#pamphlets

The new banana. 1931. Cover.

Handed out at Califur in 2009. You can read it here.

Tons of people are realizing that you can make books at home, a fact that totally floored me two years ago when I found out about it. Is that you? You should make a pamphlet!

Sometimes, people show up to the bookbinding community and ask something like, “I would like to bind a 100,000-word fan fiction into an heirloom object/gift. Where do I start?” You should start by making a pamphlet.

I think some of them don’t like hearing that, and I think I understand why. They are not approaching bookbinding as a hobby to learn and explore; they want a DIY project that will result in An Object. But this isn’t like when I painted my shutters, and all I needed was a paint sprayer, some fasteners, a chisel, and YouTube to get me going. For most folks, it’s more like if you wanted to design and build a shed from scratch, and you’d never held a saw. Why not draw up and make a little firewood shelter out of cheap lumber first?

Why not make a pamphlet?

Now, if you are coming from a strong crafter background, and especially if you already do a lot of papercraft or chipboard box-making, you can admittedly skip the pamphlet phase. But should you?

Pamphlets are cheap! Quick! Fun! Pamphlets and other simple bindings let you play with tools, materials, and techniques without expending excessive time or precious materials. You probably have everything you need already. Bookbinding is a craft with dozens of best practices and rules of thumb and recommended materials, and each one is negotiable. If you truly understand the importance of a given recommendation or standard, you can decide how much it’s worth to you and your projects. If you’re a novice crafter, you’ll quickly figure out if this fussy paper-bending nonsense is enjoyable for you at all–without buying a bunch of tools you may not use again. If you’re experienced, you’ll have a quick win, get to play with new kinds of paper, and see how different materials work together.

And you can explore how to decorate books! 

So please, if you’re even curious about bookbinding, make a pamphlet.

I’ll even tell you how. With pictures!

Functional Fore-Edges

Silly Pamphlets, why would I oppose the US hegimony?

I oppose Putin's Russian Imperialism and land-grabbing

I oppose Xi's Chinese Imperialism and land-grabbing

I oppose Iranian and Pan-Arabic imperialism and land-grabbing in Lebanon, Yemen, and Gaza via Iranian Imperialist proxy groups that hold the civilians of these places hostage. I oppose gender apartheid in Iran, Afghanistan, and throughout the Middle East.

Currently organizing some things across local organizations, revamping the image and rhetoric of my local Democratic Party chapter, collecting clothes for a gender-affirming clothing swap, participating in multiple cities' planning and city council meetings, and distributing some of the guerilla literature I mentioned previously.

On the subject of the last: I have some things I'm ready to show you.

The first one I hesitated to share because I think it comes off as Republican-apologist. For what it's worth, that is exactly the point. It's a zine I've written to be distributed in red areas with content/language that is sympathetic enough to conservatives that it may be able to act as a first step in the deradicalization process. I finally decided to publish and distribute it on the grounds of "Well, it might help deradicalize some conservatives. And it might piss off any leftists that find it enough that it moves them to action, so win-win I guess." If you find yourself mad at the content of this one, just know it is written with a very specific audience and purpose in mind. I'm not exactly sympathetic to what the MAGA conservatives are allowing to happen right now, but I'm familiar with and understand their perspectives (at an information-level, not an empathy-level).

The second is also directed at conservatives, but it's more pointed, and it's based on a response I get in a lot of conversations with "moderate" conservatives. The phrase is "I'm fine with it. I'm just sick of seeing it," which they frequently apply to LGBTQIA+ people, and they seem to genuinely think that that makes them accepting enough to get them out of conversations about queer issues. This zine is about the implications of saying something like that, i.e. "The I'm fine with it," part does not cancel out the fact that what you're advocating for in the second part of the sentence is the erasure of an entire demographic of people for your comfort. The reason I wrote something to state this directly is because based on good-faith interactions with a lot of people who think like this, I don't think most of them understand that that's what they're advocating for, and I also don't think anyone has ever confronted them about it.

If you find either one of these compelling or practical, you have my full permission to get them printed and do you own guerilla distribution in your area. I've gotten a handful of these to various groups in my roaming territory, and from what they've told me, they've been doing stuff like shoving them in the pockets of shirts at thrift shops, under boxes at grocery stores, in the pages of books that conservatives would be interested in at the library and bookstores, etc. If you do want to do this, you'd be helping me spread the ideas and increasing the difficulty of finding the original source (giving me more plausible deniability irl). Be sure to look up any local laws/ordinances related to flyer distribution in your area though. Ex: One city I lived in had a law against putting things on people's car windshields, which for the longest time I thought was like a state/federal thing when it was just that city. People skirted it by putting things in car door handles instead. Additionally, do not put anything in a U.S. mailbox. I'm told it is illegal to put anything in there without postage. If for any reason, you're concerned about being caught by any of the places you're planning to leave zines, leave very few at a time and only in one place per day. Since they probably won't be found and noticed the same day you distribute them, that gives you a temporal spacer that makes it harder to tell when they were put there and therefore who could have done it. Putting them in many places in one day increases the likelihood they will be found faster, and then it's easier to narrow down who is doing it through combinatorics, i.e. "Who was in all three of these places on this date?" You'll notice also that both zines are handwritten in all-caps. It is traditionally thought that all caps handwriting is less identifiable to a specific person than cursive or regular print (there are fewer unique graphology characteristics).

You can access a printable copy of the first zine here and the second one here. You print them, cut them out, and then cut and fold them as shown below by this zine making guide from Thomas Tallis School: