Editrice Note: Grim? Toucan't Be Serious!

This is unlucky Issue 13, after all, and it’s going to be a dark, bitter, Editrice Note, because currently life seems dark and bitter and without redemption. Or sleep. Yes, sleep would be nice. Also the time to put one’s feet up on the couch. Well, if we had feet. Because we don’t have feet anymore. You want to know why? Because of the escalator.

We are not making this up, we have an essay about deadly escalators in this issue. We have a poem about YouTube. And one about break-dancing, which was presumably written before the breaker, (pardon us, we know the lingo now) got on the escalator.

Do you want to know what’s really going on with us, why we haven’t been our usual, cheery, punctual self? It’s really not the loss of our feet. We’re trying to put our lives together, getting real jobs, pretending we can exist in the nonfictional world, all the while shelving books and writing, or not writing. And we don’t really have time between all this, to do much of anything. Not even figure out why our hair looks like it—

“Oh, just admit it, Liz,” Laura screams from the escalator, where her long mane is currently entangled, in sort of a reverse Rapunzel. “You don’t want to do this Editrice Note, anyway. You don’t want to do this issue. You want to pour yourself a whiskey and Coke and watch Dead Poets Society for the 17th time. But I’m onto you, you little faker. I’m onto you.”

“Really? ‘Cause it seems like all you want to do is to play Beatles Rockband and watch Doctor Who and knit argyle bikinis.”

“So what? At least I’m making stuff. YOU don’t appear to making much of anything. Not even an effort. What is with you? Ever since you found that hussy of yours…”

"HEY NOW, HEY NOW..."

What is the most important thing in life, Toucan fans? Is it sanity, or is it love, or is it responsibility? Because honestly, we don’t know any more. Is it learning not to complain? Is it learning how to deal with feelings of failure and emptiness, even if perhaps they have very little basis in reality?

We would put submission info here, like we always do, but frankly we might not get to you for a while. We would tell you when these issues would expect to appear in stores, or God forbid, be sent out, but all of those would be fanciful, optimistic lies, and we love you too much to do that to you. That’s why we hurt you so much. Yeah, we’re twisted like that, but at least we’re honest about it.

Sorry we can’t make it to being funny this time. Give us a few months, and maybe we’ll get the old wit back in our pen. For now, our noses are to the grindstone, and our feet jammed firmly in the escalator—the escalator of life.

Liz and Laura, the harried Toucan Editrices