Summer ushers in longer days, the flowers, and always, at SELEDA, an insurrection from our summer interns (Immm-uunnnd-ineshhhhiiiyyyeee!). All, of course, impelled and shabbily financed by staff writers, who believe in embarrassingly passive resistance, unless unpaid interns can be utilized to incite the unrest.

It has sort of become a routine… Come summer, our staff writers realize they have not seen a paycheck in… like, never… which regurgitates the question why they have to always play the "starving" in the "starving artist" routine, and, belew!… all of a sudden they are part of the CHQun "we have nothing to lose but our pencils" hzb.

It's what our elders used to call alemeQoTeb.

Not that there's ever been a CHQun we've met we haven't liked, and not that we want to be known as inQifats to any e-abiyot, but, really, what does it mean to have a selamawi self in front of upper management's office when they have not set foot in the SELEDA sefer in… like, never!? 'Ta! Abo! Why can't we have just one fabulous uprising which we can gossip about at cocktail parties???

And so, another SELEDA ritual passes (we've dubbed it "The Season of Restful Unrest") where writers inkoko yet another "cyber magazine le cyber magazine Tsehafiew" Intifada; interns act all "we are worth something"-like; and upper management calls in from Switzerland to have Balducci Biscotti emergency FedEx-ed to them.

And you wonder why we drink? Heavily.

Indemn senebetachihulN Seledamoch?

Welcome to the Open Theme Issue! A double issue, which means you have to ration-read SELEDA until September. It is our favorite issue because right about this time is when we start looking at each other with acute meselechachet and wonder if it's not time to move to Alaska. Oh, wait. We wonder that every month. Ahhh, well.

WegEshas from all corners of the world had to be summoned to attend to our "inde aknbalo yegobeTe wegeb" (which is a medical term, we found out) from all the bowing we had to do to thank this month's contributors. When, we have asked ourselves…once, will we ever feel the pangs of yiluNta and "sew mn ylal" for taking credit for the genius that are our contributors? Answer: half past NEVER! Inanten eko new…. Hey, contributors, tenks, eshi? Siyammmmrrruuu!

Ehem.

What's new at SELEDA?

We are delighted to have paired up with the exceptionally cool people at www.visualmorph.com and it's offshoot t-shirt design division, Meddab-Powered by Injera (we love these guys!) during the annual Ethiopian football fest in California this July 4th week. For those of you who are heading to the wrong coast for a right cause and would like to support our first SELEDA fundraiser, look for the Meddab Logo on the football field, stride on over there, say hi to David Mesfin (creative Director at Visualmorph) … (discounts might be available for those of you who squeal "Davvvuuu… na esti tesam" and agelabTo kissing him like yeTefa zemed), and say, "Eski gimme a SELEDA T-shirt". If you want to look extra cool, get a couple of them fabulous Meddab T-shirts too, and stand out from the crowd, make your parents proud and your friends respect you. We extend deep gratitude to our new best friends at Meddab and Visualmorph for letting us stand so close to them.

What else?

Words cannot express how elated we are to announce the return of our Mail Editor. (Re-hab took longer than we expected.) Starting in September, The Mail will return to being a regular feature… as long as you all keep writing to us. We assure you, Mail Editor is positively salivating at some of the stuff we have gotten these past months, and we urge you to keep M.E. busy so that we shan't have no relapses. Your comments are always welcome.

Our next Issue (September) will be the "YiluNta and MisTr" Issue. Ahhh… so many secrets, so little yiluNta…huh? Well, you get the point. SELEDA will transform into a virtual confessional booth in the Addis Amet. No medebabess-ing (except if it entails medabessing) our secrets, no coddling our yiluNta… speak up! Articles are due on August 15th at the latest, except if you have NO yiluNta, in which case you can tack on an extra day. (Besmeab!)

Speaking of NO, NADA, ZIP yiluNta, er… were we remiss in having SELEDA Chat last month? Hell yes we were! Why? Ok… we won't sebeb mekorkom here and eza mado. We, er… slight miscommunication… and we use slight in the most un-slight sense here. To prove that we have not cornered the market on flakiness, we promise to behave this time, and show up for our own party… TUESDAY JULY 17, at 7:00 p.m. East Coast time… let's meet at www.seleda.com/chat. You show us yours, we'll show you ours. The banner article will be this month's Life Diaries. Gulp! Is that a good idea? As if we need the slightest impetus to descend into bawdy talk. Enter at your own risk.

Whoowat else?

If there is no SELEDA next month, you will know that our first ever retreat went werrrry weerrry badly. Frankly, all of us being confined to one area for more than 24 hours might just push Armageddon up by a couple of weeks, but, heck, the world was coming to an end anyway. Since we will be mapping out SELEDA themes, let us know if there is an angegebgabi theme you'd like us to cover.

With that, we leave you in peace to have the mother of all summers. Remember to visit Meddab Designs if you are cavorting in San Fran pretending to be a soccer fan.

Until September,

Ij nestenal. Selam inhun.

The Humble Editors.
editors@seleda.com