"this elephant of years"

Elephant Mess #18
Originally uploaded by juniperbug.

I spent a little more than 3 months writing down my thoughts in journal form. I didn't write every day or even every week, and occasionally I didn't write much more than a sentence or two, but what I wrote was honest and reflected what I was feeling at the moment, although I may be over it by now. I collected all of these words together and called it Elephant Mess #18. I subtitled it: "the observations of a family geek" and later decided that it may have been more apropos if I had subtitled it something like: "the mental melodrama of an aging zinester" or "the hyperdrama of a superwonk." I suppose I could also call it "the clamor and pith of a misanthrope."
Either way, what's done is done, and it used to be just mine, but now it can be yours as well. All you have to do is send me a couple of stamps or a trade. If you send me $1, I will send you a pin as well...or I'll probably just end up throwing in pins with all of them until I run out. As always, send your best to:

Dan Murphy
PO Box 3154
Moscow ID 83843

messyelephant at hotmail dot com

"i clench my teeth, ignore my heart"

Several weeks ago I received a CD from a good friend of mine from Canada and was asked to review it. Since I don't typically do reviews in any of my zines, I decided that I would post a review here on my blog, which is something that I occasionally do. Francois is a longtime pen pal of mine and this is his latest music release:

G&F - Two Solitudes Standing
G is for Gary Flanagan, a solo artist and editor of Night Waves zine. F is for Francois Marceau of Leper Collective, Flesh for Frank and various other music projects as well as the former editor of Mastock zine. The disc is six tracks of electronic noise and distorted sound clips. Lots of interesting sounds permeate this disc, and they range from soothing to eerie to freakish or moving. The liner notes describe the music best, "various mangled, deeply processed insect sounds, noises, ambient, minimal samples." Also, "found sound, audio samples, voice, loops, noise, effects, guitar, [and] processed sound." It's very unique stuff, and is surely the product of countless hours of work. It's definitely worth a listen. If you'd like to order a copy, you can send $7 to:
Francois Marceau
7375 Louis-Hebert
Montreal, Quebec
H2E 2X5
Canada

Smash your head on the electronic rock.

"i'm of age but have no children"

Hey, if'n you liked that last site about green roofs, you should definitely check out this one.

"oh, i feel as scattered as grandmother's pearls"

I have been working on a new issue of Elephant Mess. It's almost finished ... or, it's closer to being finished than not. Hopefully you will have a copy of it in your hands before the month is over...or at least shortly thereafter, because surely it will take me several weeks to send them all out. I am telling you this because I thought it would be nice of me to keep you updated, and because I figured it was about time I posted something meaningful on here (although the meaningfulness of this post is debatable).
Since I'm not feeling overly wordy right at this moment, allow me to direct you to something that has me very excited lately: this.
Oh, and have you seen that recent documentary Jesus Camp? Crazy stuff.