very time I end up in jail my tattoo saves me. I guess I should say every time I’ve ended up in jail since I got this particular tattoo, this particular tattoo has been the thing that kept me safe. I’m not saying it made it O.K., that it made it better in even some small way… no, it sucked, it was awful every time. Shit smeared on the walls, packed into a triangular cell for two with five other people, a mat thrown on the floor by the toilet in case I wanted to sleep; I have never, ever, slept in jail. [1] I’ve slept in court after jail, I’ve slept on the ground outside the jail while I waited for a cab to come pick me up and drop me somewhere near my life after hitting a bank so I can pay the guy—and by hitting, I mean stopping by the ATM, let’s just be clear about that, all right?—I’ve slept in those cabs, I’ve slept on the floors of my friends’ bathrooms after using their showers, washing as much of that very specific stench from my body as I can before I go home, even though it continues to seep from my pores for days afterward. My crimes aren’t worth listing here, the various reasons I periodically end up in jail far too pedestrian and boring to mention; what we’re talking about is this one tattoo, on my left arm, just inside and below my elbow. What it is, this tattoo, is a simple equation, from a book I wrote back when we still didn’t know how to follow through on our grand schemes. The tattoo’s simple enough, [2] nothing too terribly complex. I do like the little joke on the right side, saying exponentially no different, but oh my god did we ever have to go through all kinds of shit to effect no change whatsoever… Those of you who have asked me what it means have all received the same answer, the same words in the same order with the same inflection every time: It’s from a book I wrote (and pause for appropriate wonder… “You wrote a book? Wow! Golly!” or whatever else people say): Each letter represents a person and their value at a specific point in time. The combination of the influences on this side (making a circle with my finger around the left side of the equation) produces this result (pointing now to the right side of the equation) in another character. And sometimes the person will recognize the joke on the right side, and we’ll chuckle about it and go on about our individual nonparallel, nonintersecting courses, having made our Geek Connection for the week. Much of the time it’s just the blank stare, maybe another Wow or something like that, but I’m really only ever answering the question just because it was asked, not because I particularly wanted to talk about it. I understand that I’m obligated to discuss it, and to be polite every time, since I did put it in a very visible spot on my body. You are not allowed to not discuss your tattoos when they’re exposed. I’m O.K. with that. I put the tattoo where it is so I could see it, so it would remind me constantly of all the things it’s supposed to mean to me, but I don’t mind when people ask.
     In jail, they don’t get the joke. They say, “Dude, that’s one fucked up tattoo, what the hell is that supposed to be? It reminds me of school and shit. Did you have a test in math class you really wanted to pass or something?” And then I tell them it’s from a book I wrote, and they all get real serious. “Dude, you wrote a book?” they say, “You’re like some real smart guy, then, huh?” And I don’t answer that question directly, not the second one anyway. But yeah, I am some real smart guy, then. That’s a given. Repeated trips to jail notwithstanding. The words: I wrote a book, are some kind of magic there. Everyone in the cell will get quiet, every face soften, and there’s odd reverie in action. Then, all the tough-guy tones gone, they start asking more questions. They ask what the book was about, and I give them a simplified rundown of the general idea. I tell them it’s an unreadable piece of crap, something I just had to write, and I had to write it in a certain way to figure out some other things. They want to know am I published, and I say no. That I am not published makes me more like them, that I do things for the sake of doing them makes them dream. Makes them start to think maybe it’s not so bad if they don’t ever hit the big time, makes them feel like them and the real smart guy are pretty equal on some levels, and then I tell them that what’s most important to me is that I stay true to myself, that I am always trying, that I don’t ever think about the potential end results of any of my actions (see repeated trips to jail), but instead stay focused on the always trying, on the doing. Never the finishing of things. None of us, I say, are ever finished with anything. Life continues despite conclusions. Then there’s the joke one of us will make about death being pretty damn fucking conclusive, but that’s not what we’re talking about there. You look in any cell they throw me in and you’ll see us sitting there, dreaming, reminiscing about this one thing or this other thing that we always meant to do, but something always got in the way… something like jail, most often. And then we’re all talking about what we’re gonna do when we get out of there. Yeah, I know, typical jail talk. But the thing is, I get out and I go do it. And I know a couple of the others have started on their things too. Out in the general population when they hand out our baloney on white bread with a rotten orange and 6 ounces of curdling milk, [3] I’ll say hi to someone I saw last time and we’ll talk about how our things are going. There’s one guy in particular who does the coolest airbrush work on lowriders I’ve ever seen. He got his stuff back from his ex girlfriend and started a little under-the-table enterprise. He was talking about setting up a shop.
      The fact that I write makes a difference. [4] None of these people will ever read anything I write, nor could they really understand it if they did (don’t think that I’m pulling any class distinction thing here, you wouldn’t understand much of it either), but the contact with someone like me actually makes a difference in their lives. A couple of them anyway. But I’m not doing this for them, I hardly ever think of them, don’t think of any of them unless I’m stuck in a cell. Forced to think about them. Why I’m thinking about them now I don’t know, probably just because a cop tailed me for about eight miles on the freeway this morning, his presence reminding me of my lack of a valid driver’s license, bringing to mind the continuing existence of a number, a small number, of warrants still out there on me. He pulled someone else over, I think he was using me for cover or something. [5] And I’m not doing this for you, either. I’m doing this so that these things may be done, that I can have a world where these things happen, because I believe it does make my world a better place. And yeah, you may live in this world, and so you might somehow benefit from my actions, but still it’s not about you. The guys in jail, even though it’s not for them, I see in them the results of my efforts in a far more direct and tangible manner than people like us would ever allow to be displayed. [6] All the things I do are all about me. [7] I live in this world, and I’m going to shape it, if only perceptually, to suit me. What you’re supposed to take from this is not that I’m an asshole, since that’s a given, and not being disputed here, but that the tangentials playing out from our direct actions have far greater impact than the things we think we’re doing. And that we are making a difference and that we should recognize that, and stop wailing and moaning about the pointlessness of existence, stop our search for meaning (see, I’m still on about it, still talking about it, since there are some of you who still don’t quite get it, still hindering forward motion with a fruitless quest for sense. And no, this still does not contradict earlier statements I’ve made about the continuing and ultimate pointlessness of our actions; yes, we impact, we make a difference, it’s just that we cannot expect that what we want to do and what comes of our actions will necessarily coincide. If they do, that’s great, but we should never expect, not even if it happens every time, that that’s how things are supposed to work. It is just as likely that intent and reality will coincide as not).
      Part of what keeps landing me in jail is a refusal to accept that the established methods are the only methods. The established methods are just that, they’re established, meaning they exist. That’s all. Stagnation and failure are the results of following the existing paths. I say that and you say, “Duh, we all know that…” but I wouldn’t be saying it if it didn’t need to be said again. And again and again. Stop right now and list ten things you aren’t doing or haven’t done because you’re following the established methods. You don’t have to give me more than ten, it’s just an exercise to prove my point. I mean, think about Gotham, what a hell it would be if Batman didn’t forge his own way. Forget for a second that Batman’s a comic-book guy and let’s consider Batman as metaphor,        |

(eight pages of Batman digression excised from this area)

                        |  that opinions differ on whether or not he actually ever killed anyone (Frank Miller, in The Dark Knight Returns, says yes, others say no) has nothing to do with it. What we should take from him is that we all need to step up and wear a goofy costume and fight evil in all its forms, [8] wherever we encounter it, never stepping back, never stepping down, never entering anything with even the tiniest shred of self-consciousness (and I mean consciousness of self) or any sense of the danger to ourselves that our actions may or may not present. We exist: we are responsible. That’s pretty much all there is to it. No amount of thinking or clever phrasing or discussion or arguments with your friends where your superior vocabulary and education occludes reality to such a point where they suspect you might be right will ever change it. “Philosophizing is just another way of being afraid. A cowardly pretense that doesn’t get you anywhere.” (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Journey to the End of the Night).
      I’ve said in past sections, in previous issues, lots of stuff about how things are wrong, how our perceptions and actions are not aligned with a more positive approach to living, to existing in our meaningless and hostile universe, but to date I’ve not offered anything else, haven’t proposed any alternatives. [9] I don’t know that what follows is really an alternative, but it’s something to think about. I like to think that what we’re doing with spork is a pretty damn concrete manifestation of an alternate option, but that’s because it’s me doing it, as an alternative to doing other things.
      There is an insane number of independent journals out there, some of us presenting ourselves as an alternative to the crap the industry foists upon us every day, some of us just doing it because we want to, some of us believing that what we’re doing is the only real way to go about it, and we’ve all got our little audiences. From just a few people to maybe a couple thousand, people are reading what we put out there. Individually, however noble our actions, we don’t have much of an impact—especially with so many authors and grad students and assorted wannabe writers holding on to everything they write and working only within the strict confines of the rules set forth by larger institutions, rules saying you cannot do this or you will be disqualified from this competition, and if you do that you won’t be eligible for that thing… and then what happens to the stuff? It never gets published anywhere, and then some of these people give up and stop writing and go on and think that it somehow had something to do with the quality of their writing, the nature of their vision, the whatever or whatever, and we are constantly deprived of potentially great, potentially transcendent, potentially paradigm-shifting work—but that’s individually. People don’t really want to give over their masterpieces to a journal that has no circulation, no matter how great a thing it might be. People will give you their crap, they’ll hand over the stuff Granta and McSweeney’s and everyone else has rejected, figuring that publication, after all, is publication, and they were just going to throw that stuff away anyway. [10] On some level I sort of understand that, but that doesn’t make it right. What I propose is that we, all these little journals, all so bent on outshining the each other, all trying so hard to get up there with the big boys, we work together on one small thing. This small thing is really very simple: Take one piece and publish it in every damn journal and ‘zine released over a span of say, three months. [11]
      Stop that. Stop shaking, stop spitting. Stop saying how impossible that would be. And you, you’re laughing so hard you fell on the floor. Shut up. And you, telling me how some idiot already tried that and how it failed so miserably, I don’t care. Spork was impossible, and it still is, but we keep doing it. All your little ‘zines and projects, they’re all impossible, but you keep doing them. So let’s all agree that impossibility is not a deciding factor. That done, let’s now talk about how to do it.

1.       Who decides? Um, we’ll decide. Me and Richard. We’ve got good taste, you can trust us. What we publish, whatever it is, is less important than the actual fact of our doing it.
2.     What about consistency? Our format is our own, different than yours, how do we all publish the same thing? We can’t all do it the same way… We will publish it according to our individual formats. We use our fonts, our spacing, our whatevers, so long as the content is the same, that’s all that really matters. Sure, there will be some mistakes, some minor differences, but that’s unimportant. The important thing is the actual fact of doing it.
3.     We don’t want to do that. Why would we want to do that? So don’t do it. You would do it, if you did, because it’s a freaking great idea and it should be done. I’m saying it here, I’m putting it on the page and I’m going to publish it and three or four people are going to see it and there’s no going back after that. And you know what? Even if I’m standing all alone on my mountain of impossible, unworkable ideas, I’ll be the one standing.  Even if I have to start three more journals just to realize in some small way my little dream of simultaneous publication, it’ll happen. You just watch. 
4.      O.K. you psycho, let’s do this thing. How do we get it going? Just e-mail me and let me know you’re on board. We’ll get a list going, we’ll all start sifting through the inevitable glut of submissions all vying for this honor, and we’ll get it done. My e-mail address is dburk@sporkmag.com. This will work. I don’t know just how it’s going to work, but that’s not important. We’ll figure it out.

      This is, I know, just one small thing, and you’re thinking that it’s hardly enough to effect the sorts of change we’re all always talking about—or maybe you realize, like me, that it’s not the what of what we do, but that we do the whatever it is. Any step we make that takes us away from the established methods is one step toward meaningful and lasting change. Everything we do or think or read or see or anything sets in motion a series of chemical reactions in our heads, reshaping small parts of us every moment of every day. Start acting in a certain way, and the resulting chemical bath will start altering who you are. Continue along any line, and the resulting bath will radically and dramatically change every aspect of your being. It’s simple behavioral stuff. It’s so easy. We do it together and we compound the potential effects exponentially. It happens to us anyway, every day, why not be the ones deciding what factors influence our being? [12]
      Now, on to binding, since that’s what this section’s always supposed to be about. If you’ve seen us before, you will notice that we’ve changed again. And I know I promised Richard that I wouldn’t change it until we finished Volume 2, but what I did last time was, while beautiful, far too difficult to continue. [13] And too expensive. My math is so bad, so bad, so bad. I didn’t realize how much the supplies would cost (and I worked it out no fewer than three times and still got it wrong), nor how much time it would take per copy. As I write this I still have a stack of 30 sporks waiting to be bound. The last 30, sure, but I’m still not finished, and we’re going into production on the next issue… just like always. The difference with this one was that I had lots of help with the binding this time, and still we weren’t able to finish them. Every day for the last six months, every morning, many evenings, always at the studio, binding and binding and binding. We were unable to keep up with demand. It made me frustrated and sad, and not just a little broke. But don’t interpret that as me complaining, since I’m not. I consider that inexcusable, and it makes me angry when I see people doing it, that they feel like they’ve got the right to moan and whine about the things they did to themselves… I’m just saying I had to rethink my approach, and I have.
        My ex-wife had an old Mother Goose book that had lost its spine and needed to be rebound before she could give it to my daughter, Zoë. It’s a really nice book and I wanted to try to restore it, but I couldn’t, since there was pretty much no spine left. Repair was all I could do. To repair something you have to take it completely apart, so that’s what I did, and discovered the most perfect binding beneath the layers of mull and glue. What it is, is a straight stitch right through all the pages at the spine. Do you see how wonderful that is? Do you understand how brilliant that is? Well, I did, and do, and that’s what we’re doing here. We’re not using a huge sewing machine, like they do/did with kid’s books like that. We’ve got seven holes about a quarter of an inch from the spine, and we start at the head, wrap the thread around the spine, tie it off, then work down to the next hole. Come out the bottom, then circle back to the first hole, then back to the second, through that and then to the third, then back and again and again… the result is an alternating double-thread, single-thread thing working its way down the spine. I thought about wrapping again to get a consistent double-thread thing going, but then I’d have a triple-thread thing, and so long as we’ve got a full wrap-around between each set of holes, it’s strong enough. Extra wrappings wouldn’t add any more strength, just bulk. At the seventh hole, at the tail, we go around the spine again, tying it off with a couple of knots. Early tests had me going around the spine at every hole, but it ended up just being extra work with no real benefit. So I stopped that.
      Another thing I noticed in the Mother Goose book was how they sewed through the endpaper as well, which hid the sewing from view, while also providing a non-adhesive way to attach the endpaper to the text block. Again, this is brilliant, so that’s what we’ve done. The endpapers are folded and placed along with the text block into our little drill jig thing (which has had holes added to it since the last issue), and the whole damn thing gets a line of holes all the way through. The endpapers, which are shorter on one side than the other, which you see, since you’re holding this, are then glued to the cover near the hinge.
      The reason the endpapers are shorter on one side has everything to do with the covers, which you also already know since you’re holding this. The covers are a combination plexiglas/linen book cloth thing, with a little bookboard in the spine for that honest-to-god, hot-damn! this is an actual book! thing. Through careful measurements I have determined that six inches is the optimum width for the cloth, three-quarters of an inch for the spine, and three-quarters of an inch on either side of the spine for the hinges. This might seem a lot for the hinge, but the sewing requires more hinge than a traditionally-sewn book would. Some efforts were made in early tests toward hiding the stitching and minimizing the hinge, you know, having it look more like a book book—and then I remembered just what the hell I was making here, why I was doing what I did. This is a hand-made book, there should be some indications to attest to the fact of its being bound by hand. If it looks just like a regular book, then what would be the reason for my having done it by hand at all? Occasionally I forget. I have remembered, and so if you touch the joint you can feel the stitching. After a little caressing, the cloth will mold around the stitching and a wonderfully biological thing will appear. Something like veins, I’m thinking. That’s how I see it, what it looks like to me. The endpapers are measured to line up with the book cloth on the outside of the cover, leaving the majority of the front and back covers free and clear of any obstructions. It’s part of the new spork full-disclosure initiative. O.K. it’s not, but I thought it might be fun to say that. Turns out it wasn’t quite as fun as I thought it would be.
     The results of this method are a strong, beautiful, more easily opened than previous issues spork. I have chosen to abandon the bookplate, and if you’re all sad that it’s not there, if you think that spork just isn’t what it was without it, then I think you’ve missed the whole point of what we’re doing. If you absolutely need one, then by all means put one in, I could even make one up and send it to you, or put a printable one on the website that you could download, but I’m not going to be directly party to that behavior any more. Not for this issue anyway. I can’t say what future issues will hold, since we’re not there yet. As soon as I know I’ll pass it on to you. [14]