Well, here we are. Issue Four.

There's good news and bad news.

The good news... guess who's back... Here's a hint: "Along came a spider..."

That's right. Mattias is back. Turns out the reason we lost him right towards the end of the first issue was that he was abducted by aliens.

The bad news... we're damned light on content. It's just Mattias and me.

When we first came up with this ezine concept last spring, we envisioned each issue would have five pieces: a feature article, two regular columns (alternating columnists), and both an arts and lit piece.

We only managed that in the first issue. This issue was supposed to get us back on track but.

I was writing the feature, Mattias was writing a short story that thematically fit the feature, we thought we had a new arts piece and Damien and I were both writing our respective columns.

Well... Our artist couldn't make the deadline and Damien got swamped at work. When we lost those two pieces, we decided to put ours off for the next issue instead, feeling it'd be a waste to bust our asses when we'd just lost 2/5 of the content.

So, here we are. Issue Four. Uberlite.

We have part one of an resurrected three part story from Mattias. We have a the Latrine.

Now, about the Latrine... First off, this particular piece changed on me while I was writing it. It went from sarcastic and snide to sentimental. The change comes about half way through.

The second thing is I'm getting a bit tired of writing it each issue. When we originally thought we'd have alternating columns, guest writers, etc, I didn't mind the idea of having the Latrine in every second or third issue but writing something to order for each issue makes it feel like work.

It would be nice to have other content, other contributors and... an actual team.

We don't wask for much, just ideas but getting even that around here is like pulling teeth.

For example ask a simple question like "Who do you think would make a good interview?" and instead of answers like "So and so is really cool" we get... silence.

Are ideas really that difficult to come up with?

Over the years, we've had some solid team members and some bums. To the bums, some advice:

Go french kiss a light socket.

I dream of the issue where I don't have to write a damn thing except a happy editorial and I can just sit back and actually edit something.

Peace,

Joseph Avery-North