Magazine Titles for The Rest of Us

****Warning - Today's content may not be suitable for young children or prudes. THIS MEANS YOU MOM.****

The Queen has been having uncharacteristically normal days yesterday and the day before. I had to run some errands each evening for the good of the household, and her royal highness decided she was up for making a break from the confines of the castle keep where she spends most of her time. This, in itself, is noteworthy as she has more often than not declined such offers of late.

Nevertheless, we enjoyed a couple of evenings together of almost normal wedded bliss doing nothing more exciting than running mundane errands. Our conversation, as it is want to do when I’ve been fed but deprived of a full night’s sleep, took a turn for the odd and unusual but vaguely amusing. At least, it made The Queen laugh which means it was at least amusing to her. I must confess to a giggle or two myself. I might have even smiled. It’s been known to happen on occasion.

The genesis of our departure from composure was my recollection of a magazine article I read while at mediation on Monday. The mediation was winding down, and I didn’t want to get into a new file (this mediator is smart enough to have a hard wired and wireless internet connection for lowly adjusters such as myself whose company’s IT departments do not trust us to change the settings on our laptops). So, I started flippin’ through the mediator’s selection of magazines. I’m not terribly interested the Sports Illustrated Swim Suit issue since they didn’t see fit to have The Queen as their model. Texas Lawyer is something no self respecting person should be forced to read. I’m not into yachts. So, Yachting magazine was out. Fortune magazine is just depressing in this economy. That left me with a magazine called Dwell.

For those who are not familiar, Dwell is a magazine about homes and interior design. From what I can tell, it’s mostly about more modern architecture and interior design. Some of it looks kind of neat. Some of it looks painfully uncomfortable. A lot of it looks like they are going to have a hard time selling it. To each their own I suppose.

Anyway, The Queen commented that Dwell was a funny name for a magazine to which I agreed. Then we started coming up with one word names for other magazines. It turns out that these names sound dirty, but aren’t. No, really. They’re not. Get your mind out of the gutter.

The first one we came up with was FONDLE. You have to pause before you say it and say it quickly and dramatically with a sidelong glance to get the full effect. We originally thought this would be a great title for a magazine about poetry, but that really didn’t make sense. So, now it’s Fondle: A Touching Magazine for Massage Therapists. Now that I think about it some more, we could also name it Fondle & Stroke. It breaks the one word rule, but I’ve seen some odd two word combinations lately too (Garden & Gun comes to mind).

Then there was SCREW (or SCREWED). A magazine for the metal fastener industry.

BONER was up next. It’s the journal of paleontologists.

And we can’t leave out SUCK IT! (also breaking the one word rule). The magazine for the plastic straw industry. Picture this.

Person 1: Whatcha readin’?
Person 2: SUCK IT!
Person 1: Well, there’s no reason to be rude.
Person 2: No, seriously. SUCK IT!
Person 1: Do you have Tourette’s or something?
Person 2: Are you mental? I’m reading SUCK IT!
Person 1: I’m mental? You wanna take this outside little man?

I want to publish one issue just to see how many fights get started. Is there something wrong with that?

Fortunately, I slept really well last night. I actually went to bed before 11:00 PM. My goal was 9:00, but The Queen wanted to go to Barnes & Noble (oh, darn) from which there is no escape. Unfortunately, this means I can’t remember any other amusing magazine titles we created at the moment. I think there was a German magazine called SCHITT, but I can’t remember what that one was about.