Phil and I were sitting in our favorite diner/hangout a few months ago, discussing the meaning of life, watching baseball on the television above the bar and chewing on a variety of salty snack treats, when on came a commercial for Leeza Gibbons' television show, Leeza (which we both watch with clockwork regularity). In the commercial Leeza, smiling brightly, stated the purpose of her show. "All we wanna do is make sense of what's going on," she said.

Phil turned to me and I turned to Phil. We were both struck dumb. It was one of those moments, rare in life, when inspiration strikes like a bolt of lightning (or a bad case of salty-snack induced indigestion). Without words, we both understood what we had to do. But Phil spoke anyway.

"Why don't we do that," he said. I simply smiled and nodded. Yes, I thought. Let's make sense of what's going on.

And that brings us to today. We are proud to introduce ducts to all of you. It's our small way of contributing sense (and nonsense) to the world.

That's a good question and we are glad you asked.

Another anecdote:

Phil and I were walking down 10th Avenue, discussing the meaning of life, gorging ourselves on ice-cream bars and trying to come up with a good and proper title for our new webzine.

I suggested, The People's Court, but Phil told me that it had already been taken.

Then Phil said, "The title should suggest that this is a way for people to connect to the world."

"Yes," I agreed. "And more than that. It should suggest that this is a way for Us (and I capitalized that word) to reach out to the people."

"It's about connections," Phil said.

"Connections that make sense of the world," I said, but then added, "Or nonsense."

Then, suddenly, my cookie dough vanilla ice cream bar fell off its' stick onto the sidewalk. I bent to pick it up, but stopped when I saw what was in front of me. Phil stopped as well. Again, we experienced another revelation. And this time we knew it had nothing to do with salty snacks.

A long, tubular duct ran up the side of a warehouse, took a sharp left turn, and then ran into an adjacent building, a nightclub. How absurd, we both thought. And what a wonderful metaphor for the strange, funny, sad, smelly, exciting, tragic and clever ways that human beings connect to one another.

"Yes, perfect," Phil said. Just then Phil's peanut butter/chocolate ice cream bar fell to the pavement.

We spent the next hour or so watching birds eat ice cream off the pavement and discussing what sort of material we would offer you (we discussed it, not the birds).

ducts will feature the very best art, fiction, humor, and criticism that all of our contributors have to offer. We hope it will feature the most beautiful, ugly, funny works of art and writing available anywhere. The more unusual, the more we like it.

The webzine will be divided into multiple "ducts" like humor, travel, art, film criticism and so on. But we do not really believe in categories and we hope our writers will often blur the line between one link and another. We want to be subversive, when it's called for. And versive when that is called for. If anything, the webzine is about point of view. It will be a diverse collection of opinions and ideas.

ducts will be a quarterly webzine. You are reading our first issue right now. It was posted September 1st, 1999. Our next update will be December 1st, 1999. We hope that you stick around to watch us grow into something that will bring intelligent insight, criticism and wackiness to the world.

So, finally, our vision has arrived. Thank you for joining us.

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