Wow, it’s the brilliant luminescence of the fourth Pop Boffin. The new big format is a hit (with me anyway), so it’s here to stay for a while. But, in these days of rapid flux even a month is a terribly terribly long time. This has been the most difficult issue to actually get down to because I found myself, for better or worse, gainfully employed. But more about that in a minute.

Issue three was debuted at Word On/Under the Street, the Vancouver version of the cross-country books and lit fair which I was proud to be a part of. Lots of strangers acquired a Pop Boffin which I hope they enjoyed. I sure had fun meeting all of the freaks who turned up. It was good to engage in zine activities somewhere other than in front of my computer or at the photocopy shop.

Sam and I both started new jobs the day after Word On the Street, which is just a little bit too symbolic to delve into. Sam is now a cute record store boy at the magnificent Zulu Records. I’ve been dot-comming it again, this time at a streaming media portal. OK, so I dissed ‘portals’ in issue two, but this one is, like, um, sort of useful. I got to be the editor and be well-paid and occasionally tell other people what to do. How unusual. The cash has been welcome but I don’t like that work stuff getting in the way of important projects like my zine and my Super 8 dinosaur high society short film. That’s why I quit. Thank god for having my life back again. And no, I’m still not a dot com millionaire.

I appreciated the winter holidays more than ever, just because I was so exhausted from working and from my Hawaiian vacation a few weeks earlier. X-mas was pleasurably slow and dull and, of course, the bags of presents didn’t hurt. I had a couple days of doing sincerely nothing and something to contrast that with. Anyway I wasn’t prepared to ‘work my guts out’ (remind me why that’s a good thing again) anymore and now every day is a holiday.

There are many ways to read this zine. You can read the articles in their order in the table of contents or you can read them randomly. The other two need a bit of ‘splaining. You can choose to read the zine with the aid of a word search puzzle. Or you can choose to read the zine by philosopher. Each article has been adopted by a thinker who explains why it illustrates one of the main tenets of their philosophy. If you read by philosopher, you will be reading chronologically, as the thinkers are arranged by the date of their thoughtful writings. Both the word search and philosopher techniques work better in print but try them online for a laugh.

Of course you can enjoy the zine any way you want - I won’t throw a fit if you find some new technique. Gimmicky? Yes. Unoriginal? Maybe. I stole the idea from Yugoslavian author, Milorad Pavic and his crossword puzzle novel, Landscape Painted with Tea. Entertaining and illuminating? Dude, I hope so. So I hope y’all appreciate everything which is wrapped up between the covers. As always, the effort is completely worth it for the people who ‘get’ what I’m saying and for the chance to express myself on my own terms.
xoxo Lara