Lies

At last, an internet craze that the lazy man (i.e. me) can get behind. Or on top of, as the case may be.

Cure

In a spirit of self-improvement I've started to address some of the painful aspects of my life, as mentioned in my previous post.


I've discovered that I can compensate for the lack of tap-tapness in my new shoes through the simple expedient of carrying castanets wherever I go. As I walk I can tap out an appropriate soundtrack, with the added benefit of being able to introduce complicated flourishes as the mood takes me. Suddenly everyone in the office is convinced that I'm performing surrupticious flamencos in the corridor while their backs are turned.


I've compensated for the scrolling on the digital recorder by realising that the machine has far greater flaws. If I tell it to record, say, The Simpsons, it will start recording at precisely 8pm and stop recording at precisely 8.30pm. This is a problem, as the weenies in charge of TV programming at Channel Ten don't seem to want to let any given episode of the preceeding Masterchef program end. Maybe they worry that any attempt to limit the goose that lays the golden ratings will kill it? Perhaps they do not understand the mysterious voodoo that made it popular and cannot approach the Make It Stop Now button without fear and trembling? Whatever the reason, I'm resigned to missing the denouement of every single episode of The Simpsons for here on. How I will cope without closure remains to be seen.


And finally, I've solved the issue with my iPod by deleting a whole bunch of music. The iPod only holds 18.55 Gbs, or about 4,500 songs, and I had more than 5,000 in iTunes. So goodbye to most of The Pixies. So long to Velocity Girl. Sod off to great swathes of Carter the Unstoppable Sex Machine, and tìoraidh! to anything Enya recorded after 1995. And unfortunately it's bon voyage and bin voyooge to several hours' worth of Goon Shows. I burnt them to a data DVD, so it's not like they're lost, but it won't be the same without random jokes suddenly popping up when I'm listening to music on shuffle.


Okay, so I lied about one of these solutions. You got me. As people who know me well will attest, I would never delete music off my iPod.

Cri de Coeur

The Unending Agony That Is My Life:


My new dark brown formal shoes have rubber soles, so instead of a smart, brisk tap-tap as I walk across hard surfaces, I just move in eerie silence. How am I supposed to insinuate that efficiency and seriousness have arrived when I have self-effacing shoes?


Most days the sudoku in the newspaper is too easy.


Most days the cryptic crossword in the newspaper is too hard.


My new HD digital TV recorder shows the current TV station in a scrolling display, and it's annoying. I read the manual and found out how to turn it off, but for some reason the toggle is missing from the on-screen menu, so I can't.


My 450 thread count egyptian cotton pillow cases show the dirt too easily.


I've run out of space on my iPod.

Fly!

Like a lot of mid-century advertisements for cars, this one hints at an America entirely populated by slender midgets who like to jam themselves into the corners of large cars.





The new GM with Body by Fisher: even if the front falls off and the wheels disappear, it will still do Warp Factor Nine. Apparently a good paint job can make up for all sorts of failings in build quality. Who knew?


Note that the "rubber weatherstrips are mechanically attached". As opposed to using voodoo, presumably.

Stars

Back in the heady days when people still thought that Science was pretty damn cool:





The man who thinks for himself knows... only Viceroy has a thinking man's filter... a smoking man's taste... resulting in a smoking man's prematurely wrinkled skin and a dying man's lung cancer.


Nobody respects astronomers any more. The only way that Science can be used to sell things these days is to park a smug woman in a white coat or an unthreatening boy-man with a winsome expression in front of a grassy meadow spotted with wind turbines. Possibly with a Prius puttering sedately across the background.


Not like the good old days. Cigarettes! Taciturn men in suits! Big phallic machines! The stars themselves spiraling down into the observatory to obey our every command! It doesn't make us happy but we don't care, for we are Men of Science!


I like to think that the guy in the background is saying to himself, "What the hell? There's a sixth planet in the solar system? Whoa!"

Swish

More vintage advertising from the 1959 Life magazine:





Does she... or doesn't she... shave off her own eyebrows and replace them with upside down Nike swooshes?


Only her hairdresser and her pyschiatrist know for sure!

Images

Our receptionist at work recently celebrated her 50th birthday, and to mark the occasion we bought a Life magazine from the week of her birth off eBay. She was delighted, if a little embarassed by the proof that she was born in the era of tailfins, President Eisenhower and magazines that cost 19c.


I borrowed the magazine after she'd had a chance to flip through it and scanned some of the advertisements. Judging from those ads, people in the late 1950s liked big cars, classy booze (including at least four varieties of gin) and planet-despoiling petrochemical products.


I really was born 50 years too late.





She remembers beer, even when you can't remember where you live. Bless 'er.


This image cracks me up. We have a slim man with a fluffy little lapdog lying in a frilly hammock, wearing what appears to be a pair of kicky capri pants. If this guy's married it probably isn't to a woman.

Memorium

It's only been a little over four years since Michael Jackson contributed a post to this blog, but it seems a lifetime ago. It was only a brief relationship, conducted entirely via lawyers and threats, but I remember it with fondness.

Farther

The last of the 1933 family quizzes focuses on dear old Dad. Fathers of this time had a hard life: the Great Depression meant that there was no money, Prohibition meant that there was no booze, and Angelina Jolie hadn't been invented yet. There wasn't much for a man to do other than wear a fedora and beat the children.


Even so, the newspaper helpfully offered suggestions on how a man could be an ideal father. According to them, the perfect dad did all of the following:





10. Takes child to visit his office or place of business.

Which would be fine if not for the fact that Daddy is a prison warder.


19. Arranges for child to spend some time on a farm and in the city.

Anywhere where Dad isn't, really.


17. Uses sandwich method of correction - a criticism between compliments.

Or, alternately, beating them over the head with a stale roast beef baguette.


13. Takes child on "flower", "bird" or camera hike.

"C'mon kid, we're going on a "bird" hike. I'm hoping to see a Grey Goose."


But no father is perfect; just ask David Hasselhoff. Every father in the world today has done things of which he is not proud, whether it be missing little Billy's school play or accidentally taping the Grand Final over 'Finding Nemo'. However the fathers of 1933 were in a class of their own. Between molesting underaged girls, smoking dope and boasting about their adultery, one wonders where Depression-era dads found the time to father children at all, let alone raise them.





20. Uses tobacco, dope, alcohol or profanity.

This is one of the scourges of the modern family. I remember when my old man was arrested for possession of 6 ounces of f*ck and driving with a blood c*nt level of .12. You never quite get over it.


24. Too affectionate to daughter's girl friends, kissing or "pawing" them.

It could be worse. He could be doing that to her boy friends.


18. Opposed to vaccination, diptheria immunization, needed surgery, etc.

"No child of mine is having a bone marrow transplant! When I was a boy we took our leukemia on the chin, like men!"


14. Plays with child's toys so it can't use them, as electric train, etc.

Or "hogging the XBox", as we know it today. Of course back in 1933 the contents of most toy chests consisted of a stick, a hoop, a vulcanized rubber ball and a coloured slave, so the child really wasn't missing out on that much.


21. Gets drunk.

The children would have prefered a puppy.


19. Lets child know of father's unfaithfulness to wife.

Dad: Son, did I ever tell you about the affair I had with your mother's aerobics instructor?

Kid: What!?

Dad: Of course it was purely sexual. She had thighs that could snap a man in half...

Kid: GAAAAAAAHHHH!!!