loc on A Mirror for Observers #11
Hello, Mike.
So I was perusing your latest issue on efanzines - the website that I can honestly state helps maintain my sanity - and noted three items of, er, note. First off, this loc cannot appear in the 12th issue of aMfO (interesting shorthand, I must say) because today is the 27th day of May and your cut-off date for locs was 12 days ago. You bugger! The net result of this is that I have to wait until the 13th issue is posted, or get my fanny in gear and print copies of Askance for actual mailing, which is something I have always meant to do, just couldn't really afford doing. Well, I'll try to get that goal accomplished.
Then you started nattering about whether or not "perzine" or "perszine" should be the proper shorthand term for "personal fanzine." For many years I have used the former term, which seems to the more accepted and used of these two possibilities. Your chemical analysis of the syllabic elements was interesting, and I think the idea that fanzines (in general, not just personal ones) tend to be a bit explosive and unpredictable in content works best. Then again, I might just throw in my personalized version: Purczine. I like it, but it's a bit unwieldy since it requires one to remember that the 'c' is pronounced like an 's', and go ahead and pronounce the 'z' as is. Think I'll stick with perzine. Why buck tradition?
I had to refer back to aMfO #9, preserved for relative eternity at efanzines.com, to find your Ten Commandments of e-list behaviour to see what you were babbling about. I must agree with your listing, although sometimes it is difficult to refrain from making comments about politics and/or religion, oftentimes both together here in the USofA, since when they are mixed, people - especially public figures - say really stupid things, and e-lists (especially Facebook) are a popular means of pointing out these stupid utterances to illustrate how moronic the speakers are. In fact, I daresay that finding such stupidity is now a popular media game. But overall, I do agree with your Ten Commandments of e-list behaviour; they are very common sense, something missing from modern society.
When I saw Paul Skelton's byline, that certainly brought back fannish memories. I really enjoyed Small Friendly Dog back in the day, and it is good to see Paul writing in fanzines again. At one point - I think it was something like 1979 or thereabouts - I told him that I had planted a tomato plant in Cas' honour - the Cas Skelton Feel-Good Tomato Patch - because she was going through a rough patch of health at that time. Even made up a little sign and stuck it in the garden, making it official. That garden is long gone now, since that was when I was still living at home in St. Louis Park, Minnesota, and now I live in College Station, Texas, where, unless you truck in tonnes of good topsoil, mulch and fertilizer, nothing can grow except weeds, wild-flowers, cacti, and fire ant hills. It gets beastly hot here, which is Not Good for tomatoes. Besides, we could have a garden if we were really ambitious and did it, but like I said, this is an expensive and labour-intensive area for any kind of a garden. Well, rock gardens would be much easier to maintain. There's a thought...
Anyhow. I like the way you use the letters of comment to create a kind of narrative dialogue, moving smoothly from topic to topic. It's good, and I enjoyed reading that. Now to see how you eventually use this loc of mine to fit in a couple issues from now.
So thank you for posting, and maybe we can trade real paper-copy zines. I have the June issue of Askance to get ready now, so I will do my best to make good on having copies to mail.
All the best,
John Purcell
"There cannot be a crisis next week. My schedule is already full."
-- Henry Kissinger