It’s all my fault. I have no one to blame but myself. It should have been obvious that this zine would suck when I saw “Ontological Irony” in bold italics on the cover, complete with definitions for both words to assure the reader that if you don’t like the zine it’s only because you don’t understand the subtext. Foolish me, I read the whole damn thing cover to cover. Whoever wrote these four pages of whiny crap didn’t put his name on it, so I’m going to call him Ted. Ted, I actually kept reading your entire P.O.T. Manifesto assuming, and then hoping, that you’d get to the point. After all, isn’t that what a manifesto does? (And by manifesto Ted, I mean making a public declaration of your motives, intentions or aims.) Instead, you’re too busy “manifesting text” and spouting your inane pop-philosophy bullshit and half-assed, adolescent musings about life, then painstakingly editing it with a thesaurus. I would cut you some slack if you were still in high school, but you’re 25 years old. It’s time to move beyond stuff like, “This is the mess you left on the floor. These are those pages you forgot about. This is that suicide note you wrote to your mom on your first bad acid trip. This is that love letter you wrote to that person who laughed in your face when you handed it to them. This is that poem you wrote that day you wore black and nothing rhymed–” It keeps going, but I’ll spare you the rest. I will, however, share another quote, if only because I don’t wish to slag someone without something to back it up. “I’ve gotten feedback from strangers who seem to enjoy my sentence structure and philosophic whimsy, just for the sake of it. I knew a film-maker girl once, and she said that getting e-mails from me was like being a personal friend of William S. Burroughs–” No wait! It gets better! “She was the same one who told me, with a tone of surprise in her voice, the first time we climbed into bed together, that she found me strong for a writer.” I’m glad you’re getting laid Ted, but your manifesto doesn’t seem to reflect this apparent “strength as a writer.” I’m not one to dislike a zine because it doesn’t have a point. I really do enjoy a good perzine, reading about other people’s lives and random thoughts. I’m nosy and a voyeur and proud of it. But if you’re just going to ramble about guilt consuming you, hating guys that hit on girls on the bus, and how you get impressionable girls to sleep with you, don’t call it a manifesto! Try to keep that in mind when you go for a fourth rewrite. (Dawn Parish)
perzine, #3, free, www.livejournal.com/users/revneongelus/ , [email protected]