Miscellaneous ramblings

This morning I was listening to X96 Radio From Hell (the morning show) and they referred to the Training Table as having “gourmet” burgers. Now I understand that there are places that sell expensive hamburgers that are slightly more exotic than your run-of-the-mill Burger King / McDonald’s variety, but “gourmet”? I just don’t know that ground beef can ever be called gourmet. Not to mention that of those fancy schmancy burgers I’ve tried, they still taste like hamburgers that just cost more. Maybe the training table is good, but gourmet? Meh. Besides, I bet everyone goes there just for cheese fries.

Second issue: are there any magazines out there actually worth paying money for? Where is the value? I was at Barnes & Noble last night looking at magazines. Admittedly I’d never go to Barnes & Noble for personal reasons: this was for school. I’m in a typography class and need a few magazines for class tomorrow. So I set about flipping through magazines looking for some that actually have good typography (I was looking at ads, mainly). But I figured if I was going to spend money on these, I might as well get something worth paying for (or at least something that I might read).

After surveying the selection and browsing through a few magazines, I realized I hate the idea of buying magazines. As far as reading material goes, there’s so much on the internet that’s free and readily available, why should I pay for a magazine that’s not as up to date as what I can find online? And I had to laugh at how much trash there was. I contemplated buying the official “Lost” magazine, but from a school standpoint I couldn’t justify it because there were like a totaly of 3 fonts in the whole magazine– not much variety. But I might have read it 😉

So much of it was trash or stuff I could just get online, so I thought, hey– what magazines to other people actually buy / subscribe to? What magazines are worth reading? There have to be some that are worth reading.

For what it’s worth, I bought the Jan/Feb 2006 issue of “Communication Arts” (no problems there– good publication encompassing all sorts of visual arts, well put-together and classy– worth the money), a copy of some digital photography enthusiast magazine (I figured what the heck. At least there was a humorous article about how to interact with models, hehe), and a bopy of US News (seems like there was a tech article in there and I just needed another magazine– US News was cheap 😉 ).

I also flipped through a black and white photography publication– it was more like an art book than a magazine. I’ve heard the argument of pornography vs. art, but I had to rethink my position on that while flipping through that book, hehe. Some photographers do seem to treat nudes as a fine art… but some are bordering on porn under the guise of “fine art” in order to sell their work / name. I’m sorry but how hard is it to just shoot a picture of a naked lady? It doesn’t impress me that much. Show me something more creative. And why only women? Women are arguably the more beautiful of the two genders, but come on– if we’re saying the body is beautiful, don’t you think they’d have a few fine art shots of the male gender? Or are we just leaving that for the muscle and fitness magazines? I guess I feel like some “fine art photographers” are objectifying women more than they are creating art– which is too bad. It’s not like women really need to be objectified more than they already are in society.

Also amusing was a magazine in the video game section, the theme being “Girls of Video Games”– it was the equivalent of the swimsuit edition of Sports Illustrated– it comes from a genre but focuses purely on hot (completely imagined– CG or cartoon) girls. I flipped through that and chuckled. Why do I not find the objectification of fake girls as offensive? Or maybe I was amused at the video game geek crowd more than I was bothered by the treatment of women in the magazine. I still remember the first time I saw a “provocative” poster of the Tomb Raider girl Lara Croft in an electronics store in Korea… still makes me laugh.

Then there’s the entertainment section. I know Mel subscribes to People magazine. As much as I think it’s silly how enfatuated people are with celebrities’ lives, I find myself reading it now and then as well.

Anyways, there was a load of crap there. Are there any magazines worth subscribing to or buying? It seems like even magazines that looked semi-decent were laced with enough trash to dissuade me from considering them.