MNZ: Carbon 14 #29

CARBON 14 website!
Carbon 14 is a magazine I contribute to, and oddly enough, indirectly, illegal music downloading has effected me through it. Mostly because of music downloads, combined with ridiculous CD prices and RIAA graft, major record stores are going out of business, including Tower Records, which was one of the largest buyers for distribution of Carbon 14. At the same time, I’ve never made a dime off of contributing (although I do get some nifty free loot), so all the music I’ve illegally downloaded has definitely given me more than I’ve lost. However, it is distressing to see media forms like the printed magazine move closer to becoming obsolete. Online articles or video clips just aren’t the same. Example: there’s an in-depth interview with Jim Cornette in this issue that is a great fuckin’ read, but it’s an actual interview with only a few pictures interspersed. In doesn’t have the boring cuckoldish creepiness of a video recorded shoot interview, nor is it the same as scrolling a computer screen down to read. It is tangible, in your hands, to take on the shitter, and actually read, perhaps a second or third time even, as opposed to glossing over and never going back, or maybe reading completely, linking to a few friends, but lost to your library next time you clean out your cookies and temporary files so that your girlfriend doesn’t find out you’ve been jacking off to BBW interracial transsexual creampies in your free time.
There are things about Carbon 14 that I don’t get (Justice Howard, even after I found out she was a chick photographer, I don’t understand… the average college town’s fedora hatted man’s weird fetish with crime magazine style sexual pictures is a strange one to me), but all in all, it’s a great magazine, and I’d say that even if I didn’t contribute to it. And for $6, you get a ton of great shit to read (there’s always at least one worthwhile interview with some sort of freak legend, and usually more than one), plus a free CD of shitty rock-n-roll. I liked it better when it had a 7-inch in it, but then again, I’m sure three years from now when I get my pdf of the latest issue sent to my robot phone with an mp3 attachment of shitty rock-n-roll, I’ll say the same thing about the actual printed on paper form of the magazine being better.