PJ O’Rourke tells a story about when he first moved into New York. A local said to him “Don’t believe it when people say heroin’s bad for you – just look at all the 90-pound junkies carrying air conditioners and stereo units down fire escapes. It can’t do too much damage!”

As you sit in your favourite café or Laundromat, or in the bog at work reading this month’s Tribune and wondering why it’s been so long between prints, have a good hard think about nicotine.

Yeah, yeah, we know, cancer, heart disease, blah blah frikkin blah, WE KNOW!! But let me tell you, when you need to get 3 articles each, a website update, a magazine layout and a full proofread done in a single weekend, there is nothing like a good long burst of nicotine to get the brain cells firing and focused.

Before all the anti smoking nazis start mooing at us and laying landmines around our house again, SHUT UP, we quit a month ago.

Yes, ashamed as I am to admit it after my two article rant in Defence of Smoking, we finally gave in and gave up. If you want to know how bad things got after that have a look at page 4. Sympathy cards can be sent to Justin care of the bar (King of Tonga).

So anyway, not smoking appears to have become a full time occupation for both of us and suddenly, oops, it’s time to get the Tribune out and the worst part of not smoking hit us like yet another brick in the head – we can’t write when we don’t smoke.

Fuck.

That’s going to make it a little difficult to publish an edgy new inner city magazine.

However, with much swearing and breaking things, and the help of a couple of truckloads of jelly beans, we’ve finally managed to pull together the Pet Issue.

For those of you avidly awaiting the Special Collectors edition for the King of Tonga regulars, sorry you’ll have to wait a little longer – either until we start smoking again or learn to write properly without it.

Note to the regular readers: you may notice unusual absence of our beloved Luke T. The only other time he’s failed to get an article to us was when he went missing in action during last year’s Spring Carnival, so we just wanted to reassure everyone that Luke is absolutely fine and not at the bottom of a barrel somewhere. After what would have to be the second best wedding I have ever been to, Luke and his beautiful new wife have buggered off to China for a few weeks. As far as we know they are having a ball, discovering terrorist alarm buttons cunningly disguised as the flush button on the toilet in Beijing and failing to get arrested in Tiananmen Square. Hooray for them!

You may also have noticed that for the first time ever, our genius-cartoonist-in-residence Brad didn’t do the front cover artwork. Again, let us reassure you. Brad has not drowned in a sea of blondes, nor has he given up smoking and been rendered incapable of drawing recognisable stick figures. He’s just having a holiday this month and letting one of the Young Turks take a peek at the view from the top. Fear not though, regular readers, Brad will be back and brilliant as ever for the next issue.

Speaking of Young Turks, check out page 13. I thought Fred was going to be easily our youngest writer, but no, there you go, I was wrong (that’s twice now!!) 12 year old Luke BdB sent us an article about his dog. We’re not about to become a kid’s magazine, but Luke and Fred write better than most engineers I know, so we can spare a page to give them some exposure and encouragement. Well done guys!

Speaking also of the next issue (go back a para or two) we’ve decided to move into the new millennium and do the Digital Age issue. Technomologlogy folks. What it’s good for, what it’s no good for and what do we use it for anyway. Find out in the May issue, in which we will also be celebrating our 1st birthday. Hooray and drinks for us!

Love to those of you who will send me cigarettes through the mail, and battleaxes to everyone else,

J&J Shaw

+ 1

+ 1