Welding is hard. You know why? Because Snafu says so. See? It’s right here. And I’ll admit, those charts don’t make a lick of sense to me, either. Then again, the internets are full of charts I don’t understand—mainly because once you get past the Periodic Table of the Elements I’m totally lost. I was never much for science. Or math, for that matter. Somehow I tested into calculus as a college freshman despite having never taken pre-calc, and I only passed due to the, um, unwitting help of others. The only science courses I took in college were a couple of archaeology courses and a rocks for jocks earth science class that I used to catch up on sleep (and passed easily because I took a near-identical course in high school).

One thing I do know, though, is magazines. I was an editor at one for something like 10 years—and editor-in-chief for four. (I even wrote snarky responses to letters for a while, so me and McGoo are like brothers from another mother and stuff.) I still contribute to several, and know a lot of people in the industry. Well, some of them are still in the industry. There’s a reason I haven’t had full-time work in years, and it’s not just because of my beard or the compromising photos on my Facebook page (I totally thought that llama was 18, I swear) or my overreliance on parentheticals. No, the ol’ magazine industry just isn’t doing so well these days. Ad pages are down, freelance rates are dropping (presuming you can even get work to begin with), even the big names are battening down the hatches and cutting pages to try and stay in the black. TIME is short, so to speak.

So while I’m sure I’m totally overreacting like usual, the line about “when Chris’s story breaks, we’ll scan it and feature it right here” in that Snafu entry pissed me off no end. Because McGoo of all people should know better. Look, I hope the article IS great. I hope it is indispensable. And I hope, if you want to read it, you go out and buy the magazine. Because if you don’t, it won’t be long before there’s no magazine to buy. That, I understand.