Our web site is back up!!!! Http://EatTheState.org is back in business after a hiatus of several months caused by problems with our server. Many thanks to webmasters Peter Sutherland and Tom Vaughn for sticking with it, and also many thanks to all you other folks who volunteered to help before we realized that our problem wasn't people, but machines. The back issues are all up now, and the new ones will be posted regularly. Check it out!

FUNDRAISER ALERT! ETS! is throwing a winter holiday (solstice, Christmas, Hanukkah, or if you just celebrate dark, damp days) party! It's a chance for volunteers, friends, and readers of all stripes to get together, hang out, and complain about President Thurmond. There's also rumors of a raffle. Donations are appreciated, but not necessary. Mark your calendar: 7:30 PM, Wednesday, Dec. 20, at the Speakeasy Cafe, 2320 2nd Ave. in Belltown. We'll see ya there.

Speaking of marginally effective but fun fundraisers, our "Eat the WTO!" fundraiser issue (I wanted to call it "We Ate the WTO!," and have "burp" on the page headers...) looks and reads great! It's a chronicle and overview of the impact of what may very well turn out to be the most important single demonstration in U.S. history. It's still available at the University Bookstore, or for $3 by mail at P.O. Box 85541, Seattle WA 98145. It makes a great holiday stuffer! And it got us thinking...

One of the reasons we were pleased with the WTO issue is that it was 16 pages, and gave us the room to run photos, more graphics, more in-depth articles, and more articles, period. That's a chronic problem we have: too much material, not enough room. For this issue, we could easily have filled another eight pages with reports and photos from N30. For the WTO issue, we ran a smaller print run than normal (because we're selling it rather than distributing free of charge), but even for our normal print run it would only cost us about $400 a month more to have regular 16-page issues.

At present, we simply can't afford that; it's all we can do to scrape up the money each issue to print and mail the next one, and we've been operating on that shoestring mode for most of our 4-1/2 years. But all it would take is one or two major donors or advertisers to be able to bump us up to 16 page issues--or even alternating 8 and 16. (The other reason we scaled back to every other week last year, volunteer burnout, has been alleviated with the addition of Troy Skeels as co-editor and both Troy and Rick Giombetti as regular writers.) Does anyone out there have any ideas? Or any money?

Oh, and for his persistence in advocating compulsory voting--and his patience in putting up with our replies--we're sending Steven Hill of San Francisco a brand-new, shiny copy (read only by Troy) of Tom Tomorrow's hilarious "When Penguins Attack!" And if anyone else wants to donate "stuff"--books, tickets, merchandise, whatever--we'll be happy to run more contests with which to pay off you, our long-suffering readers! Send to the address above, call 206-903-9461, or e-mail ets@scn.org.