Mothers' Day special - Little Ads from the American home front.

Here's a few little ads from the back pages of the July 1941 issue of The American Magazine, a decidedly patriotic magazine that seems to be skewed towards war wives.

Virginia Rounds cigarettes seem pretty excited about their cigarettes' corn tipped-ness, but not excited enough to actually explain it to us anywhere in the ad copy. Maybe anybody who wasn't familiar with corn-tipped cigarettes was un-American, and therefore burned as a witch? If so, I super know what the hell corn-tips are. Corn me up, baby! Moving on...

Worried about your liver bile? I know. We all are. So WTF is "calomel"? It's mercury chloride, and although it sounds toxic, it was actually friggin poisonous as hell. It makes you throw up. They used to give it to people to rid their bodies of "impurities". Give too much and your hair and teeth fall out. Good times.

Yeah, so, if they thought your liver wasn't doing it's job, they'd give you calomel for some reason. So I guess everyone was worried about their bile. See the happy lady smiling with her mouth but not her eyes? She is both toohtful and hairful, so presumably her bile is rocking out without the help of mercury chloride.

What's this ad selling? Um, scanning, scanning.. Ah! Carter's Little Liver Pills. That's good design, guys! Force the curious customer to read the fine print to find out what you're selling. No wonder Carter's Little Liver Pills are still doing so well today (psst- not really).

You can make extra cash peddling The American Magazine. Save Crowell-Collier Publishing the huge expense of having a marketing department and make a few pennies by hawking magazines to your friends, like Amway.

See that happy dollar lady? She's pretty funny. A nice guy might crop her all special-like and post her for your rude-finger right-clicky repurposing pleasure. Coming right up!

Click for big $.

Lastly, here's the cover of the magazine. I really feel the need to point out that the model doesn't know how to hold drumsticks. I know she's a model just doing a job for fifteen cents an hour or whatever models earned in 1941, and she's not a real musician (as if drummers are?), but anyway...

..

There are two ways to hold drum sticks. Traditional Grip and Matched Grip. She's doing the "I'm faking it" grip, favored by people pretending to be playing a drum just for a photograph.

Traditional Grip is the older, more formal way to hold the sticks. It was intended to make it easy to play on a drum tilted at an angle. Marching drums used to rest against the the left thigh of a (right-handed) drummer as it hung from it's strap around the neck, like in the picture.

By the Seventies and Eighties, they had better ways to carry a drum - usually some kind of aluminum brace that hangs over both shoulders, removing the weight from your neck and giving you a level surface to play on. So, in a way, the Traditional Grip is kiiiind of obsolete, although I still find it easier to do drum rolls and play all that rat-a-tat marching stuff with the traditional grip, because that's the grip I was trained with.

When I play at a drum kit, I use the Matched grip, because it just makes more sense to me. To use the Traditional Grip at a drum kit, you have to slant your snare drum at a funny angle to accommodate the grip, which in my opinion makes the whole kit feel weird. Also, because you're holding the left stick at a 90-degree angle to your wrist, you have a shorter reach with that hand. This makes it harder to reach cymbals and tom toms. Yes, there are drummers who play incredibly well at a kit with the Traditional Grip, but it feels weird to me.

Here's Ed Shaughnessy playing like nuts with the Traditional Grip. He was the drummer for The Tonight Show during the Johnny Carson years. I can't do what he's doing, except for maybe the sideburns, but I'd need a few months to get there. How good was Ed? As you can see in the photo, he's not even looking the sheet music.

The drum in the picture seems to be a 1938 (or so) Ludwig Popular Parade Drum. It's probably worth a few hundred dollars now. Turns out I have an old Ludwig Professional Model Snare Drum from 1929-ish. It's missing one or two tension rods (oh well), and in this picture you can see where dad and I reattached the snare strainer with modern nylon lock nuts, instead of the tiny wood screws that fell out. That damages the dollar value, but keeps the drum playable.

What's that have to do with Mothers' Day? Mom paid for all my lessons. Shut up.

Murine & Vitalis - Before and after.

I hope you're sitting down, dear readers. Or at least, I hope you're leaning against a load-bearing wall. Brace yourselves. STANDARDS OF BEAUTY CHANGE OVER TIME! I know. It makes you want to run straight off and punch an old person, but don't do that. You need to at least wait till he or she complains that all cars look alike nowadays.

Vitalis was The Shit in the fifties. The Wet Look was in. The trick was to get the wet look without putting slime in your hair. Now, I've never tried Vitalis, but I'm curious what the stuff feels like. By the time I was aware that hair could look bad, there were already loads of space-waxes available in ten ounce tubes at the store. Vitalis was already "dad stuff" when I hit the hair product scene.

Anyway, see the guy in the top picture? Look at his hair. What a loser. His hair won't be cool for forty years. If he were in the year 2000, the marlin would be all over him, wanting his caviar, or whatever. But here in 1957, he's so square, he has to wrestle that marlin onto the boat. He's trying to give the fish's nose a hand job and the fish only wants to stab him in the brain. Poor jerk can't even get any play from a fish. If he had Vitalis in his hair, he could be giving a woman's nose a hand job on his boat!

See? In the bottom picture, he's all Vitalised up, and an actual human woman is presenting her nose for some serious hand jobbing. He's just about to begin the nasal handy as the shutter clicked. Jump to 2000 again, and she'd be pepperspraying his nose-holes, what with that grampa hair he's got.

Okay, shuttle back to 1941 for this Murine ad. before we had right-wing true believer Ben Stein to show us what eyes should look like, we had to settle for women's eyes, as seen in this Murine ad.

It's another before/after good/bad comparison. Trouble is, I don't see the problem with the top set of eyes. Now, to be fair, I don't think this is a generational thing. It's not like a man in 1941 would look at them and go "eew". I think it's just a lame choice of pictures. Those eyes could look a lot worse.

The bottom set of eyes say "Don't you think it's about time you clean up your room?" Those could be your mom's eyes, which is fine, of course. However, the top eyes don't look like mom eyes. The top eyes say "How about we mess up your room?".

Messy, please! Hold the Murine.

Click for a big handy.

Click for big bedroom eyes.

UPDATE: Other erotic 'jobs that sound better than they are.

-Ear toejob

-Hairjob

-Testicle kneejob

-Nostriljob

-Framing hammer spinejob

-Nervejob

-Ear, nose, and throat job

-Brainjob

-Trainjob

-Phlegmjob

-Screamjob

-Carrot Top job

G.E. Refrigerator - The center of family life.

Gather round, children, and I'll spin a yarn of adventure from the Days of Yore. See, once upon a time, instead of a "refrigerator" everyone had an "ice box" in their kitchen. This was because before anyone figured out how to make stuff cold by compressing certain gasses, the only way to do it was by keeping huge blocks of ice around the house, and hopefully replacing them with new huge blocks of ice as they melted. Today's ad is from G.E., promoting their exciting 1941 line of electric refrigerators.

Consumer refrigerators had been available since 1930something, but it seems they were still new enough to justify the term "electric refrigerator". Want a modern analogy? "Digital camera". Only a few years ago, you would have told your friends you were thinking of getting a "digital camera", but now you just call it a camera. I bet it really frosts the old timers who now have to listen to everyone say "film camera" to describe the old obsolete technology.

Here's a Three Stooges short on FaceTube in which they play ice men, making a delivery to a house on a very tall hill on a very hot day. This short didn't make sense to me when I was a kid, until my mom explained to me that people used to need giant blocks of ice for daily life. What's funny to me now is that the horse reads the sign to determine they're at the right address, and wakes up the Stooges to get to work. Interestingly, this short was released in 1941, the same year as this ad. I guess there were still enough ice boxes around that the story of the film still worked... or at least worked well enough for a Stooges short.

Anyway, this ad takes up back to the time when the fridge was the center of family life. When you came home on a hot day, you'd open the fridge and let it cool the house, and everyone would hang out in the kitchen, gradually eating all the food you own because it's 1941 and there's nothing else to do but have wars.

Here we see a hand-ful of teen-agers having a bull-session in front of the elec-tric refrigerator. Mary holds a cafeteria tray full of pudding while everyone finishes all the milk and brown squares (or as we used to call them, "squarebrowns").

Blayne loves the way Mary's Mom makes squarebrowns, but he's just plowing through them, eager to try the pudding that Mary is holding in front of those curious lumps in her sweater. Is there pudding in there, too? Yes and no, Blayne!

Redshirt Rob (as his friends call him) just eats whatever is put in his mouth. He's just staring at Mary's legs, wondering what holds them together at the top. Easy there, Rob! There's plenty of time to find out after you're drafted and shot down over France! He'll also find out that the French have a funny word for gonorrhea. They just call it "le sexe".

Hey! What's Judith up to? Is she stealing something from the bread-box? No, she's tuning the radio. Keeping an analog radio on one station  was like balancing a plate on a pencil - constant attention. It was worth it, because in 1941, radio was still relevant and listenable. Radio networks wouldn't be programmed for twelve-year-olds by hyperactive ferrets for another fifty years, so Judith better keep her knob-hand limber! I'll help her steal some of the boys' attention back from Mary. And if the radio doesn't do it, there's always the G.E.'s Butter Conditioner that keeps table butter just right for spreading.

Big? Click.

Ethyl - Really? Drain bamage?

Look at these happy squares - Mister and Missus Dandy, out for an afternoon's shopping and general consumption. First stop, a new suit. Then, some sparklies for her, then a tank full of Ethyl, with delicious, smooth-running lead. Mmmmmm, yummy in my engine. Feeling antisocial?

I love ads like this. In 1941, nobody understood that lead caused brain damage, right? Well, not so right. The Wikipedia article on the subject is well-referenced and smells not a bit of fabrication. Tetraethyl (a lead-based fuel additive that's good for engines but not good for pretty much everything else), had been identified as a public health threat in 1924, after "refinery accidents left workers dying from violent insanity". Holy wow. Don't worry, the U.S. Public Health Service swooped in and convened a meeting (a year later) about the whole argy-bargy of lead toxicity. It lasted a day. Their conclusion was that lead did not pose an immediate threat, also there were no alternatives, even though private memos discussed ethanol as an alternative, although it was more expensive than lead. The U.S. Public Health Service concluded that the matter deserved further study and called for lunch. Thanks guys.

Here are some effects of lead poisoning:

-Lowered I.Q.
-High blood pressure
-Hearing problems
-Angry violent behavior
-Stunted growth

"Git 'r dumb!"

Leaded fuel was still used in Nascar as recently as 2008 when they switched to unleaded fuel. This explains the popularity of Larry the Cable Guy among Nascar loyalists and their acceptance of driving in a circle as "sport".

So who was the Ethyl company? General Motors trade marked the name Ethyl in 1924, because even then, "lead" was a dirty word and would make the product harder to market.

Everything's fine now, though. The EPA's phase-out of leaded fuels began just thirty years later, in 1972. But the process was interrupted when Ethyl Inc. sued the EPA. It took four years for the EPA to win the case and the actual phase-out began in 1976. A 1994 study showed that concentrations of lead in the blood of Americans had dropped by 78%.

Here's DuPont (makers of Styrofoam and Teflon) mentioning how awful lead is for your brain.

I'd probably be smarter if I hadn't gotten into Dungeons and Dragons when I was ten. The little miniature dudes we used for the game were still made of lead back then. Now I think they switched to some other metal. Sure I never breathed my miniatures, but I spent lots of time re-carving them to exactly match my character, to impress my big brothers. That may have had some kind of effect thingy on my brainular region or something. What, was I supposed to use a figure holding a longsword when my character sheet clearly stated he had a scimitar? Maybe you're the one with brain damage? Heh. Good one, Phil.

Kellogg's Pep - Rhymes with "hep".

Every decision made in advertising is carefully considered, analyzed, focus-tested, ground into fine powder, tasted, reformulated, voted on, and finally presented to the disinterested public with the sincere enthusiasm of a municipal zoning hearing. We can only assume that it has always been so. Spontaneity and the vigor of genius are not only rare in the commercial world, but they are hated, all while paying lip service to the idea of celebrating the same. Trying to appeal to a young demographic has always been tricky. The Youth are cynical and mistrustful of The Man. Fortunately, there's always been the easy fall-back of tossing some slang around to show The Kids you're down with them. Problem solved!

Breakfast cereal has always been focused on the youth market. In this ad, Kellogg's is trying to win over the tricky and skeptical teenager. Glasses Nerd Jim lacks the energy to dance with Jill, and instead of dumping Jim for bringing her to a dance and just slouching around, Jill buys him a box of Pep cereal. That's very big of her. She could have easily smashed him in the gems with a folding chair.

Everyone knows that glasses mean either "smart" or "dork". Interestingly, here we see them used as both. In Jim's case, they mean he's a wiener. But on his sister "Sis", it means she's smart. Advertising has learned that this is discriminatory, and now glasses can only mean you're smart, or that you just need glasses. Now, if advertisers need someone to be a bonehead in a commercial, they just reach for the ever-dopey Man to learn the error of his ways thanks to his wife, with the help of Product, of course!

As we have learned in the past, putting something in quotes is The Past's way of indicating that something is exciting and new. The Past is such a square. Anyway, here's the hottest slang of 1941 as demonstrated by this ad, explained for you denizens of The Future:

"got the mopes" -  This means you're infected with Communism, and are banned from dancing, since it doesn't help The State. Also, erectile dysfunction.

"my eye" - An old Italian phrase meaning "I'll give her the evil eye, and her turnip crops will all be eaten by goblins, and she will live in the wilderness like a jackal." The Evil eye can be warded off by strategic use of The Corna, as made famous by Ronnie James Dio. Hopefully, Jill knows The Corna move.

"hot-head" - Someone who suffers from encephalitis, a brain fever that was common in the deprived swamps of wartime middle America. To be called a hothead was to be called a person of low class or of sub-average intelligence having poor decision making skills and poor memory. Encephalitis has also been tied to herpes simplex, making this an especially bad thing to hear from your girlfriend.

"of all the crust" - Identical to "of all the nerve". No longer in use. My mom didn't even know this one. Can also be used to imply the presence of herpes simplex. It's really not looking too good for Jim.

A collection of free things one could have hoped to find in a box of Pep.

Pep TV commercial, in which a guy picks up his date in wat is clearly a WWII era jeep, for some reason.

Another Pep commercial mentioning "that marvelous malty pep flavor." Yes, "malty".

UPDATE: I've just found "crust" in my slang dictionary, and the definietion is a bit roundabout, but it goes like this: 1."The head". From ca. 1870. Upper crust. Hence, off (one's) crust, crazy, or insane. 2.  20th century colloquial "impudence", "cheek": since early 1920s.

Babst Blue Ribbon - Energy drinking.

In 1986, Pabst Blue Ribbon was an unhip brand of beer, and had been for some time. That's when Blue Velvet was released: a movie in which a crazy old man played by Dennis Hopper shouted his preference for PBR to a freaked out Jeffrey Beaumont (Kyle MacLachlan). That may be all you know or want to know about Pabst. This ad from 1941 tells us the tale of two reg'lar guys who seek the seclusion of the wilderness to discover the secrets of PBR's flavor and in the process, learn something about themselves.

Pabst Brewing brags that their beer is blended 33 to 1 "like the finest coffee and champagne". As far as an explanation for that goes, I found this page on a home brewer's forum that's authoritative enough for me. Many food manufacturers do this. They mix many batches together so the flavor is more consistent. One poster on the thread calls it "beer averaging". That makes sense. Mystery solved (or solved enough for me, at least).

But apparently Joe and his unnamed friend - let's just call him Joe, too - got a batch of PBR that was slightly heavy with an unnamed stimulant, and maybe some finest coffee.

Panel number three shows Joe and Joe soaring on the PBR rocket ship. Holy smokes. I've never looked like that after one beer - or any number of beers, really. What's Pabst blended with? Thirty three kinds of speed? Joe says he "feels like a NEW MAN now!" "We'll be in camp in NO TIME!" I think this ad might be a little dishonest about the effects of beer... unless "in camp" is code for something else, like "sleeping face down in a woodchuck" or "curled up together on a bed of pine needles, whispering our secrets to each other." By the look on Joe's face, it must be his first experience with beer, but not as first as his friend Joe's.

It may be that the artist exaggerated the expressions, knowing that the final print size would be on the small side. That panel in the ad is about 2 1/2 inches wide, with the faces maybe 5/8 of an inch across. That's pretty small. Any time I'm beginning a project, I always need to know the final use of the piece. That may influence decisions made along the way, like how much to "push" the expressions in these two faces. Or, maybe these two guys just get really really REALLY cranked off one can of PBR.

In my travels on the Google train to plumb the mysteries of the "33 to 1" claim, I found this picture of an old Pabst Blue Ribbon sign from 1943, here in Our Fair City of Chicago. It's part pf a collection of unearthed color photos of depression-era America, in the Library of Congress. Looking at photos this old in full color is slightly incredible. I recommend a look at them, especially if your mind has been in a state of un-blown-ness lately. I gave every photo a rude finger salute right into a folder on my drive, for safe keeping.

In 2001, Pabst engineered a comeback of their brand, using their obscurity and misfortune as an advantage. They used word-of-mouth marketing and sponsorship of counter culture events like scooter rallys and bike messenger races. Here's a link to that story. Clever. Now, with virtually no advertising done, Pabst is enjoying a renaissance all their own, among the hipster beardy types who ride fixed gear bikes with no brakes and mustache handlebars. Makes sense. Those pedal pushers could use the extra energy a can of PBR priovies. They'll be in camp in no time.

Pazo - Piles of pain.

This morning brings an ad for Pazo from 1941, left on my desk by the P.A.G. health Awareness Brigade. Not much to research or explain here. But there is one burning question. What are piles?

A quick (and risky) Google search gives us the answer. Piles are hemorrhoids. Interesting! Nope. I quickly closed that browser window for fear of stumbling upon a page with explanatory educational photographs. I don't want to know that much about piles.

Why were they called piles in days of yore? I'll admit to being curious, but not curious enough to pursue the question up that particular rabbit hole. I have general understanding about hemorrhoids, thanks to various radio call-in doctor shows. If you don't know, feel free to look it up for yourself, if you like. Enjoy.

Oof! My area.

The artist who painted this little dramatization had a tough job. Paint a woman clearly portraying pain and discomfort on her face. Make her look real, but not silly. Sympathetic but not deformed. She needs to wear her rectal discomfort on her face, as the characters are discreetly shown from the neck up.

Success? I don't know. I guess she looks plausibly put out. However, I still find her hilarious -  probably because I imagine tacking her on the end of an email or making a birthday card out of her. Now that my brother's children are old enough that I can make jokes like this without becoming a family pariah. As a result, opportunities for hilarious cards are much more common. Patty Piles will be added to the bottom of this post as a PNG, on a transparent background.

It's interesting how, if you just put the nurse's head in the other panel, she becomes a sadist. Giving Patty the piles was all part of her master plan!



Some engineer probably spent months designing Pazo's perforated Piles Pipe. I bet that looks good on the resume'. Perforated Piles Pipe - 3 months development. 2 months testing and refining.

Here's Patty Piles. Get your rude finger ready to right click her where it hurts the most in three two one...

Bromo Seltzer - Momma took her crazy pills.

Health week continues and stops today, with this ad from Bromo-Seltzer, featuring a painful lady. Clearly, her hands hurt... or maybe whatever she touches with her hands.

This ad is from 1941, when typesetting was so expensive that they omitted unnecessary words like "the" from text in large typefaces whenever possible. This is completely true, so don't even bother to fact check it even a little bit. I mean "This complete true. No you fact check."

Bromo-Seltzer was discontinued in 1975 after the discovery that the SEDATIVE ingredient, bromide, was slightly PSYCHOACTIVE and a little bit toxic. It's easy to point fingers in hindsight. So let's do some of that. Bromide was the ingredient that calmed the nerves. It was a sedative. So, it's no great surprise that, if undetected in the diet in large quantities, it could make your brain stop working right. Favorite symptoms of bromism include slurred speech, irritability and jumbled thoughts.

So now we have Alka-Seltzer (no relation), which contains a pain reliever and is already dissoved in water, so it is absorbed quickly into the bloodstream. Also, there's some sodium, which, again, speeds absorption through the intestines. Clever.

Mom always fed me 7-Up when the old belly was on the boil, claiming that fizzy drinks help with a sour stomach. I thought that the bubbles in Alka/Bromo - Seltzer did the same thing. However, ten minutes of Google searching brought no results on that. If anything, I'd guess that maybe the mechanical action of the bubbles doing their thing would disperse acid throughout the stomach, instead of hanging around in a big puddle? That sounds like reaching, to me. It's probably crap. Gotta get an intern to delete that from the post or I'll sound like a goof.

Bromo-Seltzer had a pretty famous jingle involving the rhythmic chanting of the product name so that it sounds like a steam engine. Hear here.

This painful lady is pretty funny. Maybe you can use her in an email to that someone special in your life? First big, then small. Enjoy.

Siroil - The psoriasis of the nightmare of psoriasis.

Even more health this week. Siroil promises to free you from the nightmare of psoriasis. You know the nightmare: the one where you're being chased by a faceless madman and your skin is really really dry.

Okay. Psoriasis sufferers, please back off. I'm sure it's a frikkin nightmare having psoriasis. Nobody's saying psoriasis is a joke, all right?

That doesn't make this picture any less funny. The woman looks as if she's annoyed by the spotlight shining on her head as much as any skin condition.

Murderers and bathtubs full of snakes are the stuff of nightmares. The one I still get is the one where I'm back in high school for some reason and A) I don't know my locker combination B) I don't know my class schedule and C) I've just remembered I haven't been to my English class in half a semester and I don't know what room it's in. This is a nightmare because it draws upon the fear of being an unprepared screwup who doesn't have his shit together, and being put on the spot and realizing you've completely mismanaged your life.

I'm tying to imagine what a psoriasis-themed dream would be. Maybe I'm changing clothes and I look down and wonder "Why the hell is my skin all red and dry? This blows, all of a sudden." Dream over.

Psoriasis is a chronic condition in which skin cells reproduce and slough off in volumes up to ten times greater than normal, causing white scaly  areas on the skin. It is most likely an autoimmune disorder inherited from parents. Once again, you don't want your immune system to be "boosted". You can't boost it, and even if you could you'd have all sorts of problems like diabetes and psoriasis. So, when somebody is advertising a product that's supposed to "boost your immune system", it's definitely a complete lie, and you should be glad it is. The immune system is a powerful thing that can ruin your life if it gets too enthusiastic about doing it's job. Just so you know.

This tortured lady is funny enough to add to a graphic collection for hilarious use at a later date. So, here she is, all on her own. You're welcome.

Zonitors - Interior daintiness. So darn dainty.

More health news today! Get ready for daintiness!

 What's a zonitor? Well, it's a snow white thingy that a lady sticks where the sun don't shine - no, not that sun. The other sun-don't shine place. No. Wrong again. It's right next to - yes! THAT sun don't shine place.

Anyway, she puts a zonitor there and there's something with medicine and then she becomes dainty. I dunno . Go ask your mother.

If you're especially dainty, you'll stare off, just past the camera, like the lady in the picture. Then you may get a haircut like a pro golfer.

Mercolized Wax Cream - Dainty up, for crying out loud.

I've never heard of Mercolized Wax Cream before, but then I’m not a woman of 1941 looking to “lighten up a dull, drab, sun-tanned complexion”. Yep. You read right. Having a sun tan was undesirable in 1941. Also, being dainty was the shit.

Fashion changes, and everybody knows that – unless you’re a nineteen year girl and lack the perspective to understand it. My niece enjoys laughing at old pictures of her father with swoopy hair and flared trousers. She is, of course, oblivious to the irony that the current set of fashion fads like muffin top jeans, and droopy “I just shat in my pants” jeans will be viewed by history in the same light as leprosy. Even a person as dumb as a teenager should be expected to understand that all things change, especially retarded clothing trends.

Actually, the goofier a fad is, the better the manufacturers like it, because when it goes out of style, nobody wants to be seen wearing it, which sends all the sneetches to the store for whatever is new and hot, or soon to be hilarious and stupid. The unfaltering historical constant is that every new generation thinks all that came before them is lame and that only they have the vision to be the supreme arbiters of cool forever and ever. Hah. Just take lots of pictures and hang on to them for ten years. Then, you can use the pictures for purposes of extortion. It's no less than they deserve.

I think you've had enough apples, love.

Fads always seem to follow the pattern of “whatever is hardest to have”. In this ad, the implication is that a sun tan is bad, presumably because it means you have a menial job and spend a lot of time outdoors. Here in the era of the couch potato, getting outside and forcing some air into your lungs is a desirable thing, and so is the accompanying sun tan, warnings against excessive UV exposure notwithstanding.

Here’s another example. You know how all the women in old paintings are kind of tubby? Same thing. Hundreds of years ago, anybody who didn’t spend their day sowing, reaping, bailing, or hoeing was probably pretty rich. And so, it became a status symbol to have a few inches of blubber around you to prove that you didn’t have to break your back for a living. Women that we now regard as “lean and healthy” would, in the time of Peter Paul Reubens, be called “malnourished”. Now that crappy food of all kinds are readily available and frighteningly cheap, the luxury of fatness has lost its glow.

I could go out on a limb and call the bluetooth earpiece a status symbol. It implies that you are popular, or at least in demand, and that you are tech-savvy. These are, of course, mistaken. If you use one of those, you MAY be busy or popular, but you could just as easily wear it to make yourself look popular or important. You're probably just a douchebag if you walk around a store wearing it. Upgrade your status to "asshole" if you walk around the store actually carrying on a phone conversation using it.

I do like the product names in this ad. They don't tell you anything about what the products do. You can carry a jar of Phelactine to the checkout aisle without embarrassment. It's not like "Ex-Lax", which has part of the word "laxative" right in the name. I'd like all of the more embarrassing products to have cryptic names. As I get older, I expect to need more of these items down the road, and it'd be nice to be able to buy a bottle of Transitol instead of "Core Dump - The high-tech laxative!"

Your Daily Accusation

Joke #1 - 'THAT is a really nice tie. Yes, THAT ONE RIGHT THERE!!!"

Joke #2 - Grandpa had been in the bottle again tonight. Ted knew what this meant. All night long, he would be calling him a "slacker", demanding to know why he was to good to have his legs, pelvis, and half of his torso blown off by "jerry" and too good to spend the rest of his life scooting around the living room floor in a wagon.

Joke #3 - Winner, 1941 Academy Award for the most dramatic "pull my finger" scene in a serious screenplay: Victor Fleming's The Flatulist.

Joke #4 - "Happy birthday to YOOOOUUUUUUUUUUUU!"

Joke #5 - Great. Grandpa was in one of his "lying on the floor and looking up your nose and offering to 'get that' for you" moods.

Joke #6 - "Jeez, dad! We were only talking about maybe putting you in a home. How long were you hiding under my chair, anyway?"

Joke #7 - "BANG! See there, son? If I was a communist, you'd be dead already. Gotta stay sharp. Now, help me fill in this foxhole before your mother gets home."

Joke#8 - 1941 Allstate life insurance Salesman of the Year Bud Voont, demonstrating the importance of a comprehensive "falling out of your chair" policy.

Joke #9 - "Beware the ides of next Tuesday!"

Joke #10 - "You think you've seen clean carpet? Yeah? Get down here with me and I'll show you how clean carpet can be, son!"

Joke #11 - "Houses of the Holy... better than Supertramp's Breakfast in America? I HAVE NO SON!!!!"

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

Joke #12 comes from Comatoast. Thanks CT! - "Ha! If you thought the rotten milk in the fridge smelled like crud you should smell this!

Jokes #13 to 16 are from Bob. (BTW, check out his blog from some brilliant Anchorman drawings. http://bobrissetto.blogspot.com/2011/09/stay-classy.html) Well joked, Boob!

Joke #13 - "Your honor, it was HIM! The man with chair legs for legs!"

Joke #14 - "...so is THIS where the assailant touched you?"

Joke #15 - "Look out! It's an arrogant MadMan!"

Joke #16 - "I'm right in front of you, Jim. Get your eyes re-checked."

Joke #17 Comes from new-ish commenter John Josef. Thanks John! - Daniel began to question the authenticity of "Rain-Moon's School of Holistic Optometry"

Four Roses - This bud's for you.

The picture in this 1941 ad for Four Roses seems normal, if a little drab, but there's been some painting going on.

There's not much of interest in the composition here. The colors are kind of "meh". The whole thing may look better if it were over a non-white background, like what if it were on a table in a dimly lit room with light from a window splashed across the product?

While that may make the photo more artistically interesting, the picture, as-is, DOES focus your attention on the bottle. It's the tall dark thing. I still think it could have been silhouetted nicely with a dark background if the art director were clever enough. Time is money, though.

Four Roses chose, instead, to pay an artist to "plus up" the bottle. Everything in the photograph is pretty much left as it came out of the dark room. The bottle, however, has been re-painted to make the glass extra shiny an dthe reflections extra watery. See?

Glass of product, tray, and roses - original. Bottle of product - retouched. The label was left alone (who wants to repaint all those letters?) but all the brown glass was beautified by hand. Earth-shatteringly controversial? Nope. Interesting? I dunno. Maybe.

What's more surprising than that is the fact that Four Roses (after changing hands a few times since it's birth in the 1800s is now owned by Kirin Brewing Company, of Japan! How bout that? Also of note is that a whiskey that is "a blend of straight whiskeys" is regarded, according to Wikipedia as "sub-par" or "rotgut". Hm! Funnier still, Kirin also owns Johnnie walker Black Label whiskey. The good old boys aren't going to like this.

Hopefully, something funnier tomorrow.