I have finally caught up on every magazine I subscribe to. This is a far more impressive accomplishment than it initially sounds like.
I started falling behind in my reading when I got a girlfriend, since really, what would you rather do, read a magazine or go out with your girlfriend? Tough decision. But she dumped me over a year ago, and I was left with a broken heart and foot-tall stacks of reading matter.
This time last year, I was at least six months behind in Newsweek, Entertainment Weekly, Sports Illustrated, Spin, and Rolling Stone. Now I’m caught up…in all of it.
Newsweek was the first thing I caught up on, mostly because it’s the one with the information that’s the most time-sensitive. It’s a bit silly reading about the War in Afghanistan several months after focus shifted to Iraq.
The last thing I caught up on, which I finished today, was Rolling Stone, mostly because I knew of its fall into an abyss of suckiness since the former editor of the “lad mag” (read: soft core porn mag) FHM took over last summer.
The plunge in quality is far more evident when you read six months’ worth of magazines in two weeks, actually watching what used to be a great magazine decline into utter stupidity. The decline is directly proportional to the shrinkage of the clothes on the cover tartlets.
Needless to say, I haven’t renewed my subscription. So at least if I get another girlfriend (the chances of which right now seem about as remote as me running a marathon tomorrow and not keeling over of a heart attack), I won’t have quite as much to catch up on.
But hey, I guess there actually are some good things about being single, unemployed, and stuck lying on your stomach for weeks at a time.