Magazine

It is an interesting word, magazine. It is the word used to name the loads for a gun. It is the power behind the weapon. It is the device which contains the individual shells which deliver the projectile. It is also the word used to name a periodical of projectile writings. A collection of writing bullets, if you will.

A Newspaper is a specific type of magazine which contains writings of current happenings. NEWS is an acronym for North, East, West, and South because the current events are happening everywhere. It is current, so it is a new event and because there is more than one new event, it is plural. Clever, eh? It is printed on inexpensive paper because after the initial reading, it is no longer new and is generally discarded. The inexpensive paper carries the name newsprint.

Allow me to retell the short story of the Andromedans.

These space faring people came to Earth to study humankind and were fascinated by an item one of the abductee’s carried. He called it a newspaper and explained that it contained all the “news” of Earth. This abductee tried to keep this “news” from them, so they erased his mind and dropped him off in a field, but kept the newspaper. They analyzed the newspaper so they could report back to the home world all the “news” of Earth. Using all the advanced Andromedan technology they quickly had a list of everything contained in the newspaper. They discovered it was made up of pulverized wood pulp and a collection of chemicals which provided a dark pigment. That was it. There was no other material used. They could not find anything special they would definitively attribute to this “news” the abductee spoke of. Their final report of Earth spoke of the Earthling’s talisman and concluded it was a fantasy of the deluded. There was no “news”.

But a magazine is different. It contains information of special interest. I can be history, fiction, or in depth news.

I like to pick up magazines and browse through them. I very rarely subscribed to any, simply because my interests are too broad and I usually only found one or two articles in each that I was interested in. It was like buying a music album when you only liked one song. (That is why iTunes is so damn popular…)

Here, in the 21st century, these are found online. No need to kill a tree now…

Do you subscribe?

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