre post-nerd, who keeps
the wonderfully wonderful website i09 alive
despite the machinations of its Gawker over-
Leigha George
continued on page 11
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tr
bies grew out of the “Bikes in Space” anthologies, which started with “Bikes in Space 1”,
which was issue #10 of the zine “Taking the
Lane.” Quod erat demonstrandum. The editor,
Elly Blue, is a prolific publisher and master of
the very small Kickstarter campaign. She puts
out really nice small, bicycle -related niche
books, and her recent foray into feminist bicycling science fiction anthologies shows how
deeply she groks new publishing.
Pedal Zombies proves that zombies are in
fact, not dead. At least not yet. Zombies are the
cultural symbol of our times, and this book/zine
proves that the creative contagion hasn’t completely run its course. The 13 stories contained
in the anthology are all fun, often clever, sometimes thought provoking. Among the stand-outs
are “The Breeders” by Emily June Street and
“Dead Rock Seven” by Cat Caperello.
Elly Blue and her contributors have laid out some great
SF stories here, outside of the
SF establishment. The “Bikes in
Space” series have a kind of
outsider energy that fandom has
been lacking for a good while.
In an era of sad puppies, rabid
puppies and endless navel-gazing zines, Elly Blue is putting out some strong
paper.
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as
lords. It comes as no surprise
then, that Ms. Anders delivers an
equally raw and personal story in
her new book, “All the Birds in the
Sky.”
All the Birds in the Sky is pretty typical Y.A. fare in many ways.
You know, teenage witch meets
time-traveling computer whiz, teenage witch
loses time-traveling computer whiz, etc etc…
misunderstood uber-nerd youth being punished
for their awesomeness… but somewhere along
the way, it transcends Harry Potter and enters
the realm of Jane Eyre, albeit set in a climatechanging dystopia that is a bit as if J.G. Ballard
and Terry Pratchett co-wrote a novel. Can’t imagine that? Read the book.
Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus:
How Growth Became the Enemy
of Prosperity by Douglas Rushkoff
I guess it says something when a book like
this gets a 5 star review on Amazon…from 6
people. Rushkoff rules. Rushkoff gets it. But his
message is one that is tough for some people to
take. The “growth economy”, or what most of
us call “capitalism,” SUCKS. No, I mean it literally SUCKS. With the assistance of digital technology, it sucks every bit of wealth, every bit
of value, every bit of creative energy, OUT of
it’s human host. Or, as Rushkoff puts it; “What
digital giveth, digital taketh away.”
Rushkoff looks at the evolution of the
economy from the “Peer to Peer” artisanal preindustrial era, through industrialization, to the
new, distributed “gig” economy. He recognizes
that the new “artisanal” era lacks the human
at the center… instead, digital technology allows the baseline survival of the indie worker,
while it assures the super-efficient extraction of
wealth via the same digital technology.
Like other early digital trailblazers like
Jaron Lanier, Rushkoff recognizes the great, unfulfilled potential of digital technology to be a
force for individual freedom, and the sad truth
of what it has become. Fortunately though,
Rushkoff does see solutions to the digital dilemma, other than blowing up the servers and
pitching a yurt in the mountains.
Pedal Zombies
Edited by Elly Blue
Craig Volesky
10
More of a book than a zine, Pedal Zom-
11
Out of ConteXt Files
This little zine is SUCH a great object. Everyone I show it to covets it. A tiny, hand-made
manila envelope, complete with a log in sheet
inside the cover. The interior is made up of
seemingly random quotes matched with seemingly (not so) random images, liberated from
popular media.
Like a meme-generator, Out of ConteXt
Files is meant to provoke cognitive dissonance and humor, but
unlike a meme-generator, it isn’t
the instantly-forgettable product
of a lazy douche-bag. It is clever. It required skill to make. See?
You can find Out of ConteXt files on Etsy
by searching for it by name. You will find it in
the store of Sparklebutch, who creates “little
queer crafts you never need but always want.”
Truth in advertising. It’s a rare thing.
Continued on page 22
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HAMILTON BEACH
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Beside the bed on the floor there's
rumpled clothes. A soft old cherry-coloured corduroy shirt. Black jeans. Pointed shoes. Expensive once but beat-up
looking now. No underwear and good
cotton socks. Are those the kinds of thing
Martin wears? What's he look like? What
do I look like? What's my name? I look at
the work benches, the stacks of doll-faces, glazed eyes staring ceiling-wards. As
dumb as them, but a little more mobile, I
get up out of bed.
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by Ursula Pflug
Outside the door water continues
to run. Wraparound workbenches, on
every wall but this one, stacked to the
ceiling with piles of doll faces. Piled one
on top of the other, faces look out of
faces like layers of masks. They still have
their eyes; blue eyes with flecks of light
in them.
Staring up.
The hall is empty, so empty, and the
building is filled with silence. The water
is still running; I open the door. A young
woman is standing at the sink, painting
her eyelids. Her blonde red curls are tied
back in a pony tail; the red is dyed. Her
mouth sticks out under jagged lipstick,
soft like a little kid's. She jumps, ever so
slightly, then keeps applying purple on
purple as if I wasn't there. At last her
eyes meet mine in the mirror. Mine are
brown; my hair's brown too, short. I'm
wearing black jeans and a grey hooded
sweat-shirt, look about twenty-three. Am
cute in a dishevelled gamine-like way.
But I knew all that, I just forgot. She gives
me a dark look, as though I'm not playing by the rules. I don't know what the
rules are, yet. Someone has to start talking, and she isn't, so it looks like it'll have
to be me. "D'you have any Tylenol?"
I've never been here before.
There's no one else in the room. I stay
in bed, looking at the doll's eyes. Sacrilege, those fake flecks of light. Like faking orgasm, only worse. Faking Life.
Who'd I come with? Why don't I remember? Like other wickedly hungover
mornings I know it'll return to me. Machine-heads. Virtual sex junkies. They've
discovered it's pheromones that keep
your memory sharpened. Kids get it from
hugs and kisses. Why there's so much
more ADD now; people don't get laid
any more, and kids cuddle with virtual
pets, not their parents or puppies. But I
only did it once.
Water runs. My head hurts. Not only
do I not remember how I got here, or
where here is, I also don't remember
where I live, or what I do with myself
from day to day. What do I remember?
She doesn't even look at me, intent on
her work. Her eyelids are getting very
thick.
Martin, my boyfriend. He's not here
with me now, although it comes to me
that's not unusual, for him. I told Martin
about the machine-heads, and he said
he'd run with them too. Once or twice,
he said. Of course, he's lied before.
"What are you going to be for Carnival?" I ask, leaning back on the paper
towel dispenser, watching her in the mirror. Funny I didn't forget Carnival.
"Sleeping Beauty," my girl says.
"You?"
I'm wearing my clothes, which gets rid
of at least one uncomfortable possibility.
Andrea Shriver
12
"I was thinking of being Darth Vader's
girlfriend. Kind of a spin-off, like Bride of
Frankenstein." Saying it, I know it's true.
Maybe if I talk enough, I'll remember
more. Seems to me it's happened before.
The sound of running water. Maybe
Martin's having a shower--a nice thought.
If he was trying to duck out on me again
he wouldn't be spending so long in the
bathroom.
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"Han Solo had a girlfriend, not Darth
Vader. Don't you remember?"
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She opens her eyes, the bluest blue,
very wide as if she can't believe how stupid I am. Truth is, neither can I. "Martin
with the big purple eyes, the sharp nose,
so handsome?"
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Inn. I'm starving so I go in. The prices
are ridiculously low: thirty-five cents for a
cup of coffee, eighty-five for a fried egg
sandwich; that's what I order.
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comes back with a can of Tab. Her yellow polyester uniform hisses on the shiny
flecked vinyl.
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"I thought Darth Vader had a girlfriend too, only they just left that part
out."
"That's my man," I say, glad she
jogged my memory.
"Left it out of what?"
"Star Wars was a story before it was
a movie, too. You see, I have this theory that all the movies were stories first.
And before that, just pictures written on
an invisible wall somewhere, waiting for
someone to take them down. Kind of a
Plato's cave thing. And now they're pictures on a screen again, just like they
were in the beginning. But a screen on
this side, not the other side."
"He's your boyfriend? Really? What
kind?"
"How many kinds are there?"
"I mean on this side or the other side?"
"All sides," I say, my head splitting,
figuring it's a trick question. She nods,
accepting my answer, although it seems
to worry her. "Where is he?" I ask. "We
said we'd do Carnival together like we
do every year, and here it is not even
started and I've already lost him and myself. They should call Carnival the Season of Memory Loss."
She turns around at last. It's always different seeing someone outside the mirror
and not in it. Like seeing a different part
of their personality.
"You seem to know a lot more about
stories than you do about television.
That's very unusual. I'm Louise," she
says. "What's your name?"
Louise rolls her eyes, says curtly, "He
was in here just before you. But he left."
I want to fill in some more gaps, ask
questions, but she's gone, her chunky
heels clattering. They're too big for her,
like a little girl playing dress-up in her
mother's shoes.
"It's Louise too," I say glibly, because I
don't remember that part yet. "I'm looking for my boyfriend but I've lost him.
Again."
"Hey, Louise, wait up," I yell.
"You seem pretty mixed up," she says,
measuring me with her eyes. "You better watch out: Carnival isn't a game; it's
dangerous. That's sort of like Sleeping
Beauty though, that show about losing
your prince."
She runs down the hall, turns a corner
and vanishes. I hear a steel door slam,
hear her feet clattering on stairs that
lead downwards. Slinging my day-pack
over my shoulder I follow her, slowly,
down long shadowy tiers of stair wells,
to the street door. Look both ways, no
sign of L.
"Kind of a gender reversed Orpheus.
Kind of like Isis and Osiris. Is your prince
going to come and wake you up?"
I walk, don't recognize any street
names. The few other people out walking too are so poor they seem invisible
even to themselves. I pass old dry goods
stores with locked doors and yellow plastic in the windows. There's not a sign of
Carnival, as if the city's biggest party
doesn't exist. I buy Tylenol at a drug
store, swallow several. Finally I come
to a coffee shop called the Dew Drop
"Maybe. Maybe when we've finished
making our show. I'm the star." Louise
makes a face, not entirely pleased about
it. Some star; her foundation clumsily
covers zits around her mouth.
"I think maybe it's Martin's place
across the hall. D'you know him? D'you
live in this building?"
14
"What is it about me?" I ask, too blunt
by half, as always. "People are always
asking me if I'm lost."
The place is empty, huge and dim.
The booths are upholstered in shiny red
stuff with flecks of gold in it, just like the
flecks in the doll's eyes, the rips held
together with wrinkled silver duct tape;
they wouldn't call it gaffer's tape here.
A taupe formica counter with red swivel
stools and green Hamilton Beach milk
shake machines behind it. God, how I always loved that name. It's always been
like a picture to me, of a perfect place,
where you could leave all your troubles
behind, where everything would be okay
and you'd be happy.
She reaches out, pats my hand. "The
truth is, I think we're all lost. It's just some
people try to hide it more than others."
She blows smoke rings. "I think the trick
is to stay amused, don't you?"
A woman after my own heart. And
she can't be a machine-head. They never
touch living flesh.
***
Three years ago during Carnival I
went to this warehouse party alone.
Martin was gone again. Thing is, I was
really drunk, soooo, on my way out I got
off the elevator on the wrong floor and
walked into this big eerie room full of
machine-heads and their gear. I started
to turn to run, but this one guy asked me
if I didn't want to try.
The waitress is in her fifties with
bleached blonde hair and pencil thin
plucked eyebrows. She sighs, bringing me my coffee. It's terrible, from last
week's pot reheated eleven times. I stir
in a whole bunch of sugar to mask the
taste. I bite into Miracle Whip, not Hellman's, stare a little.
I said I'd do anything once.
Goggled and gloved, I entered the
room they were sharing, thinking I'd get
to do a handsome stranger. But the people in there, our sex partners, had arms
and legs made of machines, genital organs that didn't look human at all, but
were still sexy in this creepy way: valves
expanding and contracting, each black
rubber exhalation a sigh. I heard the
rasping cries of grinding gears, saw furtive graspings of skeletal robotic hands,
all the bones showing. Beneath dirty flesh
coloured vinyl I saw chrome tendons,
frayed wiring. Sucking and popping and
moaning, the sounds of machines in orgasm. Then as I stayed in, it started to
happen to me too; I got replaced, starting with my sex where I was the most
connected. Genius embedded in this
craftsman's hand. A sad, wicked, broken-faced genius, but all the same: the
sound, the texture were so detailed, so
"Are you lost, dear?" she calls from
across the room, where she's busy polishing spotless tables, filling full sugar containers, sighing.
"I'm looking for my friend. I thought he
might've come in here." Little does she
know the half of it.
She carries my sandwich from the
kitchen, walking painfully, wrapped
in support bandages that go halfway
to her knees. "You must be ready for
your break, Denise," I say, now that
she's close enough I can read her name
tag. Denise or Vera, I'd figured. A fifties
name to match the place, her look.
"Well, yes," she says, laughing a little.
"It's these damn legs, you know?"
"Sit down?"
"Okay, but I'll get my drink first." She
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rich. The furniture was clipped, the detail
in shadows, in excrescences of old pink
vinyl, raised and knobby like a keloid
scar, in palest conflagrations of mauve in
the velvet bodysuit I wore. Sighing, sighing: only velvet sighs like this. Someone
was a genius, for sure.
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smiled up at him, his shaved head.
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Broken mirrors. We are all holding
pieces of a broken mirror, trying stubbornly to glue them back together. Maybe we should leave it shattered.
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to make the streetcar come. He wouldn't
have kept doing it if it hadn't worked so
often. That's what we were like together:
two lost lambs making up our own mythology, taking solace in an urban sympathetic magic, at once invented and
uncovered.
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He said, as if he was quoting: "And all
because real people seemed too frightening and the machines promised to take
the pain away."
"I did," he said, and turned to go. "I
know you won't come back. You don't
want to come that far in with us again.
And I can't come back out any more to
be with you, even if I wanted."
It's too bad I couldn't tell him that, he
would've liked it. That's the thing, he
seemed so nice, much nicer than Martin
really, in spite of his preferences. I think
about him a lot, of how our hands froze
on the railing, looking down on the river.
Your tongue would get stuck there forever if you let it. Something so stupid only
an ignorant kid would do it.
"Touch my hand," I said, "take your
mitt off, touch my hand."
***
"That's exactly right," I said, amazed,
sober. "Who said that?"
It could've been funny, I suppose, and
in some twisted way it even was but it
scared the hell out of me. I signed off
and jacked out, left to walk city streets,
shards of broken ice glinting like starlight. I knew it wasn't real, so what was
the matter? The technology's still so new;
maybe it's like early horror movies. "The
Thing" used to terrify people and now
we just laugh.
"In the virtual worlds people think they
can do anything, darken as much as they
want, and it doesn't matter, doesn't have
any effect in the real world. Strikes me
they might be wrong. A shadow cast
from that side to this, staining us," he
said, still sounding so lost and poetic and
smart. Handsome too, in a rough-hewn
way.
I walked, turning over in my mind sensations that had more to do with pain
than pleasure; the missing parts of myself, the parts I'd allowed to be replaced
by robotics had all been screaming faintly, phantom limbs. But it's still a visual medium--how can you remember sensations
in VR? I had to have supplied the sensations myself, a shadow of a shadow.
"I thought that was just propaganda really, hype, that whole no-touch thing," I
said, half meaning it. An outlaw culture's
romance, I'd always figured. For it to be
true would be too frightening by half.
Footsteps running behind me, male
footsteps. I turned. One of the machine
heads, Matt, the one who'd invited me.
I wasn't afraid. Machine heads are terrified of raping real women. They'd have
to touch.
He waved his wet woolly mitten at me,
walked away. His footsteps sounded
cold and lonely.
He reached for my hand, like something long forgotten, then pulled it back,
his mouth twitching. It was the first sign
he might yet know what he'd lost.
"And where is the one old story now
that will tell us the way out of this?" I
called after him, but then, I'm always
saying that; it's my thing. He stopped,
turned towards me, took his mitten off.
And touched the icy metal bridge rail instead. It stuck. He pulled it away, leaving
behind tiny bits of skin.
"You don't like it?" he asked sadly.
We walked side by side in the frozen
night, the Don River snaking below us,
full of moonlight. The east end has always been this sad.
"I'm sorry," I whispered, "so sorry,"
the snot freezing in my nose.
"It was okay," I lied.
"Then you'll come back? Not many
women come. Give me your number."
"I guess they lied," I thought I heard
him say, walking away again. We were
already too far apart, couldn't hear each
other any more.
"I know where to find you," I lied
again, "I'll drop in some time, 'kay?" I
16
"Say, Denise?"
"Yes, dear?" She's staring out the window at the dead buildings, the grey afternoon light.
"Do you know where anybody celebrates Carnival around here? Maybe
if I could find Carnival I could find my
friend."
Denise's cigarette package is red. Du
Maurier King Size. She lights her smoke
with a real lighter, a fake gold one and
not a Bic click flick dick or whatever. She
inhales as if nicotine were prana itself.
"Carnival? They started it up here a
few years ago, right? Kind of like down
in New Orleans. I've never paid much attention; it's not something for us old folks.
But there's a dance at a place called The
Aquarium, Tuesday week. Somebody
left me a poster for it, but I haven't put it
up yet." She gets up and walks ever so
slowly to the counter, retrieves the poster
lying there. Watching her is like watching time itself. A bad time.
"Maybe I went to another city last night and just don't remember," I say, thinking what harm can utter
frankness do after everything's already
gone so wrong?
She looks at me levelly. She's been
around the block a few times, this one.
Knows the score. "But," she says, blowing smoke rings, "you'd have to do an
awful beer and pills cocktail to forget
that much, down it with even more tequila." Denise speaks so slowly, as though
she has more time than the rest of us,
only it isn't very pleasant time.
"Maybe if you go to this dance..."
She shows me the little map at the
bottom of the poster. The Aquarium is a
club just four blocks away from where
we are. My life is like a CD-Rom gothic
mystery this morning. If I follow the clues
I'll find Martin, remember where I am,
how I got to be here.
"Problem is I don't remember if I did
that or not. Mind if I have one of your
smokes?" I ask.
"Well, I guess I better get going. It was
really nice to meet you, Denise. You've
helped me out a lot."
"Oh, please do. Please do. But finish
your breakfast first. It'll help."
"Okay, dear. Hope you feel better. Do
drop in again."
But I push my half-eaten egg away,
light my butt, don't inhale. I don't really
smoke but it seems like the right thing
to do; keep my molecules moving so I
don't get petrified in the fifties like Denise. And I entertain a thin hope it might
make Martin show up, like he used to do
***
I walk till night falls. I've slept in parks
before and would do it again if I had to,
but still; the street door is open: relief.
The stairs as I walk up are still, so still. I
don't hear anything except my own feet,
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so far back?
one at a time, although once I hear footsteps running along on an upper floor,
but maybe it's just a trick of memory, of
desire, like knowing he'll be there. But he
isn't, and neither is the red shirt. A stack
of boxes is gone, but everything else is
the same. I lock the heavy steel door and
go to sleep.
***
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don't I just get on the streetcar, go back
to the west side, our old apartment, our
friends, our bars, our jobs?
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"Where's Martin?" I demand. "I still
can't find him. You know him, have you
seen him? And how come he never mentioned you? What's going on?"
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I'm the only person there again, and
Denise joins me, can of Tab and red cigarettes in hand. I tell everything I know,
there's bits that come back just in the telling. "Once Martin and I had this dream
we'd get a studio together. In the east
end where rent was cheap; we'd work
our butts off; he'd be an artist and I'd do
the production and management, and
then after we got rich we could move
somewhere else, like to Hamilton Beach
maybe," I explain.
I make myself at home (haha) and wait
for more clues.
I look in the mirror, hold a mask to my
face. Still, I can't see: eyes in the way. I
cut them out with an X-Acto blade but
leave the eyelids, so they open and shut,
eerily mechanical, over mine. For hours
then, I sit at the workbench, cutting the
eyes out of a few stacks of dolls. I don't
know why, but it makes me feel good.
Cut out all those fake eyes, all that sacrilege.
"It didn't work, did it?" She asks, and
I have to nod. I ask her where we are
and she laughs. I guess she thought I was
kidding and I couldn't bring myself to tell
her the truth.
***
The next morning I take an old motorcycle helmet out of a cardboard box full
of junk and trade it for my mask. I look in
the mirror. Darth Vader. Could be. Just a
little modification on the shape. Dig under all the workbenches, find a box of
stuff for working with plexiglass resin.
I learned how to use it in art school, a
million years ago, before I met Martin,
back when I still had dreams of being an
artist myself. What a fool.
Someone phones while I'm working,
orders masks. I have to find x number of
a certain type, box them, courier them
to her Carnival store. "Make sure all the
eye holes are cut out," she says sharply,
"They weren't last time."
I tell her I'm strapped, ask if she could
pick them up herself, bring cash. She
agrees, somewhat surly. If I'm going to
be staying here, I'm going to have to
have money to eat.
***
Memory returns very slowly. I haven't
had such bad amnesia since I first
learned to abuse alcohol when I was
thirteen. Where am I? Only the east end
could be this sad. It's just a part I never
really knew; east of the Don River there
are still full of these pockets of where the
fities and sixties and seventies live on,
bordered now, so locked in misery they'll
never be able to catch up to the rest of
time. In the store windows there's aspidistras with leaves that need wiping, and
the ubiquitous layers of yellow plastic. I
don't know what all that yellow plastic is
for, unless it's to protect the plants from
UV, not that they need much protecting, what with the dank grey skies. Why
Wherever this is.
She shows two hours later, just as I'm
finishing up. Harried and businesslike,
she takes the box I've packed for her
and gives me fifty bucks. Doesn't bat
an eye at my masked face, like she sees
weirder every day.
I go to the Dew Drop for dinner, remembering at the last moment to go
maskless, order a hot beef sandwich.
Thick powdered gravy poured on white
bread, a slab of beef and pale peas
floating on the surface tension of melted
marg. The fifties isn't even my mother's
childhood; how come this place got stuck
18
I can't. We gave all that up, late summer. Came here. It's the inbetween part
I've forgotten, and I still don't know
where Martin is. I go to the Dew Drop
for dinner again, order ham with canned
pineapple rings. As always, the place is
empty except for me, as though only I
know the way in. Denise waves distantly,
sighing, but doesn't join me this time.
"Maybe he doesn't like you any more,"
she spits. "Maybe you're too messed up
for him. Maybe he's got someone new."
"Messed up? That's a joke. He's a way
worse abuser than me."
"You don't really have the same name
as me."
"'Course not. I'm Petra. That was a
joke."
When I get back I see someone's been
there while I've been gone, made the
bed, worked on the masks. It's happened
before. Who?
***
"I thought you were her. Where's your
lost five months, Petra?
Where?
I take a westbound "red rocket," what
they call the streetcars here. I'm full of
trepidation, and when the route passes
through my old Spadina neighbourhood
I don't even get off, my limbs suddenly
leaden. Who would I visit? Who even
knows me any more? I feel out of place
again, only in a different way. Where do
I really belong, or when? It seems like
when people or neighbourhoods get
stuck, they create little pockets of frozen
time around themselves. Denise got stuck
in the fifties, even though she's too young
for it. At the Dew Drop Inn, I guess the
fifties never stopped. I wonder when I'm
stuck in? A bad time with Martin, most
likely.
She's wearing a white satin party
dress over her jeans. She doesn't make
any sense. Her frizzy ponytail, her strapless dress over her dirty t-shirt and satin
old lady pumps. Maybe if I'm nice to her
she'll tell me what she knows.
"Look," I say kindly, "you can't even
get the zipper done up. How is your
prince going to recognize you looking
like that?"
"You stay away from me," she hisses,
"you're always said you didn't even want
to be on this side. And you can't come
without your mask."
"What is with your crazy outfit, then?"
Some Carnival thing going on this year
that I don't understand.
I get off the streetcar and stand on the
other side of the road, a faint feeling of
panic rising in me. The west side looks
wrong, gives me a vertiginous feeling
as though I've stepped through a mirror
and the world's reversed; everything has
different meanings. I can barely wait for
the streetcar to take me back to the other
side, to run upstairs, coat tails flying, sit
at my bench and cut doll eyes out.
But she snaps her silver purse shut and
runs.
She's run again.
What's she so afraid of?
***
Can there be such a thing as a wrong
neighbourhood of the soul?--a time in life
(for all feeling displaces time--although
often in unusual and unprecedented
On the way back from the streetcar
stop I see Louise. "Hey, Louise," I say,
grabbing her arm. She shakes me off,
glares.
continued on page 38
19
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LeslieePerri:
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cosplay, her work is now relegated to
rare anthologies of early women Sci Fi
writers.
According to fancyclodedia.org:
She first married Pohl (1940), whom she
had met through a high school friend.
Pohl persuaded her to join the Futurians.
After their divorce, she married painter/
writer, Thomas Owens, “the handsomest
man you ever saw in your life,”
according to her friend Rosalind Cohen
Wylie. Doris left him to marry Richard
Wilson, another Futurian, but they broke
up in 1965. While married to Wilson,
she worked as a reporter and journalist.
She had two children, one with
Owens (Margot Owens), and one with
Wilson (Richard David Wilson).
by Ricardo Obsolete
Doris Marie Clair Baumgardt is a
name that you may not recognize, but if
you are a science fiction fan, you owe a
small debt of gratitude to her. Doris may
not be held in the same high esteem as
other historical figures in fandom, but
she should.
In 1938, 18 year old Doris was the
first woman to join the now legendary
“Futurians.” A group of New York
city SciFi fans, The Futurians included
Donald A. Wollheim, John B. Michel,
Isaac Asimov, James Blish, Virginia Kidd
(Blish), Robert A.W. Lowndes, Damon
Knight, Cyril Kornbluth, Judith Merril,
Frederik Pohl and Larry Shaw. Doris
Baumgardt would later gain recognition
under the pen name Leslie Perri.
The Futurians were as controversial
as they were famous. Michel and others
were active in the Young Communist
League, and their political affiliations
sometimes brought them into conflict with
other factions in fandom. They were also
famous for their wild parties and other
escapades. Despite their reputation, the
Futurians produced some of the most
significant figures in mid-20th century
science fiction, including writers, artists
and editors.
Known to her friends as”Doë.”
Doris wrote prolifically and provided
cover art for fanzines under the name
Leslie Perri. She was a founding member
of the Fantasy Amateur Press Association
(FAPA), created by fellow Futurian
Donald Wollheim. In 1939 when Sam
Mosovitz banned most of the Futurians
from the first WorldCon, Doris was one
of only five Futurians allowed inside the
hall.
Doris was the Futurian’s fem-fatale,
20
and many of the young, nerdy cohort
held a torch for her. According to
Damon Knight’s wonderful book “The
Futurians,” “She was a tall, cool brunette
who looked a little like the Dragon
Lady in Terry and the Pirates.” Frederik
Pohl, to whom Doris was married for a
short time, described her as “strikingly
beautiful, and strikingly intelligent, too,
in a sulky, humorous, deprecatory way
that matched well with most of the other
people I admired.”
Baumgardt was famous for creating
costumes and could be thought of as the
great grandmother of cosplay as well.
According to Damon Knight’s book:
“On Valentine’s day, 1939, Doris
Baumgardt gave a costume ball. I take
account from Futurian News, edited by
Michel: “Present were John B. Michel
appearing aas a 21st centuryRomeo
in beige tunic and scarlet velvet cloak,
Leslie Perri as Pirouette in black patent
leather panties, tulle skirt and a bodice
and hat to match, Fredrick Pohl as an
artist in smock and windsor tie, Cyril
Kornbluth...
Despite Leslie Perri’s vivaciousness,
dedication to fandom, writing, art and
In the early 1940s she edited a
magazine, Movie Love Stories, which
(according to Wollheim), she practically
wrote herself.
She died in 1970 of cancer.
***
Blair Davis Gauntt
Wollheim And Perri at Riis Park Beach, 1938
21
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continued from page ll
Fun with Noise
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Shop Class as Soulcraft
Meta Book Review and
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title I would recommend
highly to any reader of HomeFixated. As someone who is lucky
enough to actually teach a shop
class, I can’t say enough about
how important it is to a young
person’s outlook and self esteem
to have at least a minimal understanding of how to use tools
and repair things. I think we lose
a lot of our humanity when we
deny the importance of working
with our hands. Crawford point
out: This book is concerned less
with economics than it is with
the experience of making things
and fixing things. I also want to consider
what is at stake when such experiences
recede from our common life. How does
this affect the prospects for full human
flourishing? Does the use of tools answer
to some permanent requirement of our
nature? Arguing for a renewed cultivation of manual competence puts me at
odds with certain nostrums surrounding
work and consumption, so this book is in
part a cultural polemic. I mean to clarify
the origins of, and thereby interrogate,
those assumptions that lull us into accepting as inevitable, or even desirable, our
increasing manual disengagement.
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Slow Forever
Cobalt
as
A double album…and not just
a “digital double album,” but rather a burnt
orange and black vinyl, 2 record set with an
8-page book and a thick, gatefold cover. If
that’s not enough, the music ain’t bad, either.
In fact, the music on this 84 minute epic
is top-notch. As many ho-hum American metal
bands grow up and move beyond the goofy
(but really fun) nordic black metal thing, So
does Cobalt, making its own new, homegrown
sludgy goodness.
Honestly, I admit, I’m an old guy and
late to the party on this band. I think I’m glad
about that though- as I go back and listen to
their older stuff, I’m struck by how hung up on
the manly-man bullshit the previous singer/lyricist/founder of Cobalt was. I think I could have
judged them harshly if I had heard what they
were before. Self-proclaimed “War Metal,”
whatever that is.
This record, on the other hand, is very diverse, and very rock and roll. It goes all over
the place stylistically, without sounding mixed
up or reverential. It goes to where the MC5
went, where the Stooges went, where Voivod
or Slayer went, but they aren’t imitating anyone. The record has a lot of ambience, but
doesn’t get lost in it’s own coolness.
Don’t think you like Black Metal? Check
out Slow Forever. You probably still won’t like
Black Metal, but… that’s really not my problem.
G.L.O.S.S. EP
Girls Living Outside of Society’s Shit
No,not G.L.O.W. you idiot! G.L.O.S.S.!!
One has nothing whatsoever to do with the
other. Or… doesn’t it?
Olympia Washington’s G.L.O.S.S. is making hardcore songs that are as good and as
fresh as anything that came out of DC in the
mid 80’s. With no song over 2 minutes long,
their 5 song demo is epic in it’s fury, if not
length.The lyrics are brutal and honest- “Outcast Stomp” gets right to the point. “This is for
the outcasts,rejects,losers and queers!” Vocalist
Sadie makes every word with a rare talent in
hardcore punk… annunciation!
Look on bandcamp under the tag “transbitcheswithproblems” to check out G.L.O.S.S.
And I thought punk was finally really, truly,
dead. Silly me.
22
***
Book Repair How-To
I recently picked up a great book
from a used bookstore. Shop Class as
Soulcraft: An Inquiry Into the Value
of Work by Matthew B. Crawford is a
fabulous book about what it means to
be a person who works with their hands.
Ironically, before I was finished, the
hardcover edition from Penguin Books
began to fall apart. So much for quality construction! A large section came
loose in the middle, and then became
completely detached from the spine. I’m
faced with one of the modern dilemmas
that Crawford points out in his book. Do
I keep reading the book, letting it slowly
fall completely apart? Do I simply throw
it away and buy another copy? Or, maybe download an electronic version to
my smart phone, perhaps? No, Dammit!
I will fix it! A decline in tool use would
seem to betoken a shift in our mode of
inhabiting the world: more passive and
more dependent. And indeed, there are
fewer occasions for the kind of spiritedness that is called forth when we take
things in hand for ourselves, whether to
fix them or to make them. What ordinary
people once made, they buy; and what
they once fixed for themselves, they replace entirely or hire an expert to repair,
whose expert fix often involves installing
a pre-made replacement part.
Well Mr. Crawford… I, for one, am
not willing to be passive and dependent.
I’m all about the tool use, even when it
comes to my reading habits! Luckily, my
mother was a public school librarian,
and I watched her repair plenty of books
back in “the olden days.” There are just
a few simple tricks to it, so if you have
a favorite book at home that has seen
better days, you can try this at home!
First, let me talk just a bit more about
the book I’m repairing. It’s definitely a
glue. This means that it has neutral pH.
Elmer’s Glue-All is okay, but if it is a
book you really care about, you might
want to drop eight bucks on some bookbinding glue. Elmer’s has a pH of about
5, and over time the acid in it might discolor. The same holds true for most PVA
glues. The pH scale ranges from 1 to 14,
with 7 considered to be neutral. A pH
less than 7 is said to be acidic and solutions with a pH greater than 7 are base
or alkaline.
The process for repairing the book
is very simple. After applying the glue
along the detached section of the spine,
wipe away any squeeze-out to prevent
it from making the pages hard to turn.
Make sure all of the loose sections are
perfectly aligned. You can use big rubber bands, clamps, or just lay the book
flat and stack some bigger, heavier
books on top of it. Done carefully, the
book should be as good (or better) than
new!
After reading (and repairing) Shop
Class As Soulcraft, I can’t recommend it
highly enough. It’s a fantastically inspiring book. And properly repaired, I can
loan it out to friends for years to come
without worrying about the book losing
its pages.
Bravo!
Now, let’s get back to the project
at hand, how to repair a book. The single most important thing to consider is
the glue that you choose. To really do
it right, you need some archival quality
***
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