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Most people don’t realize that the name of our magazine is tongue-in-cheek. They think we are not serious people and we do stupid stuff, evading the issues of the day.
Actually, we’re convinced that the so-called serious people are delusional. We are ridiculing them, but they don’t get it.
Let me back up a little.
You’ve seen the magazine on the newsstand. Glossy, big bright pictures. Lifestyle things like food, travel, home decorating and especially entertaining. It’s about people getting together, schmoozing, shooting the breeze.
Then there’s the photoshopped backgrounds giving subtle hints of the world’s troubles. While having a garden party in the foreground, you can see (or think you see) a homeless woman in the distance looking through a trash can, her overflowing shopping cart perched nearby.
Or at afternoon tea, the thin floral curtains cover a view of the outdoors which just might be framing a mushroom cloud.
I’m the editor in chief but Arlene does all the work. She’s a genius. Arlene is fully conscious of what, deep down, we all know.
As Arlene put it in the Editor’s Note in the front of the June issue (which nobody read):
The “serious people” create most of the problems in the world and then position themselves as indispensable problem solvers. We are not fooled. We don’t waste our time on them. Neither should you.
Instead, join us as we eat drink and be merry and—unlike the serious people—live before we die.
Yeah, we are frivolous. Why not? We do what we can. It’s not like we can vote out the people who are destroying the world, impoverishing people, and poisoning the air, earth and water. We have a tiny bit of influence and the “serious” people are actually in charge. They want us to vote on their positions simply to justify the fixed system.
We refuse. Come join Arlene and me. Let’s party!