Month: October 2016

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Call for Submissions: Strange and Beautiful

strange-and-beautiful-call-for-subs

Do you identify as queer or trans in some way shape or form? Do you make art of some kind? Most importantly, do you love Halloween? Then I want your submissions!

Give me your comics about sapphic witches, your short stories about genderfluid ghosts, your poetry about the full moon or true stories about adventures with talking boards. I want this zine to highlight artwork of LGBTQIA persons and celebrate the awesomeness of Halloween! You are more than welcome to use a pen name and I will gladly accept work that you already have.

All contributors will get a copy!

Email submissions to elliottjunkyard(@)gmail.com // deadline October 15th.

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Zine Review: Coping Skills: Because Sometimes Life Is Some Serious Bullshit

coping-skills-because-life-is-some-serious-bullshit-zine

Coping Skills: Because Sometimes Life Is Some Serious Bullshit
Dr Faith G. harper
http://faithgharper.com/

When Wanderer’s emergency happened, I found that I couldn’t tolerate TV, videos, or anything I’d usually do to distract myself. However, I did have this zine, and bit by bit, it did help…

This zine is one of a series called ‘Dr Faith’s Five Minute Therapy’ and just goes to show how effective a catchy title is. I didn’t know exactly what I was getting into when I ordered this zine, but I couldn’t resist getting it with a title like that.

Lucky me, it was a bet that paid off.

Dr Harper has created a list (love a list) zine all about things you can do to cope with what’s happening in your life. There aren’t really specifics applied to this like ‘coping with a car crash’ or ‘coping with the fact someone ate the last doughnut’. It’s like the title says – because sometimes life is some serious bullshit.

Coping Skills is written in the voice of a friend rather than a doctor (or parent or ruling force in your universe). Coping Skills is all about coping, but it reads as something closer to a conversation you’d have while out for coffee rather than one you’d have in a psychologist’s office. When it comes to stuff like this, it’s so important to hit that point of telling someone what they can do rather than just telling them what to do.

I must say that I have to admire that Dr Harper was so ‘meh’ about prayer and meditation one one page but then turned the perspective to a whole new light (that I hadn’t thought of before) on the next page.

I really love that there are suggestions for things to do that you actually can do. I’ve read too many lists and articles that suggest things that require money or other means when ‘money’ or ‘other means’ can be things that add to the stress of the situations in the first place. The suggestions in this zines are general enough that you know what she means but can apply them as you please.

I read this zine during a time when I was incredibly stressed and not sure how to function, let alone cope. It wasn’t a miracle, but it did help. That being said, I think this zine is a great zine to read for any kind of coping, be it more or less stressful.

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Zine Review: Comics & Beer

comics-and-beer-zine

Comics & Beer
Rory
www.createorperishshop.etsy.com

I’ve never been so excited to see that this was an ‘issue 1’ (implying there would be more) and so disappointed to find there were no more. That sort of stuff happens in the zine world, but I would be all over a sequel to this, no matter how many years later.

Comics & Beer is about life. Rory’s life. From the get-go, you know this isn’t going to be the ‘usual’ sort of perzine thanks to the intro being more of a multiple choice reaction quiz than a ‘hi, my name is X and I’m X years old’.

Rory has a great writing voice that has liberal pinches of sarcasm, dark humour, and disillusionment. It’s what grabbed me from page one and kept me reading. There are little pieces of humour that you might not catch upon first read. There’s even a mini-zine within the zine with short movie reviews. As far as added touches go, this is an excellent one.

That’s not to say there aren’t serious moments. In the piece about TV and our (humanity’s) relationship to it, this quote really got me:

I have shared probably 100 times as many emotional moments with a stupid plastic box as any other living person.

I love what I love and often read in those areas, so it can be a lot of fun when something like this comes to shake up my reading a bit. When it comes to my own perzines, I’m so stuffy about things and try to have themes and whatnot. It was really refreshing – and reminds me to loosen up! – to read a perzine that felt so wonderfully random in picking snippets of life. Even better, I love perzine that leave me wanting to read the next one in the series straight away. Alas…

The contact site listed doesn’t work, but that very well could be because (sigh) this is the only zine in this series. I was sad to find that out when I hunted down the Etsy site. At least you can still get copies of this zine, though. You should, too.

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Happy Mail!

Happy mail!

You have to send mail to receive mail (is my general philosophy), so my post box has been a little quiet lately. However, I have been lucky enough to have received some awesome bits of happy mail recently.

happy-mail

This comes from a lovely new pen friend who discovered my profile on SendSomething. She also sent a little something for a friend of mine (Kim) who is dealing with cancer treatments at the moment. I love to see so much kindness still in the world, given how much we’re beaten over the head with how horrible humanity is.

property-zine

I had no idea this was coming and have my wonderful friend, Fishspit, to thank for recommending this site to the wonderful Property Zine masterminds. I was impressed from the get go with this zine, and they sent a sticker and letter, too!

They have an open call for submissions happening right now, so be sure to check out https://www.facebook.com/propertymaterials

My absolute thanks to all mail senders! You truly make my days happy.

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Done, Doing, Dreaming – The Catching Up Edition

sunshine-dog

Wanderer has been home for nearly a week, and the sunshine has broken through here and there. You can bet I keep shuffling him outside to sit in the sun when it’s there. The dogs – particularly my sunbather dog, Zenna – are loving it, too.

Done

*I now have a ‘guest’ section in the Zine Review Index. I’m thinking some more may be in order (in non-emergency circumstances).
*I’ve finally sorted out the problem of images not showing up on the blog until you clicked on the individual post. Of course, if you don’t visit the blog itself, then you may have never noticed. 😉

Doing

*I’ve been collecting statistics on the blog and whatnot because I love numbers, but I also want to do my best here. Of course, that involves more than numbers, but numbers are a start.
*Now that I’ve fallen WAY behind, it’s time to catch up on emails and reading lovely blogs.
*If you hadn’t already heard, We Make Zines – the place for all things zine – is closing down at the end of this month due to a dramatic rise in cost. I’m not able to do much, but if you know about coding and site migration, be sure to stop by this thread and let Quasifesto know that you’re willing to help out.

Dreaming

*All I’m dreaming of right now is a calm week.

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Call for Submissions: Waste Management

Hi, my name is Fee, I’m 20, white, ablebodied, working class, bisexual, queer, mentally ill, fat and I dropped out of high school in feburary of 2015.

I know a lot of people but I know exactly one who shares this experience. And I have the suspicion that I know why… I’m part of this beautiful social justice community that’s also incredibly centered on university level education. And I don’t even have a levels. (Or the German equivalent.) The people that mean the most to me can’t sympathise with the very real existential fear that comes from not having a high school diploma.

A lot of people drop out of uni. That’s bad. I feel for you guys, I do, but you have so many more options in how to continue. It might not feel like that but it’s true… but being a high school dropout? in this economy? It scares the shit out of you – especially because there is a reason you didn’t stay in school and that reasons stays with you. Bullying (because you are trans or queer or fat or disabled or a person of colour or poor or any other thing people can use to wear you down with every day microagressions), mental illness (like depression, an eating disorder, bpd, etc), money (because you and your family literally can’t afford for you to not work), teachers or social workers not caring about you and not giving you the support, equipment, form of schooling, medication or love you needed because of all the things the other students used to destroy you. Or any other number of other reasons.

And now you are a fucking high school drop out. (Or the pre-university level education equivalent where you are from. This is not supposed to be us centric.)

And I want to hear about it so badly! Whether you dropped out yesterday or 20 years ago, whether you regret it or not, wether you’re back in school or never looked back, whether you want to draw about it or write or make a collage or just paint an entire page black because that’s how it feels, I want to hear from you. And by you I mean literally everyone. (If you want to for example write in a language other than english we can also totally do that.) AND I WANT TO HEAR ABOUT THE INTERSECTION OF OPPRESSION AND DROPPING OUT! Because I’m 97% sure I would still be in school if I wasn’t, you know, me.

I’m not sure how this is going to work. I’ve never made a zine before but I need to fucking heal from this trauma that was school, so… hit me up, you beautiful failures and disappointments.

Who Can Submit?

Anyone who has ever dropped out of high school. It doesn’t matter if you went back and are now working on your doctorate or if you never looked back. You can submit regardless of your academic status now as long as you left schooling before reaching university level education at some point.

If you have questions wether you are enough of an academic failure to be able to submit, you can talk to me on tumblr, twitter or via email.

Note: Dropping out of university does not count.

What Can You Submit?

Short answer: everything.

Long answer: poetry, diary entries, comics, song lyrics, collages, paintings, drawings, doodles, in-depth analysis of things, top ten lists, hate mail to your teachers, manifestos and because there will be a digital version you can also submit songs, videos and any other digital art.

Go all out. Or go deep inside yourself.

It is really important to me that you get support and love throughout this process. If you need help working on your submission or just want to vent about the emotional build up that creating things can cause, don’t be shy to reach out to me on tumblr, twitter or via mail.