Sta Safe Eye Mask - An clip art and gaff?

Good news, too-much-sex-havers! Your days of sexual peril are at an end, thanks to the Sta Safe Eye Mask! With the Sta Safe strapped to your face, you will stay safe from any and all sexual contact.

"Safe", that is, unless your're somehow into sexual welding, in which case you will completely not be protected from having a puddle of molten Sta Safe bonded to your head. Lastly, if you can only get turned on by third degree burns and searing hot face plastic, you're in luck. Sta Safe has you covered.

"Built to stand the gaff of hard service,..." Hmm. "Gaff"? This is a new use of that word. Did the tradesmen of 1946 use "gaff" as part of their eye-melting jargon? Let's see what the laziest of dictionary searches can turn up.

Definition of gaff
a :  a spear or spearhead for taking fish or turtlesb :  a handled hook for holding or lifting heavy fishc :  a metal spur for a gamecockd :  a butcher's hooke :  a climbing iron or its steel point used by a telephone lineman
:  the spar on which the head of a fore-and-aft sail is extended:  gaffe

Nope. Unless the copy writer for Sta Safe just forgot to add the "e", which would mean "a mistake or fumble", the mystery goes on. Just for the sake of curiosity, let's assume it was spelled right, and it is meant to be "gaff", as printed.

What does my copy of Partrige's Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English have to say about "gaff"? Completely ordinary bookshelf - DEPLOY!

Let's see...

So, "gaff" either means "a criminal affair or enterprise", or "a dwelling-place".

I think the guys at Standard Safety Equipment Company just forgot the "e". So, the ad seems to intend that the goggles are tough enough to stand the "gaffe of hard service" (meaning mistakes and abuse). That's a bit anticlimactic. I was hoping to unearth a bit of arcane terminology, but instead we got ordinary sloppy grammar from goggle-makers, just like always. Dammit, goggle producers of the world! When will you tighten up the screws on your verbiage?!?

You'd think a nerd with glasses like that would be a better speller, wouldn't you? Well, GOOD NEWS, poorly-spelling nerds! We've got your new profile picture here! Use it on all your InstaFace accounts! You're welcome!

Click for 1000px jpeg.

Now how much would you pay? Well, shut up, because here's another Graphic Gift! See those tiny serving suggestions down the right side of the ad? Well, one of them obviously shows a person being comedically crushed under a car! Ha ha ha! You need that as a nice clean clip art, right? Yep!

It kinda makes you want to open up a car repair service and use this image in your logo, just so you can see all the customers totally fail to stampede to your garage, doesn't it? "Your car's not fixed until one of our technicians dies." You're extra welcome!

The March of Science #4

Useless Crap for Idiots to Make!

The Danze Studio - Berlin, 1946

Joke #1 -Summer tryouts at the Berlin Skuatzendanze Academie, 1946.

Joke #2 - "Deeeeep, deeeeep breathing. Be open to the dots. Try to feeeeel your dots. AH! Very good, bertrand!"

Joke #3 - Last minute rehearsals for the holiday production of "Der Magic Shphincter", Berlin, 1946.

Joke #4 - Finally, after three semesters of practice and long nights of meditation, Bertrand finally managed to perform a Multiple Colon Drop. His graduation was all but assured. And, he still had a few weeks to help Grobert do the same.

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

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The Stateroom

Joke #1 - Yes, a new life awaits you in the off-world colonies.

Joke #2 - "Alien replicants? Ha ha! Don't be silly. I was about to ask you the same thi-. Wait........ Xabdor?"

Joke #3 - Allen and Peggy sat quietly as Doreen began to read them all a bedtime story from the Sears catalog. They could tell from where she opened it that tonight's story would be about garden stuff.

Joke #4 - "Ladies and gentlemen, my wife will now do that sexy trick where she crosses and uncrosses her legs. Those of you in the first two rows may want to look under your seats and put on your rain ponchos now."

Joke #5 - To make your trip as comfortable and cozy as possible, the staterooms on all Amtrak trains are upholstered with soft, warm, nearly hairless human flesh.

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

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Cockpit Knob

Joke #1 - "EZ-Flite Manual, Step 1: To start engine, gently caress turkey baster."

Joke #2 "Ladies and gentlemen, the captain has squozen some kind of weird bulb. So, if someone could come tell me what that means, we could all move on."

Joke #3 - In 1946, the number of midair collisions spiked by "a couple". The FAA responded by mandating the installation of "ahoogah" horns on all planes.

Joke #4 - "EZ-Flite Manual, Step 2: Turn the Flight Indicator from 'DON'T FLY' to 'FLY'. The plane should now be flying. If the plane does not seem to be in flight, check the position of the Flight Indicator. After being set on 'FLY', it should be on 'FLY'. If the plane remains in a state of non-flyingness, have the Flight Indicator checked by a qualified knob technician. Do not attempt to exit the plane before having the Flight Indicator serviced, in the event that the plane is actually in flight. If you are uncertain whether the plane is in flight, please consult supplementary manual 2C: "How High Is Up?" for step-by-step instructions on identifying "flight". Do not attempt to exit the plane before discerning definition of 'flight'..."

Joke #5 - "For safety, the pilot's hat has been screwed to the roof of the cockpit. Please note that in the even of an emergency, the pilot's hat must be unscrewed from the roof of the plane as rapidly as possible."

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

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Artcraft Stockings - Sitting in the Dark is Elegant.

"Hi, Mom, It's me... Hm? Oh, nothing, just bored. A fuse blew, and since it's 1946, and I'm a woman, I can't do anything about it. So, I just thought I'd give you a phone call in the dark.
Pardon? Yes, I'm still dating the giant cowboy. Hm? No, actually, he's gotten a little bigger since then. Now he's thirty-THREE feet tall.  He gave me his bandanna, so I guess it's pretty serious, huh? I made a skirt out of it. Romantic, huh? No, of course I washed it first, because I'm so elegant. Also I have these stockings that make me even more elegant. I dunno, 'art' something. Oh well. I better go;  this dark isn't going to sit in itself, ha ha. I will. Love you too, Mom. Bye bye."

Southern California - A Place for Medieval Families

I'm not sure why images in magazines of the 1940's were more often painted, rather than photographed, but I'm glad. Maybe it had something to do with the printing technology of the time or maybe it was just the fashion. I can't see why it would be cheaper or easier to reproduce a full color painting than a full color photo. Even on the cover of this magazine (not shown here), it was a mix of B/W and color photography. When flipping through an old magazine, it immediately leaps out at me that it's from the 40's, because of all the painted ads. That's usually one to buy.

Rendered ads seem to be more naive and delusional than photos, and these are the things that make old magazines hilarious for me. Without looking up demographic information, I'm guessing that the population of Southern California has been pretty diverse for a long time, based on nothing more than it's proximity to Mexico. Back in '46, though, you had better promote the idea of a country paved with white bread, regardless of the actual demographics.

The rendering is typically gorgeous, of course. I'm trying to figure out what it is about the style that screams 40's to me, and it's hard to put my finger on. It's almost certainly gouache, but that's not it. I think what, to me, is so great about these old renderings is the contrast between the light and dark parts. Also, the saturation of color is higher, almost cartoony. This may be because color printing was novel at the time, so they wanted to flaunt it, like in Wizard of Oz, with the berserk technicolor. I still see billboards for Coke on my way home from work, featuring paintings like those done for Coke by Haddon Sundblom in the 30's, and those have that old look that's so hard to explain. You know... the ones with Santa Claus drinking a bottle of Coke? The style has that balance of realism with spontaneous, unblended brushwork that make me so jealous.

Anyway, back to making fun of the ad. Check out the picture of dad, who's just caught a fish with his trident! Wait - a trident? Who brings a trident on vacation? "Honey, let's pack up the nomad this weekend and head to San Diego for a picnic and some spear fishing. Then I can bring down a puma with my flail for dinner and we can have that sparrow I killed with my morning star for a midnight snack!" Have you ever known anybody who spear fishes AND looks like Ward Cleaver? Have you ever known anybody who spear fishes?

Also not to be missed is the unfortunate compositional decision to have the butt of the spear look as though it's been rammed through the boy's head. "Uh, that's a nice fish, dear, but you've almost certainly killed our only son." "That just means more fish for us, sweetie!" Maybe I'm being too glass-half-empty about this? Maybe dad is pulling the trident OUT of his boy's skull, which has been pushed through from the opposite side by parties unknown (fishes, perhaps?), and now mom can begin to administer direct mouth-to-brain resucitation in time for the whole family to enjoy a nice fish dinner? Junior should recover in no time. There's a massive aloe vera plant in the forground to heal up the gaping skull wound, with only slurred speech to remember the incident. The important thing is, everything works out fine in Southern California. You should visit. Just be sure to bring along your trebuchet, for some light hunting.

Highways of Tomorrow - Whenever that is.

In 1946, Holiday magazine published a story about the new (at the time) highway system, and how it would end traffic congestion. All together now... "BAH hah hah hah hah hah hah hah *snort* hah hah har har har *wheeze* hah". Remember in Roger Rabbit, when Judge Doom revealed his grand vision for a highway system spanning the country, with restaurants serving rapidly prepared food? This is the same expression of an automotive fantasy, only without the insane grin.
In case you didn't know, the American highway system is based on the German Autobahn, which was conceived by our pal Uncle Hitler. There's an episode of Modern Marvels that covers this topic and is also fascinating, therefore you should watch it.

Anyway, back in '46, us Americans were all excited about highways, because we were tired of sitting in traffic jams. To the left you can see a picture of the Cahuenga freeway in California, shown as an example of what we can all expect to enjoy when Tomorrow comes. Yes, there will be plenty of room for all nine privately owned cars in the state of California. Actually, there's a reason to have a half mile of following distance between cars in this photo: at the time, that's the distance required to stop a car from a speed of twenty miles per hour. Cars were squishy, floaty, cast-iron tubs on wheels, and their brakes were based on the prayer system.

Maybe this photo was mistakenly printed as a negative, and the shot was actually taken at 3am, in the dead of night, when all normal people are sleeping? Wait.. nope. Closer inspection reveals that the cars have shadows. It must really be daytime! How bout that? I guess this is how they thought it would always be. More proof follows.
The highway system will forever destroy traffic snarls. See? See the big exes scribbled over the pictures? Stop being skeptical you skeptical jerk. Should we give the people of 1946 a break? After all, they'd just defeated Hitler. It was natural for them to assume they could also fix traffic. Things would really be much worse now without the highway system, and how could they forsee a time when every person in the country above the age of six would own two cars and use them  both simultaneously while cooking a turkey on the way to work? Maybe they imagined that in a few years everyone would get where they needed to be and just stay there, eliminating the need for cars at all?

Lastly, here's a picture of Lakeshore Drive, for Chicagoans to enjoy. I don't know where the Chicago is in the picture. It looks like a highway running past a farm or orchard of some kind. At least Chicago is more sophisticated than Cahuenga California. We have eighty-one cars and eleven boats.

1946 Monark - It's not for sale...Fran-CIS!

Streamlining was the carbon fiber of the 1930's, 40's, and 50's. At the time, it was recently discovered by the auto and rail industries as a means of reducing drag and improving fuel efficiency. It came to exemplify the era's design aesthetic, even when applied to things that didnt really move at all. Toasters, radios, blenders, you name it. Everything was rounded, with horizontal ornamental ridges. Carbon fiber is worshipped in much the same way today. Originally developed for the aerospace industry as a super light replacement for metals, carbon fiber first trickled down to sports equipment, where it's use still made sense. Then fashion took over and, as usual, went deliriously insane over the material's low-weight, high-tech, high-strength chic potential. Now, it's characteristic checkerboard gray and black pattern can now be found imitated on pretty much everything marketed to male humans, from steering wheels to electric shavers.

So it was with streamlined shapes in 1946. It's easy to find pictures of streamlined trains from that time, and they are eye-wateringly gorgeous to behold. The designers knew that streamlining was more than functional, too. The trains were often painted in bright colors to enhance their delicious candy-like appeal.

The 1946 Monark bicycle is just one example of streamlining at the consumer level. The bicycle probably weighed close to fifty pounds, and never saw speeds above twenty miles per hour, making wind resistance a non-issue. That was irrelevant. It was all about styling. It says so right there in the copy: "Airline-style pedal crank...streamlined auto-type rear reflector... built-in auto-type tank horn". A bicycle had no use for a gas tank, but every bike had one, because A) it made it look like a motorcycle and B) it gave the designers some surface area to do some streamline stuff. Two-tone paint is something else borrowed from the auto industry of the time. I have a personal theory that, as part of the recent hysteria over retro car designs, two tone paint will make a return at the factory level.

If you look at the bottom of the ad, Monark mentions another model called the Silver King, made of aluminum. Aluminum production was ramped up for World War Two, and when peace broke out, aluminum producers needed new markets for their new and useful wondermetal. Strangely, a bicycle is an excellent candidate for aluminum construction, as every ounce counts in a vehicle powered by a human whose (adult) legs have been rated at 1/4 horsepower. Even now, aluminum is just about the most popular of the "affordable" lightweight frame materials in the bike industry. Just like carbon fiber, it first appeared in the aviation realm, and trickled down to the consumer level. However, even something as mundane as a kitchen chair makes sense when made from something strong, relatively cheap, and light, like aluminum. Carbon fiber is still pretty expensive, and though strength and low weight will never go out of style, it is my hope that cheesy pretend carbon fiber checker patterns die like the dodo.