Has this ever happened to you?

Has this ever happened to you?

You’re sitting down to collage the $2 stamp collection you thrifted and OH NO turns out it’s mostly 20th century German stamps including lots and lots of YOU-KNOW-WHO??? But you still want to make art with it so you need to invent an alternate reality where QUEEN ELIZABETH II (who isn’t great either, but options are limited) has to team up with a small dragon and a masked sharpshooter to blast you-know-who out of what might be Manhattan so nobody gets the wrong idea? But you still really don't want anyone to get the wrong idea, so you name the whole thing Stamp of Disapproval and put a big thumbs-down on the cover so it's crystal clear that you super duper DO NOT APPROVE of you-know-who?

But you also don't want people to think that you're pro British monarchy or pro colonialism or anything so on the back cover you have a little girl pointing to the queen and asking her dad "Hey nut sack, are you and the tramp done with secret time yet?!" so that there's a little something for the monarchy haters? And while you would never imply that this specific queen is anything like you-know-who, if the question is "do the British royals have blood on their hands" the answer is "OH BOY DO THEY EVER" so it feels appropriate that the stamp of disapproval is more about, like, the abuse and corruption of powerful heads of state more generally?

But at this point the zine is only half done and OH BOY is it past midnight already or what!? And you still need two more page spreads but also you are really ready to be done with worrying about you-know-who and you REALLY don't want people to get the wrong idea so you figure it's safer if this page just has, you know, no ideas at all? So it's just all bright colours and non-historical figures doing not much of anything, except for the one german stamp that is a guy in a hard hat about to get hit on the head with a brick for some reason?

And then the last page is some guys on horses and one of them has a sword and you don't approve of swords but at least it's not a gun and he isn't actively hurting anyone so you just replace his head by pasting an Italian 40 lire stamp with a painting of some random guy because replacing heads with random stuff is required at least once a year to maintain good standing with the guild of collage artists? But then later you google "40 lire Italian stamp" and the first result is somebody selling the stamp for $10 on eBay and the second result is all like "hey idiot that's the prophet Daniel from Michelangelo's frescoes on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel" and then you're like uh oh this is either gonna make me look really smart or really dumb with the art history crowd and so you ask google "hey did Daniel do bad stuff in the bible?" and google is all like "unlike many prominent biblical figures, Daniel is NOT recorded as doing ANYTHING bad or sinful in the Bible" and the good news is it's a hilarious sentence but the bad news is this is gonna make you look SO DUMB with the art history crowd! Like maybe if they aren't paying attention they'll be like "lol that's a Michelangelo" but maybe they WILL be paying attention and will be confused why some dude known for integrity, humility, and totally knowing what your dream was about is in the same zine as YOU-KNOW-WHO and is carrying a sword? Like maybe I disapprove a little that Daniel had god tell the lions they couldn't eat him EVEN THOUGH they were probably HUNGRY because Babylonian kings are not known for a progressive stance on animal welfare, and what kind of SICK JOKE is throwing somebody in the lions' den if they aren't allowed to eat them? But that feels like a stretch.

And it's late but it's finally time to make the fold-out spread and this is for real your last chance to make sure that NOBODY GETS THE WRONG IDEA so you paste in a quote from Calvin and Hobbes that's like "Oh what an awful thing I did! How I regret it now! I hereby resolve to change my evil ways! Oh remorse, remorse!" and you're hoping that it reinforces the vibe of "DON'T TRY EXPANSIONISM AT HOME KIDS!" But you don't want it to be said by you-know-who or the queen or anything because you're pretty sure they never apologized for SHIT and you DEFINITELY don't want it to be interpreted as a redemption arc or anything. So you paste in another dude from a random Italian stamp and call it a day but you don't realize at the time that not only is it ANOTHER MICHELANGELO and now the art history crowd is really gonna get you, but LO AND BEHOLD the purple 15 lire Michelangelo stamp is depicting THE PROPHET JOEL who you are totally named after and has literally never come up in your whole life because Joel is the shortest and most boring book of the bible and also according to google it is unpopular due to its "grim imagery, lack of historical context, extreme brevity, and theological ambiguity" and even though it would apparently only take 5 to 7 minutes to read, even a neo-Luddite like you is like "you know how many short form videos that is? swipe left!" But SOMEBODY must have read it and surely that's the kind of thing that top tier art history nerds would know about so maybe now when mid-tier art history nerds read my zine and text their friends "lololol can you believe this idiot put the prophet Daniel on a horse with a sword along with the queen of England and you-know-who?" the king nerd of the art history guild will be like "UM ACTUALLY if you read the centre fold you'll find an apology from the prophet Joel which is OBVIOUSLY a meta-commentary disapproving of the commodification of an artistic masterwork and SUBTEXTUALLY commenting on the death of the author because the author is BRILLIANTLY making his own namesake denounce his work, as only a TRUE art critic would understand" and now you are SO BACK WITH THE ART HISTORY CROWD and can FINALLY GO TO SLEEP.

Has this every happened to you?