I've been publishing zines for about five years now, off and on. Therefore, I know, deeply, how much your little offering to the world is really not so much just a piece of writing or meaningless photocopies. You really want people to like it because, by some kind of weird zinester metaphysics, it really is a piece of yourself.

So I'm a little nervous when a zine like Copycat comes in. There are flashes of truth in its way-on-the-small-side 10 pages. Lamentations that I can see are very real and very honest. There are also small pieces before the writing found its flow, so to speak, that are obviously there as filler rather than content. In fact, the actual content could have probably been condensed into four or five pages (half-size), and left room for more articles.

According to Cathy, this is the last issue of Copycat, since she's moving on to other projects that she's more "in tune with," so to speak. My advice to the reader is to save your $1 or stamps and wait until she comes out with the first brand-spankin'-new copies of this new and different publication. It seems to me that she threw this together to have something to send out, rather than because she had much to say, and although there were enough beginnings to be a good base in this issue, there just weren't enough middles to make it worthwhile. Or, if you can't wait, write 409 Water St., Jackson, CA 95642.

It will be interesting to see how her new project develops.

[ by Elizabeth Badurina ]
Rambles: 4 May 2002