Face it: The internet is magazines now, and it’s not even actually magazines at all. If you google “magazine,” everything that comes up is a website. That’s messed up.
The last time I saw a magazine was July of 1999, not counting every day since then and several before. Print is dead, as sure as night is day. There’s nothing any of us can do. We just have to forget about it. Forget about it, hear me? No, of course you don’t. If this was a website I could have included an audio recording. Let this moment be the final nail in the coffin – the coffin I have out back filled with magazines and the body of my grandfather.
When my grandfather died, I forced my family to hold his funeral in the middle of a much more fun, more important party at the Lampoon, held in celebration of “back to school.” But now that print is dead? Why, there is nothing to get “back to” at all, especially not when every course you take at Harvard is either ENG101: Reading Magazines, or ENG201: Reading.
I did go out onto the front stairs of the Lampoon one time, and it was a beautiful to see the castle from the outside. I did not look at anything else, for fear it would prompt me to say a funny joke without The Boys there to hear it. Once I was back inside with The Boys, I opened my mouth and said a ten minute long stream of hysterical jokes, which the outside world had given me the inspiration for. Basically what had happened is that I had forgotten about trees, and now that I remembered that trees existed, I had a lot of tree-related comedy to get out of my system. Specifically, I had one minute of tree material, followed by nine minutes of comedy about being a woman. What can I say: I am a woman, and I must talk about this in case I forget, and try to jerk myself off by rubbing a phantom dick, which would be honestly not that much worse than what happens when I actually try to jerk off. What happens usually is that I get distracted by my grandfather saying “help me” over and over again from out back. Very muffled, of course.
As a woman, the media has taught me that I cannot say anything, but I can “lean in” very slightly in any direction I may choose. I usually choose to lean to the left, because of my severe scoliosis. The media has also taught me that it is dangerous for women to go outside alone at night. This is why I have not left the Lampoon – usually when I want to leave it is already nighttime, or it is the daytime but my sedatives are about to kick in.
So anyway, the day that print died was coincidentally the day I got my period of the 50th time in my life, not counting all the times I hid blood capsules in my vaginal canal to scare my gynocologist when she went to put more capsules up there. How did we know print was dead? I saw a weather.com van drive over a copy of the New York Times in the street. The headline on the Times? Print: Is it Dead? I couldn’t see the answer because of the tire tracks. Alright, fine. I could see the answer, but I haven’t finished ENG102 yet so I just don’t know what it said.
