Joy to the world, a zine is born

My week in review & how you can get my zine!

I had a good but busy week getting ready to table a zine for a local film series! I was feeling nervous for it since it was my first time ever being a vendor. I was fretting about making sure I put together enough zines, what other materials I should put out at my table, and what I was going to wear (a fun Grateful Dead shirt, I decided ultimately).

Luckily, Jenn was very supportive, helping me figure out all these things. She even made some signs for my table and got food for us before the event – I knew there was a reason, among a million others, as to why I picked her. It ended up being OK though as I didn’t end up selling anything. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t a little bummed by that, but I realistically knew that was how it might go.

Nevertheless, I got to hang out with some friends, have some people take a look at my wares, and got to see Shanghai Express, an old movie from the 30s that was way funnier than I was expecting it to be and was even more engaging thanks to a literal professor doing a Q&A after the showing to talk about the movie.

(Credit: Paramount Pictures)

I was dead tired by the time we got home that night, but not too tired to go for a nice hike the next day with Jenn. We went to a nice park that does a great job of letting you be one with nature on the trails.

We got to see all sorts of fun birds, but my favorite sight was probably a pileated woodpecker. They are the biggest woodpecker in North America, and I believed it – the one we saw was huge! I wish I had a picture of it, but I’m sure you can easily find one if you google them.

The rest of the weekend was spent mostly just chilling. I started playing a new game called Nubby's Number Factory. It’s a fun game and sitting down to play it makes me feel like I’m in 5th grade again, sitting in the computer lab to play a goofy game because that somehow made us learn how to use technology???

I would have spent all night playing this as a child. (Credit: MogDogBlog Productions)

Thanks to reading books and working/playing at the Number Factory, I haven’t been online all too much this week, and I can’t say I regret it. Social media feels so important and urgent until you get off the sauce for a bit. I’ll still be writing here, of course, but tabling my zine reminded me how important it is to get away from the socials, touch grass, and just be out in the world IRL.

I hope you can touch grass this week too and you can even get away from a screen while reading some of my stories because…

I made a zine!!!

That’s right, I’ve been talking about it on notes, but I really did make the zine I’ve been talking about for weeks.

Just look at this labor of love!

What was originally me just doinking around to see if I could make a zine again turned into me discovering that yes I can, and yes it’s fun to do!

I had a lot of fun making Let’s get funked up and put together five stories that I’ve written on Substack over the first three months of 2025. It features stories about cannibalism in the workplace, funky space abductions, a hotline for planets nearing extinction, and more.

It’s $10, or $2 a story!

Seeing my stories leave the digital world and land on print is super cool to me, and I hope you think it’s cool enough to buy your own copy too.

While you can technically read all of these stories for free on Substack, there’s something nice about having them all laid out nicely together in one place on paper where you can’t get distracted by other things like I often do.

Plus, it’s just another way to support me beyond tipping me on Ko-fi.

So, if you dig it, Buy your own copy here! (I will super duper appreciate it!!!)