From Pathetic Life #18
Tuesday, November 14, 1995
Going through this week’s mail, I’m the recipient of two checks for sample issues of the zine, so I’m going to rant about it.
Like it says in Factsheet 5, like it says in every issue of Pathetic Life, I don’t take checks. It’s not because your check will bounce. It probably would bounce, but that’s irrelevant. It’s because Pathetic Life is not a company and doesn’t have a bank account.
The price for the zine is three dollars. My price for carrying an out-of-town check from a stranger into some bank where I don’t have an account, waiting in line for half an hour to show ID I don’t have to a bewildered teller, and explaining to her who I am and what zines are and hoping she’ll turn your check into three bucks, which she won’t, would be substantially higher.
One of today’s checks is “pay to the order of Pathetic Life,” which is stupid, and the other is payable to cash, which is slightly less stupid, but still a nearly impossible challenge. Most checks come payable to Doug Holland, which, of course, is a pen name.
I’ve been quite nice about all the checks, usually returning them with a handwritten note explaining that I don’t take checks, and why. I’ve considered having a rubber stamp made.
Out of dozens of such notes I’ve written, maybe five check-writers have subsequently sent stamps or cash. Sometimes I’ve stupidly enclosed the zine with the note, but the response rates seem no different.
The latest issue of PL still hasn’t been mailed to everyone who prepaid for it, because I don’t have enough stamps. I’ve stretched the mailing schedule out because I’m broke, and checking the maildrop is supposed to leave me less broke, and it does — there’s always cash, it’s always appreciated, and a few more past-due copies of the zine are going into the mail.
But there are also checks, every time, and it’s starting to seriously piss me off.
Other people’s ignorance shouldn’t obligate me to spend 32¢ and waste an envelope, returning a check I can’t cash. From now on, anyone who sends a check will receive no reply, and all incoming checks will be playfully ripped into 32 pieces and confettied into the trash.
♦ ♦ ♦
While filling paid orders and typing, I’ve been listening to Free Radio Berkeley, and for more than an hour now a man has been reading a rant against ending Affirmative Action.
I agree with him. Affirmative Action is a fitting apology for generations of discrimination, shouldn’t be ended. If anything, there needs to be more action and it ought to be more affirmative.
The guy talking on the radio, though, is awful at it. He’s reading his spiel, and it sounds like he’s reading, and even stumbling over his own words. Too many words, too. What he’s said fifty times already is, basically, that America is a racist society and always has been — a ballsy thing to say at the Republican National Convention, but people listening to a pirate radio station probably already know that racism exists and is bad.
That’s really all this guy’s been saying, for a frickin’ hour now. It’s an impressively ass-backward accomplishment that he can make such ugly and outrageous facts sound so boring.
No, I’m not going to call the station and say this, but I’ll say it here: Some people have a gift for public speaking. Some people don’t. The people who don’t should not be speaking publicly.
This is an entry retyped from an on-paper zine I wrote many years ago, called Pathetic Life. The opinions stated were my opinions then, but might not be my opinions now. Also, I said and did some disgusting things, so parental guidance is advised.
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