HELLO FRIENDS!!! The first half of the year is shaping up to be a doozy. I haven’t posted a meme since March 10, which is indicative of where I’m at. I’m in the middle of a short-term job that is a pretty great opportunity, but unfortunately it’s like 11+ hour days with some weekends sprinkled in. It can be tough to want to do more social media after spending all day doing social media, an occupational hazard of the content mines.

Quick to-do before you keep reading

Existing subscribers, please log in at zine.trainsongz.net and make sure your subscription and address is up to date. There’s probably like 100 of you who were subscribers last year but had a payment issue in Jan/Feb/March. Any questions or problems just reach out to me directly. Our tech isn’t perfect, but it’s getting there. We’ve built a totally custom system for managing print subscriptions, because nothing existed. Train Songz Enterprises!

If you’re not yet a subscriber, you can do so for $33, $55, or $77 for the year at the link above. We spend about $45 per yer per subscriber across four issues after printing, mailing, paying artists, etc. so $33 is priced at a loss and $55 and $77 are priced to pay it forward. It all evens out.

We also give one issue away for every 10 sold. We sell about If you’d like to request a free issue, I’ll have a form for you to fill out when #9 drops.

But times like these where I might be uninspired on the memetic side of things are literally exactly why I wanted to start the zine. If I only had Train Songz the meme page, Instagram could “punish me” (reduce my reach) for not posting in a month. I’m old news! My first posts back might not “do as well.” And while I said it’s sometimes hard to want to do my own goofy social media after doing it all day, putting the zine together is totally different and energizing work.

Oh well! The zine goes straight to your damn mailbox, no algorithm to fight on its way from us to you (though the United States Postal Service comes with its own difficulties).

This all being said, I have some gnarly ideas for fresh content for the page. Just need a wee bit more time during the day, and that will come my way in a short six weeks.

With that preamble in mind, I am very very very pleased to let you know that this new issue is PRINTED and READY TO ROCK. I will “launch” it on email and Instagram in the coming days, and it will be available for purchase thereafter. You’ll be the first to know, since you’re on my email list.

So keep your eye on your email inbox and tell a friend to check out the zine. This issue is a fun one, at 56 pages it’s the most packed yet and at the actual legal limit of what constitutes a letter, and we’ll be back with another in June.

–The Conductor