"normal is weirder than you would care to admit"

I read lots of zines this week (week ending 5/27/06) due to extremely slow days at work and sleepless nights. Here is the list:
-Assassin & The Whiner #15
-ladypajama is... #17
-Glossolalia #6
-How To Skin A Cat #3
-BCN (bicycle commuting now) #2
-The P.R.A.N. #1
-Checkered Past #13
-Barrelhouse #2
-Just Like A Gemini zine
-Jen Pillosophy zine
-Penny Sentinel zine

It's been a rainy, cold and cloudy week. I haven't done much in my garden, but I did spend a good part of Saturday helping out at the organic farm. We planted leeks and several varieties of onions. There was a lot more that needed planted, but it was cold and rainy and the ground was so hard it took us most of the time just get a few rows ready for the onions. Rain is good, but if the soil is really clay-ey and lacking in organic matter it just clods up on you, and that was the case out at the farm.

PETA recently announced the winners of this year's "World's Sexiest Vegetarian" award. The winners are Prince and Kristen Bell. I'm not at all a fan of Prince, but I will publicly (though hesitantly) admit that Veronica Mars (a TV show in which Kristen Bell stars) is one of my guilty pleasures. I don't actually watch TV (mainly because I don't get any channels where I live), but I rented and watched the entire first season on DVD, and I thoroughly enjoyed watching it, so there. That whole sexiest vegetarian contest is lame anyway, and PETA is really getting on my nerves lately, so whatever.

Broadcasting Live

I now have my very own radio show on the University of Idaho student radio station. I play math rock and space pop ... or in other words I play indie rock and some punk. I'm leaning more towards music by the Elephant 6 Recording Company and similar sounding bands. It turns out that I really love pop rock...but the good stuff, ya know. You can listen to my show online on the station's website. My show is every Wednesday morning from 6 - 8:30 pacific time. It's early, but I'll try and make it worth it.

Also, recently in a community on livejournal.com I read an interesting article that deals with a topic I wrote about in The Juniper #6: local food vs. organic. It's a very interesting and thought provoking article, and it includes some good comments so I am offering you a link to it. If you have any interest at all in this sort of thing or if you just feel like getting educated on a new issue or topic, you should definitely give it a read.

"it's not quite summer, but it feels like summer to us"

Now that school is out for the summer, I have time to catch up on some reading. Each week during the summer break I plan to list here on this blog all of the zines and things that I read during that week, so plan on hearing from me fairly regularly...at least until school starts up again in August.
Here is this weeks list (week ending 5/20/2006):
-various plays by Maaike
-One Girl #3
-dimanche #2
-Teaching Nutrition zine
-Crushpuppy zine
-ladypajama is... #16
-Hip Hop Don't Stop #4
-Fatty Boom Boom: vegan cookzine
-Devil Girl #2

I am also going to be posting pictures of my gardening on my flickr page. I simplified the web address, so here it is: http://www.flickr.com/photos/juniperbug Check it out sometime. Things should pick up in the next few weeks as I recently discovered that the growing season here is much shorter than I originally thought it was. Consider yourself lucky if you live in the warmer states and have been gardening since March or April.
In other good news: I am going to have a radio show at the university student radio station here in Moscow, Idaho. Wednesday mornings from 6am to 8:30am pacific time. If you get a chance you should check it. The station streams online at www.kuoi.org. I am mainly going to play eccentric indie pop rock in the vein of Elephant 6 and company, but I'm also going to throw in a mixture of other great stuff as well. It will be awesome....I promise.

Let's Be BFFs!

This post is generating quite a bit of response on livejournal so I figure I should post it here as well:
First off, my mom works in a library in a small Idaho town called Mountain Home. The library has just recently reopened after an extensive remodeling and expansion project. Due to the expansion, my mom now has space to put together a small zine library for folks in the area who may be interested and to spark interest in indie publishing for those who may have never heard of such a thing. Maybe you don't realize how incredibly awesome this is: a zine library in a small Idahoan town in the middle of the desert. It may be the only zine library of its kind in the entire state (I don't know though, so someone can correct me if I'm wrong). Anyway, you should send me your zines so that I can give them to her to put in the library. It's an opportunity for your zine to be exposed to people who may be totally new to the idea. And it could also be a continuation in your plans for world domination.
Also, I am starting up a mini-distro of sorts. I haven't decided yet exactly what it will amount to, but I'm looking for zines and things to carry nonetheless. The zines I am looking for are of a semi-specific (but also fairly broad) genre. I want to distribute zines that are similar in content to my zine, The Juniper. Thus, if you do a zine or diy project about gardening, bikes/alternative transportation, cooking/food preservation, food politics, diy, sustainable living, eco-warrioring, treehugging, eco-villages, organics, permaculture, biodynamics, greywater, seed saving, sewing/knitting/crafting or anything up that alley, you should definitely get in touch with me and we'll talk.
Send your zines for the zine library and zines for distro consideration along with anything else you feel like mailing to:
Dan Murphy, PO Box 3154, Moscow ID 83843
juniperjournal@hotmail.com
School is almost out for summer, but not forever.