This is a writeup about a magazine that I think most of you need to start reading. It will inform you on the condition of your house and your life in ways you cannot even imagine at this point in our dialogue. When I choose a magazine for Walmart bathroom reading, this is one of my favorites along with Road & Track and Guns & Ammo. Those second two magazines may have language that is well above your grade school reading level, so most noders might want to start their adventure in magazine experiencing by picking up a copy of Good Housekeeping.

Founded in 1885 (one hundred years before 1985), Good Housekeeping was started in a textile mill. We all know that life was that much better for everyone when we had textile mills, but that is not what this writeup is about. This is a writeup about Good Housekeeping magazine, which is WORLD FAMOUS for the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval. That is when you knew things were okay to buy. When it had that seal. As good as sold.

Unlike other magazines you can give your wife to read in between her work cooking your dinner and darning your slacks, Good Housekeeping doesn't encourage getting tattoos or thinking about "individuality" (Internet kiddie term). It tells you what to do in order to keep a nice home and make good cookies. With Good Housekeeping, your pet broad can learn all the skills she needs to keep you happy except for the sexual ones. For that, you have to get some back issues of the magazine Hustler from the 1970s. They let the woman know where it is at. Trust me. Get some of those on eBay. Go in the kitchen with them and shove them in the wife's face. She'll read them when she sees the big hairy men on some of the pages. They dig that stuff.

In 1911, Good Housekeeping was bought by the Hearst Corporation, one of America's greatest all-time corporations. It had some troubles during the Great Depression, but salesmen like me took to the streets, along with hired Pinkertons, and forced people to renew their subscriptions by taking their children and their ten cent apples and making them sign. Just making them sign. I am talking about just straight out break those fingers and make them sign. It was very effective marketing, and likely the only reason why Good Housekeeping survived those years and other magazines like Well-Heeled Homelady and Dapper Little Bitch did not fair so well (they went out of business and never recovered).

Soon began the greatest project in American history, launched right out of the offices of the Hearst Corporation: the Good Housekeeping Research Institute. There were a whole bunch of tests they would do at this very clean institute (counters were wiped down thoroughly and frequently) and those tests would determine whether something got the Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval or was driven out of business by disapproving mobs.

These days, Good Housekeeping doesn't have that much influence. People read magazines less often because crap like Calvin and Hobbes and hospital shows are distracting them from doing so. It isn't fair. But you can subscribe today, and you don't even have to pull a postcard out of a magazine like you did in the 1970s when you wanted to send away for X-Ray Specs. You can go to their modern website:

Their website (modern) is at www.goodhousekeeping.com

They don't know me there, so don't namedrop. That pisses me off when people do that without permission. My name carries weight in the business world, the publishing world, and the world of academia. Use my name in any of the top circles of those areas of the world and you will always get in the room. But do it without my permission and we have issues, you and me. Understood?