December '04  

news: Hobart #4 available now; 2004 Pushcart nominations

Guest Edited by...
by Ryan Boudinot

Plane Crash Stories
by Stephen Elliott

Apparition
by Stephany Aulenback

EP No. 5
by Calvin Liu

Prequel
by Lee Klein

Evenfall and the Residents Return from the Casino
by Matthew Simmons

   EP No. 5 (The Hidden Track)

         by Calvin Liu
            (the four track "EP" appears in Hobart #4)

It wasn't really that long ago when people didn't know about germs, and that when they were looking at nothing they were really looking at something, but then you think that maybe they did have some concept of it back then, at least the concept of the something spreading, even though you're thinking about a time when you didn't catch a cold but you did catch love, like how they used to say, "love is a bug," but no one could really see the bug even though they knew it when they got it (love, that is), but love was never really a sickness in the coughy, phlegmy sense so the bug was actually a good thing, something that people wanted to catch, but again that was some time ago and this is now, and when you think about how love has changed since then and how a lot of people now aren't even sure if they've got it or not ("I think I love you.") and how some can't even say it so instead they call it "the L word," you know now because of science that love was never really a bug to begin with, at least not in the germ-like sense, how love doesn't really spread like that unless you mean it like you're spreading you're seed like you're sleeping around, but only to say, yes, you know about all germs and how they spread from person to person, usually by saliva and especially by kissing, which of course explains so perfectly how it all happens that first she gets sick, then you get sick, then your coworkers get sick, then your coworkers' children get sick, then your coworkers' children's classmates get sick, and inevitably a schoolteacher gets sick, then two, then three, then four, then before you know it, one of the schoolteachers who gets sick is the same young and leggy schoolteacher you've been sleeping with behind her back, and of course by the time the germs have spread to your young and leggy and now sick schoolteacher, they've mutated, so of course you get sick again, except this time you're sick with a guilty conscience because she is now the one taking care of you and not your young and leggy and (so you've since discovered) super-flighty and super-impervious schoolteacher, and of course that's not to mention how just last week it was you who looked her right in the eye and said the L word, and she even said it back, so sweetly, and you knew how deeply she meant it.