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Number 2

The instant a new issue of Rat Blood Soup rolls off the presses a complex chain of activity begins. Several Individuals we'll call "couriers" are dispatched from the print site on their way back to RBS headquarters. Each carries the copies of a different single sheet of RBS. Some of the couriers are decoys, carrying bogus copies that look similar to the authentic ones. Not even I know which couriers carry the real sheets, or what their individual routes will be. Once they are here the first new issue is quickly assembled and locked in a special case alongside the first printings of other issues. These issues are visible behind four inch thick dark- filtered glass in a titanium casing filled not with oxygen but with inert helium gas. This case retracts into the wall behind an elaborate electronic safe-type door. In case of an emergency or nuclear threat, the entire case plunges 150 feet straight down into the ground where it is surrounded by lead plates. As soon as the new issue is safely locked away, on my orders some of my people who remain at the print site destroy the masters/originals on the spot by burning them. It sounds like a hassle I know, but it goes very smoothly and quickly.

So it goes being a zine editor. It's not very exciting. No one has ever attempted to intercept any of the couriers, and there has never been a fatality in connection with the zine's production.

Do the readers know I love each and every one of them? Of course they do. And it's not just because of their unceasing worship of me that I bestow my love on them, but rather because I very simply respect each of them as individuals, with feelings, capabilities and potential unique to themselves. This is why when I visit them in their homes I will often help myself to things in their kitchens and refrigerators without asking, gorging myself like a "slob" until I am full. They love this. By acting this way I simultaneously disperse the tensions caused by a formal visit, and I kind of place myself "below" them, so they are not then expected to act subservient, to behave in a sycophantic way offering me things left and right and waiting on me hand and foot. I have received many a post-visit note thanking me for my "barbarism"--my messiness, smells and lack of couth-- that is so effective at putting my hosts at ease, at relieving their anxiety about always feeling somehow inferior to me.

I was a little worried looking at the previous issue. At seventeen pages it seemed a little light, a little short. I picked up a real magazine, one of those where it comes out every month and people pay to advertise in it and all that stuff, and noticed that although it had 169 pages, 65 of those pages were ads. There were another ten pages of ads if you counted these pictorials, which were really just ads, where model-types were prancing around the countryside with some text in the corner saying something like "T-shirt with coffee stain by Rat Blood Soup: $250.00" The magazine then was 38 percent to 44 percent ads. This meant that if the RBS issue in question would contain 38 to 44 percent ads, it would have been 27 or 30 pages long. This made me feel much better.

But about Rat Blood Soup headquarters. Yeah, we field a lot of mail from people who are curious about just what it is that goes on in here, and at times like now I feel bad that I really cannot tell you. Don't feel bad however--you can live a more or less full life without knowing, and in fact, having this knowledge imparted to you could make your own life seem so small, so minute and of no importance that you actually could be put at risk for serious depression or even suicide. I can tell you though that I arise around 9 or 10 in the morning and walk down to the kitchen in my underwear to get a glass of orange juice. The staff knows better than to even as much as point out the fact that I am in my underwear. They complement my partially nude body and my breath. I am too groggy to offer anything in return aside from a sort of "unngghh...". I head back into my room and sit back to read the paper while young virgins wash my feet and anoint me with some smelly stuff from some funky looking bottles, I don't know what the crap is. It's not that I'm into going out with young virgins or that I have some "thing" for them or anything like that at all. I just like the women who are washing my feet to be pure.

Looking at this issue I see that it's a little thicker, and also a little text-heavy. Needs some more graphics. It takes forever for me to draw stuff, so I'm going to be looking for someone to maybe give me a hand there. It occurred to me that maybe I should try to consume, to actually eat one issue of RBS. Just kind of get it wet, mix it into a pulp, and eat the crap. Like maybe the zine would be more palatable to people, that they would be more likely to swallow what's in here if their editor could show that he physically swallows the thing whole. Hmmm...Don't worry--if I do, it will be on video.

 

take care, my darlings.
I'll visit you soon,
Will

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