Master Mind! - Or not.

Just four days after The Waterboarding of Chicago, a critically moistened city returns to work, and somehow finds the courage to make fun of old magazines again, because if we stop making snarky jokes about defenseless old pictures, the water terrorists have truly won. You are heroes, dear readers. Show that stagnant pool of bacterially lethal and possibly electrified filth in your basement that your spirit remains unbroken. Laugh with us in the face of overly simplistic advertising and push your squishy, mildewy fear to the curb of your mind, for the Special Item Pickup Service (also of your mind) to carry away.

Speaking of your mind, let's speak about your mind. The picture in this ad is more like one I would use to portray a man who is baffled by numbers, rather than a math whiz. he looks like his head is spinning. "Don't ask me! I hate math! I'm only an artist!" If he were really good at math, the numbers would all be in clear, straight lines. But what do I know about selling books?

The book is bound in cloth, which now seems a little shortsighted. It seems to me that any book worth keeping should be printed on rubber pages and bound in a CO2-canister-inflatable raft. A book like this may help you calculate in your head your total losses you need to report to your insurance company, assuming you have flood insurance, which most people don't.

He'll make you forget all your math worries.

Please enjoy this delightful clip art version of the mathy gent from today's ad. You can pretend he's really good at math, or that he's a math-tard. Or heck, you can even pretend that those glyphs floating around his head mean he's a prince of hell, as lavishly illustrated by visionary painter and freaky weirdo Wayne Barlowe. The choice is yours.

Click for big.

Click for big.