There was a time when you, kind readers, were limited to the dimensions of touch, sound, sight, and smell. Oh, box faced friends, reaching us through familiar sensations of fingers and electrical currents – through all the poetry that could and likely has been amassed on the subject of our modern processes – are these new touches, these touches which sometimes tire you.

You have a breadth of life in a world you do not understand, or perhaps understand too well. When your fingers breathe, they leave a fog on panes of strange glass which make up windows impossible to break. They are everywhere, unless you are poor, my friends, and unless you are not with us today.

A new body has wrapped itself around our own, and within it's skin teem the beings we love, and the beings we desperately rely on to love us, sparkling, so much better, and embodying all the modern cliches of distance and closeness. And within this skin we flail ourselves about, soundlessly, as our own bodies – encased yet so obviously separate, grow distracted. Toes tap; heads tip on their shoulders; eyes strain against the bidding of our generation.

As we abbreviate our love and make our clever side steps into personality against the blinding light, the sources; the rules and the codes, an understanding has been reached that we are all in this together. Like ceramic creatures in a glass globe, we shake, and we let our hopes rise and fall, united by a delicate, yet all enveloping sky.

Friends may be few; friends may be questionable; friends may be more undetectably rotten than ever before. But here, at least, you have us. Know that wherever you are, we are in the same hands, and always will be.

This week at SM²:

Coyote Rosebud sends her regrets: the next installment of The Voracious Mouth of Roadkill Rita will be posted in our February update. Kram has no regrets. Dottie Jax remains hard at work writing a novel detailing the tamer side of Insane Clown Posse fans, and regrets only that.

Suggesting dreams of tiny sledgehammers from the garden wall,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

December at Syphmag has been a quiet month so far. We collect half-empty and assorted matchbooks and lighters bearing the names and slogans of our establishments of employment, and set our rough drafts on fire. We brush the papers against the windows, melting the ice that's formed there and scorching foreign, yet strangely authentic, new patterns onto the frosted glass. We enjoy our rewards as the warmed ice spills over onto the carpet in a small but cherished waterfall. We pass SBK's camera amongst ourselves as we pose along side. A Syphmag Christmas vacation.

Why hold onto the past? We fill our stained, half-washed second hand pots and pans with our notes and letters; our old plans. We light them and we hold our icy hands over the flickering light of those ancient maps to our identities, those instigators to our accomplishments thus far. We watch as encouragement and anxieties from our former selves and friends burn brightly in our eyes, turning the cold blue light of our northern Canadian offices into a hot, warmly coloured tropical nightlife. Our subdued shivers could almost be called dancing.

The past is behind us, and your keepsakes lie forgotten, misplaced behind some ancient piece of furniture. You could light it all on fire, if need be, and you would survive this cruel season. You are separate from what has made you. You look for new things to collect; always new things to absorb and leave deflated in the basement sink.

Syphmag is here, with a new month's worth of content. New comics from Rockmell and 'Lil, a new poem from Winnipeg star Kram, and new prose from Betty McKenzie and Coyote Rosebud.

This month at SM²:

In a world of brief possession and revolving interests, it may be well to remember that parts of our worlds remain unchanging. Friends, the weather outside is sometimes frightful, no matter the longitude or hemisphere, and the new year will always bring with it some thoughts of those things past. Just remember: ten minutes of safety precautions can save hours of police reports and firemen's lectures.

All our love at the close of 2009,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

PS:
Was our update lacking in holiday spirit? Syphmag reminds you that there are in fact two Tiny Tommy Christmas comics. 2006's A Tiny Tommy Christmas Story (http://syphmag.net/tinytommycomics/07.htm), and 2007's Elitist Misgivings Day (http://syphmag.net/tinytommycomics/31.htm). We've been assured that Tommy's 2010 holiday comic will be the best yet, but until then, we hope you enjoy, and pass along, these old favourites.

Readers: as you spread your sweater-clad arms and throw them around the nearest body or bottle; as the autumn sets in and turns your leaves and hopes to crimson red; as you struggle through harsh winds, city dust that stings your eyes, and endless rumours of deathly disease just to find someone, somewhere, who wants to listen to your gentle cries through this winter. Oh boys, oh girls, and oh casual or frantic undecideds: you are looking for the right party. You await the right moment, the right dress, the right pose.

You stand in doorways! You tip your glass, and you tip your head, and from the corner of your eye you watch the room and think, yes, this is the place, this is right, and I belong. You are not some sad, 80s chump just because you wear a cardigan sweater. You are real and alive and it is the year two thousand and nine, and you understand! You can jump over that line of human isolation and make connections; you are a grown organism with the understanding of several millenia behind you, and you will not be lonely. You will not be one of those sad and tormented fools of past musical decades.

And you touch the right places on all the right sweaters, and you smile your gorgeous, photographable smile, and you say so many right and relevant things, and you are gentle and good in your harmlessness; your words flying across the party like a pair of open arms. Yes, you will be always surrounded by true, wonderful friends who are also making these correct choices in attitude (influenced by you, no doubt, and also by their own fine graces and experience).

Yes, this world is right.

You walk home with your hand in hers and you expect nothing, readers, and of course you pretend to be as shy as decency requires, but you know the future, and you are at peace with it. And through the winter months while she lies in your arms, never once will you think of that fate you might have had, bitter and alone, cringing against the wall at each and every desperate attendance to each and every ridiculous party. You understand this world, and you have come to know that there is no other way; and now, you are simply thankful for it all.

Yet, gentle readers, sometimes art is on a different plane than life – and sometimes a good story about a bad party is just what the season requires. This week, we bring you two – as well as new photos from SBK's photo diary, and an interview with two young men who seem to know when to carouse, when to collapse in despair, and when to combine the two with perfect harmony.

This week at SM²:

Sometimes the party is over, friends, and we must wipe the whiskey from our chins and find our shoes by the door.

This month, we end our update with some business, and some news.

Syphmag's news posts, dear readers, will now appear each month in all of the usual places, as well as in blog format at http://imtrying.net.

An interview with none other than myself also appears (reposted from our site) here: http://imtrying.net/?p=212, and our new RSS feed, which will be combined with IT³'s charming art blog, The State of the Arts in Canada, and the posts of our publishing house, I'm Trying I'm Trying I'm Trying, Ltd. All worthy reading to keep you warm through every accidental stumble during this oncoming winter.

The new Syphmag RSS feed can be accessed here: http://imtrying.net/?feed=rss2

More news: interviews! Syphmag wants your interviews. Our standards are high, our criticisms harsh, but if you have an interview conducted in the past with anyone, or anything, that you, dear reader, deem relevant in this life, or if you have an idea for a future endeavor, please, contact us. We have decided, contrary to our usually stringent content policies, to accept guest and reader contributions to our interview page.

Interviews and pitches may be submitted to magazine@syphmag.net.

Payment for all accepted contributions will be unmonetary, but of value. Speaking of which, Syphmag has a store. Thank you for your patronage.

Our thanks to those who have visited us at Canzine, Expozine, & etc.

Until next month, a friend of your heart of love, and your heart of practicality,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Little lambs: have you missed us? We've been busy. Syphmag took a brief hiatus last month to fight bitter biding wars for web domains, clean up the debris of our last show, and snuggle up a little closer with our investors (read: menial dayjobs).

If you attended our last show in Toronto, thank you. Syphmag truly appreciates your love, support, and shy but resolute ability to eat fine finger foods. Dearest readers, we are your friend in every dimension.

This month marks an important anniversary for Syphmag – our second year of content is officially over, and our third year has begun.

Syphmag, a transient magazine by nature, has come to you from a variety of residences: from our roots in underground rooms in west & east Toronto, to our first-year homes in New York City, Atlanta, or the parking lot of Google Inc. (outside of San Francisco), to the Canadian cities of Winnipeg and Montreal – and now, at least briefly, back to our offices in Toronto. What does all this moving mean?

All the better to reach you with, my dears.

And yet, we are a little world weary. We begin to feel a little lost. And thus, friends, this month, our first installment of year three, we bring you an abbreviated update, featuring only our most cherished of writers: Coyote Rosebud, Dottie Jax, Bettie McKenzie, and Kram.

Welcome to year three, friends, and we hope you enjoy the ride.

October at SM²:

And with that we'll leave you now, gentle children, with a link to photos of our A Recession of Mortality show:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/sketchbookkid/sets/72157621945466310/show/,

and our fondest hopes that even amid the tearful despair of Autumn, that we may inspire you to turn your chin upwards, ever upwards, above the ghost of our hand.

With love, and until November,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

It's almost over, folks – welcome to the last month of summer. And I'd call you friends, but are you, really? Our lives rush by us much more quickly in these summer weeks, and carry with them our flickering selves; our fluid and adapting personalities.

As a teacher might set a questionnaire on your desk as the bell strikes on the first day of a still hot and restless September, we ask, what have you done with your summers? You magnificent creatures – how debauched have you become? Who have you hurt, and where have you lain, broken and filled to the brim with your youth? Do relatives pass you by in the street as you stand, shocked into immobility by your unrecognizable face, your late-night ruined features, your new skin, and the heat's piercing lessons that can never be unlearned?

Summer is not a time for reflection – summer is a time of experience. Yet if you find yourselves awake this month, accidentally alone and without a plan or even a conception of what to do with yourself, or who you have become (and spending intimate time with a stranger in this way can be frightening and uncomfortable, we know), then we must remind you: come to us. We will be here, just as tortured, searching, enlightening and entertaining as we ever were. As these summer months burn into your skin, we have felt your discomfort and confusion, and we have placed our sympathetic hands here, for you; in hopes of dampening with cool water those scars you acquire out there, dancing too close to the sun.

This week at SM²:

Remember – come to us in those moments when you start to slip on those slick, remorseless days of August. You may just be the better for it, come the changing of the leaves.

We'll see you all at the end of this month in Toronto, at Syphmag's Ghost Show, 'A Recession of Mortality'. All the information you could ever dream of can be found here: http://syphmag.net/ghostshow.htm.
Bring a friend – or, bring two; one new, and one old.

Whether the number is one or three,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Friends, acquaintances, and curious ill-wishers, another month has come to it's close. Perhaps it has been a slow month, perhaps a quick one – perhaps a month that was filled with fear.

Where will you go? You ask, who will you be? In that unknown future of futures, where loose potential has become restricting circumstance, and the age which is upon us has set age upon us – yes, we will be old, ladies and gentlemen, and we may not be old ladies and gentlemen.

We may be paupers! We may be laughingstocks. We may be desperate and beggarly; we may incite pity from the people we once walked among as equals.

And so, security begins to loom on the margins of the pages of our secret diaries. I wish, I wish, I wish – and then, on the side of the page, "but I could", and "mightn't it be better to...". You begin to work against your dreams, drawing up the plans to break you from your fall even before you have begun to attain the heights you desire – oh, friends, you think it would be so easy to just take that plain and unelevated road!

But no, good readers, stop yourselves: it is going to be alright. There will be something to catch you, no matter how high you climb, no matter the risks you take. No matter the headline's crisis; no matter the panic which rises like the sun each day in your throat; be calm, be brave. Youth is a dying flower even as it blooms, but to bury a blossom capable of bringing such joy; such excitement; such hope? And isn't it better not to know one's deathbed until the last possible minute?

You are young and know you may be wild and free, and yet you fear ruin. My gentle, tormented friends... go forth into the unknown. Greet it with the knowledge that there, you will not be alone. You will find friends at every turn. The only lonesome place is in the valley of regret.

This month, Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine will do our best to quell the shaking in your heart. We have a new resident in illustration, 'Lil Comics, who brings us twenty-nine paintings of cowardice. Our regular contributors shine as always, we have new additions to our store, and we bring news about two upcoming events.

Take our hand, and place it under your chin. Time is short-lived, but its murder is still a crime.

July at SM²:

It may take you a month to get through our new content, but we hope that it brings you joy during these next hot summer weeks.

In the meantime, Syphmag will be at the Rivoli (334 Queen St. W., Toronto) on July 10th for the bi-monthly Pop With Brains event. All door proceeds go to Toronto's CAMH Centre for Addiction and Mental Health. There will be bands, beautiful young people, cold drinks, and we'll have books, postcards, fine art, buttons, prints, and more, and we'd love to see you there.

Syphmag's next gallery show will be Friday, August 28th in Toronto, Canada. How do you learn more? Stay with us, and we'll make sure you're in the know.

May you be lulled to sleep just once this month without the fever of "tomorrow, tomorrow, tomorrow",

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

To some, each new beginning has the potential to be the antidote to regret. To our weakened fingers and our aging faces, this seems to be the dream of ours: the foundationless belief that new eras bring new beings, and that new places breed new possibilities.

To the weathered traveler, however, this idea begins to wear away. One such as this will stop planning for and creating new personas in the eclipsing months and weeks before their imminent and threateningly permanent departures – and instead will collect together in preparation what have become the necessities of their clearly static personages: the thief knows he would be a fool to move on with only his loose and brightly patterned promenade clothing, just as the reluctant curmudgeon learns never to fail at traveling without a sizable collection of large, countenance-covering books, newspapers, and letters: just one will not do in times of cramped company and the attempted minglings of human amity.

Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine lies with the latter group (travelers yes, and curmudgeons to be sure) – in that we have drifted our home base so many times that we now view ourselves as creatures who are predictable as the rise and fall of the sun and celebrity. Each new beginning is now a flurry of familiarity – extension cords promptly connected; files arranged, system-hungry as ever, in their eternal and abstractly chosen orders; thumbed copies of Proust's In Search of Lost Time finding their way to new and unspoiled dust-gathering grounds – as our writers and residents settle in to their yet unfinished bickering and loitering and I, once so excitable at the idea of chance uncovered by geography, send out for the cheapest Vietnamese and pitch black coffee that our road weary pocket-money can buy.

Friends, our new home in Canada's most eccentricity-genial city is spacious and comfortable, much like the only profound change that we bring to this second half of our second year – that being, our updates will be more extended, as we intend to update monthly rather than biweekly. Our contributors (and myself, as an editor under seemingly unending avalanches of comma splicing and crisis' of artistic confidence) had begun to feel that to produce truly worthwhile work in these times of debt-fueled anxiety, meekly accepted social obligations and the aggregation of online video content, time is as necessary as inspiration, talent, or a room of one's own.

Syphmag now updates on the first Friday of every month, giving our readers thirty days to digest our voluminous, but always substantial, new content.

This month at SM²:

As Sketchbookkid's photos may have documented, our Tolerable Affections show on the 1st of May fulfilled many of our hopes and aspirations; and we hope it did for you as well. Thanks for all who attended, or who were involved, on behalf of both Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine, and our sister company IT³.

Photos from Tolerable Affections, and from our shows of the past, can be found here:

Syphmag Events.

And stay with us closely; we are already making plans to interact socially again in the future.

Keeping careful watch over the tiny shoots in your garden, via Google, and until next month,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Tolerable Affections

(everything you needed to know).

It is not just another week here at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine. Spring is in the air: Dottie Jax and Kram have found an abandoned, small town college radio station which, by some fluke of time and space, plays only the same four Armstrong and Sinatra songs, over and over and over; and they laugh at this constantly, and dance around us – scattering papers and ruining hours of work while we beg them, please, to go out and play.

I myself am in constant conflict with both masculine and feminine callers: suddenly you boys and girls have discovered flowers! Low and behold, these forgotten things that grow. And now they (the flowers, not the callers: whom we always manage to send away) adorn our cabinets, mattresses, and bookshelves, dropping their damp petals amid all our scattered linen, skin cells and bread crumbs on the floors which, if we found the time to address these doe-eyed friends in the way that they had hoped us to, I suppose one of us would chose to sweep up instead.

Yes, the mess of spring time! Each bird takes flight, and with it will go your lingering questions: will it return? Will it find some new, more exciting place to nest? Will it die; will it never land again? And who are we to not fly as free?

We have a few announcements to make in this regard: first and foremost being that this is the last Syphmag update until after our spring break. During this intermission we will bring you news regarding our next show & party; call on you occasionally with links to old and undiscovered material; and pack everything into boxes for (as I'm telling SBK) a long trip back east, to the Canadian frontier of our birthplace (Toronto) and then a bit beyond, to Montreal (though many of those boxes are headed, in fact, for Siberia – where I'm sure SBK will be glad to look when she finds that she needs, say, those notes she has already transcribed seven times over and which relate to a project which was unanimously voted completely undesirable by all in our company, herself included).

Yes, after a snug winter in the center of Canada, another moving day approaches! So we are like those small birds, my friends, taking flight amid the rising mists of springtime. And you will wonder: will we return?

Trust, my children, may be likened to the endless catacombs of the internet. Like trust, they could never be built in a day; and would be impossible to describe to one who does not know them already. Yet you are here – and everything one feels to be real must be as real as anything.

We will return to you with all new content, and from a whole new home. Our magazine has been a transient one (our movements from Canada to New York; from Los Angeles to Atlanta, must prove this), and has never faltered under the weight of new skies. Your trust, my friends, we will feel with us as we travel across the country this year. Now, in the meantime:

This week at SM²:

Our upcoming show will take place on the evening of May 1st, in Winnipeg, Canada. We will delight to see you there – and will, of course, be in touch lightly all through the coming weeks.

A whisper of financial advice: the aura at the clairvoyant's offices is only our love for you.

Saving your pennies,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Ghosts pass in and out of our lives. Of course, you know what I mean, here, by ghosts: those familiar faces which we pass by as we walk; familiar faces which are, once we've managed to make ourselves and our looking conspicuous, not our old friends at all; not those ancient causes of heartbreak; not those oft thought of but stoically forgotten personalities we encountered at the wrong time, or in the wrong place, or that we simply didn't hold on to tight enough; no – they are simply someone who looks like someone else, whom we were, for that brief instant, both hoping to see, and dreading to find.

These unsuspecting strangers (who think us so lustful, or so rude, or so demented), with their coincident features, confront us with the impossible, the regrettable, and the coarseness of circumstance at these sudden, unpredictable and inopportune timings; throwing us into melancholy, inciting useless curiosity, and delivering fits of nostalgia that (we must admit it here) can continue to haunt us for unforeseen and excruciating periods of time afterward.

Some bonds, once broken, can never be sewn back together – while, in the case of others, you can not even grasp hold of both ends at once. The harsh ice of reality can be a dreadful thing to stumble upon when one simply meant to catch a bus, deliver a package, or enjoy a party.

In our confused and lonesome situation, these unforeseen wrenchings of the heart can make our lives appear small, and our plans and pleasures, grotesque. So it is that I have been wondering: is there a way to prepare ourselves for the horrors; for the onslaught of memory?

There is, friends: emotional catharsis through art. Acquainting ourselves regularly with the hauntings of our disappointments and anguishes, through the artistic fabric spun by others, will create for us strong backs, strong minds, and strong hearts.

This week at SM²:

Now, friends: it is evident that there are things in this life which one will never 'get over'. I pray this magazine will be one.

Holding your hand and feeling for your dreams,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

As February draws near to it's close, so too will this harsh winter: and friends, look round: we've made it. This morning, as I was glowering over SBK's tattered, hole-stricken winter 'boots' – if they can be called such at this point –; which we all assure her she will never be forced to wear again through another season (this will be the summer we strike rich, and relocate to someplace warm: Spain, perhaps), the subject arose between our beloved designer / photographer and I about the nature of identity, and how interlinked it naturally is with one's priorities.

SBK is a hand-wringer; her life as our web programmer and contributor here is one of deadlines and duties: much in the way that mine is as editor of this ancient, internationally distributed webzine. SBK's mind is one full of details and questions related to her artistry – and is not particularly welcoming to the occupation of scheduling the grueling experiences that inevitably prelude the attainment of new necessities. Over the course of our conversation it occurred to us, most comically, that even if all of the currencies in this world were at our disposal, those tattered enemies of warmth would still find themselves a grudgingly secure home in the tangled heap that is our foyer / kitchen pantry / reception room.

Friends: dedication does not allow for idleness, and neither does it allow for common sense. Should, for instance, our impassioned resident writer Kram find himself obliged to chose between eating his first meal of the day – at nine o'clock in the evening, no less – or rewriting for us a piece that we have been forced to remit to him: which will he select? Why, of course; I will find him at 11 o'clock: email sent; pulse barely detectable; passed out cold between the two filthy, embracing objects which are our SBK's pathetic winter footwear.

A telling symbol if there ever was one.

There is something to be said for self preservation. Yet, there is also much to be said of the insanity which grips those who have found themselves a purpose beyond their own physical being; you can take it up with Schopenhauer on how purely one can interpret the motivations found at the root of these instances: but it is safe, I believe, for us to say that without these tortured guardian angels, we would loose much of the soul and passion that has driven us, thus far, through our lives.

Cheers: to those who dismay and inspire us with their blightfully misguided priorities; and to the fact that so many of them now gather together, in one place: here.

This week at SM²:

Ah yes, friends: priorities. As this week's update is done, there are bills to be taken up from the pile; spots to be wiped from the porcelain; nutrients to be intravenously fed to the digestive systems of at least one of our more wretched contributors; and plans to be made for our next transmission.

Always in motion; always reminding you of your own,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

It's been a busy couple of weeks here at the Syphmag offices. Our sister endeavor here, publishing and binding company IT³ Ltd., is midway through production of the second printing of another obscure, forever to be forgotten tome of Canadian poetry: this time on behalf of our distinguished resident writer, Kram. We've had parties to attend, artist tours to book, bodies to dress in austere, refreshingly unironic fashions– and an ever increasing influx of hopeful, disordered applications from the masses to become a part of the Syphmag family.

Rejection slips have been flying from my fingers! And I wonder to myself: is there, now, anyone in this world who is as dazzling; as original; as naturally talented as my little flock of contributors? The doubt grows in my mind in equal proportion to the esteem I hold for these fine young friends of mine.

As we come together this Friday, snug in our hamster-like homestead of crumpled papers and miss-matched splinters of thrift store furniture, I look round the room and I see the best of Canada's artistic future. We may be gaunt; filthy; vain; eccentric; socially intolerable– but we have an unmatched soul, and neither the triumphant sounds of the love we could be making echoing from the apartment of ill-repute above us, nor the eerie scufflings of the deadly caterpillars (Dottie Jax insists they are meely mice) which have made their home beneath the debris of creativity in our studios, will stop us from making our stumbling, imperious way towards that which is rightfully ours: the security and amenity of success that is our ultimate doom.

This week at SM²:

Now friends, don't let me get ahead of myself, but I've heard a little bird (or are the caterpillar-mice metamorphosing?) tell me that, extrapolating from past statistics, the glories of this week will only be expanded and increased upon in two week's time. One can only hope– though nothing else seems more certain.

Cheers, to fourteen days of recovery from this beautiful thrashing,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Friends, there is often trouble in our worlds: be it trouble in the form of immediate danger, or the kind of worry which gnaws at one softly but surely from all sides; sometimes quietly chewing at a shirt sleeve, sometimes ripping loudly into an exposed area of skin.

For all our rationality, we remain helpless victims to these troubles; these changes which thrust themselves over the set dining room tables of our lives like large jungle tigers, scattering dishes, sending cutlery flying; these woes which drip down through our rooftops, trickling through attics, creating small but deadly puddles of unknown grief in the dark hallways of our comfort.

Yes, there is no defense against the onslaught of anxiety; no potion to ward off the fevers of your questioning mind.

This week at SM²:

If you're new to our magazine (perhaps you heard about us at Pop With Brains #19 this weekend in Toronto, Canada), thank you for joining us, and we hope you'll make yourself quite at home. If you're an old reader, our wonder at and love towards your devotion knows no bounds. Either way, we are honoured by your presence here.

Please remember that we do have a store, wherein you can find work from Tiny Tommy Comics, Lara Violet Stars, and more.

A friendly face to anyone but your enemies– (our enemies),

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

A new calendar year is upon us, and talk radio programs everywhere ask their callers: What are your new year's resolutions? Ah yes, this year you will be less untidy, less fat, less cruel; this year you will not put things off until tomorrow.

Here at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine, however, the general consensus lies with the talk radio hosts' tongue-in-cheek jests: randomly contrived promises instigated only because a new calendar has been pinned up on the cork by the office printer at the same tedious job you worked for the duration of two thousand and eight will change nothing. Yes, the jokes are true– we will all fail to make change simply by acknowledging a desire for such.

So, in this spirit, I myself resolve to fall in love this year: to give my heart completely to some deserving person; to open up my spirit in a way that is both breathtakingly vulnerable and astonishingly selfless– I will relinquish control of my own destiny in order to bind my soul and dreams to that of another, previously foreign, entity, in hopes that, through human connection, I can illuminate not only more about this world, but more about myself.

Yes, this year I resolve to abandon the solitary, solipsistic lifestyle I have championed, chip on shoulder, since youth, and give myself wholly to the hands of fate and fairer sex; may they do what they like with my tender, malleable body.

This first post of 2009 is dedicated to you, friends, and to all these pledges we've made. We're in this together– you, with your cupboards full of cheap grocery store chocolate, and I, with my stubborn, lonesome heart of stone.

This week at SM²:

Friends, another week is done, and I must be off. Please remember: SM² now updates biweekly, meaning that we will return to you on Friday, January 23rd. Until then: stay warm in your homes, and bundle yourselves tight in the comforting fleeces of anticipation.

Ever the amiable eye peeking from the depths of your mailbox,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

A delayed final update of the year, with our apologies: our holiday party and subsequent tour of Eastern Canada forced us to postpone this update until today.

Readers: a year comes to a close here at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine with this, our final update of 2008. As your stomach churns and your mouth fills with bile in anticipation for the year's most decadent parties and their aftermath, we will be working for you, preparing for another twelve months of hard labour fueled only by the leftovers of those more practically fortunate than us–perhaps yourselves included–who leave their dreams in our calloused, emaciated hands.

Throw your love up to the heavens, friends– and throw your love up into the streets of your wounded cities; in the morning, you will find us ready, forgiving, and easily accepting of any and all innumerable implied apologies.

Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine will return next year–January 9th–with biweekly content updates, as well as all new print material.

This week at SM²:

Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine thanks everyone who contributed to or made an appearance at our holiday party & art show this past week– stay tuned in the new year for more events hosted by our tight selection of staff and our ever expanding collection of friends, and for photos from the show and from shows past.

We leave you, for the next two weeks to our archives, with recommendations that you spend some time with Lara Violet's first dazzling year work; Sketchbookkid's Photo Diaries first four year's worth of calculated snapshots; our 2006 interview with comic book artist and New York heart-throb Neil Swaab; and, of course, the early work of all of our writers past and present.

All of our tender and controlled affections manifested as a lush red carpet leading you into this new and unpredictable year,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

As the horrors and nostalgia driven pleasures of the holiday season set upon us again, here at the offices of SM² we have begun to ask ourselves– another year? Another year of squalor and cardboard and "imagination flavour" soup? Another year of careful, apologetic rejections, "lost mail", and slyly worded questions as to the where abouts of the colour black in our accounting books?

We are forced to ask ourselves, is our apparent worthlessness, worth it? Is this, here, our current life, the project that has for years consumed our every waking moment– worth it?

Ha! As if we have a choice. As if anyone–ever–has a choice.

Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine marches on into another calendar year, with this, our second last update of 2008. See below for details as to our upcoming holiday party, and our return in 2009.

This week at SM²:

For all those who visited us at ExpoZine: our heartfelt thanks.

Upcoming in Winnipeg, Canada (current homestead of SM²): Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine Presents: Elitist Misgivings, Art Show and Holiday Party. Hosted in the base of our publishing house, ITITIT Ltd.

Details are as follows:

Thursday, December 18, 2008
6:30pm - 11:00pm
IT³ Back Stairs United
161 Langside St, Suite 24, around the back & up the stairs
Winnipeg

For more information and a full list of artists, contact us at magazine@syphmag.net, or visit us on Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=46476059991&ref=mf

A gentle reminder: Syphmag will take our winter break following next week's update– leaving you plenty of time to get caught up on everything you've missed: be it the odd Dottie Jax book, or Year One's worth of Wee Eskimo Woman.

Who?

Exactly.

One hand in the cookie jar; the other on your shoulder,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

All of us deal with loneliness in our own way. For some, a moment alone is a chance to take in the beauty of the world, uninfluenced by the expectations or obligations of another human presence. For others, a moment alone is a terrifying ordeal– soon remedied by the wonders of informational technology, or hard liquor.

Readers– we understand that you are a varying assemblage. Whatever your preference: we can oblige. Time and space for private thought? Here you are. Rambunctious lubricant away from the treacherous entrapments of introspection?

Let us entertain you.

This week, Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine presents brand new content which will be–now and for always–whatever it is, to you; for you: whoever you may be. We hope you enjoy your time with us.

This week at SM²:

Ladies and gentlemen, another week is done– and with it departs the month of November.

I, for one, knew we would be making it through– but if you feel the need to check your pulse, go right ahead: we'll wait up for you.

Once again: ExpoZine Montreal 2008 is this weekend: Saturday November 29th & Sunday November 30th.

Lara Violet will be in attendance: selling postcards, comic books, and mini zines by many of your favourite Syphmag residents, including Tiny Tommy Comics, Coyote Rosebud, and Rockmell Comics. There will also be free business cards available for you to take home, including samples of Sketchbookkid's "Lara Violet Stars" photo project.

Visit the ExpoZine site here: expozine.ca/ or contact us at magazine@syphmag.net for more details.

So much more than socially yours,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

There are a few things that unite us all together in this world. One, of course, is need–or love, if you enjoy poetics–and another is death.

This week SyphMag brings you stories of both, and afterwards, when we will leave you alone in your room, reveling in your brief feeling of spiritual connection cheaply achieved through complimentary amateur CanLit– we hope you will run your fingers through your hair, pull on a clean sweater, and come out to see us in Montreal.

More about your upcoming opportunity to see SyphMag staff live in Canada's cultural mecca can be found below this week's update.

This week at SM²

Do you love Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine as much as some other things in life that you're come to gravitate towards in favour of other, more life-shortening hobbies that may have haunted your past? (We know, we know)– then come and see us at ExpoZine Montreal 2008, Saturday November 29th & Sunday November 30th. Lara Violet will be in attendance: selling postcards, comic books, and mini zines by many of your favourite Syphmag residents, including Tiny Tommy Comics, Coyote Rosebud, and Rockmell Comics.

There will also be free business cards available for you to take home– and, because we do know business here, our business cards are attractive enough to warrant space on your fridge, so long as your mother doesn't mind. Your beautiful, Montreal mother– to whom we send our warmest regards.

Visit the ExpoZine site here: expozine.ca/ or contact us at magazine@syphmag.net for more details.

Looking forward to vicarious human contact,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

November is a month of memory: never do we spend so much time looking over our shoulders as now, with the weather's quick changes and the incalculable freezing and thawing taking place in the streets outside and within the hearts around us, forming the human race into a frustrating organ playing in and out of our lives just as everything else too finds itself in fluctuation– we have to wonder: who will stay, who will go? Why do they stay and go; why do we? Who are they, and who, then, will we become? Who will make it through this winter with us–and why? How?

Readers, as you cling on to whatever is at hand in your search for answers; as you spend your sleepless, late autumn nights searching for meaning in all the wrong places–your old photographs; your letters; the traces of past mistakes littered in tiny places around your room–we beg you, please: relax. There is nothing to analyze; nothing to regret. There is a change that's coming, yes– but your body will be there day after day after day, and your sanity and your experience and your heart: they will be there until one day it all beats no more. That is all there is, here on this endless stretch of time.

So why worry?

Why worry? Why mull over this past when the supermarkets are full of tiny packages of rich, wonderful cheeses guarded only by un-manned cameras and semi-conscious security guards? Why worry, when you can have a place that is warm, sympathetic, and updated weekly?

This week at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine:

Are you feeling better? Don't feel too much better– and save your anticipation: we're planning some parties.

Always yours, always on schedule,

Nicolaas Van Roon, ed.

Dearest Readers, great and small:

What a week it has been! A week of late nights, of tension, of bodies touching bodies in gestures of joy; solidarity; triumph; a week of crossed fingers and yes, even tears.

Looking out on the world through various LCD screens in our highly secured and heavily curtained office in this wrong, wrong side of the tracks local, we have seen things this week that have made our blood run again: we have witnessed a passion in others that for so long we dreaded was alive only in us. It has been a week of awakening– you, you are all alive!

You have all been thinking, and dreaming, and hoping, even as you pushed past us in the super market line ups muttering death threats and clutching your precious store-issue recyclable bags– you have been living a secret life of innocence! Returning to your homes at night to sit alone a little and imagine things as if they were filled with light, and not despair. You have been whispering secrets of hope into the collars of your jackets, into the rear view mirrors of your cars, into your hands as you move them towards your eyes to wipe the sleep away and better your view of the tiny people on the television.

Readers, friends, this week may be the first of many, or this week may fade away into oblivion: but I will not forget it. And I will not forget you– you strong, beautiful, hopeful people. Every billion of you, with that inside. What a week.

This week at SM²:

Schopenhauer warns us against joy: each high, happy moment will bring us one deeper, lower hour of suffering. And yet– did he know what I know? Did he find the world that I have found, on these screens, in you?

Even in the depths of my anguish, I will remember this searing imprint of hope. And each week, it will seep through my veins so that I might remind you.

The secret is out: you believe it too.

Until next week,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Each week (as in each and every gathering of time) we learn something new. Some times, we learn things which we feel we knew all along– but have come upon again, startling ourselves; where did that little bit of information go when we needed it? How long have we been repeating mistakes due to the misplacement of some under-cherished lesson from the past?

It's the sort of thing that makes one want to bundle off to Ikea and pick out some sleek plastic shelving units for one's memory. Then–when one has guests over–others can also feel right at home when exploring one's mind, as their own is eerily similar in both style and function.

Yet of course, friends, this is impossible. One cannot simply pawn off the duty of maintenance of one's thoughts, knowledge, and memories to ultra modern foreign importers. Each individual consciousness is doomed to be forever impenetrable and as constantly changing as the faces of the minimum wage workers one wearily and charitably digs deep within one's pockets to "tip" during the constant onslaught of trivialmoments of exchange throughout one's daily life.

So how, then, can we ever hope to reconcile with each other? With all the chaos of our inner, private worlds, how will we ever find common ground within and without a desperately disorganized humanity?

Why, through indie magazines on the internet, of course.

This week at SM²:

It would seem, curious readers, that the jury is in: and the barriers between us will stay, once and for all– a life sentence if there ever was one. But do not despair, comrades; there is light to be shed yet between the cracks in the mortar.

Fighting for your illumination from one dawn to the next,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

There is nothing better loved in this world than unexpected joys: those moments or times which creep up on us, nuzzle our shoulders, breath softly in our ears and say: "Shhhhh, it's alright." Those fleeting experiences of warmth and companionship when one expected a cold and slightly bitter journey alone.

Sometimes, however, dark periods haunt us, and we go months without feeling a sweet caress from the hands of the universe. These tormented months, so often in the winter, leave us damaged, sometimes permanently– leave us saying, "No, I can't, not ever. It is impossible."

Friends, these months may be ahead. Perhaps you have been too busy working; learning; perfecting; scrambling; scratching; thinking of the wrong things, to fully comprehend your plight, and now stand suddenly before the looming presence of a lonely, uncalculated season of harsh weather and scarce kindness. Perhaps your happiness has left you, slyly, in the night, leaving your bedsheets dangling from the window, a signal to your neighbours of your failure to secure comfort for yourself in the coming darkness, and a warning: it could happen to anyone.

Yes, you may be left, but you are not alone. Like a true friend or a dedicated paid professional (we can only dream of progressing onwards from the former to the latter), SM² will be there. On those unexpected warm days, and the scores of cold ones in between– whenever needed, like lovers who have no moral qualms, no malevolence, no greed: only time and patience.

This week, we bring you a return of Tiny Tommy Comics, as well as new work from Dottie Jax, Rockmell Comics, D.J. G.P., and more.

We may be bitter, but we hope our update brings you warmth.And no, be quiet: it is not impossible.

This week:

The time to talk is over, friends, but dialog can continue at magazine@syphmag.net. Address your comments, complaints, or conversation to whomever you please.

Earning your trust, week by week,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Together, we have all spent a dark week in Canada. Here, in the center of this country, our usually Poe-esquefully playful offices have been overshadowed by a humourless cloud of politics, water logged copies of Macleans, and heavy national disappointment. Our foreign friends have sent wishes, gifts, and supportive commiseration– and for that we thank all of you, whole heartedly.

This week at SM² we are a little hardened by our country's collective failure to either produce or elect a persona of stature; of character; of mirth: and it, perhaps, it shows. All the better!

Take your tired, peaceful heads and lean them, chin-first, onto your weary hands, and join us, good citizens; passionate neighbours: for this week at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine.

May all your cares and worries alleviate themselves into a communal sigh of "We, shall, etc!".

Special thanks to Joseph Stella and all the good people at ICMTTP for their much appreciated interest and support; as well as their lovely, if expired, designer couches.

Dottie will return next week, along with many friends old and new.

Keep warm, friends, and try to turn your bitterness into hope; fuel; or at least, cheap laughs. We're rooting for you,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Friends, these are troubled times. Some might wonder why we at SM² are not writing all the bad cheques we can and fleeing, out to the sunny seas, out to places where no one can ever find us, out to places where language is as worthless as your broken whiz-kid neighbour's stock options. Yet, we know we're needed here. In these times of crisis, what can one really do but turn to art?

I mean, my friends, gentle readers, that when it all comes down to it, there is nothing in this world that remains the same.The only thing that ties each changing era to the next, is an unending reaction of the heart. How can we know who we are? How can we know we'll be alright?

Alright? Alright?

Why, because somewhere, in the hidden folds of the continent, there are tiny and powerless but determined people working against all logic and reason, to bring to you some kind of vision, some kind of mirror, some kind of message to say, you don't have to give up, to forget yourself, to crumple like the paper on so many concrete Manhattan passageways. You are more than numbers: you are your silly dreams, your lonely smiles, yourbroken, unrelenting heart.

Here at SM² we will continue to be here bringing you slivers of safety, security, and yes, even love, that little thing which burns on even as the rain washes all of your numbers away. We will keep the faith, along side our faith that you will know we need you, as much as you need us. This is not codependence– this is true friendship.

Enough! Remove those broken hearts of yours for a moment, and soak them here, in our waters. This week at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine, updates are as follows:

Thus concludes this week, my weary readers, but there is always next week; there is always permanence here, in the arms of your patient editor,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Dear Friends:

A new week is upon us here at SM², and with it brings new work from a host of bright, starving talent from all across this country. I myself am currently away from our base on business; Dottie Jax was called upon to fill in on writing the update this week, but just an hour ago I received a frantic call from SBK: apparently Dottie's update was too morose to expose– even to you, our six or seven melancholic, world weary readers. And so here I am; but briefly.

This week's updates are wonderful; nearly killed me; and are as follows:

Readers, I must end here, without the usual prolonged goodbyes. I depart with a wish that good health be with you– despite the obvious ramifications of various physical inflictions to which you may succumb: that being, your marginally intensified interest in reading art magazines on the internet.

As previously mentioned, we have released a new edition of Tiny Tommy Comic's LA Is Evil, which can be found in, and ordered from, our store.

We'll be back next week,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Ladies; gentlemen; fans of Japanese animation who can be defined by no tangible category:

Welcome, to another news post at Syphilitic Mermaids Magazine. It's been a week since we last communicated–only one week–and, though I'm sure we are all very different people now, seven days having past, I feel there is a comforting familiarity beginning to brew here, between you, our humble readers in your filthy dorm rooms; pristine parent's houses; over-priced white-washed one bedroom apartments, or unfrequented corners of libraries across the continent: and us, somewhere in the midst of our cross Canadian rampages, thumbs sore from finding rides, feet sore from urban poverty, mouths sore from under use (who would feed us? Who would kiss us?)– and there is nothing more beautiful nor more terrifying than the familiar, my nameless, faceless friends. I can already taste the wonderful, cabin-fever ridden winter which approaches us.

Speaking of the familiar: D.J. G.P. is back in our midst– each week is a new reunion, it seems (after all, this is the internet). With D.J.'s newest stolen arrangement we also bring you new poems from the fiery Coyote Rosebud, coquettish Betty McKenzie and the ardent Kram; as well as a new short story from our dysphoric Dottie Jax.

On with the updates! This week at SM²:

Friends, the sun has risen and I have SBK and Coyote's stern orders for eggs over medium to reduce scrambled: so, I'll be brief:

Last week we announced our newest release, a new edition of Tiny Tommy Comic's LA Is Evil, which can be found in, and ordered from, our store.

To read, see, and listen to all of our available content, click the link found at the top of this post to find our full list of contributors.

To write to us, select the "I'm Telling On You" link on the bottom right of this page. We welcome compliments, encourage comments, beg you for criticism, and turn a suspicious, but at least momentarily delighted, eye toward all submissions.

As the morning light filters through the newspapers on the windows and the girls take turns sliding small, frightened insects on paper toboggans down grease of my hair, I bid you goodnight.

Until next week: may your park benches and corporate cafes always be within the reaches of a strong and free wireless router,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Readers:

Creationists–such as the ones who rented us these spacious new rooms with locks on every door, and explicitly forbade SBK and I from trading keys to our respective private quarters ("call us if you need guidance", one man said sternly to little SBK, eyeing my battered tramping jacket with great suspicion and probable envy)–believe that God built this universe in seven days. How long, then, might one think would it take Coyote Rosebud to come back to us?

Eighteen.

Months.

Eighteen months have passed since Dottie Jax last had work for us, as well. Has it been worth the wait? Yes, yes and more so. Will it be worth the wait again next time?

That's easy.

Readers, it will be as much of a shock to our routines as to yours when we say: this is it. This marks our return to weekly updates.

Weekly. Yes, just as your gloomy roommate's seasonal depression comes knocking once again; just as you realize that your cute fall scarf can't compete with the corduroy jackets of the poseurs with their parent's pocket change; just in time to soften the blow of the debts you accumulated over summer; we will be here for you, consistently. Oh yes – your future children won't be impressed by those bands you saw from three kilometers away this past July, but that high school girl who buys narcotics from your next-door neighbour just might be. We are rooting for you, and we are forgiving all of your mistakes even as you make them.

I assure you, given the chance, we would create one universe for you every seven days–four to five universes per month–but, for now, we hope you'll join us for our regular updates.

Welcome to our weekly magazine. May it flourish for many months, may it avoid disaster, may it brighten your darkening days.

This week at SM², we bring you new work from our new residents, new work from our old residents, and one new resident: a swarthy male drinking companion of mine named Kram. This week's updates are as follows:

Friends, enemies, gently blown-off acquaintances who still maintain an interest in our various pursuits: thus concludes our update for the first week of fall. If all goes according to plan, my waxing poetic about the seasons will have to stop, as they won't be changing nearly as often as I'll be bringing news to you. The moon – I haven't talked about the moon in a while. Next week: cliches concerning celestial beings, and guaranteed new work from Dottie Jax, Betty McKenzie, Kram, and Coyote Rosebud.

As always, you may contact us through the "I'm Telling On You" button towards the bottom right of your screen.

Raking leaves in every tea cup,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

As summer draws to a close, we at SM² have been asking ourselves some serious questions. Questions such as: where did we put that electric bill when we purposely misplaced it? And, if your tuition cheque bounces and nobody clears it, does your education live on somewhere in time?

Yes, as you lay down your beach towels and adjust the chest hairs poking through your new lover's v-necked white t-shirts, as you stumble through the city without a thought towards a darker future, we are looking out for you, we and only we have maintained full composure, and know in our hearts and in the hearts of our logic that soon, winter will come. And with that thought in mind, we bring you, during the last heat wave of this year's summer, new content from many of our old favourites and new friends at SM²:

New contributor: Kiwi Harlow:
A backwater international debutante. Our first two stories from Kiwi Harlow make her a hard first act to top, and easily a worthy new member of the family.

New from Tiny Tommy Comics:
SBK's expensive new drawing style pairs up with Dottie Jax's cheap but always consistent rage in four new comics.

New from Betty McKenzie:
In five new poems, Betty has clearly been drinking with all of the wrong people, and traveling with all the right ones (alone).

New from Rockmell Comics:
Encounters with Jiminy Sinner: the first comic from new series documenting the lives of two people who should and do know better, but continue to pursue their love out of sheer madness, desperate hope, and, perhaps, overwhelming adoration for the chaotic mid-decade genius of John Darnielle.

New from Sketchbookkid Photo Diary:
For someone who doesn't drive, drink, or smoke nearly as much crystal meth as her peers, SBK certainly manages to break her share of well-meaning Canadian laws. Yet she somehow manages to keep the photo diary up to date, meaning that you can live a careful rebellion at her side, piece by piece.

And there you are, we hope that you enjoy the updates– if not now, then months into the future, when the world is frozen and your decision to forgo pants in favour of irony begins to clutter your life with acts of stoicism and self loathing. You're welcome, and no, we won't mention it again if you don't.

I am aware, yes, that there has been an increasing amount rumours spreading about Dottie Jax– SBK is tight lipped about her whereabouts, her creative output, and her mental health, but the general assumption in our crowded, sweaty central Canadian studio (between myself and the florescent bulbs, I mean) is that she has perfected invisibility in a way only a small, lonesome, wandering 20-something can, and is currently in the depths of Ontario, secretly filming every breathing moment of Seymour Samuel Detroit's life for later analysis and critique.

At least, that's the last assignment I gave her, anyhow.

Come back soon for more comics from EWR & TTC, an imminent announcement of our newest print release, our remodeled store, and the epic climax of our debt-ridden, love-smothered lifespan... which we continually put off for another day, much as we do the electric bills.

Just kidding, children, we're here to stay. If it wasn't this tough to keep an arts magazine in the wilds of Canada, I'd quit this gig tonight, and be on the next plane tomorrow to fight the bulls in Madrid.

Flickering lights and warm, bleary eyes,

Nicolaas Van Roon.

Don't believe anything we tell you when we say we're coming back, my friends, you know what liars we've been.

What teases.

What negligent parents.

We love you. All of you. Yet each time that we let you down, we have to laugh a little. We have to laugh because here at SM² , we have so much love to go around that even with all that love we have for you, we still love ourselves the most. So maybe, just maybe, we have been leading you on, our of our vanity, out of our own need, out of our sickness. And maybe, just maybe, you deserved it. You must have, if you're still here.

We're back, and still haven't got the patience for apologies. And neither should you.

Welcome home, my lovelies. And welcome new comers, who hate everything cryptic, everything alienating, everything new. We're old, join the gang.

Home

Nicolaas Van Roon, Editor.

The most delicious day of the year is upon us, but before we at SM² head off hunting, we've loaded some new stories and content, the first batch of 2008, including a brand new writer.

SM² Main Page

You may have noticed a lot of changes around the magazine- Sketchbookkid's got the page as minimalist and easy to update as possible right now, as most of our contributors, editors and designers are in school or working, applying to grad school or yale, trying to win scholarships, scrape by for rent, evade malnutrition, the police, etc... though we were never pretty, the resignation to "wallflower" is something that we're all getting used to. But, we know what we have inside of us.

Groundhog.

Enjoy the new updates and anticipate the tales of my blooming sincerity (has it been overlooked?),

Nic Van Roon

The new year approaches, and nearly 6 months have past since our last update. The blame game comes later, but for now, we have three more features available at SM²:

Rockmell Comics (with new updates)
Tiny Tommy Comics (with new updates)
Sketchbookkid Photo Diary (with new updates)

That's right, we've got new material from three of our artists. This could be the start of something big and beautiful.

Coyote Rosebud
Seymour Samuel Detroit
Wee Eskimo Woman
Eli W. Rockmell
Dottie Jax
D.J. G.P.

Enjoy, and keep checking back, or you're bound to miss something important.

Ho Ho Ho,

Nic Van Roon

Year 2 will be beginning soon. The following writers are currently available under our new layout:

Coyote Rosebud
Seymour Samuel Detroit
Wee Eskimo Woman
Eli W. Rockmell
Dottie Jax
D.J. G.P.

Keep in touch, as new updates will be added almost daily.

Yours,

Nic Van Roon, editor

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