Economist; Nexus; Private Eye

It's been a periodical couple of weeks.

I bought The Economist for the first time about ten days ago, in a fit of fascistic self-improvement and because it contained an article entitled Don't Protect Bad Belgian Art, which turned out to be a lot less interesting than it sounded. I read it with some wine, trying to get rid of the feeling that I'd sold out to the Man (cheap lager and roll-ups would have been a better choice but I don't smoke any more). It turned out to be exactly what you'd expect: closely reasoned, closely written, intelligent, considered and catastrophically dull. I realise now that I can't remember a single thing it told me. So this week I decided to go to somewhere else.

Nexus is an Australian magazine dedicated to weird shit and conspiracy theories. I've just looked for it in my book storage zone on the floor and it's disappeared.

I'm not suggesting anything, just saying.

I remember an article about Tesla and a giant eight-sided pyramid with a copper alloy hemispherical top that he was building to make rain when the Second World War intervened and but a stop to his brilliance. (Draw your own conclusions.) I read about some Serbian monoliths that acted as ionising air conditioners, although the article didn't say why prehistoric man would want to air condition Serbia. Maybe just because he could. Then I read about the oldest temple in the world, which is in Turkey. The revelations went on: I now know that a secret cabal of rich people is trying to impose a single currency on the world. (Why didn't The Economist tell me this? Are you thinking what I'm thinking?) And I found out about the experiences of a man from New Zealand who was kidnapped by a female alien named Zeena who looked just like the aliens from Roswell and you know maybe that's just coincidence and maybe it's also just a coincidence that her name is very close to to that of a fictional warrior princess who fought evildoers and protected weak mortals from the mighty godlike supernatural forces in the universe but I don't think so, do you?

I needed to get out of the nexus that Nexus had sucked me into.

My Private Eye arrived. I wept with joy. It's the best magazine to do the jobs I demand of it, which are to generate righteous anger, make me laugh and annoy the commuting management consultants on the 7.37 Misery Flyer to Marylebone. The Economist just makes them think I'm one of them. Nexus lets them dismiss me as a scruffy long-haired Jethro Tull fan of no account (which to be fair is exactly what I am). But Private Eye tells them I'm on their case. Yeah: be afraid. Be very afraid.