ALT.ZINES: An Internet newsgroup dedicated to the discussion of zines and DIY publishing in general. Newsgroups can be accessed by anybody via a computer program called a newsreader. Many modern browsers include newsreaders. A good freeware newsreader is Microplanet Gravity (http://lightning.prohosting.com/~tbates/gravity/). I disapprove, as there is much profanity and babble there.

ARGTTUP: A Reader's Guide to the Underground Press, otherwise known as Zine World (http://www.undergroundpress.org). Zine Review Publication.

BEER: Beer is the life-giving nectar that Your Humble Editor's alcohol intake most frequently takes the form of, as it is cheap, plentiful, and delicious. It does tend to bloat Jeff a little, though; he's lost that boyish figure of late, and is starting to resemble King Henry VIII.

BINDING: The way the gathered pages of a book or zine is held together. Examples are: Perfect-binding, saddle-stitched/stapled (also called booklet stapled), ring binding, or tape binding. People who use tape binding need to be silenced immediately, as it quickly devolves into a sticky mess.

BOURBON: The preferred booze of The Inner Swine Inner Circle, usually in the form of Jack Daniels, proof that mankind will some day rule the universe. Booze is fine although it does inspire some people who are normally nicely quiet to speak up and speak loudly, which is undesirable.

BOBBLEHEADS: Jeff Somers is under the impression that his disembodied head floating on a page is hilarious, and he overuses it to the point of insanity. The goggle-eyed, shameless photo of his head was taken during a car ride at a moment when he thought a crash was imminent and he feared for his life. This actually adds to the humor quotient, for me.

BUST: Bust is a magazine that started out as a zine, or a zine that is simply incredibly successful, depending on how you look at it. The argument rages on. More info: http://www.bust.com.

CDR: A recordable CD-Rom. There are also CD-RWs (recordable-writable), as well as DVD-Rs and DVD-RWs. These are mainly used to record stolen MP3 music files, contributing to the noise level of the universe, and are thus deprecated.

CLINT JOHNS: `Chief Dude' at Tower Magazines, although I strongly suspect the name is a universal pseudonym much like Kaiser Soze. Must be regarded with suspicion due to the support and interest he shows towards unreadable hack Somers; obviously the man has a secret agenda. I suspect that whatever his agenda is, it's a noisy one, and so must oppose him.

COMMODORE 64: Early personal computer featuring built-in BASIC, an 8-bit architecture, and 64k of RAM. Deprecated due to its advanced sound-synthesis capabilities thanks to its SID chip.

CONSIGNMENT: Taking on zines to resell, paying for issues only if you sell them, as opposed to paying up-front. For example, Jeff Somers sends Jimbo Distro ten copies of The Inner Swine. Jimbo sells four copies, and then sends Jeff the agreed-upon percentage of that $8. Most, although not all, distros and stores work this way with zines.

DANETTE SOMERS: The lovely and talented wife of Somers, too good for him by far. I've learned to treat her with care, as she's crafty as well as easy on the eyes. Serves as TIS Legal Counsel as well as wife. Often referred to as: The Duchess.

DIGEST: 8.5x11-sized paper, folded in half. Usually booklet-stapled.

DISTRO: A person or persons who distribute zines to the waiting world. Some are very small, while others work with hundreds of titles. A large number of distros are staffed by one dedicated person, who takes on zines (usually on consignment, but occasionally with payment up-front) and sells them personally. Not a very high-income pursuit, to be sure, but also very quiet.

DIY: Do-It-Yourself. A philosophy often associated with, but not limited to, publishing. Any endeavor wherein the creators do not sit around waiting for some company or organization to manufacture and distribute their wares and instead perform all the labor themselves, on a low, self-financed budget, can be considered DIY. Zines are so DIY they hurt. My own La Campaña Para El Silencio is DIY--I do not shy away from blood on my own hands.

DOS: Disk Operating System. The most common is Microsoft's MS-DOS, but PC-DOS, DR-DOS, and FreeDOS also exist. Operating system for PCs, happily nongraphical and silent. Replaced over the years by the uglier, noisier, and fatter GUI-based systems like Windows.

DIY PRESS E-BOOK: Electronic book. Any book-length work published in electronic format of any kind, requiring either a PC or a specific electronic device in order to read. This is what's wrong with the world: For hundreds of years we've had a perfect communication device: Writing. Thousands of years after creation, texts can still be decoded and read. Hundreds of years after their creation, the works of Shakespeare are still accessible. You can drop books into the toilet, and they are still usable. And best of all, there's no noise involved in reading, unless you're one of those mouth-breathers who has to whisper along with the words or they get lost--but we somehow think we need an advance in technology in order to continue reading. Assholes.

E-PUBLISHING: Any creation and distribution of written material via electronic media, such as: The Internet, floppy disks, or digital files. One thing to keep in mind is that Zines are paper, E-Zines are electronic, and never shall the two mix. On pain of death.

FRAME-BASED: System of electronic typesetting which views aspects of a page--text boxes, picture boxes, etc--as separate and separately modified frames. Word-Processors are not frame-based, which is why they make piss-poor typesetting tools if you want to do more than just format text. This is what's known as Obfuscating Jargon, used by geeks to make everyone feel dumb, and to hide their own ignorance on subjects behind a screen of foppy words. This is why verbal communication stinks, because you can just drop these terms into a conversation and move quickly away from them before being forced to provide some sort of definition.

FLOPPY: 3.5" diskette used in PCs. The death of the floppy is always being heralded, and yet it survives. Sort of like Somers' unreadable zine.

FONT: Any digital typeface that can normally be rendered in a variety of sizes. Times New Roman is a font. This entire book uses three fonts: P22 Typewriter, Times New Roman, and Oz Handicraft. Some zine publishers (and DIY publishers in general) suffer from font diarrhea, wherein they use every font at their disposal, in wildly inappropriate ways. These people are basically making noise on page, and will be deal with when the Glorious Silent Pogrom comes to their town.

FREE AS IN BEER: Taken from the Open-Source Software movement. Some things are `Free' as in Speech, meaning free in the sense of your fundamental rights and freedoms, while others are `Free' as in beer, meaning something you get for no money. This helps clarify statements like "I like free software" though it only complicates statements like "I like free beer." Another reason, I think, to ritualistically cut out all your tongues.

FREEWARE: Computer software that is given away, with no strings attached, as opposed to Shareware, which is given away for a limited time with the expectation (often enforced via disabling the software after a while) that you will eventually pay for it.

FRONT-/END-MATTER: The stuff at the beginning (Title page, table of contents, preface, etc) and end (index, appendices, etc) of a book, usually typeset and paginated separately from the text.

GEORGE "THE ANIMAL" STEELE: A wrestler born in 1937 who was famous for being a wild, uncontrollable madman in the ring who would often eat stuffing out of the ring padding. He is also one of the hairiest men ever seen in the wild. He doesn't say much, however, and for that reason I plan to make him Governor of The Eastern United State's Territories after I seize power.

THE GIMP: The GIMP is the GNU Image Manipulation Program. It is a freely distributed piece of software suitable for such tasks as photo retouching, image composition and image authoring. See http://www.gimp.org for more information.

GUI: Graphical User Interface. A picture-and-mouse based way of interacting with an electronic device, like a PC. Microsoft Windows, KDE, and Mac OS are examples of GUIs.

HARD DRIVE: The secret cube inside your PC which stores all your secret information, apparently via black magic. I have no dispute with hard drives, as they are useful and more or less silent.

HTML: A markup language used in rendering web pages. You mark up strings of characters with codes that mean "bold" or "italic" or "centered" and when the browser loads the page it interprets and discards the codes, leaving only the formatted text. That's technology for you: Everything a little more complex, every year. IRC: Internet Relay Chat. I had no idea what this is, so I had to look it up. Turns out, it's just a form of stealth-babbling. It's a client-server chat system of large (often worldwide) networks. IRC is structured as networks of Internet servers, each accepting connections from client programs, one per user. Used by a lot of undergournd-types precisely because people like you have no idea what it is.

ISBN: International Standard Book Number. A number voluntarily assigned to a published book, used by distributors, bookstores, and the Library of Congress to keep track of books. Paranoids see it as a conspiracy to keep small-fry DIY publishers out of the game. Me, I'm all for a ISHN--International Standard Human Number, tatooed on the back of everyone's neck. Every time you enter a public space your ISHN would be scanned, and if you made too much noise, you'd automatically be incinerated. Granted, the rate of false incinerations would be high, but it'd be well worth it.

JEFF SOMERS: Under laboratory conditions I have nurtured my own ego into a huge, healthy beast with rippling muscles and thick, downy hair. But I have also entrusted servants with Elephant Guns to blow its brains out if it ever slips its chains and starts hurling feces around the place. That is all.

JEOF VITA: TIS Staff Artist, creator of most of the cover art associated with TIS-product (including the cover of this book), Founding Swine, and ancient member of TISIC. Jeof Vita's boastful bravado angers me. I intend to have him silenced as soon as I find a way to defeat his wife/bodyguard, Misty Quinn.

KAREN ACCAVALLO: Reluctant member of TISIC and proofreader of most TIS-related material. Known for her white-hot rages and her desire for `more order', I strongly suspect Karen would make an excellent ally, if not my Queen in a More Silent World.

KEN WEST: Founding Swine whose original role in TISIC is shrouded in mystery but who now handles security for notorious lush Somers, making sure Your Humble Editor remains unharmed when he appears in public, and cleaning up his many public messes with ruthless efficiency. Known to be relatively quiet, I often think I could use someone like him on my own team.

KEYBOARDING: Manually typing text which only exists in hard copy format, usually into an electronic format. Typing is a noble art, as long as you don't have one of those clackety-clack keyboards that make a lot of noise, in which case I will make you eat it.

LASER PRINTER: A laser printer is a popular type of personal computer printer that uses a non-impact (keys don't strike the paper), photocopier technology. When a document is sent to the printer, a laser beam "draws" the document on a selenium-coated drum using electrical charges. After the drum is charged, it is rolled in toner, a dry powder type of ink. The toner adheres to the charged image on the drum. The toner is transferred onto a piece of paper and fused to the paper with heat and pressure. Either that, or small Keebler Elves live within it and draw furiously.

LAUREN BOLAND: The Overall Official Cool Chick of TIS, whatever that means. Lauren moved from New Jersey to Colorado a few years ago and her TIS-related activities have diminished a great deal.

LEADING: Space added between lines of type to space out text and provide visual separation of the lines. Measured in points or fractions therof. Named after the strips of lead which used to be inserted between lines of metal type. It's amazing how ancient reasons for things continue as terminology in the modern age. Plus, now you'll be imagining strips of lead between every line. Weirdo.

MANUFACTURING: The process of taking printed pages and binding them together into a finished booklet. This includes gathering, sorting, binding (stapling, glueing, etc), and folding, and anything else you might do to the issues/books, like spilling beer on them, setting them accidentally on fire, or cutting yourself on something sharp and bleeding all over them. Which I assume must be part of the manufacturing process since Somers does this quite frequently and usually mails the issues anyway, sometimes with a lame apology note like sorry about the blood.

MINI: Used to describe all zines smaller than digest. Letter-sized pages folded into quarters, eighths, etc. MISTY QUINN, ESQ.: A longtime member of TISIC, Misty is the wife of Staff Artist Jeof Vita and witness to many of Jeff Somers' more embarrassing or illegal exploits. Her dangerous knowledge is probably why Somers hides behind anything he can find when she walks into a room. Often this turns out to be a lamp or slender plant, leaving it obvious to everyone that Jeff is right there in the room. He continues to hide, however, and doesn't even respond when people start shouting at him to give it up, he's been seen. If anyone tries to physically accost him and drag him into the open, he feigns unconsciousness, goes limp, and doesn't wake up until everyone has left. He then claims no memory of the events. This is remarkably effective.

MR. MUTE: That would be. I abhor noise. I think you're all a bunch of chattering monkeys. I am going to cleanse the world of chatter. Since you're all chattering monkeys, that pretty much means I'm going to cleanse the world of you. While I wait for the right moment to launch my Silent Revolution, I pay the bills by freelancing for The Inner Swine. Somers doesn't seem to mind my political views, despite the fact that I intend to gut him when I'm in control. He's funny that way.

Nothing: There are no entries here. Move along.

ONE SHOT: A zine produced one-time only, not a serial title.

P2P: Peer to Peer. Usuall used to describe a distributed computer network in which each workstation has equivalent capabilities and responsibilities, unlike the Internet's client/server structure, wherein one computer is a server and the other a cllient--usually a browser. What? I'm sorry. I lost consciousness from boredom there for a moment.

PAPER WEIGHT: Expressed in pounds. The higher the number, the heavier and thicker the sheet. I think everyone knew that kind of instinctively, but I've never lost underestimating all of you chattering monkeys. PC: Personal Computer. You know, the thing you get all your free pornography from.

PDF: Portable Document Format. Adobe file format using the postscript printer language to create an on-screen document that matches its eventual printed form, which can then be read across many platforms (Mac, Windows, Unix, etc). In other words the height of the electronic revolution, apparently, is to make the things you see on screen look exactly like the printed documents we've been working with since the year 1. No wonder you're all going straight to the gallows once I take control.

PROCESSOR: A processor is the logic circuitry that responds to and processes the basic instructions that drive a computer. When people refer to a pentium or a 486, they're talking about a processor. Which means they're boring fucks, but at least they don't write endless articles about them, like Somers.

QUIMBYS: A legendary bookstore in Chicago, very DIY and zine-friendly. Stop in and say hi to Liz Saidel. 1854 W. North Street, Chicago, IL, 60622; www.quimbys.com.

RAM: Random Access Memory. High-speed memory in your PC which is used to store temporary processes and data for use by programs. Either that, or a voodoo spell.

Ramen Noodles: God's perfect food: Dried noodles and a foil packet of sodium-heavy `seasoning'. Boil, sprinkle, drain--delicious! All my Silent Shock Troops will eat these as their rations.

REVIEW ZINE: A zine which has as its main purpose reviewing other zines. Some of the major ones are Xerography Debt, Broken Pencil, and Zine World. The biggest one used to be Factsheet Five, but it's been so long since that published it's really a myth now. Review Zines are a good idea, since they discourage people from talking about what zines to read.

ROB GALA: Founding Swine, now living in Seattle. Rob did a lot of work with Somers on TIS prior to giving up in disgust due to Somers' heavy drinking and personal-space issues. Rob still occasionally contributes to the zine, though he won't enter New Jersey without a Police Escort, for fear of a drunken Somers attacking him. SASE: Self Addressed Stamped Envelope. Basically a way for someone to respond to something you've mailed them without incurring any expense. Kind of uppity, if you ask me.

SELF-PUBLISH: Do I really need to provide a definition of this? Fine. Any kind of publishing which does not involve a corporation or other entity putting up cash and services. If you're doing all the work or paying for all the work, you're self-publishing.

SERVICE HOUSE: A compositor or print shop which is taking electronic files (typeset files, images, etc) and producing a printed product. I know what you were all thinking, dirty monkeys. The good news is, I've got nothing against sex in the Coming Silent World. The bad news is, you're most likely not going to live through the Silent Pogroms which will usher in the Coming Silent World. Tough break.

SIDE-STAPLED: Stapled along one edge, in poor imitation of tape binding.

STANDARD: Your average eight-and-a-half by eleven inches. Either 11x17 pages folded in half, or letter-sized sheets stapled in some ugly manner.

THE USUAL: An ever-changing term, but generally speaking this refers to enough postage to pay for someone sending you their zine, or a trade of your zine for their zine. A lot of zines will list their prices as "$X or the Usual".

THUNDERCATS: An animated television show involving, as best as I can tell, a group of superhero cat people (one a Lion named Lion-O, one a Panther named...ah, who the fuck knows. Or cares). This shit is why the world needs an enema. Somers's giggling enjoyment of crap like this likely explains his childish and inexplicably popular zine. The bad guy in the show was a mummy named Mumm-Ra, and he gets mentioned a lot. You gonna tell me now that Somers doesn't deserve to have his tongue ripped out?

TISIC: The Inner Swine's Inner Circle, otherwise known as the loud, noisy group of boozehounds who continually conspire to make Somers think he's amusing. Bastards.

TRADE: An exchange of publications or other goods in lieu of paying money for a zine or other DIY product. Most zine publishers will happily trade their zines for yours. Some get a little uppity about the `cash value' of their zine, and can complain if you send them a four-page stapled photocopied zine in exchange for their 100-page, professionally typeset, full-color gem. Fuck `em.

TRIM SIZE: The size of a book or a page of a book after all excess material has been trimmed off--most books are printed on paper much larger than their final size, and the excess is cut off. This book, for example, has a trim size of 7x10 inches. Isn't the publishing world just wonderful?

TOWER RECORDS: Chain of record stores founded in the 1960s, with stores across the United States. Known for being cool, independent, and very, very zine-friendly. A lot of zines are primarily distributed by Tower Magazines, which stocks the magazine racks in Tower stores. Tower also printed this book, natch. Be nice to Tower. Although when it's all said and done, they're going to have to find something else to sell, since music won't be allowed once I'm in charge.

TYPESETTING: The art of arranging letters on a page to be printed, usually for a combination of aesthetic and functional goals. Includes: Thoughtful selection and use of typefaces (fonts); correct use of emphasis; optional decoration such as initials; adhering to rules of typographical syntax, such as when to use a hyphen vs. a dash, or what glyphs to use for quotation marks, which varies greatly among different languages. Boring as hell.

UNIX: An Operating System for computers, initially developed at AT&T labs in the early 1970s. Still in very wide use today, and a number of systems based on it, most notably Linux, are positioned as realistic competitors to Microsoft Windows in the home desktop market. Ah, the cold, silent world of computer code: If only we could all live there.

UPC: Universal Product Code, commonly called a bar code. These are the weird-looking series of lines which appear on the price stickers on a lot of things, which get scanned at the cash register in most stores. Some DIY publishers disdain the UPC as a tool of corporations, designed as a barrier to small-time publishing, and some merely see it as a symbol of having sold out to The Man.

VGA: Video Graphics Array. A display standard for PCs. Almost all modern graphics cards adhere to this standard (640 x 480 pixels in 16 colours and a 4:3 aspect ratio. There is also a text mode with 720 x 400 pixels). I think I'm the only person in the world who knows this.

VOLUME: When you're talking about a periodical like a zine, it's a collection of issues, usually grouped by year. The Inner Swine, for example, has four issues to a volume every year. When you're not talking about a periodical like a zine, I hope to hell you know what the word volume means, otherwise you're in serious trouble. And I probably wouldn't help you anyway.

WIRED: A magazine that is often mentioned in the age-old argument of what, exactly is a zine. Although it is undoubtedly a full-on advertising-soaked magazine owned by Conde Naste now, back in 1992 the first issue of Wired was initially cobbled together on an expensive color photocopier by two people. Does that make it a zine? Or does it make a lot of zine publishers jealous assholes? Shut up, you.

xenobombulate: There are no entries here. Move along.

YIN: There are no entries here. Move along.

ZINE: Taken straight from the alt.zines FAQ: "With regards to form, most will agree that zines are paper publications with small print runs, usually serialized. With regards to spirit, most will agree that zines are driven by passion rather than profit. Beyond this, few blanket generalizations can be made, though people love to try. Some argue that a zine ceases to be a zine as soon as it sells more than 5,000 copies, or adopts a barcode or International Standard Serial Number (ISSN), or accepts advertising, or costs more than $3, or has a glossy cover, or looks professionally done, or has readable text... and so on." Basically, a zine is a DIY publication, usually narrow in focus. The Inner Swine is a zine. What you're holding is a book.

ZIP: Either a disk or a compression format. Zip Disks are floppy-like disks that hold 100, 250, or 750 megabytes of data. A zip file is a file which has been compressed via an algorithm to reduce its size on a disk. This is confusing, because geeks love that obfuscating jargon, don't they? I will spare the geeks, however, when the Silent Pogrom comes to town, because they will be instrumental in building my Spheres of Silence, and the Fortress of Solitude.

...until next time...shut the hell up.