Micro-Fluff! - What the flock?

Critical career opportunity update now from 1961! Become a flocker! Big-profit orders come from neighbors, gift shops, stores of all kinds. Why aren't you flocking right now?

Flocking is the process of applying a velvety texture to things. First apply glue, then apply the fibers, usually via a "flocking gun" which uses compressed air to spray the fibers onto the glue. Now that you know, you absolutely should have gotten in on the ground floor of the super-lucrative flocking boom, back in '61. Everybody wants their stuff to be velvety. Every neighborhood needs a flok-krafter. (Every advertiser needs a dictionary.) Decorate jewelry, department store display cases, windows! Windows?

See how lucrative? See this guy who is probably Nels Irwin? He's been lucratized for sure... probably with the help of a lucratizing gun.

Oddly, this same picture was used to market other decorating kits:

• Asbestos-All
• Spectra-Shit
• Ants! Ants! Ants!
• Wonderdump
• Motherflocker
• Super-Spume
• Fecal-Luxe
• Lung-Fuzz

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CRITICAL SCUMBAG UPDATE! Alert reader Cyclotronboy has called me out, on my hideous failing to look into the fate of Nels Irwin. Usually, we'd do a "what ever happened to.." on a person, but today we dropped the ball. Apparently, Nels and a partner were sentenced to hard time in the slam, for mail fraud, in 1958...

According to the indictment each letter was mailed for the purpose of executing a scheme and artifice to obtain money by defrauding prospective purchasers of work-at-home mail order businesses. As charged in the indictment, the fraud was accomplished by omitting material facts and by making certain material representations which were false and known to be false, upon which representations the prospective purchasers were expected to rely.

On each of nine counts of which he was convicted (Nos. 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9 and 11), Irwin was sentenced to imprisonment for three years, to run concurrently. On each of the remaining seven counts of which he was convicted (Nos. 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19 and 21), sentence was suspended and he was placed on probation for four years, commencing at the termination of imprisonment. Kerns received concurrent nine-month sentences on each of the nine counts on which Irwin received three-year sentences. Kerns received a suspended sentence and probation, similar to that granted Irwin, on each of the remaining seven counts.

So, dear readers, we can safely assume that Nels spent some time in prison, probably getting butt-flocked. Boom! You didn't think I'd go south, but I sure did! Very south!

Pointy Tree Day Cards from ages past.

Just in case there is anyone who is on the fence about wanting this year's P.A.G! Pointy Tree Day Card, you absolutely do. Here are our award-winning designs (probably) from the last three years we've been making them. We just need a physical address, which won't be used for anything else. That would be too much work. Also, we don't have an advertising budget or advertising staff. We're not monsters, after all.

A couple of quick FAQs:

Q: Can I roll these up and smoke them?
A: Uh, I guess, inasmuch as they're paper, and combustible.

Q: Are these for real ads?
A: Yes. They're real ads that ran in real magazines, usually back in The Fifties. The images on the cards are unretouched. That would wreck the fun.

Q: What is it with you and smoking Santas?
A: They're funny. What's with you and not understanding regrettable irony?

Q: How do I know you're not going to use my address to come to my house and stalk me?
A: We've got enough to do already, thanks. If we wanted to watch people drive to the grocery store and argue with their spouse, we'd watch TLC or maybe Bravo. Boom!

Q: Really? Free? What's wrong with you?
A: Get back to work.

2011 front

2011 back

2012 front

2012 back

2013 front

2013 back

Little Ads - You want this stuff, somehow.

You know what? It's been a while since we've dropped in on our mouth-breathing, unemployable friend that's always asking to borrow a couple of bucks, The Seventies. Hey, The Seventies! How's it hanging? The cold sore's healing up pretty good. Whatcha got for us today? Blow our mind, man.

Foldaway Lap Desk. Good for Dad to write his book report. Getting up
not advisable. Also see our toilet chair building guide.

"Slipcover" makes an "unusually pretty" bookend or doorstop.
Protects brick from damage and weather. Reduces noise when brick
is thrown through windshield.

"Crystal" ball. Makes an interesting "conversation" piece, such as "What instructions does
Mini-Sauron have for you today?" Can you see yourself in the future selling this for 25¢ at
a rummage sale? No way!

Let your husband know you'd marry him behind the Shakey's Pizza all
over again.

Bell Telephone System - Phone garden.

Phonegarden. Lamest band to come out of Seattle in The Nineties.

Hey, citizens of the timestreams! Couldn't you use a big friendly "hello" from Easter in 1960 right now? No? Great! To get you ready for Pointy Tree Day Season, here's a big juicy "hell-frikkin-o" from Easter in 1960, and Easter says you should have as many phones as you have rooms in your house!

"Pick a Phone from this garden of colors!" Can you spot the typo in that sentence? That's right they forgot the two Ls on the end of A. "Pick ALL phones from this garden of colors... and a creepy stuffed Easter Bunny with tarantulas for eyes.

"Pick all the phones you want, human,
it will not save you. Sssssssss."

Because this photo shoot happened in good old analog The Sixties, there was no post-processing trickery used to get the shot. You can see that the phones are held up on "stems" made from something very like rebar wrapped with green crepe paper. If you're old enough to have ever handled a Western Electric telephone from the old wireful era of telecommunications, you know that they were made from recycled manhole covers, and can be used to knock out a donkey.

Knowing this, you can guess there's no way an eight-year-old girl is holding up a basket (gripping it way way off center) with a telephone in it, with one hand, nowhere near her center of gravity.

Cheeky devils. The girl just has her hand on the basket. She's not holding it up. They made a "stand" out of the same not-a-stem, thick-as-your-finger steel rod to hold up all 118 pounds of basket plus phone. Then, they nudged the camera's tripod until the cord of the white phone sort of obscured the basket stand such that you'd never give it a second glance.

Just in case you're not old enough to have ever used one of these phones, I should explain that you didn't actually buy your telephone. Bell owned all the phones, and their customers leased them on a monthly billing cycle. So, of course Bell wanted you to know how many pastel colors were available. They also wanted you to understand everywhere you absolutely needed to talk on the phone, just in case you were too slow to understand the word "everywhere". So, they kindly provided these serving suggestions, clearly labeled with room names, just in case you have a finger-thick segment of rebar bisecting your brain (making you the ideal audience from the perspective of every ad man ever born).

Bedroom phone: A useful plot device for those

late-night "there's been an accident down at the mill"

calls. Also for those nervous "No, that wasn't your

father and I. That was just the radio." calls.

Kitchen phone: So your husband can tell the salad

he'll be home soon.

Living room Library phone: So you can ask your wife

where you keep all the candlesticks, rope, pipes,

revolvers, and poison.

Teen room phone: Not actually connected, so your

carefully stored teen cannot call President Faceless

Kennedy or Little orphan Faceless Annie for help.

Family room phone: So you can call the guy at the

TV shop to ask why Andy Griffith is upside down.

Also, to tell your teen's parents it will now be $10,503

because you need to get your TV fixed.

What? No bathroom phone? How will your friends hear all your various gurgles? Lucky for us here in The Future. We have FaceTube to forcibly share all that content.

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2014 Pointy Tree Day Card cattle call!

It's time for the annual Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day card get! You'd think Pointy Tree Day was tomorrow if you walk into any store. Pointy Tree Day season is a time of year to abandon shame and taste. There's hardly anything to sell for Thanksgiving, apart from stuffing or maybe those accordionated paper turkey decorations. So, stores just skip right over that bullshit and start hammering the Christmas merchandise on the day after Halloween. Help America abandon taste and destroy perspective by clamoring for your 2014 Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Card!

You're bound to have a lot of questions for some reason, so please re-read this FAQ, copied from last year because we're lazy busy. In the meantime, email us some kind of physical address, because these cards are actual paper card stock. No stupid "e-card" lameness here. Also, price is free! Don't complain!

Phil Are GO! Pointy tree Day Card F.A.Q. (Fervently Aggravated Query).

Q: "How the hell can I get my copy of the Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Card?

A: It couldn't be easier! Just send us your addre- Q: "TELL ME HOW!!! NOW NOW NOW!"

A: Hey, shut up and let me finish, spaz. Send us your address. That's it. PhilAreGo@gmail.com

Q: No way am I sending you my address! You'll stalk me!

A: If you think we have the time to sit in an unmarked van across the street from your house, you are probably grossly overestimating the interestingness of your life, and also the amount of free time we have here at GO! Tower. If you're that paranoid, give us your work address, or the address of someone you know. We don't care.

Q: Do you have any of the older versions of the Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day card lying around? Can I get  a couple of those?

A: Yeah, we have some of those. If you ask all nice, we'll send an envelope with a few different cards in it while supplies last or until we don't feel like it any more.

Q: If I collect all the versions of the Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Card from way long ago, will they be valuable some day?

A: Sure. Why not? Go nuts.

Q: Why is the Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Card always something to do with cigarettes? What's your problem?

A: Because advertisers don't dare mix cigarettes and Santa any more. Christmas cigarette ads are funny and inappropriate. On the other hand however, Santa is supposed to be immortal, so he should be able to smoke his brains out, right? In The Night before Christmas, he smoked a pipe with smoke that encircled his head like a wreath or something. When's the last time you saw Santa smoking his pipe in a store ad, or commercial? Santa smoking a cigarette is just frikkin weird. Lastly, if you need to ask why cigarette Christmas ads are funny, you should probably go read The Drudge Report or something, because irony and black humor obviously don't work on you.

Q: Will the Phil Are GO! Pointy Tree Day Card always be a cigarette ad? No really, what's your problem?

A. No, it won't. If we run out of Christmas cigarette ads, we'll use something else. Also, shut up.

DKW-750 - A smarter smart car.

Urgent incoming news now from our bureau in 1960. Mercedes used to make "economy cars"! Yes, they technically own the Smart brand today . Yes, the Smart is a small car, but it's hardly an "economy" model. You can spend less for more car elsewhere. In addition, the Smart series of cars keeps getting terrible reviews for the drive train (engine and transmission). This makes it hard to justify the asking price of the Smart.

But back in 1960, there was the DKW-750 existed. See?

It had interesting features like a two-stroke engine and inboard brakes, a setup in which the (fairly heavy) braking components are mounted along the center line of the chassis and are connected to the wheels via the axle. This moves weight off of the wheel and makes the car handle better, because the wheels can respond to the road more quickly due to less weight bouncing up and down with the wheel. It's what they call "reducing unsprung weight", and It's still something you pretty much only find on supercars. Few current mass market cars have this feature. None, that I know of, at least.

The DKW-750 was a typically poetic German name for a car, and it sold for $1665, which is $13,389 in today's money. Compare that to the Smart, which can be found new for maybe $17,000 but more typically hovers near 20 kilobucks. I'll take the DKW, thanks.

Know what? I'll take it even more if it had enough wheels! Did someone ask for a DKW halftrack sort of thing? No? Well here one is! Get your unhöflich finger ready to right click this little beauty onto your hard drive. Bitte, baby!

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Marfak - Know your lube.

Urgent news now, from 1945. Lubricant advertiser uses baffling image to sell lubricant!

The P.A.G! Imagery and Usage team has been unable to determine the importance of being on a swing with a steering wheel. One thing's for sure, we're tired of being disappointed when beating our grease with a hammer. Those of our readers trapped in 1945 are urged to use Marfak in all their hammer machines and when lubing their automobile's chassis, stat!

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