Too damn much print media -- time to clean it up

This house is full of readers, it is also full of magazine subscriptions. The current list of periodicals is: National Geographic, The Onion (America's finest news source), Harper's, The New Yorker, The Economist, Vanity Fair, Primitive Archer, NW Flyfishing, and Rolling Stone.

I think that there was some cheapo offer of multiple magazine subscriptions involved in this long a list of subscriptions. T. has been saying he's not going to re-up any subscriptions except The Economist on his end of things. The Economist is a brit publication, and the information that it provides is refreshingly frank and has an obvious, overwhelming, and reasonable bias. It's about the money, stupid. If anything is "anti business" then it gets the stinkeye. Simple enough to sort out for us. It turns out to be a really great source of international news, providing info on stories that would never hit U.S. publications.

For The Wife, The New Yorker is going to stay for sure. Hell, that magazine is worth it just for the comics. There are always loads of interesting feature pieces and good book and movie reviews. Plus, it's just a tradition for her. Harper's seems pretty much like more of the same, so will be nixed methinks.

For The House, The Onion will stay. It's just too funny to let go. There are free teasers online, but having full issues laying around is really great. National Geographic, however, is under debate at the moment. Mostly we appreciate the magazine, but it seems that the quality of the articles has been steadily, slowly, but inexorably dropping over the last decade or so. The videos for sure just absolutely suck now. The court is out as to whether we'll keep that.

For me, Primitive Archer stays. Dorky as it is, there are techniques published there that exist nowhere else and I want to archive them. I don't make a ton of bows, or right now even target practice much, but having a full library of these magazines seems like a good idea to me despite these facts. Too much nearly-lost information gets published there to give up. It is like having a full set of Foxfire Book Series, an archive for future generations. As for my Northwest Flyfishing -- well -- it's a guilty pleasure. It's fish porn, and especially now that my best fishing buddy has been out of state for so long, and I'm in school, and so busy in the summers -- I just haven't gotten out like I used to. Having fish porn around can be good in these circumstances and bad. It can be a horrible taunt about the things I'm NOT doing in my life, but it can be a nice arm-chair escape as well. Jury is out on that publication, I just can't make up my mind yet.

Not much I like better than slimming things down in life -- whether it is gathering up unused clothes for goodwill, giving boxes of old computer gear to FreeGeek to reuse and sell, or quitting less-used subscriptions. Just feels good.

Enjoy your random domestic decisions,

Bp