Library time, my top activity of the week. Well, [that is] except for chasing women less than half my age, but that don’t count no more. The place is full of Kens today (a referral to a roommate I once had who used to go to the library to watch what other people were reading. No lie, he used to go to the grocery to watch what other people were buying). Luck was with me, the entire 1990s collection of National Geography was in house. That’s qualified luck, I cancelled my subscription years ago when they quit printing pictures of “bare-breasted native girls”. I considered them to be nothing more than single, young, attractive girls. Now, it is even worse, they won’t print pictures of young women at all, except maybe behind a veil. Also, they make it a point to mention any woman in any picture is married, to whom and often for how long. [For the record, the author is not a breast man and does not consider bare breasts anything unusual. My total objection was the magazine’s surrender to a vocal minority. I think the crabby women who objected were hardly a large segment of the readership and NG should have stuck to its format of accurate portrayals of other customs.]
[For the record,] the main reason I canceled was for what I call the National Geographic “NG” Conservationist problem. This is meant to be derogatory. The life cycle goes something like this. A hundred years ago somebody goes into the bush and cuts down trees. They build a cabin in the wilderness. The next generation heads for the city and becomes middle-class, don’t give a twit about ecology. Then the third generation, raised on color TV and pop-tarts suddenly realize wilderness is at a premium. The fat-cat heirs launch a conservation drive to have the land surrounding their cabin declared a nature preserve, their inheritance exempted of course. Their true purpose is to have a private tract of land, and the facts are strongly on my side over that one. Yet, they get full coverage from National Geography, and an exclusive acreage patrolled by forest rangers paid for by taxpayers.. Well, I don’t like the way NG lionizes such “conservationists”.
Money Magazine is another offender. Except I never subscribed to that publication. The articles were a little too patronizing even for me. People who have the spare cash to do the things they describe probably don’t read such magazines. That is the stockbroker’s job. This month’s issue contained, sandwiched between articles purporting to give expert advice on investing, not less than 22 ads for the worst money loser of all time--automobiles sold on credit. The magazine doesn’t suspect a thing wrong with such hypocrisy.
