Blog Love Omega Glee: How To Read A News Magazine (18 July 2012)

Francine's latest issue of NewNews arrived in the mail, so she reads it while eating breakfast. It's the only mainstream magazine she reads on a regular basis, and she reads it in much the same way that Kremlinologists used to read Pravda during the Cold War, reading between the lines and decoding the articles to get hints of what the powers that be are thinking at the time. She assumes that it's effectively published by the Central Intelligence Agency and other apparatchiks of the national security state under the auspices of the globalists.

This week's issue is about books. Well, the people who think they run the world have always fancied themselves as cultured, Francine thinks. That's why so many of their sons and daughters pretend to be artists while living on their trust funds, which does clog things up a bit for real artists, but keeps the kids from ruining the family business for a few more years at least.

Francine opens the magazine. The first ten pages are devoted to an advertisement for a new prescription drug, with five of the pages listing side effects. The drug will apparently make your skin clearer, but your blood dirtier. The letters to the editor page entails a vigorous debate about whether the United States should invade Somalia or just bomb it over that country's refusal to accept its fate as a toxic waste dump for North America. There is no mention of just leaving Somalia alone, nor of withdrawing the thousands of American troops stationed around the world, some in countries where the wars they originally were deployed there for have been over for decades. If the American taxpayer is still too dumb or powerless to stop paying the bill for their room, board, and equipment made by military contractors who bribe congressional representatives, then more soldiers' lives will be wasted to make the world safe for American corporations to rake in huge profits exploiting people around the world, including their own.

Turning past advertisements for products such as luxury cars that Francine would never be able to afford, she finds the international page, where world events are condensed to six words each. If Francine hadn't already read about these events online, she'd have no idea what this section is about.

Flipping ahead to the national page, she reads some bootlicking praise for both major party presidential candidates, but no mention of any other candidates. The way the race is covered reminds Francine of how the wrestlers promote a big match on Jake's wrestling.

Also, the cable went out in Philadelphia, and there was a riot until it got turned back on. You can pollute the earth all you want, but don't ever mess with a person's television. Francine interprets the extensive coverage on this incident as a key signal to all undercover operatives to make sure the cable infrastructure stays intact until they are finished dismantling The United States Of America.

On to the "My Soapbox" page, where every week a different person not from the staff of NewNews contributes an article. Oddly enough though, each week the article is written in roughly the same editorial voice. A lot of people in this country must think and sound alike! This week's soapbox, written supposedly by an economist, proud father, and concerned citizen from Devil's Bunghole, Texas named Bilo Selhi, argues that anyone receiving tax dollars for education such as college students with government loans should be banned from smoking since they constitute an investment for the state and lung cancer from the smoking might cause them to die before their loans are paid off. As usual, when government money and individual liberty run into conflict, NewNews chooses government money, or, in other cases, just plain money.

The next article is about a celebrity who died, the actor Nar Cissus, who is described with hyperbole as "arguably the most influential person of this century". From long experience reading NewNews, Francine knows that the magazine will use the same line to describe the next celebrity who dies. The arts section hypes the latest product from another branch of the mega media corporation that owns NewNews. This week in keeping with the book theme, it's a novel that sounds very similar to The Pornographic Flabbergasted Emus book that Francine read, except in this one the band's members are apprentice wizards, prep school detectives, and vampires who survive the Holocaust, and they all become rock stars in the end. A movie is in the works, of course.

Fifteen minutes after finishing the magazine, Francine doesn't remember a single thing in it, but next week she'll read the new issue anyhow.

Blog Love Omega Glee is a novel by Wred Fright about two bloggers who fall in love while the world falls apart, which is being serialized on his blog. To start reading from the beginning or read another installment, please visit Blog Love Omega Glee Central on WredFright.Com. If you like what you've read, or you've read all of Blog Love Omega Glee and want more Fright, then please read his first novel, which is available in print and as an ebook.