🎧 NEWS - Relevance and prominence in the era of media miasma
New releases in transitional times & moving at a failure's pace
I’m here.
It’s 2024.
The imperial calendar progresses without ever looking back on itself.
But we know better than to rely on straight lines and 2D spectrums.
How have you been holding up?
Since last we spoke
I was going on about making a new book, pre-orders on a t-shirt re-release, and reviving Cyborg Memoirs, my 21-year-old URL, as the locus of my ~artistic practice~ and public identity, from where I would orient my offerings, including this substack and my patreon, rather than be doing separate scattered work across the myriad platforms.
I don’t know about you, but I’ve been online and making websites since the mid 1990s. In those days the WYSIWYG (‘what you see is what you get’, pronounced wizzy-wig) editors did a shit job and knowing how to hand code was preferable. In 2024, the WYSIWYGs operate as good as we had hoped they would 20 years prior (an interesting observation for my astro heads reading up on Pluto in Aquarius eras), and I’ve been updating my website (built on a self-hosted wordpress install) bit by bit to take full advantage of today’s web design capabilities.
Below you’ll find a survey of NEW RELEASES excerpted from my site, but I invite you to visit the original URLs for big image collages, full text, and experimental layout shit.
What’s also happened since last you heard from me, was that I got an experienced (and full price non-intern) working class therapist who pretty immediately said, all these problems you’re telling me about, baby that’s classic ADHD. Insert shocked react GIF of choice. Actually right before this what happened was I had a springtime pre-birthday astrology reading with Sparkles of Gold, where I was like yo I have natal 0° Venus in Leo and I’m kinda spooked about this long upcoming Venus in Leo transit and retrograde period. Sparkles aka Nikolas saw that plus a few other things going on and was like yeah, after this transit you’re gonna be a different person. Thereafter came the new therapist, the ADHD rx, the meds, the random post Venus rx excursion to a zen monastery and subsequent zazen practice, the therapy with mom, and wow wow wow wow wow goddddddddddduh. What can I say? That divinatory arts and spiritual practice, like indulging a penchant for fantasy scifi, are not to be ignored? Sure.
There’s lots more to say on the above, on what “moving at a failure’s pace” means, on what I’m planning for next, but let’s get on with today’s matter: the goods.
Cyborg Memoirs 2012-2019
when the image based internet overtook the text based one, and a new visual level of identity and experience based political discourse online seemed to take offfffffff
[image: a paperback book sits on top of a pile of laserjet drafts on a wood table. the book says cyborg memoirs 2012-2019, m. téllez, and shows a white mixed race person’s hand holding a pen. green almond shaped manicure matches the grip of the pen]
EXCERPT
This was a project I intended to bust out quick like an errand, something to encapsulate all these essays and rants and reposts from my tumblr, materialize them on paper before too much time passed and another internet archive vanished to censorship or bankruptcy or new owners trashing the place.
It took me like, months and maybe a couple years to get this thing from notes to a printed book. Looking thru one’s own archive and choosing what to print and in what order and tapestry takes time, I chronically forget this. And I knew I needed to give the collection context. And I work too much. And it just took time.
So putting this book together taught me to embrace work at a Saturnian pace. In a Saturn-ruled profection year—for my astro heads—I made myself plans. Set deadlines and produced things. Got into my planner shit. Got myself pharmaceutically juiced a few months ago and so I’m feeling capable, reflecting on what is and what was. I’m sitting. The run-away is reintegrating. Come together. We’re cyberpunk. Rising inflection?
Cyborg Memoirs has been my domain name since 2003, and before that was the title of maaaaaany mid and late 90s internet free-bandwidth diary sites. In all this time of making bags and zines and books and planners and stickers and all this shit, I don’t think I used the CM name for any of it. I don’t know why, I kept making new titles instead, making separate entities. I used literary pen names and legible monikers for “real life” projects. Maybe I was keeping that name safe in cyberspace. I mean, Cyborg Memoirs has always had my poetry and prose and fanfiction and smut and ranting on it, has always been a network and a node, MY CYBER SPACE. It’s where I’ve hosted my stories, long before and since becoming an awarded artist and published sci-fi author official—I started doing this shit in 1995!!!! I was a pre-teen. I’ve spoken about this before, right?
For those of us who started out on the 1990s internet, I think it’s important to chronicle our experiences of those times, as well as the ones that followed. Nostalgia, sure. But for me, it’s remembering what life felt like—————the orientation of the senses, what the machine interface design and flow was like, who were the other people there and why, how big and how small and ethereal and almost taboo it was to be “online”, and the promises vs the realities vs the academic accounts and state legislation and commerce that followed—————before the amazon web services driven spectacle of internet shopping slash social media conglomeration infoflood livestream genocide times of today. In those nascent years online, what were we physically going through.(i don’t trust words can express it all either)
Record scratch—This book is the first time I’ve ever physically printed anything under the name Cyborg Memoirs. I think now it’s time. It contains a handful of interviews and a whole lotta posts from an era of tumblr begun nearly a decade ago. As part of my Cyborg Memoirs Revival plan, it heralds the closing of a chapter and the beginning of a new one. Cross the threshold for the imperial calendar year 2024 and dissolve the primacy of a singular pen name for a network handle instead. Recount some of what was as we enter what is.
As usual, I did layout design and copyediting of my own work, asked a few homies for feedback throughout the process, and got the books printed at my faves, 48hrbooks.com out in Ohio.
Stickers for Cyborgs
new designs for 2024
[image: an open notebook serves up a bevvy of sticker designs by yours truly. the background is completely full of various other collected stickers]
EXCERPT
I don’t think I evvvvver posted this stuff here when I was first doing it, but somewhere in the mid-late 2010s I started getting vinyl stickers made to accompany the small array of other wares I took to zine fests and indie publishing fares and maker markets. Patches, pins, zines, and books, and the occasional shirt or tote bag. Being my Tumblr hey-day I promoted heavily there, on socials as @gear4cyborgs, and sold online as well. I was trying to “make stuff” under the now defunct DHD215 / Desire Hope Despair Heavy Industries moniker (what a mouthful), hoping I could get a regular something going (a side hustle is the term nowadays) with seasonal designs and visions of brand building, but I couldn’t get the means together and was really just doing too much.
In early 2023 I announced my Cyborg Memoirs Revival plan, an effort to revive and restructure the grown-disjointed facets of my online presence and artistic output. There was a lot to do. Update my website design and its outdated copy, rewrite artist statements & abouts (still going)/update CVs, rebuild my online shop to a new platform, plot out production schedules for the grip of items I was hoping to produce, get a whole new book edited and published, apply to a couple award/opportunities even tho the process sets off bad inflammation flareups (and I’m thisclose to requesting disability accommodations for these things)…
Anyway, here, my production efforts materialized in time to vend the Philly Zine Fest and Trans Art Mart, two events I hadn’t done in years but that people would routinely ask if I’d be at. I guess I mention this because since the pandemic lockdowns I feel like I isolated myself from the public eye in a way, and yet there are people all the time reminding me that they remember me and are even waiting to see what I’ve got going on next.
I initially thought I would scheme all this stuff into being and be able to promo it online back to back with vending IRL this past December, as if that’s all I do with my time and don’t also work a demanding full-time job, but the lessons and constrictions at this era of my life dictate that I do things little by little when I can and not when I think they should be done (i.e. I physically cannot handle burning myself out anymore, the recuperation grows longer and longer etc etc etc).
This is all to say, here’s some new and updated sticker designs, please enjoy.
DESIRE HOPE DESPAIR Tee Redux
a reissue of my ‘classic’ DHD design on heavyweight garment dye tee, sizes 5X ~ S
[image: a bedroom floor with the sun streaming, high contrast, in the sunbeam the white ink words DESIRE HOPE DESPAIR are highlighted, a black 5X tee laid out in full with other clothes strewn around it]
EXCERPT
Part of my 2023 Cyborg Memoirs Revival plan was to produce some new merch, as well as attempt a pre-order model to print tees (usually a much larger upfront cost than when producing printed objects).
I’d been sitting on drafts of designs and notes of fun stuff I’d like to make for too long, so I signed myself up to vend two December markets to put the pressure on. I reprinted a ton of old zines, got a new book to the printers, designed some sick new stickers, a set of bookmarks, and reissued a(n apparently) cult classic tee. Then I burnt myself out doing too much SAD BUT TRUE but hey.
Fans of my DESIRE HOPE DESPAIR era gear production have been asking me when I would do a re-release ever since I made the last one several years ago. Now that so much more time’s been swallowed in the pandemic timejump, people have been telling me their tees have become shredded or lost to lovers and so on. So. I really had to bring it back.
Bookmarks for Cyborgs
collect em all type jawn
[image: 4 different paper bookmarks sit on top of a wood table. the slogans are BEAR WITNESS, devotion, THRESHOLD, REMEMBER]
EXCERPT
I’d been wanting to design more bookmarks ever since I made some to accompany mine and Metropolarity’s previous books in 2021. This new set commemorates the release of my latest, featuring the slogans BEAR WITNESS / DEVOTION / THRESHOLD / REMEMBER. If you order a book from me, you’ll get one. And if you just LOVE bookmarks, You can also order a 4-pack by itself. =)
Wrapping up
ENORMOUS GRATITUDE to my paid subscribers here on substack and patrons at patreon ~ it’s thanks to your support that I was able to get all this stuff made and printed.
To my paid substack subscribers: if you’re interested in receiving stuff in the mail in exchange for your support, please consider switching your $$ to my Patreon. I’m not able to manage personalized contact with my paid subscribers here in the same way as over there. For instance, for the DHD release, I was able to message those who had spent a certain $$ amount supporting me and offer them a free tee back in December. I have to organize the paid tiers to reflect current operations, and will soon be mailing out additional goodies from my new releases, so… something to think about!
What’s next? I finally bought into podcast hosting, and I have a new episode of scifi smut, news n philosophizing thru sound collage coming together. I finally became a member at Philly Community Access Media and am plotting on improving my recording chops and putting together a regular show. God willing I will collaborate with some homies in the process, and be able to hone my skills in service to what’s needed (and not faltering down underexamined avenues of literary status and artistic success).
In the meantime, I’m just now peeping the WEALTH of tawdry 80s and 90s cinema on tubi, and have been watching b-grade post-apocalyptic movies from that era, now that we’re firmly in the far-flung future calendar times of these films. Climate collapse, fascist dictator states, total surveillance, cops that look and act like Israeli occupation forces, cybernetics, robots, nature mysticism, it’s all there.
But what are we to imagine for our futures today?
Thanks for reading. Holler back if you got the time. Take care of your eyes and your lymph. Move around. Talk soon.
@}-;——————
Monk
“Let me respectfully remind you, life and death are of supreme importance. Time quickly passes by and opportunity is lost. Each of us must strive to awaken. Awaken. Take heed, do not squander your life.”
[image: a pink bookmark sits inside an open book, Leah Lakshmi Piepzna-Samarasinha’s The Future is Disabled. the bookmark reads BEAR WITNESS]