Tue. Mar 19th, 2024

Subversify is a PR4 magazine publishing news, commentary, humor, viral content, travel logs and reviews. The “Question Everything” concept allows writers from around the world to share their perspective free of censorship.

We are neither Right nor Left, nor “Centrist”, but are exploring the TRUE meaning of “progressive” values in an age where so much war propaganda is floating around the Internet. Our content features news, history, commentary, fiction, reviews, cynicism and just about anything else that disrupts brain waves or causes ripples in the smooth flowing media stream.

If you have an opinion, and know how to write it professionally and with a strong voice, it doesn’t matter if we agree with it – it needs to be heard. We prefer dangerous freedom of speech that doesn’t resort to violence or name-calling to prove a point. We don’t want peaceful slavery or passive corporatism. We want a challenge!

Editor-in-Chief and Publisher: Karla Fetrow
“Some great perversity of nature decided to give me a tune completely out of keeping with the general symphony; possibly from the moment of conception. I learned to read and speak almost simultaneously. The blurred and muffled world I heard through my first five years of random nerve loss deafness suddenly came alive with the clarity of how those words sounded on paper. I had been liberated for communications. I decided there was nothing more wonderful than writing. It was easier to write than carefully modulate my speech for correct pronunciation, and it was easier to read than patiently follow the movements of people’s lips to learn what they were saying. It was during that dawning time period, while I slowly made the connection that there weren’t that many other people who heard the way I did, halfway between sound and music, half in deafness, that I began to understand that the tune I was following wasn’t quite the same as that of my classmates. I was just a little different.

General education taught me not only was I just a little isolated from my classmates, my home was just a little isolated from the outside world. I was born in Alaska, making me part of one of the smallest, quietest minorities on earth. I decided I could live with this. What I couldn’t live with was discovering a few years later, in the opening up of the pipeline, which coincided with my first year of junior college, that there were entire communities of people; more than I could possibly imagine; living impossibly one on top of another in vast cities. It wasn’t even the magnitude of this vision that inspired me so much as the visitors who came from these populous regions and seemed to possess a knowledge so great and secretive I could never learn it in any book. I became at once, very conscious of how rural I was and how little I knew beyond the scope of my environment. I decided it was time to travel.

The rest is history; or at least, the content of my stories. I traveled… often to college campuses, dropping in and out of school until one fine day by chance I’d fashioned a bachelor of arts degree in psychology. I’ve worked a couple of newspapers, had a few poems and stories tossed around in various small presses, never receiving a great deal of money, which I’m assured is the norm for a writer. I spent ten years in Mexico, watching the peso crash. There is some obscure reason why I did this, tightening up my belt and facing hunger, but I believe at the time I said it was for love.

Here I am, back home, in my beloved Alaska. I’ve learned somewhat of a worldly viewpoint; at least I like to flatter myself that way. I’ve also learned my rural roots aren’t so bad after all. I work in a small, country store. Every day I greet the same group of local customers, but make no mistake. My store isn’t a scene out of Andy Griffith. The people who enter the establishment, which also includes showers, laundry and movie rentals, are miners, oil workers, truck drivers, construction engineers, dog sled racers and carpenters. Sometimes, on the liquor side, the conversations became adult only in vocabulary. It’s a good thing, on the opposite side of the store is a candy aisle filled with the most astonishing collection, it will keep a kid occupied with just wishing for hours. If you tell your kids they can have just one, you have an instant babysitter; better than television; as they agonize over their choice while you catch up on the gossip with your neighbor.

We also receive a lot of tourists, a lot of foreign visitors. They are usually amazed at this first sign of Alaskan rural lifestyle beyond the insulating hub of the Anchorage bowl. Many of them like to hang around and chat. They gawk at our thieves wanted posters. They laugh at our jokes and camaraderie with our customers. I’ve learned another lesson while working there. You don’t have to go out and find the world. If you wait long enough, it comes to you.”

Executive Producer: Grainne Rhuad

Grainne Rhuad gained a love of learning at a young age at her grandfather’s knee. It was he who taught her that all that could be known was out there for the taking. She has made it her life’s work ever since to know as much as possible. Her incurable inquisitiveness and her sometimes irritating ability to remember diverse and seemingly meaningless facts has served her well in her quest to bring learning and entertainment to people through her writing.

Grainne currently resides in Northern California, although her restless gypsy background takes her on many excursions. It was here that she settled long enough to complete her B.A. In Psychology and spend 8 years working in the Social Work field with Children, Adolescents and Families.

Grainne is wife, mother and sister. Her madly passionate redheaded genes lend themselves to argument but should always be taken in the best of spirits. She sees argument mainly as a sport which needs constant conditioning. She also prides herself in being oxymoronic in all things. She highly suggests that every reader fact check everything for themselves as she sees herself as a storyteller, a bard, and a suggestor of themes more than a historian. Her main purpose is to cause feelings in the reader which may or may not be comfortable, but which should make them think on either a cognitive or subliminal level. She would say, “If you feel, my work is successful. If you respond…well that is the highest of compliments.”

Brand Manager: Nick Upperman

Nick Upperman lives in Arlington, Texas and specializes in various business functions for Subversify.com. He is a firm believer in the freedom of speech, social responsibility, and ethical awareness. In addition to advocating the importance of community service and helping others, he has spent a number of years volunteering for non-profit organizations that benefit local communities. Nick also advocates environmental responsibility and vegetarianism along with health and fitness.

Contributors

Late Mitchell Warren

Bill the Butcher

Renee Garcia Brown

Roy Erickson, Jr.

Anthony “Neonorth” Thomas

Jane Stillwater

Jennifer Lawson Perez

Alexandra Pratt

Irish Mike

The David

Astra Navigo

Eddie Santo-Prieto

7 thoughts on “About”
  1. Hi gang! Excellent blog, as far as I can tell so far. Look at all the clear-thinking Alaskans on the boat! Gotta love it! I was in Anchorage from… oh, 89-93 give or take a little. I was a bassist/singer in a band (Dakota Country) that had a sit-down gig at Anchorage’s Sawmill Club, and later I moved to the Buckaroo in Spenard, and also to a place downtown where be played “atop” the bar? Can’t rem the name of that joint. Plus, I met some excellent friends in Alaska that just refused to let me “camp in Anchorage”. So, I had to learn telemark skiing and hiking and biking and survival skills… and about everything there is to know about salmon, moose, bears, and dredging for gold. I had a wonderful time… both playing music during a time when north shore oil money was hopping… and in learning about a few of the many wonders of Alaska.

    Anyhoo, I’m a pseudo-Christian anti-capitalism activist, and country music singer/picker. Howdy to all… hope we get to do some good work together. Take care. I think my former bandmate Murel Kidd is still hanging around Palmer or Talkeetna somewhere. If anyone knows/sees him, push a fingerful of DeKuyper’s peach schnapps into his left nostril and say “Wingnut says HI!”. 🙂

    Larry “Wingnut” Wendlandt
    MaStars – Mothers Against Stuff That Ain’t Right
    (anti-capitalism-ists)
    Bessemer MI USA

  2. Hello Larry, and welcome. Since you’ve been to Alaska, you know how we Alaskans are. If someone says, “hey, this boat looks sea worthy”, than everyone has to climb on board. We’re on a mission right now to put together a radio podcast, and we’re looking for some promising musicians to help fill the bandwidth. If you think you or some of your friends might be interested, don’t hesitate to contact us. In the meantime, i’ll keep my eyes and ears open for Maurel Kidd. Palmer’s a stone’s throw from the door and we’re looking at a return trip to Talkeetna in the near future.

  3. Hi Karlsie and others… thanks for the welcome. Is there a blog area that talks specifically about the podcast? I’ve been pickin’ and singin’ for about 30 years now… but mostly ‘live’, and very little, if any, recording. When you’re a proper disgusting road musician, your road pack consists of a pick and a prophylactic, and not much of a home life is ever established. I’ve never married, have no kids, and no recording equipment. In fact, the music “industry” has pretty much pissed me off. Club owners are angry too, and they lean on music acts to make or break their clubs, no matter what advertising the club has done. You (as a band/act) are supposed to “draw” the crowd, and hell, most of us road pickers are more concerned about how we’re going to get the new waterpump for the car we’ve worn out hauling amps and lights to God-awful towns and clubs. The business of music… is just as grinding as most other enslavements… and its turned-off many of us good-time-loving pickers (and part-time drunks/stoners).

    Aside from the difficulty of finding some cheap recording equipment… what about (copy)rights? Will you be doing all-originals, or will you allow covers? And what’s the “fair use” laws say about doing covers? And what is the purpose of the pod casting? Money? Messages? Will money be involved at all?

    Last I heard… when a copyrighted media is republished for the purpose of analysis and scrutiny (publicly nitpicking it to death)… the “fair use” situation holds-up in court pretty well (artists/publishers can’t sue and win). So, we/you COULD… analyze the song before/after performing/airing. Originals? I have maybe 10, and maybe only 6 worth performing to anyone but the moose.

    I won’t rule out performing on the podcast… but… its really not something that fits my style. I’d rather do campfires. Got some of those around? And yes, I will definitely ask around to see if I can find others that might want to perform or have their stuff pod-casted. I have one chap in mind right now… and I’ll pass it on to him… a good local picker and singer.

    I liked Alaska a bunch, and after I take care of some aging local kin, I’ll probably try to get back there. But I said the same about getting back to visit Korea… another place I loved… and I still haven’t returned after 20 years. Money blockades. Affording. But, I suspect a guitar and a thumb will get a person up the Al-Can… under desperate circumstances. 🙂

    Yeah, I’m watching and drooling over the desktop hard-drive recording decks seen these days. You? Pretty nice stuff… some of it. I have a rack-mount Alesis S4 synth here with midi controller/keyboard on it, and I program cakewalk midi’s too, so, hmmm. The S4 band-in-a-box is here and ready… but I don’t have anything for multi-track recording. And a whole bunch of my time is spent writing javascript. I’m making a multimedia chat client… a Firefox add-on… been at it 9 years now. (erf) Its actually the love of my life these days… and almost done. Some screenshots here… http://webpages.charter.net/wingthing/html/test/xoozilla/ . It lets any person become a media-j… allows CSS chat and media sharing amongst all chatters in a room, so its quite related to pod-casting, I suspect. Its the world’s best totally-free chat client… BY FAR… and has been claimed as so loudly… but nobody seems to care. If it hasn’t got a corporate name on it, it can’t be any good. Sad state of affairs.

    Do any of these “lets fix the planet” activists ’round these parts… have chronic depression? I know I do. It keeps me from getting very enthusiastic over ANYTHING, these days. But, I’m 52 years old, too. And I’ve enjoyed pipe tobacco and other pipe substances for… oh… all my life. Maybe I’m just fried-out, eh? Maybe I haven’t been allowed to use my Alaskan-gotten cool telemark skis near enough, in recent years. I just don’t have the energy and enthusiasm anymore, it seems.

    Ya think I’ve talked about me me me me me enough yet? Sheesh, Larry! How pathetic, huh? There’s probably a better blog area for general blabbing like this. Point the way, as wanted.

    If ya wanna talk music, better keep it OLD CLASSIC COUNTRY or 70’s radio rock, or else I won’t understand. My favorite stuff is swing, though… and esp Texas swing… like Asleep At The Wheel and Bob Wills and similar. I also love 70/80’s classic rock… Radar Love, My Sharona, BTO, Doobies, Steve Miller… era. Love playing that style too, but never had much chance… as I got stuck in countryville somehow. 🙂

    Am I talking about me again? Holy crap! SOMEONE, ANYONE… TALK ABOUT YOU! HURRY! 🙂

  4. Wingnut, i really feel you ought to join our forum as that is where we discuss topics and themes for the mag, bat around ideas, exchange information, offer suggestions, place submissions and generally get to know each other. There, you can meet the other staff members and talk to our radio podcasting group. You can locate the forum by scrolling down the right side until you reach the box showing the girl with the censor tape over her eyes. Click on it, and you’ll be transferred to our forum. We’d like very much to chat with you about all the wonderful things you brought up.

  5. @Wingnut, so glad to see you here. The olde school traveling troubadour has seen a distinct culling hasn’t it. I wouldn’t worry too much though the music industry is pissing everyone off. I am thinking a return to the olde ways is the next best thing. In fact I have been keeping watch of just how many musicians from many genres have been checking out from the industry.

    Old Country is amoungst my favorite, nothing coming out of Nashville today compares, it all sounds like Pop to me. Come and join the gang at the proboards. We would love some musical infusion and stories from the road.

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