Month: July 2019

Mister, That’s The Biggest Nickel I’ve Ever Seen

Nat Geo 7/36

I love how early ads doled out the facts. The US has 13 phones for every 100 people, and Europe has less than three. You better recognize that Bell Telephone worked its hiney off to get that done. You’re welcome, America.

Mad props to Bell.

Per http://www.elon.edu,

While Italian innovator Antonio Meucci is credited with inventing the first basic phone in 1849, and Frenchman Charles Bourseul devised a phone in 1854, Alexander Graham Bell won the first U.S. patent for the device in 1876.

And while this Bell ad states there were 34 million phones in the world in the summer of 1936, today there are 2.71 billion smartphones in use. Per http://www.bankmycell.com, 35% of the world has a smartphone. And most of us are addicted. Perhaps you are even reading this on your phone now, although I wouldn’t recommend it. You need a big monitor to enjoy these pics. 😉

Last night, my husband and I discussed the large long distance phone bills we used to accrue in the 90s, how I would call my mom collect at Christmas once I arrived at my grandparent’s house, finding a pay phone in the mall to call home, or a phone booth outside, complete with yellow pages (which some folks ripped out). All things our son will never understand. And while we still have a landline, we don’t have a rotary, so he won’t experience that either. And frankly, most of his communication is texting, so rare is the time he even speaks on a phone at all. Remember when we looked forward to hearing each other’s voices?

For Whom The Horn Blows

National Geographic, March 1928

I got on my hands on a tall stack of vintage Nat Geos this weekend, all from the 20s and 30s. And yes, even in 1928, they had colorful pictures of bare-breasted tribal women. Odd.

In this particular article about Michigan, “Mistress of the Lakes,” they declare Detroit a “City Without Slums.” Now that’s quite the declaration. Clearly things were going well in 1928. One of the manufacturing jobs listed, in addition to cars and gold pens, was the lumber industry. And let me remind you, if you’ve never read a National Geographic article, they are loooong. There was no TV yet, not everyone had radio. So this article on Michigan alone goes from page 269 to 325. Crazy, right? I won’t read it all. But I’ll share these picshas.

The curiously-coiffed gal above is the assistant cook at the lumberyard, who retires to the rear of the cook shack at noon each day to sound the call for “dinner,” which is what we call lunch.

Into the room, the men would file for nourishment. A unique feature of the lumber camps was absolute silence during eating. They maintained that it prevented arguments, which could lead to “brawls, broken dishes, and broken heads,” none of which that cook up top would want to fix. For those with misophonia, who lose their minds when forced to listen to others eating, this would have proven a challenge. But mental conditions were not coddled in their day, so group masticating it was.

The author of the article asserts that strong and faithful horses were better able to do certain lumber camp work better than “any motors,” but I imagine that didn’t last long.

While it was not uncommon to see huge rafts of pulpwood float downstream for consumption of paper mills, much wood was loaded onto ships and processed throughout Michigan.

This particular vessel below has just discharged a cargo of one million board feet of rough lumber from a Canadian port, which Saginaw’s mill will finish for ready-cut houses. Per michiganhistory.leadr.msu.edu, Saginaw hit its peak in the Lumber Era during 1882, with 1,001,274,905 board feet of timber cut in mills along the Saginaw River.

No wonder we hug the trees now.

greenbiz.com

 

Cosplay 1961

61 Round Up

Not sure what’s going on here, whether it’s a Greek college costume party or Halloween or what. I do know that stuffed animals that size are on the pricey end, and usually don’t belong to adults, unless it was won as a carnival prize on a date.

I’m all for fun and frolic and costume parties, but only for an evening. I deplore the current subculture of cosplay. Detest anime. Loathe manga. I don’t understand the lengths to which grown people play pretend and the time and money and travel spent to escape their real lives. I understand being a child at heart, enthusiasm, awe, seeing the world with fresh eyes. But playing dress-up with other grown-ups as a lifestyle? Perhaps I’m a crotchety old fart, but I don’t get it.

Back In The U.S.S.R. (Don’t Know How Lucky You Are)

Nat Geo 1/47

When we studied WWII in middle school, I remember trying to wrap my head around the murder of six million Jews. It was a number I couldn’t fathom. I currently can’t imagine having a million dollars, and I can’t process that there are over a million people in my hometown now. It’s still too big of a number for me. So when we think about the estimated 26 million Soviet citizens who died during WWII (according to the Washington Post), it’s mindboggling. Can you process that number? There are only 25 million people in all of Australia right now. Less than 26 million in all of North Korea. Can you imagine just annihilating that many folks?

And the men above were spared. Survivors of forced labor camps with nothing to their names. What a hard road that must have been to travel.

Per a January article about Soviet slavery in Russia Beyond:

“They crammed us into wagons, as many as they could, so we couldn’t move our legs,” recalled Antonina Serdyukova, who was captured in Ukraine. “For a month, traveled that way.” Describing her life at a plant near Dresden, she said, “We ate once a day, a bowl of soup, with carrot and swede.”

For the Ostarbeiter (“workers from the east”), forced to live thousands of kilometers from home, fate was like the lottery. Metallurgical plants, mines and farms needed workers, and where they ended up depended on who paid the most.

“When we arrived, there was a transfer point, I would call it a slave market,” said Fedor Panchenko from Ukraine. “In an hour, they sold the whole group of people to different hands.” Among a group of 200 people, Panchenko found himself in a factory, at the ironworks in Silesia (now Poland). For those who came home, life was also hard: German captivity was a stigma. “Fellow citizens despised us,” calmly recalls Panchenko. “I couldn’t apply for a decent job and spent 37 years working at a factory, and if there was any kind of breakage, they would say to me each time: “Oh, no surprise, you worked for Hitler.” Others kept silent about their experience in Germany for decades – they didn’t want the stigma to impact their careers or families.

giphy.com

How To Pair Peppermint Mocha With Frozen Caribou

Natl Geo Jan 1947

Hunters chop a frozen caribou and devour it uncooked. Indians called these northern tribes Eskimos, “Eaters of raw flesh.”

So go the words of this 1947 National Geographic article. Seems pretty cut and dry to me. But evidently we’re not supposed to say “Eskimo” anymore; Eskimo is considered offensive, especially in Canada, being widely thought to stem from a Cree pejorative meaning “eaters of raw meat,” which is precisely, accurately what they are doing in that very image. So I don’t know how that is offensive. But in this day and age, isn’t everything?

Demeaning any group for their race or heritage is clearly wrong, but good luck staying abreast of all the latest victim classes and subsequent acceptable language. It shouldn’t be too hard to avoid the E word if you live in a non-igloo location. Is it okay to say “igloo”? Will the judge allow it?

Calling an eater of raw flesh the word for “eater of raw flesh” seems fine to me, but a sliver of my race pie is European (read: privileged) so what do I know? And I’m in the South, and them is up in the Nawth. So what do I know from Eskimos?

I DO know this is racist:

http://www.sfu.ca

Absolutely. I get it. Demeaning.

But this next ad from 1958? All I see is a cutie patootie selling me delicious chocolate, which I imagine is waaaay better than frozen caribou. Is there a word for “middle-aged eater of chocolate”? I’ll take it!

There isn’t any hate behind this ad that I can see. But some folks will go looking for it, scavenging for it, desperately trying to find malicious intention. Cute kids sell ads. Always have, always will.

In 2016, then-President Obama signed legislation that replaced Eskimo with “Alaska Native” in federal laws because Non-Inuit people had assigned the term. Isn’t that what all language does? It assigns terms? I guess I just don’t get it there. Does that make people feel like they’re taking their power back if they get to change the language?

So what about Eskimo kisses? Is that okay to say? Is it okay to do?

Is a Native American eskimo-kissing a white male offensive? (If I am to assume she is even Native American based on looks). The boy-child Peter Pan is culturally appropriating a Native American headdress, and that is in the “no-no” column these days. No race is ever allowed to wear anything that another race has ever worn; that is theft, plain and simple. But what if you’re many races, like many of us? A dozen different results from Ancestry.com? Can you “appropriate” the customs of any of your ancestors and don the gay apparel of your forefathers? Or should I say foremothers? Well, that gets tricky. But let’s be honest: even though she is literally pushing him back, he is metaphorically pushing her down both by being white and male. And immortal.

 

Men Who Don’t Fit Through Doorways

Look, I’m fine with barrel-chested men. No worries. But this is ridiculous. These heads don’t match these bodies, and these bodies don’t exist in nature.

Just look at the man above! He’s at least three feet wide. It’s like hugging a refrigerator.

The ads aren’t even targeted toward large men. They just presume all men are this wide? Perhaps if an elephant stepped on them, they would be.

One would think that folks would be rationing material in The Great Depression, not overusing it.

This last guy is ridiculous. He’s half farmer, half mobster, and 100% frightening. What do you feed him? Does he eat from a trough?

And just in case you’re not sure what kind of chest you have, here’s a chart.

thoracickey.com

 

Oy Vey, Van Der Oye

The Blog of Funny Names

Hola and bienvenidos, readers of this funny-named blog. We shall not let you down with today’s multisyllabic offering. While logic and reasoning would lead me to call this bearded paleskin a Netherlander, as he springs from Voorst, Gelderland, Netherlands, I must use the more accurate term of Dutch.

wikipedia

Today we celebrate the Dutch politician, Willem Anne Assueer Jacob Schimmelpenninck van der Oye. For most of us, the only Willem with which we are familiar is actor Willem Dafoe, not to be confused with Willem DaFriend. While this is completely irrelevant, I do feel I must share with you the name of Dafoe’s spouse, Giada Colagrande, before we proceed on the Dutch front, simply because this blog demands it. It brings to mind an image of Food Network’s Giada De Laurentiis holding a Super Big Gulp of Coke. While Giada would not be caught dead in a 7-11…

View original post 415 more words

Well, This Is Awkward

Men’s clothing ads of the 1930s were curious. I certainly don’t get it. Is this normal for a fully-dressed man to be supervising the sporting goods usage of a barely-dressed man? I don’t care for this tone.

Nor do I care for the tone of this one. Young men, arm in arm, marching in their underwear. It’s getting weirder. And I can’t even with their tagline.

This seems to be more normal, just some men in office shirts checking out another man’s clubs. And while it’s odd to buy clothes that “flatter your summer tan,” it doesn’t really get strange until you see the belted briefs. What is that about? Do you have those?

Let’s end on a less naked note, with this 1932 Arrow ad for men who get fooled by shirts. And no, that’s not our president; it’s a fellow who evidently goes fishing in a nice button-down, tie, and khakis. You know, like village fishermen. Is he petting that fish? Is he stroking its fins? Is that the proper protocol? No wonder shirts have been fooling him.

%d bloggers like this: