Parodies Lost Chris Blenkarn
A one-author (almost) zine, but you wouldn't know it by the contents. The zine is a collection of parodies of different writing styles, ranging from merciless lampooning of mail order gift catalogues to Inga as a Jane Austin heroine. I found most of it funny even when I wasn't familiar with the source material. There are a lot of short pieces, with a few longer ones, so it's an excellent zine for dipping into at random.
One of my favourite pieces is the first one in the zine, a wickedly funny parody of those automated call answering systems that involve listening to a never-ending maze of recorded messages at premium rates. I can very easily see Avon setting up such a system with messages that don't bother to hide his opinion of the callers:-)
My other favourite is one of the long pieces. This one's the diary of an attendee at the Way Forward Conference in the New Federation, along with all the bits of paper one gets in the application pack. It's horribly, horribly familiar... Will appeal mightily to those who have had such things inflicted on them by their managers, and should appeal even to those who have escaped this. Some of the political satire poking fun at Britain's New Labour government may go over the heads of non-UK residents, but the gist of it should be clear.
The zine is a lot of fun, and recommended for those whose tastes run to parody.