Marc Fischer

Oooh, thank you!

ZineMap - Drop Your Zines, Find Your People Explore a global map of the zine universe, track your zines, and discover new places to share your work.

Check out zinemap.com. This international map of zine shops, libraries and events is a stellar resource - lots of community input and some interviews too. Thanks to its creator CJ for telling me about it this morning. Happy to boost this, as it's filled with useful information.

Nice! I love finding reams of paper in thrift stores. I've found some great stuff this year including a ream of 24# 11x17 paper for $2.99.

This squirrel and I had a good little staring at each other session the other day. I am always down for this.

This is one of those things there might be a reddit forum or Youtube video about.

Can you check the copy count on it? I also wonder about hacking the old toner cartridges to add more. I have a Brother (maybe 7 years old?) and I bought a Brother cartridge that makes really dirty prints and has a lot of toner left and I wonder about transferring the toner to another cartridge.

Did Eazy E finish his borscht?

That maybe should go in the medical expenses column. I'd have to correlate the day that I bought the records and what was happening in the news, but I think in 2025, it's safe to say that it was always stress buying and therefore medical.

Usually the bad coffee, chai lattes from the machine, or breakfast sandwiches. Maybe only 3 or 4 Slurpees. My rule with Slurpees is only if it's 90 degrees or higher, usually.

Our combined gas bills for the year were more than I spent on records by probably at least 25%.

I also learned that I spent less on records than I might have thought (though I sometimes paid for those with cash). I'm off to a heavier spending start in 2026 though.

I haven't read this yet but does the article answer the question of whether or not ICE Cube will swarm on any motherfucker eating wild mushroom stroganoff?

The cover of the booklet "Editors of Underground Magazines." The main image is an inverted scan of the cover page of my original assignment. A section of the back cover text: This booklet is a reprint of an assignment from the spring semester of my first year in undergrad at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. I was an art major and received my BFA from the school in 1993. I believe the class this was written for, Strategies for Writing, was required. I have no memory of the professor, but I suspect it was a grad student or some other young instructor that was determined to be a stickler for proper academic writing form above all else. I’ve reprinted their final comments on page seven. During this time in college, I was still publishing the zine I started in high school in early 1988, Primary Concern. For the most part, I did not try to make my zine part of my college art or design course work. My zine was a parallel activity until school and having a social life demanded time that I could no longer devote to publishing. I made seven issues of that zine before stopping in around 1991. I no longer share copies of it with anyone. It’s my juvenilia and I find it embarrassing. I rediscovered this college writing assignment in my childhood bedroom while visiting my mom in Philadelphia, and then regretted not bringing it back to Chicago with me. I asked my mom to mail it to me, much as she would always send me my mail when I was in college. Despite the uncharitable grade this paper received, I don’t find this writing too embarrassing­—perhaps because I’m mainly writing about the work of other publishers, some of whom were my peers. Looking this over again, I was surprised how much I still agree with many of the positions the paper shares. A couple friends suggested that I make this reprint and I decided to go for it, reformatted as a booklet. It’s a compact snapshot of how I remember the self-publishing culture I was part of at the time.

3rd new Public Collectors publication of the year:

Editors of Underground Magazines

A reprint of a recently rediscovered text from way back in 1990 when 19 year old me decided to write a paper about zines for a class during my first year in college.

Just $4.00 from www.halfletterpress.com

I'm working on my taxes and reviewing my credit card records and the numbers don't lie. I spent $95.48 at 7-11 in 2025.
* I charge everything at places like this because I don't give a fuck about their fees.

Hahahahahaa

OH FUUUUCK!! I will not be making coffee in my room. The last place I stayed in had continuous free coffee in the lobby after complimentary breakfast hours so I did that.

ABOLISH ICE sign made with plastic pieces that are affixed to a chain link fence along Milwaukee Ave. in Chicago's Avondale neighborhood.

This beautiful ABOLISH ICE sign has appeared on a chain link fence in my Chicago neighborhood (Avondale). The plastic pieces seem like they are possibly designed specifically to grab fences to make signs like this. Very nice presence on a gloomy day.

Laws of good coffee are also frequently suspended but it’s short term so it’s OK.

It has taken a long time for some institutions to comprehend but as it turns out, libraries can actually catalog zines and circulate them! Astonishing! Glad this is happening for you too. There are some good advocates out there.

Dude has some ideas that are as bad as his riffs are heavy, but still a better option than John Joseph, I think.

I think since I stopped teaching college classes, I've started adding more pragmatic/educational information to my more writing focused publications like this one. It wasn't a conscious choice but I think it's a good direction. We don't need jobs at institutions to teach.

@quimbysbookstore.bsky.social has copies of this booklet already (delivered literally an hour after the UPS truck arrived) so if you are in Chicago and want to avoid shipping, stop on over there!

A booklet cover showing a photo of a purple chain hotel in Milwaukee in early evening light. Info on the booklet from the back cover: Since founding this project in 2007, Public Collectors has always focused on what can be done informally, without institutional support or validation. This booklet describes how a self-initiated artist residency in a hotel can be a productive creative retreat that doesn’t require an application or invitation. Artists probably started making art in hotels soon after hotels came into existence. Some hotels today have artist in residence programs where they invite artists to stay in their rooms and use them as studios. This approach depends on the artist receiving an invitation and isn’t open to anyone. Other kinds of artist residencies require applications and can be very expensive if they aren’t funded by the residency program. In 2024 I started exploring the idea of giving myself a short residency whenever I wanted one by looking at off-season hotel prices in the Midwest, where I live. I started thinking about specific approaches to making that would be well-suited for a hotel room, what I should pack, and how I should structure my brief stay. The idea of a self-residency in a hotel is not novel but every time I say to someone that I’ve done this, they tell me what a useful idea it is and how much they want to try it. Hotel residencies may be particularly enticing for artists that work from home and don’t normally spend money on an off-site studio. The self-initiated hotel artist residency is for people who think a simple room in an uninspiring place might be just the ticket to complete a project that doesn’t require much more than a quiet place to be. If you can bring your own supplies and inspiration and prefer solitude, sometimes a room without much of a view and a plate of complimentary breakfast might be all you really need to make your work for two or three days.

New Public Collectors zine!

The Self-Initiated Hotel Artist Residency

When your studio goes wherever you go, why not take it on the road for a couple nights and give yourself a self-initiated residency in a hotel at cheap off-season rates and see what you make? $6.00 www.halfletterpress.com

The header of the new Public Collectors newsletter, which shows a neighbor's flat plastic inflatable pumpkin and asks the question: "How do you explain bombing an elementary school to a deflated pumpkin?"

The March newsletter for Public Collectors has been sent. But you can also just read it right here: mailchi.mp/a4a1802379b7...

LOLOLOL!!

LOL. He does know a lot of words and doesn't respond to everything I ask him with excitement if it's not something he wants. But if I ask him if he wants to go somewhere, the answer is generally FUCK YEAH!!! LET'S GOOOOOO!!!!!

This speedy little monster turns 14 years old in a couple months by the way. He's ridiculous.

Today I also briefly showed my dog where some of the publications I have made or worked on are displayed at Quimby’s. He breezed right past them because he’s too short to see anything that isn’t on the bottom shelf. Also, he can’t read.

All three of my new Public Collectors booklets for 2026 are listed at www.halfletterpress.com, by the way. I'll announce them more fully tomorrow.

I dropped off two brand new Public Collectors zines and restock at Quimby’s in Chicago today. I asked my dog if he wanted to go with me. The answer was a resounding RA RAAA!!! RRRRAAA!! RAA!!!! RAR!!!