Fools Motley Magazine

Creating an internet magazine from scratch is an
interesting experience. With your average paper
magazine, you know that you have the imminent
eventuality of physical hard copy to roll into tubes and
whack people in the head with or have the local paperboy
wing through their garage window when you really need to
get somebody's attention. But an internet magazine is no
more concrete than your average idea. If people don't go
looking for it, then for all practical intents and
purposes, it isn't there. It's the sort of thing that
exists only if enough people decide they believe it
does. This sounds like a weakness, and I guess it is,
but there are lots of important precedents.

Take fashion, for example, in oh say, the 1980s:

Trend-Setter: From this day forth, the taller the
monolith that a woman can construct from her hair, the
more power she will possess!

General Public: We shall obey.

And thus, my sister's high school yearbook photos came
into being.

But fashion changes quickly because there are few, if
any, objective standards. It's all about whatever rules
everyone happens to agree on at that moment. Kind of
like a pick-up game on the playground between two sets
of kids that don't know each other. So, from today's
models you'd expect complaints more along the lines of:

It was bad enough when I had to shave my head and start
taking heroin. Now they're demanding I have plastic
surgery to look more mannish!

Nowhere is this phenomenon more earth shaking than in
the arena of government. Government is really just
another idea, at best an ideal. Look at the history our
own United States:

Revolutionary #1: Samuel, I've been thinking, what if
this whole regal King nonsense was a load of bunk, and
we just up and gave his authority to someone we liked
instead.?

Revolutionary #2: I say, that does sound rather like
fun! Let's go ambush some Red Shirts and then throw some
tea in the harbor.?

Reality, as Robert Anton Wilson likes to say, is what
you can get away with.

Now, I'm not saying our magazine is going to
revolutionize literature, but it'd be nice if people
decided we exist. So, I want to personally thank all the
authors and readers for submitting to the magazine or
just observing the fun and making pretend that we're
really here. May it be a long and enjoyable delusion,

Daniel Devine, 6/23/03

Published by Fools Motley Magazine, 2003. All rights are property of the author. Copying and distribution of this work is prohibited. Webpage designed by Fools Motley Magazine based on templates from www.angelfire.com . Background provided by www.coolarchive.com .