Issue 2 reprint and official launch

Issue 2 is selling so well that we had to request a second run from our printers.

Huge thanks to everyone who bought a copy. You’ve secured the making of Issue 3.

The reprint has some tiny differences to the original run: a slightly different cover and a bookish inside title page. These were last-second fixes and will now be present on any future prints. If you have an original version, you’ve got yourself a limited edition and evidence that you supported New Escapologist at the beginning.

In other news, the official launch party will be at the Glasgow CCA on 7th July at 8pm. Come along for a free glass of wine and some jolly banter.

An Escapologist's Diary. Part 1.

After two years of working in an office, I have handed in my notice. There are six more weeks before I actually have to clear my desk but already the sense of pending freedom is exhilarating.

It will be a three-month mini-retirement. I will travel, write and spend a not inconsiderable stretch of time in Montreal with my girlfriend. Together we’ll live the lives of Haruki Murakami characters: luxurious unemployment.

Two years work to earn three months of freedom is still a horrible injustice but I’m confident that this is just the beginning of a much longer escape plan and that eventually I’ll turn that ratio on its head. I’ll report back through these pages.

Colleagues have asked me how I feel. Do I feel anxious? Do I worry that I won’t be able to find another job when I get back?

The answer to both questions is a resounding No. As to how I feel, I feel great. I feel defiant, autonomous and (I’m sorry) slightly smug.

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Issue Two now available to buy

Issue Two of New Escapologist (pictured) is now available. Buy your copy here.

The theme for the issue is ‘War Against Cliche’ and features work from David Miller, Dickon Edwards, Neil Scott, Samara Leibner and is edited by Robert Wringham. Typography by Timothy Eyre.

Make seed bombs

I’m excited by the idea of seed bombs.

I first learned about seed bombing at a protest on a local Tesco development site. In that instance, protesters made use of the seeds of unmanageable plants that could cause monkey business for developers. I prefer the idea of sewing wild flower seeds on urban scrub.

Personally, I’ll be using foxglove seeds. Past experience tells me that they are more likely to take to hard urban soil than many other wild flower seeds. Also, bees love foxgloves and my main impetus for this whole thing is a desire to help out urban beekeepers.

Seed bombs are remarkably easy to make. Here’s a video tutorial.

New Escapologist held in British Library

Finally, some recognition from the establishment. New Escapologist is now visible on the British Library catalogue.

Furthermore, it can be consulted at the BL or even shipped out to any other library in the UK via inter-library loan. Cool. New Escapologist is a friend of libraries. Copies of #2 will be freely viewable from selected other libraries in the next year.

Fight the Trite

Robert Wringham supports your right to have breakfast for dinner and dinner for breakfast

(Content from Issue Two. Buy the whole magazine here).

Happy Birthday to you, Thunk!
Happy Birthday to you, Thunk!
Happy Birthday dear Laaaaauraaaaaa, Thunk! Thunk!

I am in pain. It’s partially self-inflicted from bashing my head against the function room wall (balloons tacked into each corner, some hilariously arranged to resemble a cock and balls) and partly as a result of third-party cliché abuse.

Happy Birthday to yooooou.

THUNK!

You will never hear me sing the happy birthday song. No price is high enough.

Yes, I have a problem. I have a mental illness that nobody seems to understand. If I explain that it’s a bit like Tourette’s Syndrome, we’re getting close.

What’s the problem exactly? I am adverse to the trite: to doing what’s ‘expected’ or ‘required’ or to ‘go along with things’ – especially when doing so is supposed to be ‘fun’.

Don’t misread that I position myself as an angry rebel-to-the-core. I can conform when I have to. Then again, I’d probably betray us all to the storm troopers if we were hiding in the attic and some dickhole said, “Shhh”.

Like I say, it’s a syndrome.

Whenever I’m required to ‘join in’ – to clap along or to dance to music or to play some sort of game where a requirement is to work with other people – I am filled with a near-insatiable urge to do something weird: to strike a funny pose, to kick off an inappropriate conversation, to remove one of my shoes and begin to eat it, to aggressively overturn a table or to shout “Titfuck!” at the top of my lungs.

I just can’t help it. I sometimes stand backwards at gigs. I sometimes shout the words “Ha Ha Ha” at trite comedians. I’ve cleared chess boards when I’ve been expected to lose graciously. To use the language of the cliché bore, I’m a stick in the mud.

“Anything popular is wrong,” said Oscar Wilde. I’ve been spouting this little micro-quote for a long time now. The irony, of course, is that quoting Oscar Wilde is in itself pretty trite. As I hear myself quoting him, a little bit of vomit pools in the back of my mouth.

Slightly more palatable is the mirrored maxim, “Anything different is good.” Thus spake Bill Murray in Groundhog Day, when he’s finally released from the time loop: an endless cliché of his own making.

When you make small talk or confess to a ‘guilty pleasure’ or are moved to announce that you enjoy Family Guy (doesn’t everyone?) or decide to buy one of those brilliant Mr. Men t-shirts that everyone else is wearing or to strike up a conversation about how good the latest Bond movie was, you are effectively saying, “I am operating on default settings. I am Times New Roman in size 12.”

Fuck that.

Don’t think you can escape triteness by buying into an existing subculture either. If I see you wearing white make-up and a dog collar tomorrow, my friend, I will kick your ass.

OK?

Let’s declare war on the trite. When you see a singer on Jools Holland doing an impression of Chris Martin, please don’t reward him by going out and buying his CD, whether The Guardian likes it or not. Punish him! Don’t even let the TV people count your digital signal as a Nielson Rating: switch over to News24 or something instead. Hell, switch over to a channel that isn’t even broadcasting. Musak trumps music sometimes.

War!

When someone uses a popular anachronism (“yeah, you and whose army?”), pull their trousers off. When their trousers are clumped around their ankles and they’re giving you a bemused “WTF?” expression, explain that you have Cliché Tourette’s. If you’re too much of a pacifist for that, just shout the word “HolocaustFuckCancerJar!” and carry on with the conversation as if nothing unusual had happened.

Neologisms are chief in our arsenal.

War!

When someone speaks against non-sequitur or uses the phrase in the pejorative, give yourself a good, hard slap in the face. That’ll show ’em.

Fuck the mall: an interview with Judith Levine

Robert Wringham goes shopping with Judith Levine, author of Not Buying It.

(Content from New Escapologist Issue One, now sold out).

The polar ice caps are melting, war is rife, natural resources are running out by the clappers and poverty is most definitely not history.  Humanity’s ecological footprint is 23% larger than the planet can handle in terms of regeneration: as a species, we’re consuming far too much. While New Escapologist wouldn’t want to point its beautifully manicured but nonetheless accusatory finger in any particular direction, your personal shopping habits probably aren’t helping things.

In 2005, journalist and author, Judith Levine decided to stop shopping. After a particularly stressful period of Christmas shopping and coming to the realization that over-consumption is precisely the thing that is destroying the planet and making everyone hate America, she decided that enough was enough.
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Learian Verse

One of the features we have lined up for Issue Two, due for release late next month, is a selection of Edward Lear poetry handpicked by Marco Graziosi.

Marco picked too much for us to include in print so we’ve put The Dong with the Luminous Nose and The Jumblies here at the site.

Buy Issue Two for further verse along with original Lear illustrations, beautiful typography and a short essay by Marco.

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An Invitation to Escapology

In this essay, Robert Wringham introduces the ideas behind New Escapologist. Originally published in New Escapologist Issue One.

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