cyborggarbage's e-zine

novemeber

lol yeah yeah im bad at keeping this thing going but i made some changes to make it feel less Hard to do in my brain. i dont want this thing to feel hard, i want it to be a spot i actually use to blog bc i think it would be fun. so basically i removed the side bars from every page but the homepage so i dont feel like i HAVE to updated EVERY page every time i use this site. i think it will work. it's stupid but it was making it hard. a brief run down since may: work has been busy, really ramping up the role i play in oshwa which has been really rewarding. took a lot of the summer off gigs and just worked main jobs so i could vist montreal, go to a cottage with friends, do some personal work, started planning the next dinacon and the next summit, visited portland, ottawa,and montreal in about 3 weeks time, turned thirty, did another zinetopia fair, kept running the monthly meetups and like a bunch of other random stuff. it's been a lot but also im happy i get to do it. thi time of year gets hard for me so getting to remember all that is nice. ive also been working on my yearly perzine which is nearly done, then im going to work on a zine about movies that inspire me. trying to make sure im focusing on projects so i dont get too sad this winter!! will be keeping busy and doing what i can to make plans so i dont wallow!!!! also really going to try and remember to use this thing sometimes.

may

as always things are busy. the zine fair/machine launch went really well, people had a good time at the launch and we had three featured readers and three volunteer readers which was super rad. im really excited about building on it and helping it grow in a variety of ways. but it's still super weird to think i'm just in charge of a whole vending machine now until...it dies or i do?

post launch i got real hunkered down on the 2024 summit and that was always a pretty big success. lee is a wizard and incredible and i feel so lucky i get to make things happen with them. i love how we work together and how we bounce ideas of one another. it's so fun to make things i love with someone i love!!

downfall being i got covid right after the summit which sucked. i tested positive for two weeks straight and felt disgusting the whole time. it was extre frustrating bc i have been extremely cautious!! i mask vigilantly, i use mouthwash/nasal spray combo, im careful about the risks i take on. and yet it didn't matter in the end. ill never stop doing any of these things but dang i wish i could stay safe.

now im gearing up for the summer and thinking about things id like to accomplish. ive got at least two zines i wanna make, i wanna digitize everything i made last year, and my pal tricia and i are starting to work on a larger project together that im really excited about!! ive always got a few vague travel plans lined up and also lotsa days of lounging, spending time w the cats and steve. i love summer. i feel so much more alive when it's warm out.

april

it's april 3rd and so so much has happened but honestly ive been far far too busy to even think about this site in any capacity. i went to boulder for a residency and made zines there, i visited ramy in oakland, hosted a zine fair, got through the holidays, bought a vending machine, starting a monthly zine meetup, planned another zine fair, planned a zine machine launch event. And then also just like. did my other jobs and saw friends and family and was BUSY!!! But i'm going to be doing my best to remember this place exists because it does feel so fun to have a place that is just mine! i love getting to type out my thoughts into the void! im stressed and tired and struggling but im almost there. zine fair/zine machine launch back to back is making my life tricky but on april 14th steve and i are going for a fancy brunch to celebrate.

wish me luck! I'll try not to report back too late!

august

it's august 28th which means im officially 29 years old which is not bad. ive been having a pretty quiet day, i did a little bit a of work and ive been watching trashy movies. So far Underworld and The Faculty. 90s/2000s supernatrual movies are truly my favourite thing in the world. I posted the july zine. which ill talk about more in the year of zines page. im hosting a party next weekend, i think it will be fun. i love organizing something with a theme, a style reccommendation, something that gets poeple excited to wear their best and favourite outfits. i hope thats how it goes.

we went to bc for 6 days but because of the wildfires it was 9 days. it was the first time id been back in close to six years. it was so good to see my family, especially seeing my cousins as teens. theyre so wonderful. but im also so happy to be home and with steve and zero again. i'm giving myself a week to do more things on this e-zine then i will create the physical zine version. im really looking forward to it.

rfr and diy

in the process of watching degrassi i got distracted by a new offering on a streaming service. they had all of season 1 of radio free roscoe and i figured i'd side track to that real quick since it's only 26 episodes. degrassi is many many more. while watching rfr i got caught up in the fun of an undergroud teen diy radio station again, something i love so much that pump up the volume is one of my favourite movies. it also got me thinking about this incredible run in early 2000s canadian teen tv where they had a bunch of shows centered on some kind of diy anti-establishment media. beside rfr there was also radioactive for teen diy radio however it was on just a bit before my time of having regular access to tv (my mom was weird) so i remember a few reruns but not much else. i do want to fix that. i also watched our hero, a tv show about a teen girl writing a perzine about whatever is happening in her life that week. i caught reruns of this when i was about 14. i think it's what introduced me to zines, it's a little fuzzy and hard to remember but it was this combined with finding a copy of whatcha mean what's a zine in my highschool library. renegadepress.com which was about an underground e-zine run by a few teens. the show did some classic exploring of teen issues but also had some really strong focus on Indigenous issues and had a really incredible cast. it was extremely fun and introduced me to the concept of e-zines. i feel like if there had been a computer in my house at that point in my life i would have made an e-zine then. but im doing it now and i think that still counts!

all this to say that i think it's pretty cool that we had this run of teen diy tv, and i think these shows really deeply influenced my interests and passions. i kind of want to collect all the seasons of all these now, before they get lost in some media wipe. new little side project: build a cute, neat little diy culture media collection. maybe ill even build a special shelf to hold them all when i'm done.

degrassi and summer

rewatching degrassi in the summer seems to be my main way of coping with the weird summer depression that creeps in towards the end of July. this is my first time watching it all from the very beginning with kids of degrassi st, it used to be hard to find kids online. im on junior high season 2 now and it's good to revisit. i havent watched it all since 2016, my last big bad summer depression.

spike remains one of my favourites, her hair is absolutely iconic no matter what anyone says. im also a fan of the twins, they're good foils for stephanie. LD is also a fave, bc the queercoded characters are always going to be my favourites. the episode in season 1 where caitlyn starts to get scared she's a lesbian and has that nightmare where everyone is shouting lesbian at her is truly a masterpiece. season 2 is fun bc liz shows up, i really like liz and her cute little chelsea haircut. i had a sort of chelsea for a bit. downfall is liz is weirdly antichoice but hey its the 80s, she didnt know.

degrassi is a real comfort show. so many episodes, so many iterations. there's some really fun crossover between kids of degrassi st and junior high, lots of the kids appear in junior high.

i dont think im depressed really but something about this summer is feeling lonely. it's my first summer in kw and i haven't made many friends here yet so i guess revisiting my degrassi pals works. it never really feels like summer is long enough anymore but tv seasons with 20+ episodes certainly helps make it feel longer.

this is the spot where ill write about whatever

look i just wrote this whole thing about kids of degrassi st and degrassi junior high but i fucked up and didnt save so i guess for now this area will look like this until i feel like rewriting it or writing something new.