Truly the Shittiest Archaeologist Ever
Julia Eff – https://twitter.com/julia_eff
California Rachel – https://twitter.com/hitchcockienne
http://crapandemic.storenvy.com/

Truly the Shittiest Archaeologist Ever is a small, black and white accordion-fold zine of collected live tweets from California Rachel while watching the Indiana Jones trilogy.

I don’t remember why now, but when I was a kid, I loved the Indiana Jones movies. Before I was old enough to know how many things were wrong with them. Haha. Bring on the zine!

Truly the Shittiest Archaeologist Ever sets you off on a different to the norm adventure straight away with the accordion fold set up along with starting at the bottom of the accordion and reading up. Julia briefly introduces the zine – a collection of livetweets from California Rachel. What follows is a fun assortment of clippings that can also be a fun ‘when did that happen’ game if you haven’t watched the movies in a long time.

The tweets are hilarious, salty, and quite adult. Full of swearing, no holds barred statements, and other references, this isn’t a zine to leave around willy nilly. That being said, one of my favourites is the seemingly innocent:

“THE DOG??? YOU ARE NAMED AFTER THE DOG?????????”

As I mentioned, this zine is an accordion fold. I think it’s fun and works in a physical way to reinforce the Twitter feed look and feel of the zine. The tweets are small but are still quite easy to read even in lower light.

I think there is a little give and take with this one because I think you need to at least be familiar with the movies and be okay with the Twitter format in general. Being an adult is also pretty essential. Hahaha.

From its format to its content, I quite enjoyed this solid poke and prod at Indiana Jones. A fun one to have a look at.

Blunt Talk
Various
https://www.wizd-az.com/store/p127/BluntTalkZine.html

Blunt Talk is a full-colour US half-sized zine about all kinds of topics related to cannabis including history, legal matters, recipes, stories, and more.

As you know, I love zines for a lot of reasons. This zine I love because it’s like a little reference manual or guide to get you started on whatever path your curiosity takes you in regards to cannabis. There are so many topics covered!

Blunt Talk opens with an introduction to how the zine came together over the course of a year and their aim to shift – if not completely get rid of – stigmas regarding cannabis. As someone who studied the subject for various projects over the course of a semester, I appreciate their efforts. It’s clear the dedication and passion the contributors have for the subject.

I think my favourite part has to be the Leafly Holdings circle chart showing the myriad of different ways cannabis can be useful for helping physical, mental, and emotional difficulties. It’s colourful and informative in a way that’s easy to take in. (While still encouraging the reader to do your own research!) There is a lot of information in this zine, and varying the ways in which it is conveyed is refreshing. There are also statistics as bar charts, and I do love statistics.

I also quite like that they chose to mix the serious in with some not so serious. History and societal commentary alongside recipes and even recommended activities depending on what strain of cannabis you’ve had.

The look of this zine is quite nice. The text can be a little dense in places, but the type font and size are readable, and there are plenty of images included as well. I especially liked seeing all the old posters and advertisements regarding cannabis.

One thing that threw me a little is not including authors’ names with the pieces. There also weren’t any links as to where to find the zine itself, but a quick Google search sorts that out. In the grand scheme of things, the former is more something I noticed rather than something that bothered me all too much.

Blunt Talk is a great zine packed with so very much information about cannabis. They state right at the start that they don’t claim to be experts. But with so many links to follow, it’s easy to supplement your knowledge beyond the zine and form your own opinions.

If you’re at all curious about the topic, this zine is a great place to start learning.