"...blogging in the name of..."

Ah, I guess how this blog is perceived is entirely my own fault... an offhand comment elsewhere has made me realise that there must be a perception that this blog is dedicated to TV programmes. This is, by no means, the intention. The title of the blog;

Digression

should be a clue. It's meant to be about diverse, various, subjects. About whatever I feel like writing about at the time. It just so happens that at the moment, I seem to be writing mainly about TV. And in particular, Lost. This is mainly because I love and adore Lost more than any other TV programme at the moment. And, and the moment, we are 5 episodes in to the 17 episode run of season 5. So, there'll be plenty more Lost blog posts over the coming weeks... it'll die off a bit in the gap between seasons. 

In many ways, this blog is meant to be a 21st century version of my fanzine. When I wrote things for that it was about my main interests at the time. Had I started a fanzine in January 2009, rather than 2008 chances are it would have been called 108 and had loads of articles on Lost in it. Rather than, say, Kenickie... 

So, although it appears this blog is mainly about TV this is not the intention. There will be more digressions as time passes. Really. 

Talking of fanzines, I did have an idea late last year about the old fanzine I used to do that lasted for 24 issues between 1998-2000. You see, I did have this plan to upload them all to my website, but this kind of got stalled at #3. There were all sorts of hassles with the OCR on the scanner, and even now you can still see blatant typos on there.

So I came up with the idea of reprinting the lot of them.

All of them.

But all 24 issues in just one volume. 

The idea was to do this via lulu.com, the self publishing site. I'd set a nice low price that covered the costs of producing each issue and bosh... but it wasn't to be just a straight reprint of the 24 issues. I'd also include the one mini-Munch produced, as well as all the flyers. And maybe even reproductions of the actual Munch Questionnaires as filled out by various bands (they all had on the back page one request - draw a picture of anything you want - that never made it to the zine itself). There would also have been an article about how the zine came to be, and reminiscneces and so on, and introductions to each issue. And I was going to canvass as many Munchers as possible to get their contributions. Oh, and I'd have persuaded Timmy 2Hedz to have written something for  it as well...

...however, the page count of the thing, and the eventual cost to get copies printed seemed too high to me. Maybe I'll have another look one day to see if it's viable. It's something I'd like to do, though. The thought that all 24 issues of Munch would be available to anyone, anywhere in the world, at any time... it's exciting. 

Every now and then, I'll pick out an issue of Munch and have  a flick through it and think "ah, I did good there". I know it sounds egotistical, but those 24 zines (well, 23; #24 is, really, a bit rubbish) are something I'll always be proud of. They're not perfect. Some of the stuff in them is a bit dodgy. But with all of them I kept on trying to do something different each issue; to keep it fresh and new, and not get in to the trap of every issue, essentially, having the same template. Ah, I still maintain that if you took Deadline #12, and The Zine #1 and mashed them together you'd have the perfect zine.