Folks, this is one final reminder that our closing date for all small-business ads in Issue 03 is this Friday, June 12th. We’re currently up to 18 advertisers – looking for a full 24 so that we can fill up 2 pages. The people who’ve responded so far have been amazing; we have a dollmaker, a gal who makes monster masks, a crafter of Victorian-inspired leather spats, a clothing collection inspired by Edgar Allen Poe, a lowbrow art gallery, and many more.

For those of you hearing about this opportunity for the first time, check out last week’s post about our Small Business Advertising Program. We must receive your ad by Friday if you want to participate. If interested, please email us ASAP. Thank you!

Many of you have asked if Coilhouse Magazine would ever open up its doors to small, independent advertisers. Up until this point, we’ve only been able to offer full-page ads to larger companies like Fluevog and Dr. Martens, and very successful indie outfits such as Plastik Wrap and Wildilocks, making it difficult for smaller advertisers (Etsy sellers, comic publishers, music labels, etc.) to reach our audience.

We heard your requests, and we’re excited to present a new way for small businesses to advertise in Coilhouse: a stylish, NotCot-inspired format, similar to what you see above (see it in high-res PDF here). The idea is simple: each advertiser gets one photo, one title, one URL, and a couple of lines of description text. You don’t need to have any graphic design skills, and your business will be presented attractively within our pages.

Print advertising can get pretty expensive. A one-time, full-page ad in Nylon cost $21,638 in 2008. A similar page in Inked will cost you $14,323. Although a full page in Coilhouse is very affordable by comparison (at $1,500), it’s still outside the reach of many smaller businesses, who are oftentimes the most relevant to our audience. It is for you guys that we created this new format, which runs $99-149 per issue, per spot.

We’re offering this new format as of Issue 03, and the closing date for accepting ads is Friday, June 12th. If you’re interested, please drop us a line. Ads will be accepted on a first-come, first-serve basis, and spots are limited.

After the jump, a FAQ regarding this new format.

…aaaaand, that’s it. They’re gone, folks. Issue 02 is no longer available for sale on this site. Many thanks to everybody who bought an issue at the last minute.

For those of you who just missed it, our friend Cassandra at Wildilocks in Australia is selling 6 copies of Issue 02 and 6 copies of the coveted, limited-edition Issue 01! Cass originally bought these from us at retail price when they came out, pretty much just to support us. Thank you, Cass!

Help us clear room for Issue 03! Out of 1,000 copies of Issue 02 that we had up for sale, there are only 30 left. These will be on sale for another week (or less, if they sell out faster), and then Issue 02 will officially be sold out forever. Many of you have asked if we’re ever going to reprint our issues. We don’t really have an answer to that, except to say that if it does happen, it probably won’t be for another few years, if ever. So get it now, before it’s gone! Click here to buy Coilhouse Issue 02. Thank you for everyone’s support thusfar.

UPDATE: THEY’RE GONE! Woo hoo. Thank you, everyone.

Yesterday, we published a sneak peek from our exclusive interview with Ross Rosenberg, one of the most mysterious bloggers on the web. The wait is finally over, and we’re publishing the full interview below. Sadly, the interview had to be cut short because the smell coming from beneath the floorboards at Ross’ apartment got to be too much for us to handle. At least now we know why he wears that creepy respirator all the time. Without further ado!

Who’s a pretty, pretty princess? Ross, are you a pretty, pretty princess?
What I do on the first Friday of the month is my business alone, thank you very much.

Boxers or briefs?
Boxer briefs. My delicate yet horrifically disproportioned scrotum requires the support of briefs without the horrid, mankini effect that they bring to the occasion.

Chocolate or peanut butter?
I’m glad you asked this question. There was a time, before 1928, when the Flavours were kept separate, as it had been for centuries, and rightly so. It was only with the invention of Harry Burnett Reese’s devilish Cup that segregation was overturned, leading to the current climate of Hedonism, Lawlessness, Toucherism, and Moral Decay. Indeed, it is with such fervent vigor; such unscrupulous ferocity that the Leftist Elite push the Liberal Chocolate/Peanut Butter Agenda that we have entire generations of young people, their minds innocent and unfettered by the horrors of this world, these young people have had their virgin minds viciously raped by the idea that the mixing of Flavours is okay and, indeed, natural; and when I say that I mean it. The Leftists are raping our young people with giant, Chocolate and Peanut Butter cocks and we are allowing it. It’s being taught in our schools and sold in plain sight in every supermarket and bodega and we are allowing it into our homes. We are inviting these filthy Leftists to rape our children with their candy cocks; spreading the delicate, pillowy folds of their frontal lobes with our own ignorance, and it has to end!

Also, chocolate.

Sushi or tacos?
This question is rendered moot by the fact that sushi is merely a Japanese taco. Look it up.

Later this week on Coilhouse, we’ll be posting a Very Special Interview with one of our all-time favorite bloggers: Ross Rosenberg of ECTOPLASMOSIS! fame. If you’re unfamiliar with this man’s writing, proceed to ECTOMO immediately and read EVERYTHING that Ross – along with his wily co-editors – has posted there. We promise you, nothing will ever be the same. Ever. Again. For the abyss gazes also into you.

Here are some topics that Ross enjoys writing about:

• Moustache Monday: True Love
• Rockin’ The Dog Sack
• Do You Know Your Children Are Smoking Smarties?
• Great Moments In Masochism: The Petaminx
• Department Store Fossils
  
• The Art (And Craft) Of The Vulva
• The Inventiveness Of Failure
• Robot, Made Up

Ross’s keen command of the English language, coupled with his mystifying ability to flush esoterica out of the grimiest and most cryptic corners of the web, has landed him in our RSS readers from day one. How does he do it? The full interview is still to come, but for now, the exalted 23rd level Chaotic Neutral Blogmaster is ready to divulge his secrets for success to future generations:

What advice would you give to aspiring bloggers?

1)     Respect: When starting out it’s hard to get noticed. Just like in prison, it pays to find the biggest, baddest motherfucker in the room and go at them full steam. Nothing gets attention like pointing out Perez Hilton’s grammar mistakes or a long opinion piece on how you could take Xeni Jardin in a knife fight.

2)     Choose your words carefully: Polysyllabic words are for pussies and Fascists. Keep it short, sweet, and guttural. Also, using the British spelling of any word will ensure that you’ll never get anywhere and people will make fun of you behind your back.

3)     Lists, lists, lists: Everything you write should be in the form of a list, whether it be the top ten things you smelled on Thursday or the top five tips for aspiring bloggers.

4)    Just because your paranoid doesn’t mean they’re not out to get you: Blogging is a dog-eat-dog business (see #1), consequently everyone is a potential threat, so do your best to take care of them early whether it be character assassination or just giving really bad advice.

5)     Blockquote: This is a big one. Why write something when someone else has written it for you? Just blockquote a big old chunk of text and add a one line introduction followed by a one or two line opinion at the end.  Even better, ask your readers to comment and give you even more content! “Warren Ellis wrote an interesting article about ferret juicing today:” Blockquote everything but the last paragraph. “It all sounds good, but I’m not sure everyone has access to a cider press. What do you use to juice your ferrets?”

Bonus:  Boobs: Seriously, no matter what the subject matter is, stick some tits in there. Everybody loves tits.

Stay tuned for the next installment of Rosenberg Knows Things About Stuff, wherein the question of “boxers or briefs?” and other impenetrable mysteries of Rossness are finally answered.

As we finalize Issue 03, we’re also starting to lay down the groundwork for subsequent issues of Coilhouse Magazine. To that end, we’ve decided it’s time to create a talent database of Coilhouse readers who are interested in working with us to create something new.

Last time, we asked to hear from illustrators and graphic designers. We were overwhelmed by the amount of talented respondents; more than 100 of you wrote in! We’re still sifting through all the amazing portfolios. Each of you should have heard back from us by now, but we just want to thank you again for sharing your work with us.

This time, we’re asking for all you writers out there to contact us if you’d like to write for a future issue of Coilhouse. Here are the specifics:

• Show us that you have a way with words! Link to or attach writing samples
• Your writing samples must be nonfiction. Please – no poetry or short stories. At least not at this time. Ideal would be: published articles, really wonderful blog posts.
• If you’re using blog posts as your writing samples, don’t just say “here’s my blog, check it out.” Link to specific, exceptional posts you’ve made. Take the time, in your email, to include a brief description of what each post is about.

The magazine article you end up writing could be based either on an idea that you approach us with, or based on an idea that we pitch to you. Maybe we’ll play matchmaker and team you up with an illustrator or photographer that we know. Right now those are all just ideas we’ve been toying with for future issues of Coilhouse. Nothing’s set in stone, but we want to see who’s out there.

If this post speaks to you, don’t hesitate to contact us.

As we work to complete Issue 03, we’re also starting to lay down the groundwork for subsequent issues of Coilhouse Magazine. To that end, we’ve decided it’s time to create a talent database of Coilhouse readers who are interested in working with us to create something new.

Currently, we’re interested in hearing from illustrators and print designers. If you fall into one of these categories and would like to contribute to Coilhouse, please send us an email! In this email, tell us a little bit about yourself and include a link to your portfolio or some examples of your work. That way, we’ll be able to contact you if the right opportunity comes up as we continue publishing future issues.

Ultimately, we want to hear from everyone: photographers, fashion designers, journalists, etc. To avoid getting overwhelmed with too much email, we’ll be asking the different groups to write in at different times over the course of the next month. For now, only illustrators and print designers are invited to write in – mainly because we know fewer of them than we do people in any other group.

We’re excited to expand our creative circle, and we hope to hear from you soon!

By now, Coilhouse tees are appearing in mailboxes all over the world. We’ve seen a few tweets come through from satisfied customers (enjoy your shirts, atavistian, rickiep00h, msalistar, girloncamera, Jerem_Morrow!), some comments on the blog (glad you got it in time for your Recycled Rainbow meet, Jezcabelle), and photos are starting to pop up on Flickr. But also, we’ve received a couple of emails stating “where’s my shirt, beyotches?!” To those people we’d like to apologize for the delay and let you know that the shirts will be on their way shortly, if they’re not already. We originally indicated in our T-Shirt Ordering FAQ that there’d be a 2-week delay between the time or ordering and the time of shipping because of the time it takes to screen-print the shirt, but we’ve fallen a couple of days behind due to the sheer number of orders. We are shipping them out in the order in which they were received, and all shirts should be mailed by the end of the week at the latest.

So if you haven’t received your shirt, hang in there – it’s on its way. And when you do receive it, or if you already have: pictures, pictures NOW! Take a snapshot and post it in the comments. We want to see the Coihouse Army in uniform!

UPDATE: We shipped the last batch on Wednesday. Everyone’s shirts are in the mail.

Guys, there’s good news and bad news. Bad news first: our Coilhouse shirts just came back from the screen-printer, and we have a huge problem. The ink had not dried yet when they started folding them. There are smudged, silvery blobs all over all the shirts. O NOES! We don’t feel comfortable mailing these out, and we can’t afford to get another batch printed. With sincere apologies to everybody who ordered a shirt last month, we are unable to fulfill your orders at this time.

The good news is, everyone who ordered a shirt will instead be receiving a limited edition item from our upcoming line of sexytime-themed merch: this embossed tin of exclusive Coilhouse condoms! These actually cost more to manufacture than the shirts did, so you’re getting a great deal. The tin features the original Coilhouse poster child, Stratosphere Messenger, drawn by Zoetica. Our intrepid cyber swashbuckler is carrying a very important message to the boys and girls of Coilhouse: be safe! Use protection! Don’t end up like some people, because this is what will happen to you. Inform, Inspire, but don’t Infect!

I/I/I rubbers are just the first item from CH’s upcoming line of adult-themed swag, which will debut in conjunction with Issue 03. We know our hot readers are gettin’ some AND BY GOLLY, WE WANT TO BE A PART OF IT. We’re thrilled to offer you a line of products as stimulating as they are socially conscious.

Actually, this is all a subliminal plot to make you associate sex with Coilhouse, goading a Pavlovian impulse to buy every time we put out a new issue. Sshhh.

Make sparks fly with our Tesla Coil “Cog” Ring. Tickle your prostrate with the pointy end of one of our Ethics Butthurt anal plugs, (each inscribed with the most asinine comments from certain threads on this blog that just won’t die). We’re developing a line of silicone tentacle dildos, because hey, that’s one fetish we all seem to have in common, as well as restraints made from space age metals, absinthe-flavored latex dental dams, and Shibari bondage rope woven from hair harvested directly from Mer’s scalp.

This range is still being developed, and we’re taking requests. Please post suggestions for products we should carry in the comments. Sorry again about the shirts. We promise, what we’re mailing you instead will be much more fun to wear.

Click below for more scintillating merchandise!