I need some investors, quick. I want to start a new magazine that is actually fucking useful to, well, me. Decorating ideas for a studio apartment that won't destroy all hope of getting a security deposit back. Receipts to keep for your taxes.

A goth style/fashion/makeup issue guest edited by Jilli.

Window box flowers/herb gardens for apartment living.

Useful investment/money articles that assume you're a thirty-something who doesn't give a crap if you die single.

Book reviews by Smart Women/Trashy Books. A Tomato Nation advice column. A Dress A Day column from Erin.

How to make the most of your yard sale. Where you can park for free in every major metropolitan city. LUSH product of the month. What sort of groceries you can get on twenty-five bucks that will last the week without making you twenty-five pounds heavier.

A tech column written by women, for women. And I want it on every grocery store checkout stand in the US. Because, SERIOUSLY, magazine just BLOW right now.

Here, here. Can the Buffista teachers take turns writing an education column, too?

Aw, man, Allyson, if I had any money to invest I'd totally invest in your magazine. I'm still mourning the loss of Budget Living, which sounds like a proto-your magazine and folded something like three years ago. I just ran across one of my few remaining copies on a neglected bookshelf this afternoon and got sad all over again. Theme parties for under $150! How to assemble thrift store and Goodwill finds into a neo-Victorian glam bedroom for $25 or less! John Waters raving about the glories of SF's Kayo Books! Redoing your entire kitchen with a yard of gingham rickrack and two paperclips!

It was awesome.

Budget Living was awesome before The Man wrecked it.

Last week, at the bar, the bartender was complaining that her subscription to Jane was replaced with issues of Mademoiselle or something. I have no idea what you're talking about, but I agree entirely.

Budget Living was awesome before The Man wrecked it.

I hacked up most of my copies for cool images to use on CD covers, which I now bitterly regret. Had I known, I'd have treasured them just like I do my mint runs of the golden era Sassy and Spy.

I do love Ms. Magazine, though, got to say. Definitely not a magazine telling you to BUY BUY BUY and LOSE WEIGHT and GET A GUY!

It's much too serious for the kind of magazine you're talking about, though. I'd like a little frivolity and budget living in my non-gender-stereotyped magazine.

I have no idea what you're talking about, but I agree entirely.

Good man.

Allyson sounds like she's talking about a Bust/Budget Living mashup to me.

Man, I loved Sassy. *Before* Jane left, it should go without saying.

But the magazine I miss most of all is the dear, departed Mode. No other magazine for plus-size women who want actual fashion instead of muumuus comes close.

t edit This cover, more than anything I can think of, exemplifies MODE in its glory days: [link]