What I like most about this one is the juxtoposition. On one hand you have the cover model cheerily smiling while above her is the head line “VICTIMS MINCED FOR PIG FOOD!”.
Then along the bottom you have the heartwarming tale of 2 sisters finding each other after a lifetime apart right next to a picture of an oozing headwound.

*BONUS*

Picking on the Daily Mail (or… DAILY FAIL! LOLZ) is like shooting fish in a barrel but they can still pull a classic scaremonger - “Why no child is safe from the sinister cult of emo”

To put it mildly, the Daily Mail is to professional journalism like a date rapist is to romance. The quotes seem to be copypasted wholesale from a forum I’m guessing and are dismissed with a sneering “But as any parent will tell you, adolescent children can be highly irrational.” Because Daily Mail reading parents know best after all.

Chat magazine, daring to show the reality of dangerous furniture that has been covered up for too long now!

The photo underneath the TODGER TERROR headline brilliantly illustrates the all too real fear of having your penis sliced off by a scythe. But the winner is the big arrow pointing out the BIG pants, just in case you were unsure.

Today’s update is courtesy of Seaneen who also writes a blog that’s being adapted for Radio 4. So catch it now before it becomes the next media sensation!

This weeks cover model was an ex-minion of the Joker it seems. Her teeth are far too large for her head. Breaking my self imposed rule of never wondering about the insides, I did ask Seaneen about the “Mum who ate her home” story and she summed it up thusly…

“The woman who ate her house was someone who anxiously ate the threads of her carpet, ate toothbrush heads and purchased carpet samples to chew on. She is, in the realest sense, a rug muncher.”

It’s creepy photoshop time again! The cover models eyes seem completely unrelated to each other.

Before this blog came to be, I started posting some magazine covers on the forums at cook’d and bomb’d. The reaction I got from there convinced me that there was definitely something in this weird obsession of mine that was worth sharing with the wide world of the internets. Another amazing thing that happened though was that it somehow convinced others to create their own too! Here’s a couple that came about…

This was the first effort by no_offenc from CaB. This one wins simply because it captures that ‘Real People’ style of creepy photoshopping. This picture is why I always double check my PC is turned off before I go to bed.

The eerily human face of Serious Cat lets you know this is indeed serious business. This cover pokes fun at Jim Davidson (the guy in the bottom right corner, famous for his “unenlightened” views), an activity that is never wrong! Nagsworth is the classy verbwhore responsible for this! Long may his face bang!

BUT WAIT! THERE’S MOAR!

The distressingly named Kitten Wrangler has sent me a scan of Take 5 all the way from Australia! This blog has now gone international! How about that?

The cover model must win awards for having the least sincere smile with the most impressively sized teeth! The biggest surprise for me was what they consider to be a “plus size” model too, dangerous thinking that.
The competitions seemed to be pushed quite a lot in this magazine, why in this month there’s AU $100,402 worth of prizes! $100,000 isn’t enough to entice the average Australian woman anymore. $400 more wasn’t enough so they upped the stakes again by $2! Take 5, always giving that little bit extra!

Their star prizes this month are a pair of wedding rings (for him and her, evidently Take 5 doesn’t believe in gay marriage). What could be more romantic than proposing to your eternally beloved with a ring that you won from a AU$2.80 magazine?

Take 5 - a magazine for readers.

Take a Break compared to Real People and Pick Me Up seems on first glance an altogether more classy read. The cover model isn’t ghoulishly photoshopped and the headlines aren’t emboldened with eye-searing yellow. However scratch away the thin veneer of respectibility and you get “Your womb’s got two horns”. What astounded me about this one was that they hold their audience in such contempt, they’re printing breathing lessons. As if their readership weren’t able to work it out for themselves.

However, scratch away more at Take a Break and an altogether far more sinister plot emerges. Take a Break, not content with just printing human interest stories started several campaigns. One is specifically for women who want to take petty revenge on cheating boyfriends.
Their plans don’t just stop there either! Unimpressed with the state of the country they formed an actual political party! With the sole aim of combating anti-social behaviour instead of concentrating on those other meaningless things like taxes, healthcare, education and international relations. There’s a sweet naiveté to it all at least, many mums volunteered to stand for elections without checking to see if there actually was one being held. The volunteers, well intentioned as they are, speak only about how something must be done without thinking about what CAN be done. It’s like a Daily Mail fantasy come true!

The editor John Dale estimates that around 2.5 million of his readership don’t vote. The idea that such a sizable amount of people could be possibly politically manipulated by a magazine that teaches them to breathe is sobering.

Thanks go out again to the amazing verbwhores at CaB for this update!

Mums’ Army blog

This was brought to my attention by the lovely SOTS from the Cook’d and Bomb’d forum (the spiritual birthplace of this blog). She used to have a Tom Baker avatar so clearly she’s a lady of taste.

IPC Media publish Pick Me Up and the Chat range of magazines. On their website they describe Pick Me Up as thus.

“Pick Me Up is the woman’s weekly magazine that sparkles with originality and warmth and sets the pace in the Real Life sector. It always provokes a smile, and takes you to a place where it is fun to be. Upbeat, vibrant and fun, it’s an intense package of the best real life stories and puzzles. The intrigue of real people’s lives is Pick Me Up’s heartbeat. With its big heart and fresh look, it’s the real life magazine you want to be seen with. Altogether, it means a quality real life read that is excellent value for money. Pick Me Up has more real life than any other magazine.”

And to illustrate how full of warmth and fun it is they have this cover right next to the description.

Nothing says warmth, vibrancy and fun like a screaming ‘STABBED IN THE FACE’ headline after all!

Thanks again to SOTS from CaB! Picture taken directly from http://www.pickmeupmagazine.co.uk/

The headline about the handbag did cause me to burst into laughter at the W.H Smiths in Bristol I found this one in.
One thing I’ve noticed about Real People is their cover models are usually photoshopped to make them look anything but like a real person. This one for example looks like a collection of facial features pasted on to a blank face like a sinister version of Mrs Potato Head. Is it a smile, a knowing smirk or has she wired her jaw? And why does her left eyebrow look like it’s been drawn on with a burnt bit of cork?

Day 2 of this blogs life and courtesy of my friend Icy Sedgwick there’s a new header image! Thanks to her this blog is looking a little more lovely now…