Jack at Clinomania recently posted a long consideration of Japanese girl magazines. Very entertaining. His enthusiasm shines through. Of particular interest is his brief mention of "a test to see how good you are at drawing." God knows how some clever assistant editor at AnAn designed such a test.
But most importantly, this post is an excellent example of what seems to be one of the major themes of Clinomania; namely, communication theory. Jack, and to a lesser extent Boat, frolic in the vast gap that exists between a conveyer of information and its recepient: cf. their examinations of the inability of TV network executives to understand audiences, and the dumbness of college essay writers. One might say that Jack and Boat delight in what is "lost in translation;" one might be a d-bag to say that. But all this talk about medium and message reminds one of the joke on "The Sopranos," where the writers named a character Marshall MacLuhan, and then introduced a meaningless nurse character who's only function was to point out what the writers had done.
Anyway, I have had the good fortune to go to Japan. And so I can report that Jack's post is pretty much meaningless, because all Japanese girls are too busy trying to figure out which soda is currently the hippest to read magazines and worry about their talk style.
