Little ads, 1968 - Great things for the perfect lifestyle of brilliant people who aren't useless idiots at all.

Be sure to wear goggles or risk looking very weird. Lamps included with lamp.

Note: Only bipedal basset hounds will immediately wilt and die upon contact.

Paper piece of shit is endorsed by up to three disembodied floating heads. No obligation.

Once gloves receive $2.98, they are, in fact, technically professionals at being gloves.

Conversation serving suggestion: "Why would you want a fake Prussian helmet on your mantel? Did the Burgermeister Meisterburger leave in a hurry?"

Sears' High Waisters, 1970.

UPDATE: Due to a flood of two comments demanding to know if this is real, we have decided to post the original ad. We choose to interpret this not so much as a testament to the workmanship of the Phil Are GO! Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Brigade (those guys already strut around like they own the place), but rather that people are prepared to believe almost any dopey clothing trend from The Seventies.

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Colorgroom - Vanity unfair.

This ad for something called "Colorgroom" all but uses the phrase "like a woman" as a pejorative. Well, the joke's on us, because obviously Colorgroom had the last laugh, enjoying worldwide success by becoming a must-have product found in every man's dresser drawer. Right?

"Don't dye your hair like a woman's!" God help us! Are you insane? Don't be an idiot, stupid! It gets better, too...

As, apparently, anyone could tell you, streaky hair is symptomatic of being a woman. Is your hair streaked? You may be a woman! However, being both insecure and vain are seemingly not nearly as shameful as being a lady, and they are A-okay for men. Otherwise, there's be no need for Colorgroom, right?

Do you use some kind of chit chat program at work or maybe not quite at work, or maybe at work, but not really for work? Your friends need to know that you are always thoroughly groomed, or that you are not quite as happy as you'd be with dark hair. That's why you need these avatars. They're both 1000 px square, so whatever thing you use to avoid working at work, it shouldn't have a problem accepting one of these images as your new head. You're welcome!

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The Three Axis Trainer

Joke #1 -  May, 1960. NASA builds multi-axis rotational trainer to test pilots' reactions to being put into multi-axis rotational trainer.

Joke #2 - "We are very sorry to hear you are having difficulties with your three-axis trainer. Your call is very important to us. Please remain on the line. If you suspect that your device is actually a two-axis trainer, press one. If you have been scrambled into a hideous pile of goo, press two..."

Joke #3 - "Yes, Don, you probably could touch those things if you stretch a little, but please don't. They're very ticklish. No, don't 'cup' them either. Look, can we get back to the experiment please?"

Joke #4 - May, 1960. NASA builds multi-axis irony trainer to test pilots' reactions to being held pretty much perfectly still a little ways in the air in a fantastically expensive machine. Device was designed to simulate potentially hyper-ironic conditions in orbit.

Joke #5 - NASA is still considering possible names for the new training device. Current favorites are "The Belly-Go-Round", "The Daddy-O", and "The Wacky Circumference".

Joke #6 - "Before we begin, I'll ask you one more time, Don: Did you grab my wife's ass at the Christmas party?"

Joke #7 - "Don, you know you're not allowed to park that in the executive garage, right?"

Joke #8 - The Tesla Model Q. MSRP around $70,000. Zero to sixty in four seconds. Exposing the battery to temperatures below -22 degrees for more than one day will void the warranty. Battery performance degrades up to 30% over eight years. Range is reduced by 40% at any temperature below forty degrees. Running the heater will further reduce the useable range of the vehicle. You want one because your neighbor has one.

Jim D. sent us joke #9, from a distant, nauseated galaxy. Thanks, Jim!  Unlike so many other early NASA programs, Project Audiolus was a complete success, and coincidentally it proved the conventional wisdom wrong: In space, everybody can hear you scream. Hear you very well, indeed.

Joke #10. Never one to miss an opportunity for a ball joke, Mr.FancyThreeBallPants_2 does not disappoint. Thanks, MF3B2! NASA tests the multi-billion dollar "Trianglotronic Ballinator", in which the subjects see how many structural triangles can be counted while they are simultaneously hit in the face by three large rotating dodgeballs, which may or may not be a naturally occurring phenomenon in outer space.

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.  -Mgmt.]

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Western Pine Association - The jigsaw is up.

So, you're probably sitting there, thinking that laziness was invented a couple of years ago, and that before then, everyone was always really diligent and never cut corners. The Western Pine Association, long understood to be a near-constant volcano of always-new advertising art, is about to get busted wide open. Prepare to have your mind frikkin' blown, kid!

Lumber guys want us to build lots of things with wood. Got it.

But there's naother story here, and we're going to sniff it out. There's something familiar about the art in this ad. This looks like a job for the Phil Are GO! Investigative Reporting Team!. Let's get those guys in here, pronto.

We asked the P.A.G.I.R.T to type "western pine" into the search box on our own blog. When we did, many staffers whipped their glasses off in shock and said "My god, this goes all the way to the top."

Check out this link to our post about the Wetsern Pine Association from almost exactly one year ago. http://phil-are-go.blogspot.com/2015/03/western-pine-association-laundry-lady.html

Whaaaat?????? Art conspiracy exposed!!!

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Let the jig equal up.

Some fat cat at the Western Pine Association HQ got reeeeal creative with the art budget here. He probably paid a staffer to modify the old art to make the laundry lady into a cookout dad. So what did he do with the remaining art budget for the fence ad? There's no guessing, so let's start with some guessing. Those Big Pine Boys like to party, so maybe it went up his nose? Or maybe he spent it on a bunch of plywood hookers? Or maybe he just blew it all on some really expensive Italian pine suits?

One thing's for sure. This crooked little chef has got a background as transparent as the story the Western Pine Association is trying to feed us, and that means one thing: you can put this shady cook over whatever image you like, but he still stinks. Stinks, like crooked money and the scumbags that make the ads for the Western Pine Association. Watch your backs, people. We're through the looking glass here, people.

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Flowerpants - "You can feel how good it looks."

Sure, some pretty bad shit happened this week, and it's easy to think things keep getting worse and worse and there's no hope for humanity. But you know what was going on forty-seven years ago? In the March, 1969 issue of Esquire magazine, this appeared...

This guy looks serious. Here he is, this guy, Mister Flowerpants, with his chin in his hand, as if he's judging you, the viewer. You're looking back at him through history and he's peering up at you through a hole in time, from forty-seven years ago. He's looking at you like he's not sure if he likes the look of you... like he doesn't quite approve of your lifestyle.

Flowerpants sees you, maybe with a cup of morning coffee in your hand, because you get up extra early to avoid sitting in traffic for an extra hour. Maybe he thinks your hair isn't puffy enough, or your glasses are too small. He's not really digging your sweater, and wonders why, if you're from The Future, aren't you wearing a plastic sphere over your head, and why you're not wearing a sparkly silver cape, and fluorescent lipstick.

"This is The Future???" he demands. "Where's the hovertable, man? Why isn't everyone having random sex, and talking in beeps, if they're so much further evolved?" "Has the world been taken over by squares in The Future?" Flowerpants is confused and disappointed by you, from The Alleged Future. He doesn't approve of your lack of grooviness. He doesn't approve of your boring button down-shirt and he especially doesn't approve of your boring old jeans.

For lots of reasons, go fuck yourself, flowerpants.

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UPDATE: Alert Reader John S. came to the realization that Flowerpants has a lot more judging to do in the world, and sent us a copy of him on a nice transparent background. Using this Flowerpants PNG, you can make Flowerpants pass judgment on anyone and anything you can think of. Does Flowerpants approve of your dog's surprise carpet pile? Does he approve your coworker's novelty coffee mug? Drop him into a picture or print him and cut him out and see. Your world needs to know if Flowerpants approves. Thanks to John for doing the pen tooling. The rest of you? You're welcome.

Nursery Rhymes of Horror and the Macabre

Post Cereals - Going Breakfast Clear.

The P.A.G! Images and Scanning Them Team reported to me that that this ad happened to fall in the centerfold of the magazine, and that it happened to have already worked itself free of the binding some time over the past fifty-six years. As a result, it was a cinch to gingerly lift it free and scan it with no funny paper-groin weirdness going on. "Yeah yeah, big deal. Just give me the Graphic Gifts, already."


Just as we look to The Seventies for amusingly horrible judgment and routinely awful decision-making, The Fifties are a reliable source of delusional irrational exuberance and positivism bordering on the disturbing. So, as a purveyor of first-thing-in-the-morning nutrition, Post only felt obligated to give you the impression that, if you ate their cereal, it would magically give you the energy to leap up from the table, get out there and physically assault the day.

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Just look at the way junior bravely simulates optimism. he almost looks like he's not afraid of whatever he'll face today. What's wrong, junior? Having doubts? Be careful, son. You just keep eating. Take it in. Let it become part of you. Don't ask too many questions.

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Sis looks like she's drunk the Kool Aid. She seems to have been fully indoctrinated into the cult of Postology. She's a level three clear, it seems. But if that were true, wouldn't she be able to pour the bowl using only her breakfast mind powers? Maybe she should ask for her $128,000 back? Hahaha, just kidding. She doesn't want to do that. Even if she says she does, she doesn't.

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Mom's looking flushed and ready to do whatever that thumb needs her to do. Go get em, mom! With that kind of dedication, you have nothing to fear from The Father Figure.

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Good frikkin morning! How's your energy today? No time to talk about it because dad's got too much energy to finish a sentence! He's positively vibrating with unreasonable optimism. What's he laughing about? What's not to laugh about? he can bend space and time using only his mind. He's couch-bouncingly cranked! If you ask him why, you're clearly part of the problem and need to be destroyed. You'd better vibrate too or be deemed Fair Game. You don't want to be Fair Game. Don't even ask.

If you think you can sleep tonight with these happy people on your hard drive, go ahead and right click them onto your computer, so they can influence the thinking of all your other files, unless your file seem capable critical thought. They'd better not.

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Monstrosities of Science 01

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Twin-engine six-wheel Mad Max dragster-1962 Popular Science.

As you may know, more wheels is better - at least, to look at. In 1962, Popular Science ran this half-pager about three guys who built a twin-engined six-wheeled dragster. The four drive wheels have a bizarre staggered track width, and the whole thing looks exactly like it was built by some guys in a garage, which kind of makes it great. Very Mad Max.

UPDATE: Here's a quick interview with a slightly older Neil Leffler explaining how they built the car. Thanks to Cyclotronboy for finding the footage.

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Up Your Decor, 1969

Wow, everyone! The Sixties sure were turbulent and stuff! Who's really excited to start The Seventies and make everything all groovy again? Everyone! That's what! So, why not start by decorating your "pad" with some hip new styles that your family will be sure to tolerate for decades to come! Yes! That's why not! Let's get ready to do what I just said! Let's "Up Your Decor"!!!!!!!!

Everyone knows your bathroom is the extra private comfy room of your house, and these ultra
luxurious bathroom cozy kits are a great way to comfyify your personal evacuation area. Everyone
wants their bathroom to absorb some of the spiritual energy of the homeowner and never, ever let it
go. that's why these super-absorbent fixture fluffers are perfect for absorbing all your aural juices
and creative fluids, so they can hold onto your spirit forever. Everything in this kit, from the toilet
snuggler to the garbage cozy will never forget you! You'll be in them!

Hey, junior. You call that a carbon atom? Ha ha! It looks like little junior won't be sending home any
big checks from his lucrative career as a researcher of science. But you know what? He's smart
enough to know that nothing's better for making up mistaken molecules than a nice huge plain of this
luxurious ocher pile. How vast is the ocher pile plain? It's vast enough that junior is a safe distance
from the five thousand dollar Eames chair. There's no chance he can damage it by whacking his face
on it. The chair and junior are safer if he keeps his bottom planted on the ocher pile.... in style!

Who's enigmatic? Mister and Missus Blue, that's who! And so can you, with this infinite blue void of
blue shag. You'll be up, up, and away in the wild blue yonder. You and your hexagonal ceramic side
table and your lone ionic elbow column. You just can't let yourself leave until you figure out what
the chandelier is hanging from, but then "it's hard to leave when you can't find the door"!

What's in? What's out? You are, if you've got these neat-o indoor shingles on your walls! Welcome
your neighbors into the outside of your house if you want to, but if they look like they "can't handle",
just leave them inside, out there. You  and your carpet crawlers know that you've got to get in to get
ouuuut! We are sorry to have blown your mind!

Color TV broadcasts, the FCC, and YOU! - A nation in agony, 1950.

Back in 1950, TV manufacturers, the government, and up to four people were frantic about "What's To Be Done About Color Tee Vee?" Manufacturers were fighting about technical standards. Broadcasters were trying to figure out how to most effectively bury the color broadcasts in the schedule. This left the beleaguered consumer to decide whether it was worth over $700 (adjusted for inflation to modern Futurebucks) to stick a giant contraption to the front of their black and white TV, converting it to a color image, or just run out and spend $9,000 (again, converted for inflation) for a full-on color TV. Jesus.

We now present this article from the November, 1950 issue of LIFE so that you can relive all the anger, all the confusion, and all the Vitalis of this turbulent period of upheaval in our nation's history. Where were you when Howdy Doody switched to color? Probably hiding under the bed. He was freaky enough in grayscale.

A brief editorial on naming things:

It's interesting that LIFE felt the need to change the name of a "broadcast" to "colorcast" just because of the addition of color to the signal. A "broadcast" simply describes a signal sent over airwaves. Why should a relatively minor alteration of the signal's format call for a name change? Did they have "dramacasts" and "comedycasts"? No, they didn't. That would be just as stupid. But when people are all excited about something new, they get swept up in the fever of the moment and proclaim that we need a slightly new word to talk about the slightly different thing everyone's wetting their pants over at the moment.

This reminds me of the word "podcast". The word was coined by Apple as a portmanteau of "iPod" and "broadcast", and is more than a little cutesy, because that's Apple. Of course, Apple wants to claim inventorship of everything in history, no matter how many examples predate their execution of an idea. But, history is written by those who shout the loudest and have the best lawyers.

Anyway, the name "podcast" has stuck, due to adoption by most people, and to change it now would be awkward and forced. Sensibility and taste notwithstanding, Leo Laporte insists on calling his TWiT (This Week in Tech) podcast a "netcast". Leo gets ten out of ten points for giving Apple the finger, but minus several million for trying too hard and being verbally clumsy. It has completely failed to catch on, so Leo should just let it go.

Another notable example are William Shatner's forgettable Tekwar series of books. In Shatner's lame vision of the future, everything has a dorky new name based on the manufacturing process. Plastic figures heavily in the future, apparently. So, a window is not a window. It's a "plas-window". If your wondrous vision of the future basically involves prefixing everything with "plas-", maybe consider having a cup of coffee and going for a walk until you have a real idea for a story.

Instead of getting more obsessive and granular with names, always trying to force people to learn your stupid made-up word, why not lean in the direction of simplicity? Why be complicated for the sake of complexity? Just call a podcast a "show". It's a perfectly good word that already describes anything from a vaudeville revue to Laser Floyd. Does the means of delivery matter enough to try to shoehorn a new and dorky word into everyone's brain? The desperate wish to make up a name for every iterative version of something that already exists betrays the obsessive lack of perspective of the would-be wordsmith. Your new thingy is very exciting for you, and possibly very nice for someone to use, but it probably doesn't need a new pronoun. Consider what a random person would call it after two seconds consideration. If a pre-existing word leaps easily to mind, you probably don't need a new name for your thing.

For example, electric cars are becoming pretty common, but it's still just a car. Thankfully, nobody has tried to rename them "electrotransports". Just wait, though. Apple has yet to unveil their electric car invention. I'm sure they'll have some pompous declaration with a twee new name they made up. "All other forms of transportation are now obsolete. This is the iScoot. It has more rounded corners. The line forms to the left."

Danger bomb.

Joke #1 - "My god gentlemen. The box isn't joking. This bomb is almost completely made out of danger. It really is a danger bomb!"

Joke #2 - "Wait. God dammit. This alleged 'danger bomb' is merely a 'discomfort bomb'. These terrorists really are just fucking with us now. ...But still, it looks really itchy in there."

Joke #3 - After making contact with the device from a safe distance of fourteen inches, Special Commander Basil Stoneguard could then begin to defuse the arming mechanism, protected by his Anti-Danger Vest and Extreme Safety Trilby.

Joke #4 - If he made a mistake and set off the device, the Peril Funnel should direct most of the blast directly through his face, protecting his shirt and hat from danger.

Joke #5 - "Yes, I think I see the device. It looks like it's, oooh, about nine hundred yards away. I'll need the extra long pliers, I think."

Joke #6 - The Sigma f/2.0 macro bomb lens allows for sharp, bright  close-ups of almost any explosive device. And, as a true macro lens, you can be sure that any explosions that blow you up will be at perfect one-to-one scale, without any unwanted optical magnification.

[Commenter jokes will be added to the post.   -Mgmt.]

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