http://tucsoncitizen.com/view-from-baja-arizona/2010/08/10/the-frumious-bandersnatch-lives-on/
by Hugh Holub
Aug. 10, 2010
Those who attended the University Arizona between 1965 and around
1970 may remember a yellow satirical rag called the Frumious Bandersnatch.
One of America's first "underground newspaper, the Frumious
Bandersnatch showed up every other Wednesday poking fun at campus
authorities and the government.
At one point the FBI, as part of their COINTELPRO investigation which
was aimed at destroying underground newspapers around the country
such as the Village Voice and the LA Free Press, attacked the
Bandersnatch. The FBI sent agents around to Bandersnatch advertisers
encouraging them to quit financially supporting the yellow paper.
Didn't work. Advertisers responded by doubling the size of their ads.
Said a lot about government wasting their money harassing a bunch of
college kids with a twisted sense of humor. Not much has changed in 45 years.
The University of Arizona booted the paper off campus, claiming it
was littering the campus. A federal judge disagreed and enjoined the
University from banning the paper, even if it was trash.
There are three known complete collections of all print editions of
the paper…the FBI has one, I have one, and the Special Collections
Library at the University of Arizona has one.
The Bandersnatch went on-line in late 1996, becoming one of the first
Internet satirical newspapers. The Frumious B is one of the founders
of the Internet Satirical Newspaper Association.
If you Google "satirical newspaper" the Bandersnatch manages to stay
right up there at the top with the Onion, for reasons only Google
can understand.
At first, when the Bandersnatch went electronic, it was aimed solely
at a Tucson audience. But when the paper started getting email and
death threats from all over the world, it dawned on everyone…"that's
why they call it the world wide web". The Bandersnatch morphed into a
national and international paper, with a Tucson edition.
Much to the dismay of Tucson tourist promoters, the Tucson edition
tags Tucson as "the place where they hunt scorpions with blacklights in homes".
The Bandersnatch had another battle with the government when we were
banned by libraries all over the country under a federal internet
censorship law…we were automatically filtered because "bandersnatch"
is obviously an obscene word to some. When it was finally figured out
the name comes from Lewis Carroll's "Alice in Wonderland" poem
Jabberwocky, the feds had egg on their face.
The Bandersnatch also hosts the General Delivery University,
the Free Baja Arizona movement and the Squirrely Advisor, a parody
of advice and how-to columns. The Squirrely Advisor has been compiled
into the book Get In Touch With Your Inner Rodent and feature such
useless advice as How to Live Alone, How to Live on a Tight Budget,
and Little League Lessons of Life.
The Bandersnatch has a set of policies and reprint rights unlike
most publications. We deny all liability and have no assets, and one
can reprint stuff from the Bandersnatch provided the paper gets
credit and a link.
Currently the paper has readers in 202 countries. Didn't even know
there were that many countries. The map is interesting because the
only places the paper doesn't have viewers are places like the Sudan,
one of those little "stan" countries that broke off when the Soviet
Union collapsed, and of course North Korea.
Over the years the Bandersnatch has had many guest writers, most of
whom cling vigorously to their anonymity.
Some of the articles published in the Bandersnatch have become Web
Classics, copied onto other people's web sites (mostly in violation
of copyright law) and forwarded around and about. One of the most
famous Bandersnatch pieces is a Modern Noah's Ark and 10 Water Laws
of the West.
When the Bandersnatch went on line, it was one of the first formerly
print publications to recognize that it was a lot cheaper to let
people print the paper with their own ink and paper if they wanted a
hard copy. It also made distribution a lot easier since one didn't
have to haul a load of print papers around in a truck. The ability to
use color without extra cost was also cool. And you could fix typos
in an instant and no one knew the difference.
One its more dubious distinctions is having pioneered and failed at
every option for generating revenue from its web site. It lives
mostly off donations.
The Frumious Bandersnatch publishes more or less monthly, unless
events dictate otherwise.
The Bandersnatch has generated 3 books for sale on Amazon.com:
Get in Touch With Your Inner Rodent
Deer Seen as a Terrorist Threat…the best of the Bandersnatch
General Delivery University Catalog
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Note: Hugh Holub is the founder and the editor/publisher of the
Frumious Bandersnatch.
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