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It was a pretty cozy setting for a guy like me. I was sitting, Indian style, on the floor of my office, surrounded by motorcycle magazines, bass magazines, guitar magazines, car magazines, a primer on slide guitar, several books on electronic theory, a couple of books on tube amp repair, and one on guitar repair. Add to that the unlikely (to the culturally myopic) integration of poetry by Heaney, Frost, and Whitman, and an assortment of recording gadgets, cables, wires and do-dads. Were you to walk in on me, you might be inclined to think that I was either in the midst of some strange religious ritual, or that Shelly had finally reached her wit's end and made me the centerpiece in a very large bonfire. Both of which are precariously close to the truth.

But I was simply cleaning out the office so we could shampoo the carpet. When cleaning, the first step is to make an even bigger mess than you started with. Anyway, it was getting kind of grungy in there. Carpets are, essentially, a large sponge. Ever notice that when you're finished cleaning with a sponge, you spend more time trying to rinse the dirt out of the darned thing than you spent cleaning up the mess? Carpets are like that. Enough about carpets, let's get back to magazines.

Why so many? Because they are perfect for the end of the day, just before bed. An article or two works almost as well as a sleeping pill. Reading at night tends to make me drowsy, but with a magazine article (or a good short story, I might add) I can finish what I've started and remain coherent enough to have retained some of what I've read. Unlike a book, in which I fall asleep having read the same 10 pages three nights in a row. I enjoy heavy reading during the day, light reading at night. Except that I do a lot of light reading during the day too.

Magazines also make excellent reference material. My collection of some publications goes back twenty or more years. Old technical articles are absolutely invaluable when I'm trying to get some obsolete piece of equipment to work. And then there are product reviews. You can check out what magazine A has to say about product X. What about magazine B? Are their likes and dislikes the same? Is the thing they are complaining about something that you would see as a benefit? You see? A magazine is a wealth of useful information in a small, brightly colored, glossy package that stacks neatly on the coffee table, then slides, like a giant deck of cards, off of the table and all over the floor.

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