The output of a creative amateur will always be more compelling than that of a passionless professional.
When people play around with tools and mediums they're new to, they make interesting mistakes and infect other genres with their concerns and obsessions. At the very least, they bring something new to the table, sometimes by accident and sometimes by design.

(Click each issue to see what's inside.)

Novel Amusements is a CD-ROMzine of videos, games, and digital toys. The first issue, packaged in a lunch bag, was subtitled "a digital lootbag". It was meant to be a refuge from the boring commercialism of the internet gurus and the boring pretentiousness of the video art scene, more defined by what it wasn't than what it was.

The second issue's a little more focused: with the theme "Teenaged Boys and Other Animals," each of the sixteen little items inside has a connection to either one or the other.

This one, despite very little promo and the inclusion of indefensibly bad (but anthropologically fascinating) clips by and of teenagers, got a review in Now and an interview on the CBC.

The third issue has another sixteen offerings, this time on the subject of "Dressin' Up and Steppin' Out!" With a theme like that, it's not strange that there's more music than the past issues, with vids accompanied by songs by Peaches, The Hidden Cameras and the Tijuana Bibles. It was zine of the month in Broken Pencil, and a story was written about it in the Toronto Star.

We don't really know where we're going with it. We're feeling our way down the hall, bumping into people.

And it's fun as hell.