I had just started High School, Olympia High School to be exact. I heard about a 'zine that was originaly based in Olympia and done by Olympia High School students and ex-students, yup you guessed it, Oblivion. So of course I was interested, I mean who...after 8 years of school WOULDN'T be interested in trying to stop the fascism and dictatorship that school is? Ok so their are lots of people but I wasn't about to be one of them.

Well so through powerful sources and voodoo magic I came to be aquainted with several people who had been involved in the events that took place some two years ago. Namely, a group of students bashing the school in a 'zine they made and handing it out without asking permision, therefore breaking the school policy (R0CK!). Well of course being only students with about as much power as a serf compared to a king, they were punished. I learned as much as I could and read all the past issues online and became more and more interested.

So I got this crazy idea about sort of resurecting Oblivion, well Oblivion never actually died, it just turned it's attention elsewhere and gave up on OHS (Olympia High School). I felt that it really had a right to be distributed in high school. High school students are the ones that we're trying to educate, because adults don't seem to be able to change from how they were brought up so we had to get the message to the youth so when they grow up and become the politicians and lawyers and business men they can change things.

So over time, I bothered enough people, gathered enough info, and waited...waited for the next issue to be printed. Well that day finally did arrive, it was Friday April 17, 1998. The day before I had stopped Mr. DICK Allen in the hall and told him about how I wanted to meet with him and discuss getting a certain publication authorized for distribution at OHS and he told me to talk to his secretary. So on Friday I made an appointment for Tuesday of the next week. I anxiously awaited next week, hoping for the best, I was pretty certain we would be able to get Oblivion authorized, just one thing loomed in front of me, profanity, the school hates it, and Oblivion has it. Well Saturday Mnemo dropped off 15 copies of the recently printed Oblivion and I was psyched. I'm thinking "Wow this is gonna work, hopefully DICK (The Principle/dictator) doesn't notice this letter talking about how principles suck."

Well the next day I showed the 'zine to a couple of friends, they loved it, and later that night my mom read through it and she thought it was really cool. On monday I dropped a copy of Oblivion off at DICK's secretary's desk and told her to give it to him as soon as possible. Later that day Mrs. McMonkey (anonymity stuff) read Oblivion, she also thought it was really cool. She thought that it was great that us kids were actually taking the time to do all this stuff and stand up for what we believed in. So I was totaly even more pumped about the meeting the next day. "Everybody who had read it so far loved it, so why couldn't the principle maybe just love it too?"

Well Tuesday rolled around and second period Eggnog and myself went up to DICK's office, well actually he wasn't there so we talked to his secretary, and she got on her little walkie-talkie (of which I'm sure she's VERY proud) and started saying weird codes and other garble, stuff like "5 to 1, this is base, blah blah blah, Didrik Wold is here to see you, blah blah blah" So finaly DICK showed up and we took a seat in his office and started to discuss Oblivion. The first thing he said was something like, "I didn't read through the whole thing but in what I did read I found some 'shits' and 'bastards' and such, and we have a policy about profanity..." Well we tried to explain that there are only a few profane words in Oblivion, nope "A policy is a policy". But those articles are submitted by people, and to censor them would be wrong, nope "Any publication that we authorize here at OHS has to live up to the same standards as our school paper, and one of those is NO profanity". What if we put a warning on it, telling people that there is profanity in it? "I told you, no profanity, we can not allow you to distribute things with profanity in it at school, some kid takes a copy home and shows it to his parents and then I start getting phone calls asking why I'm allowing this. Other companies have also asked to be able to advertise at OHS" yeah but Oblivion is free, we're a non-profit organization, "It doesn't matter, no profanity." well what if we were to make a censored copy to distribute at school? "maybe, I'd have to take another look at it, thanks for seeing things from my viewpoint" no problem (*thinking*: Fucker) well if we do decide to make a censored copy we'll come back and let you take a peek at it, thanks for you time, bye.

Well so we were rejected because Oblivion has a few objectionable words in it...figures. Well we weren't about to censor Oblivion, though we thought about it. All I can say is that DICK is making a dumb choice even though he pretty much has to make the choice...we would have to take it to his superiors to get passed that profanity thing, that's district policy. Well I tried it the "right" way and that didn't work, but we continued giving issues to people who asked for them.

Toward the end of the school year Mnemo and myself organized a distribution thing. After school on the last day we were going to pass out as many copies of Oblivion as we could pay to print. The day came around and we only had about 50 copies but damn if that was gonna stop us. So eggnog, pergatory and myself (Mnemo couldn't make it) passed out Oblivions to people we knew and people we didn't, some even got special greetings from eggnog such as "merry christmas" or "happy hanukkah". It wasn't the biggest most splending distribution of Oblivion but at least we got some copies out there. Even though we didn't get Oblivion authorized and even though we weren't able to distribute that many copies I still feel as if I've acomplished something. If nothing else I at least got the 200pts in my Health class for doing a "very original 'make something happen' project"