International Zine Month Day 23-25

So, I ran out of zine specific shirts. But, I have this skirt that I made out of some corduroy pants an old housemates left and I sewed a typewriter patch on it:

International Zine Month day 23

 

Yesterday was the 24th of July. It is a holiday in Utah. It is the day that Brigham Young got to Utah and said “this is the place”. There are fireworks and picnics and parades. A few years ago I thought it would be funny to have one in Portland with all the people who had escaped the clutches of Utah. Well, this year  I got a permit at a park and we trekked down the street with our hand carts…actually, a red wagon and a cooler with wheels. It was a lot of fun. We listened to music from Utah and had fun with our friends who had moved her and a few extras that came along. I did not wear a zine shirt, I wore  shirt of Paul and Dave’s old band, The Downers. Did I mention that Dave, my favorite genius drop-out, was visiting us from utah. Well, he is and we have been having lots of great, late night converesation. Good Times!

Today is the 25th and this is about the last of my zine related apparel. I got this typewriter shirt at Wholy Craft in Columbus, Ohio on tour last autumn. I dig it.

So, the other day we were sitting on the porch drinking and talking and a guy came up and parked his Ninja.  idodn’t know they still made those. Jacki had to inspect it and then OJ had to see what it was all about.

Jackie Cat vs. Ninja

 

OJ cat vs. Ninja

I love these cats.

International Zine Month Day 22

This shirt was sent to me by Krity Win. Sadly, I have not been to the Auckland Zine Fest. I would love to go someday.

I posted some more photos of my garden on facebook, take a look.

here are some previews:

International Zine Month Day 20

So, here’s another photo from my punk jacket. Hello Nothing was a one page zine from Florida that was made by my penpal Tim. We were pretty good penpals from 2008-2001 or so. I don’t know Tim’s last name or I would search for him. We lost contact years ago. I really enjoyed his one page zine.

HelloNothing

He made me this painting in 99 and wrote on the back of it.

in postage we trust.

 

Last year I wrote a post card to the address that is blurred out in this photo, I never heard back.

If you are our there Tim Nothing, I still have your painting on my wall and I still like real mail. I hope you are having a great life.

A year ago my friend Steve was living in our basement and sharing my office.Also, I made this post about it. I had just gone to see the Swingin’ Utters and had my face mangled by the elbow of a skinhead. Well, it has been a year and I took a new photo of myself to see how the scar had healed. What do you think:

also, I have no idea wat color my eyes are. I just say grey.

International Zine Month Day 19

My sister stopped by at 6:30am this morning  to drop of my mom’s dog, Maggie. (we call it a puppycat) It has this little carrier that it loves to hang out in. I brought the puppycat box upstairs to my room…where Jackie, the cat was sleeping. Jackie was not happy with the intrusion of a dog. Maggie was pretty calm but they had a half hour staring contest before Jackie split.

Maggie is the little one. The one on the right is my aunt's dog, Rex.

In honor of my sister delivery of the adorable puppycat, my International Zine Month shirt has to do with her.  This is part of my oh-so-cool-patch-work-punk-sweatshirt. This was a staple of my wardrobe from about 1996-2000. I also used to do a lot of embroidery and embroidered “ALEX WREKK” across the knuckles. I had to retire it. I didn’t feel like being a walking billboard. I have a few other zine related patches on this sweatshirt so if this cold and rainy Portland weather keeps up, I’ll post some more.

Anyway, Touched By An Anvil was (is?) the zine my sister did. My first zine was Fun in A Bucket that we started together in 1995. I moved on to my own zine, Brainscan, and Webly changed the name of the zine Touched by An Anvil.

Touched By An Anvil! and also an old school Groovie Ghoulies patch.

International Zine Month Day 16

International Zine Month Day 16 shirt: Quimby's books

I got this shirt at Quimby’s after the Chicago Zine Fest this year. I actually got paid out from selling zines and put their money right back into the register to buy this shirt. That’s Korinna with me. We used to have zine adventures all the time, but it’s been awhile. We are both at the IPRC for the 24 hour zine challenge. I haven’t quite started yet. You can watch with the like ustream video feed here.

International Zine Month Day 15

International Zine Month Day 15 shirt: Pander Zine Distro I miss Pander Zine Distro and the accompanying message board. This was a shirt that I cut too short so I couldn't wear it anymore so I turned it into a patch on another shirt. What's that in the background? Oh, it's just my Risograph machine named, Rizzo!

 

Last night Paul and I hung out with our new, soon to be housemate. After that, Paul and I had our full moon night playing records and dancing, as we do. I declared last night that Tones On Tail is the most underrated band ever. They are so good!

Today Paul and I are going to rip out some more of the annoying grass in our yard. Grass in dumb. Later we are going to a show but I have to get to bed early to get up bright and early

 Tomorrow at 10am starts the 3rd annual 24 Hour Zine Challenge!

If you go here and sponsor me in the 24 Hour Zine Challenge and donate $10 to the Portland Zine Symposium you will get whatever creation I come up with. Last year it was a zine full of storeis about all the post boxes I have ever had. If you sponsor me for $25 I’ll send some extra special goodies like stickers and buttons. In the words of my mother “It’s a pretty good bet that you’ll finish” and she sponsored me for $25!

International Zine Month Day 14

We are almost half way through the month! My shirt pile is dwindling, but I still have some more to go.

international Zine Month Day 14 shirt: Portland Zine Symposium 2004. Artwork by Clutch!

 

Last night was the last Word Game Wednesday at the Waypost. It was pretty fun even though not too many people showed up. I introduced people to Fluxx, which is the best game ever. well, maybe not. Apples to Apples is the best game ever but Fluxx is pretty close.

My friend and fellow Zine Symposium organizer, Blue, called me a jerk in her blog because I have 7 sponsors for the 24 hour Zine Challenge this weekend and she only has one. If that makes me a jerk, then I’m ok with it! Maybe you would like to join Team Jerk too? You’ll get a copy of my brand new zine before anyone else if you do.

Here’s the info on how to join Team Jerk!

The Portland Zine Symposium is hosting a 24 Hour Zine Challenge at the Independent Publishing Resource Center (IPRC) on July 16-17. This is benefit for the Portland Zine Symposium. If you sponsor a zinester to complete the 24 Hour Zine Challenge and pledge $10 or more you will receive the zine they finish!

If you go here and sponsor me in the 24 Hour Zine Challenge and donate $10 to the Portland Zine Symposium you will get whatever creation I come up with. Last year it was a zine full of storeis about all the post boxes I have ever had. If you sponsor me for $25 I’ll send some extra special goodies like stickers and buttons. In the words of my mother “It’s a pretty good bet that you’ll finish” and she sponsored me for $25!

There will also be a Ustream channel so, wherever you are in the world, you can watch our caffeine induced scribbling and creating. More details coming soon!

International Zine Month Day 13…and cats!

I might be running out of shirts. Know any I should buy? how about one your want to send me?

The shirt for today is the 2009 Portland Zine Symposium. The story about how the theme became cats is pretty silly. I think we were having a meeting at house that had 4 cats milling around us. We kept coming up with these ideas and we kept coming back to cats and everyone was all “Yeah! Cats!” and I was all “Cats? really?” then I realized that it was the 9th year of the symposium and that cats have 9 lives so I said sure

I think 2009 was the year of the cat for me because not only did we have a cat theme for the symposium, I think that was the same year that our house mate moved in with two cat friends. I had never been a cat person before….ever. I’m still not a cat person but I absolutely adore our fuzzy housemates, Jackie and OJ. They are inside/outside cats who hang out with me while I work. I’ve grown used to talking to them. They are also really protective. I didn’t know cats could be protective, eve of houseguests. They escort people away from the house and back to the house. They generally keep our block on lock down. I love these cats:

I love how they look like secret agents here.

Did I mention they are brothers? They fight like brothers, but they also just chill sometimes.

"I don't mind if you forget me" Jackie, or as we sometimes call him "Morrissey Cat", is my favorite. He likes people but he doesn't like to be picked up. he preens himself a lot and he really really likes me. Paul calls him my familiar. I never ever thought I would allow a cat to sleep in my bed but this guy does quite often. Maybe I should plant him some Gladiolas?

Oj....is a bit different. We call him Keanu Reeeves cat. He's a goofy muscley weirdo. He got in a tussle with a racoon, hence the cone, but he's kind of a bad ass. He also likes boxes and I worry I might accidently send him off to distant lands by accident.

They like to hang out with me while I work in the yard.

Ok, enough cats. Time for me to get back to work. If you wanna see more of my cat friends, you can see my “i’m becoming a crazy cat lady and they aren’t even my cats” album.

International Zine Month Day 12

And welcome to day 12.

It’s a cold and rainy morning in Portland so I was able to wear one of my two long sleeve zine shirts. They are both used shirts printed on for PZS. This is a 2007 shirt. It was the first symposium I had planned after taking a 2 year hiatus. It was nice to come back a familiar thing, but with a whole new group of people.

Giraffe!

Did you know the Portland Zine Symposium and Whiffies are sponsoring a bike-in movie on July 29th. Go here to vote on what movie we should watch.

 

International Zine Month Day 11

First things first. Here’s my zine shirt:

1st Portland Zine Symposium shirt.

For some reason I actually forget that I was the person who created the artwork for the first zine symposium. I took a photo of my favorite 3 bank Underwood typewriter and did a bit of editing with a photocopier like adding “PORTLAND ZINE SYMPOSIUM” to the keys.  Not my best design work but, I still like it. I wish I had added a bit of dots and shades. Maybe I should try again next year?

We has a Symposium meeting last night. We got our stickers back from the printer and they look great. We also set up a bike in movie on the 29th of July at a location in SE. If you havne’t yet, you should vote here on what movie to watch . We also have Word Game Wednesdays At the Waypost this Wednesday. Come and play word games!

I got a Google+ account yesterday and wasting a lot of time tinkering with it. Including getting my own shortened url: http://gplus.to/brainscan I remember years ago I tried to get brainscan@gmail and totally failed.  Here are my thoughts so far:

1)My favorite thing is that it allows me to have multiple names. Facebook wouldn’t let me change my nickname to Sunshine (my real name) even when I sent them an image of my passport. Google+ lists me as Alex Wrekk, Sunshine Bowls, and Alexand Bowles. People know me in different ways so why not allow that?

2) I like the groups. They are a lot easier to manage there than on facebook. This way I don’t have to bother non-zine people with all my updates and frantic-ness about the zine symposium or whatever. I can also put my customers in a group so they don’t have to see that I’m slacking off and taking pictures of my garden instead of making buttons for them and I don’t have to struggle to remember where all 500 of my friends live and accidentally invite them to an event that is happening in Portland when they are in New Zealand. Yes, facebook has groups but they are super cumbersome to edit.

3)I like that I can link all of my e-mails, not just one, to my account. All of my e-mails get dumped into my google account anyway so it makes sense.

4)I have an android space phone and I dig that I can take photos and they automatically upload to a photo account only I can see. If I wanna share I will, but I don’t have to.

5)I like that, unlike facebook, Google seems to know that you go other places on the internet and that you maintain other places on the internet and that having easily accessible links to my online shops, twitter blogs, and photos might be useful.

6)) They allow you to edit your posts! This seems like something simple that Facebook could have done but hasn’t.

7)G+ allows you to opt out of receiving notifications for a post. If you just have one thing to say and don’t really care what the 200 people who also have something similar to say then why should it clog up your e-mail with notifications?

8) I have been debating about making a ? circle for those people who I can’t figure out how I know them. Does that make me a jerk?

Overall I’m liking it.