I just got a glossy magazine in the mail today, a magazine to which I do not subscribe. It’s full of expensive color photographs and interesting stories. Like “Why Bother to Fill Out an Insurance Claim When It’s Faster and Cheaper to Pay for Repairs Yourself?” and “You Might as Well Settle Instead of Hiring an Expensive Lawyer.” The magazine is from my insurance company. It contains other “must reads” such as “Insurance Fraud: How to Turn In Your Neighbors!” and this investigative gem, “Insurance: A Bargain or Just Good Deal?”

It is too bad about insurance fraud. It must cost my insurance company a lot of money. Almost as much as it must cost them to produce and mail this stupid magazine that I just put in the recycling bin. There could only be one story in it that I’d ever be likely to read and that would be “We’re Killing This Magazine So We Can Lower Your Monthly Bill.”

Of course, I don’t just get magazines no one needs or asked for from just my insurance company. I get magazines from my stock broker, my banker, my big box store, my credit card companies, my church, my auto dealer, my charities, my internet provider, my PBS station, my union, a couple of museums, a few antique malls, the Chamber of Commerce and a winery. There are more, but I’d need a magazine to list them all.