Also, I've narrowed the column width to something more easy to read. Let me know if you like it or not.
A correspondent recently commented in an email that she felt like putting a journal on her site would be casting pearls before swine. Before you get judgemental on her, understand that she's been running this site since before everyone could get a free googol-gig sitespace on the Net, at personal cost and time, and most of her visitors only want to know if she's putting up more pictures of tits.
I don't agree with her viewpoint, but I understand it. From 1995 to 1997, I edited a SubGenius/humor zine called obloquy, putting out a grand total of five quarterly issues before circumstances interrupted. As far as I'm concerned it rocked, and I'll probably scan the pages as PDFs for this site some day.
Nonetheless, each issue took thirty hours to edit, lay out, format, inkjet print (and burn out a cartridge)... If I hadn't had a background in graphic design it probably wouldn't have taken as long, but it wouldn't've looked as good, either.
In any case it was a labor of love, and there was always the hope for some token of appreciation from those who read it. Credit is due to the fan mail I did receive. But producing a zine, like a site, is an expression first and a call for recognition second.
In the end I put obloquy on hiatus not because the warm fuzzies weren't coming in fast enough, but because I had a series of life events that forced me to redirect my energy elsewhere. The zine would have been pure crap if I'd tried to fit it into fighting an insurance company and a police department, overcoming a depressive episode, and trying to figure out what the hell to do with my life. All told 1997 felt like being Atlas.
It's better now, and I'm doing this site instead of the zine. The work is less grueling, the results more immediate, and the distribution speaks for itself. But I can still hear that voice that tells me to check the hit log, and wishes more people would contribute or at least comment.
If you trip across one of these kinds of sites, please drop the author a line, even if it's just to say "Kilroy was here" and you liked/disliked the site. It won't cost you a thing, and you might wind up making an acquaintance.
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