Oh People!

May 8, 2025

About a month ago, it started showing up in the mailbox. I didn't order it, neither did my wife. The kids certainly didn't, at least, I hope not! Every week, stuffed in with the flyers and the rest of the junk mail is the latest copy of People Magazine. So, I just throw it in the magazine rack on top of the shitter so it doesn't go directly into the recycling bin and an innocent tree didn't die for nothing. Besides, I'm a writer who writes for free, for inner peace. At least somebody out there is making money doing their art, I best support their efforts.

The articles are short, filled with color photos and pretty much lack any substance whatsoever. Although, if you dig deep enough there is usually at least one intriguing article in there...I guess that's for the person stuck in the doctor's office who needs something to kill the time and doesn't feel like reading the latest escapades of Hollywood's elite. But after a while, and filling me with shame, I have to admit...I started reading the fluff.

It was weird, I started to look forward to the next issue to mysteriously appear in my mailbox. I suppose I was getting tired reading about the housewives of New Jersey and the latest dingbat Justin Bieber was poking around with. I needed to see what Jennifer Aniston and the rest of the surviving Friend's cast was up to! And just like that, there was the next issue. Ah, the machine doing its best to tug at the heart and fog the mind (to quote Ken Brockman).

Funny thing is, as I cursed the machine and it's ability to dull my senses and take me away from the more important matters in this world...such as our freedoms and rights being slowly and methodically stripped away from us little by little...I realized something. Instead of walking away from my morning constitutional being all riled up by reading the depressing and often terrifying morning news, I actually felt good about my day.

Yes, for a brief moment I wasn't reading about the idiot in the Whitehouse, or the spineless stooges that tremble at his feet and kiss his ring while the rest of us lay in the destruction left in their wake. No, today I leaned that when Michael Bolton awoke from his brain surgery he began to sing. I learned that when his children came in to see him that the nurse asked them if they ever heard him sing like that before. Oh, how naive to not know this was the man who sang, 'When a Man Loves a Woman'. How devilishly cheeky!

Thank you, machine, for randomly sending me my weekly pulp...and for free! Hopefully! Now, it's off to read the real news and ruin my day.

Oh, my sanctuary, how I love thee!