Matt has always been the weird (relatively speaking) one, and, much to my constant changrin, the smartest of the bunch. However, I like to blame this on the fact that he's got like six years on me.

When our parents divorced and Mom, Ted, and I moved to La Grande so Mom could go to college, Matt stayed with Papa in Coos Bay to finish up high school with his friends. He was sixteen. I visited Matt maybe once or twice a year, and talked to him on the phone quite a bit.

Correction From Matt:
I did not "stay in Coos Bay to finish up high school with my
friends". If you'd been listening during our telephone
conversations, you would realize that i stayed to finish
high school DESPITE my friends. My friends were, and continue
to be, a loathesome bunch of bath-shunning, attitude-copping,
freeloading, thieving sons of bitches.

I always knew he was just getting weirder and weirder, for reasons such as, when we came to visit once and found that he had spraypainted the downstairs bathroom with grafitti. And he grew a nettle in a pot in his room to an incredible size and named it "Cthulu." And he had me stay up late with him and his friends and watch Alien while they tried to scare me.

Correction From Matt:
the decision to spraypaint the downstairs bathroom with graffiti was not
entirely my own. I had been receiving nocturnal visits from rap sensation Ton-
Loc for a number of months. We used to sit up late drinking sassafrass tea
and discussing our various opinions on current affairs in the political
landscape. He recommended graffiti art as a healthy way of expressing personal
frustration about life in contemporary civilized society. The lyrics to his
hit song "funky cold medina" were originally an elaborate graffito Ton-Loc exe-
cuted on the side of a First Interstate Bank in San Diego.

When Matt graduated, he moved to Portland to attend Reed College, where he had gotten a full ride scholarship (lucky bastard). And he got, in his own words, "fat and gay and sad." He constantly called and complained about how much his counselor sucked and was trying to screw him over on his financial aid. But I think he had a good time, some of it at least.

Anyway, he was a sophmore, and I was 13 and living in a town with a population of about 2000 rednecks and I was rapidly going insane and falling in with a really bad crowd, and Matt had me come down and stay with him for a while, and he had me smoke pot (not my first time, but he thought it was). And so he assisted in my eventual fall into depravity and madness, for which I will be eternally greatful. So I made it a practice to come and visit him in the summers, and that is where most of my knowledge of him comes from, besides long phone conversations whenever we could afford it.

In fact, his old website, dedicated mostly to director John Waters, was where I originally got the idea for making one of my own. He has been a great mentor and friend, not to mention brother. But on with the story at hand.

Matt led a strange life with strange friends and strange events and strange, strange stories to tell. And he started not making sense. Like telling me he believed that oranges were manufactured in factories and then shipped to Florida to be tied to trees. Crazy stuff like that. Not too crazy, really. I've been known to make absurd claims. So has Ted, but he's weird in a different way, just like me, just like Matt.

Correction From Matt:
while oranges are in FACT manufactured in factories and shipped to Florida to
be tied to trees, your emphasis of this issue unfairly dwarfs the equally
important issue of so-called "wild animals". the hoax being perpetrated by zoo
organizations across the country is cruelly convincing droves of gullible
people of the existence of ludicrous animals such as tigers, elephants, and
even the silly hippopotamus. besides their animatronic nature - easily observed
if you simply watch these "animals" closely - the claim of their existence is
merely a conspiracy to make us believe that the jungles are not ruled by
vicious dinosaurs. which they are. the dinosaurs are in control. beware.

So Matt got married. To his best friend, Jayme. I approve, 'cause they did it for all the right reasons. Tax breaks. Easier to get new housing. Financial aid. And they can say things like, "my wife's boyfriend..." It was cool. I was a preacher in the wedding. Preacher number one, I believe. I was the bad guy.

So then Matt graduated, and moved to Chicago to go to graduate school, for some weird degree or another. And now he writes this zine, because, like all of us, if he doesn't create something, he goes insane.