Galleon Kids.

Joke #1 - The sea spray over the gunwales, the warm glow of a merchant vessel burning to the waterline, the hiss of a well-slit throat. Jimmy and Charlotte had to admit, they didn't regret dropping out of law school.

Joke #2 - "There she is, kids. Right beautiful, in't she? Get yourselves belowdecks and prepare the guns. Tonight, the wind will be filled with the screams of skee-ball buskers and, if we're lucky, Chuck E. Cheese 'imself."

Joke #3 - These pirates weren't so bad after all. Although he sometimes missed his family, Carl was glad he had been whisked away on a bloodthirsty whirlwind adventure by Captain Jimmy and Captain Charlotte.

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

Rose's Fruit Squashes - Translating British.

Technically, Americans and The British speak the same language, but the dialects are miles apart. This is made plain by this 1952 ad for Rose's Fruit Squashes, which appeared in Picture Post (like LIFE magazine, but English). There's a lot to unpack in here, so let's translate some British to American.

Fruit Squashes - For one thing, there's the description of the product. Presumably, fruit "squash" is juice, right?

Good wicket - "Wicket" is a word that comprises about 75% of Cricket terminology (Cricket being the national sport of England, and massively popular throughout India, thanks to the propagation of the East India Company in the Nineteenth century.

Primarily, the "wicket" is the little assembly of wooden sticks that stand just behind the batsman. In effect, it serves as the strike zone in American baseball. The "bowler" has to knock down the wicket with the ball, while the batsman tries to hit the ball. The parts of the wicket are the three vertical "stumps" and the smaller "bails" that bridge across the tops of the stumps. It looks a little stonehengey.

Also, the pitch (field) upon which Cricket is played is called "the wicket".

Also also, "losing a wicket" refers to a batsman being dismissed by the bowler.

Shew! So, the ad having the title "Good wicket" might be interpreted as "nice play" or "nice hit".

"Bags I don't fetch the ball" - https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/bags

bags: children's slang , British and Australian
an indication of the desire to do, be, or have something

So, obliquely, the boy really doesn't want to go next door and get the ball... I think, since "Bags I don't fetch the ball" seems to imply he really wants to not get the ball. Something scary is next door.

"That man next door's got a long red beard and a black hat. Looks like an ogre." "No, idiot, he's a famaous artist. He draws pictures of ladies with one eye and three legs." -  From the description of the artist's work, they should be describing Picasso. He did stay at a farmhouse in Sussex in 1950, which at the time was the home of his painter friend Roland Penrose.

Self-Portrait with Uncombed Hair, by Pablo Picasso.

However, the part about the red beard and black hat sounds exactly like Vincent Van Gogh (which, for some reason, is pronounced "Van Goth" by every British person). A quick Google search shows that Picasso had brown-to-black hair. He wasn't a ginger.

Van Gogh. Red beard. Check. Long? Meh, not really. Black hat? I'm sure he had a black hat somewhere. Most people do.

However, the description of the painting style ("ladies with one eye and three legs"), sounds like Picasso. Van Gogh's style was a little more traditional than Picasso's.

Portraits by Van Gogh.

Portrait of Woman, by Pablo Picasso.

So, the question of which artist is the scary dude next door is a bit confused. Safe to say that traditional English society wasn't sure what to make of "the new painting style", which, at the time, had only been around for about a hundred years. They could be forgiven for confusing one scary painter for the other.

"Soppy, I call it." - http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/soppy  Being overly emotional or sentimental. No surprise that a couple of kids would see any painting of a lady as "soppy".

"It's a cert." - http://dictionary.cambridge.org/us/dictionary/english/cert UK, informal. "Certain" or "certainly". Duh.

"But if he shows you his pictures, just say 'very interesting', like father does". - Oh, hah hah hah hah. Conservative English culture was freaked out by modernist painters. If only they had something more important to think about at the time, like finishing the rebuilding of London.

Dairy Junket - So, uuh, "dairy Junket"?

Current middle-American culture probably has more in common with Russian culture right now than it does with, say, British culture of 1947. If you were to pop open a copy of Pravda and look at the ads, you could probably make sense of them... barring the language barrier. Okay, so if you had a Russian friend translate them to you, you'd probably get it.

Not so with this ad for Dairy Junket, found in a 1947 copy of Picture Post (It was like LIFE Magazine, but from England). See for yourself.

Yeah, there's a lot to unpack in there. Just reading through it, you can feel your brain tripping over strange ideas that the ad obviously assumes are familiar touchstones to the intended reader, who is obviously not us: people sixty years in the future. There are layers upon layers of alien-to-us experience that push this ad well outside of our arena of familiarity.

Thing 1 - Double-you tee eff is "dairy junket"? My only known definition of "junket" has to do with political campaigns. Help me out here, The Ultranet.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Junket_(dessert)  "Junket is a milk-based dessert, made with sweetened milk and rennet, the digestive enzyme which curdles milk."

Okay, that sounds horrible, until you consider that rennet is a key ingredient in cheese production and that curdled milk has a couple things in common with cheese and yogurt. Ever had kefir? Try some. It's like a fruity yogurt shake. Delicious.

Dairy junket. Image found here.

"Junket" is a strange word to us (probably), but that's only because the anglicized version of the original French word "jonches" sounds gutteral by comparison. I'd happily dive into a bowl of something called "jonches". This from the same Wikipedia entry:

Elizabeth David, in an article in Nova, dated October 1965, asserts that the word "junket" derives from the French jonches, a name for freshly made milk cheese drained in a rush basket." The article can be found in the collection An Omelette and a Glass of Wine originally published in London by R. Hale Ltd, 1984. See the chapter titled "Pleasing Cheeses," Page 206.

Look up "rennet" for yourself. Although cheese is great, the idea of rennet, a key ingredient of most cheeses, is just repulsive. I can't help you there. Knowing where rennet originally came from, it's a mystery to me how anybody ever invented cheese. Must have been a really slow afternoon on the farm that day. If it had been down to me to discover cheese by experimenting with the contents of calf stomachs, we'd be living in a pizzaless society. Love cheese, but eff rennet, man.

Thing 2 - "Priority pint". Believe it or not, the Interwebs seems to know nothing about the phrase "priority pint". How bout that? We found a hole in the internet! Taking into consideration the context of the ad, which is postwar England, most important foods were still being rationed as late as 1954. So, the English were still struggling to get enough decent food on the table in '47, the year this ad ran. We can surmise that "priority pint" was some kind of catch phrase reminding people to try and have a glass of milk per day.

This is a very different experience from today in the U.S., when we suffer from an abundance of empty calories, and obesity is a major health risk for something like 66% of Americans. At the same time, "fat shaming" is a phrase we use to scare away people who are aware of this problem.

CRITICAL NEWSBLAST UPDATE!!!! Alert Reader "unknown" has looked further down the "priority pint" search results than the Phil Are GO! Researcg and Googling Team themselves did! Behold! Also "aha!!!"

Priority allowances of milk and eggs were given to those most in need, including children and expectant mothers.

Thing 3 - "Invalids". The ad cheerfully points out that "children and invalids also love it". "Invalids", once a descriptive term for sick or injured people, is now kind of a... what's the word?... pejorative term that implies a certain amount of laziness, even though the denoted definition just means "sick or injured". Regardless, to use the noun "invalid" in an ad today would be unthinkable. It's not nice sounding. Of course, we must remember that in 1947, London was still rebuilding most of their city, having been recently bombed to rubble by the Nazis. They had better things to worry about than mincing words. They had a few invalids to look after.

Thing 4 - "Points free". This one's easy. Rationing of nearly everything people needed in England was a big deal in 1947. There was a points system in place to make sure the necessities were distributed fairly. If you want more detail than that, you can read this BBC article about exactly how the points system worked. So, when a tube of goo that you can use to make a vaguely nourishing dessert could be had without costing you a food ration, that was something to celebrate.

Thing 5 - "Manufactured by Fullwood and Bland Ltd." Here in The Future, our society is way more marketing-centric (so, you know... dumber). No matter what one of the founders surname is, you can't have the word "bland" in the company name. Doesn't matter what you make, but especially if you make food.

Imagine buying food products from these other unfortunately-named companies...

-Smallwood and Vomette

-Crotchworthy and Groine

-Spunkforce and Hurle

-Groane and Spiew, Co.

-Foodpoisoning and Projectile Diarrhea, Inc. (A Taco Bell subsidiary)

-Barfjet Kitchens, Ltd.

-Aunt Streptococcus Bakeries

-Buttforth Breweries

-Grandma Cockocockus' Breakfast Nook, Inc.

Tyresoles - Whither, retreads?

Today we bring you a public service announcement from England, where you can rely on a baby to alert you to critical automotive maintenance events. Good to know!

So, Tyresoles are understood as what we call "retreads", once you finish stumbling past the British spelling of "tire". "What's a retread?" you ask? Usually, it's when a shitty movie is made from a previously made property, to show you how hard it is for Hollywood dipshits to make something original, or something that you don't watch with your face cradled in your hands. See the Underdog movie, the Thunderbirds movie, the Inspector Gadget movie, the Tim Burton Planet of the Apes movie, or the Matthew Broderick Godzilla movie. Note that by "see" I mean "see as an example". By no means should you see any of those movies unless you have two robot pals to help you make jokes.

A retreaded tire (or "tyre") first requires (or "reyqoyires") inspection by a certified tyre baby. The baby will check the tyre (or "toiyrire") for any remaining tread. Having verified that the toiyrire is indeed bald as his/her baby-bottom, your toiyrire baby will then check to see that the toiyrire (or "taiyroree") is suitable for repair. He or she will check the taiyroree carcass for holes, gaps, apertures, passthroughs, tears, gashes, slits, nails, tacks, safety pis, railroad spikes, daggers, scimitars, poleaxes, glaives, shiruken, wakizashis, and, if you live in England, kippers. The taiyroree baby will then remove the taiyroree from the car, and put it in his/her van, to be taken to the Taiyroree Treatment Facility where it will have a new tread strip glued onto it. Yes, really. Glued.

"How can this be safe? Is it as good as a new taiyroree? Are you trying to kill me?" you ask? Apparently, it's completely safe, and no, not really trying to kill you. Taiyroree (or "tchoiyrrr") retreading is routine for fleet and delivery trucks. Tchoiyrrrs are frikkin expensive, and a retread is much cheaper. This spring, I'm looking at replacing the tchoiyrrrs on the GO-mobile, and it's going to hurt. Why can't I get retreads for my car? Word is that a retread is 80% cheaper than a new tchoiyrrr, if you believe Wikipedia.

So, double-you tee eff? You never hear about people putting retreads on passenger vehicles any more. The P.A.G. Research and Googling Team found this admittedly anecdotal article explaining why not...

Jeff Yurasits of Joe's Battery & Tire in Allentown, a 29-year veteran of the business, said Joe's probably hasn't sold a retreaded passenger tire in the last 10 or 15 years. "They pretty much were priced out of the market," he said, as new-tire prices declined, narrowing the price differential. Low-cost new tires from overseas were a factor in that process, according to the retread tire industry. 

In addition to the narrowed price differential (caused in part by the advent of low-cost imports of new tires), the multitude of passenger-tire sizes made it difficult for retreaders to keep pace, Stevens said. Truck-tire sizes vary far less.

Aaaaah, that makes sense. Too many different sizes and tread patterns to manufacture. Bummer. I would definitely have considered remanufactured tchoiyrrres for my car.

Anyway, here's a surprisingly interesting video on how retreading is done. The video is hosted by the tallest baby I've ever seen, but he seems to know his stuff. Isn't he a good boy? Yes he is! Yess he iss! Isn't he a goody woody widdle boyyy?

Kruschen Salts - Got the hump?

You have a creepy leering grandpa-shaped hole in your life and you didn't even know it. Good thing we're here to straighten that out.

"Got the hump" didn't appear in either of the books in the Phil Are GO! Library of Slang and Unconventional English. The Research and Googling Brigade had to resort to a web search...

UK informal
› to get upset and annoyed with someone because you think they have done something bad to you

It looks like this ad is using the expression in a broader down-in-the-dumps sense, implying that bad posture with a humped back indicates that you're bummed out. They just really wanted to use that super hilarious camel joke, obviously.

I'd never heard of Kruschen salts before, and a web search only points to pictures of ads like this one, or pictures of the bottle. A little further digging brings up a list of ingredients. A couple of "alternative medicine" sites talk about the health benefits, but alt med people are superstitious goofs that enjoy magical thinking, like homeopathy. Their recommendation has nothing to do with reality.

The NIH says that ingredients like various sodiums and potassiums mostly treat constipation. WebMD was surprisingly useless for almost all of these ingredients. Ask WebMD what these do and you'll be answered with a "consult your physician". It seems WebMD's lawyers feel that you're better off they're better off with you not knowing about things. Www.drugs.com was much more helpful.

• Citric Acid                            (Neccesary for life)
• Magnesium Sulfate                (Laxative)
• Potassium Chloride                (Benefits kidneys, heart, muscles, nerves)
• Potassium Iodate                    (No such thing. Maybe an outdated name for something else?)
• Potassium Sulfate                   (Laxative)
• Sodium Chloride (table salt)    (Necessary for life.)
• Sodium Sulfate                       (Laxative)

So, mostly Kruschen seems to help "get the train out of the station". And, apparently, this is the face of a blissfully empty station owner. Right click this evacuated gent onto your hard drive because you never know when you'll want to scare the shit out of someone. You're welcome.

Click for big.

Dead End Dirt Track - Bloody brilliant.

The July 12, 1947 issue of Picture Post has this wto-page article about fifty or so boys who made a dirt track in a vacant lot, using the bombed-out church next door as a staging area and/or clubhouse. The ten-year-old version of myself is indescribably jealous of three things.

-There were like fifty kids in the vicinity interested in racing their bikes.
-They had unrestricted access to a vacant lot, and all the adventure it offered.
-They weren't hassled by The Pigs, or fretful helocopter mommies bent on raising their kids to be pansies.






Growing up in the suburbs of Chicago, there was a farm near my street, and maybe five of us were able to mess around a bit in the fields. Sometimes we'd manage to make a dirt track of sorts, and that would be great for a couple of days, until the farmer came along and tilled the field, ruining our fun by using his land for it's intended purpose. Boo. The kids in this article? They had a huge lot to screw around with for months. So frikkin cool. And, they had a great bombed out church to use as a pit area. Bad. Ass. The fact that they all chose to have a house rule against functional brakes only magnifies their badassery.

Click on each image for an embiggened version, where you can actually read the text.

It looks like their track is on a bit of a hill, with one off-camber turn and an
uphill section. That's more interesting that just a flat course. The only way

I could think to improve it would be to make it a more interesting layout than

a siple oval. Something more like a road course, with a long straight and a twisty 

technical section in the infield. You know... more variety. This is not a complaint.