Little ads - Careers for Cheap!

Dive for extra dollars with surplus old-timey equipment from Popeye cartoons.

Models will not have sex with you unless you're a "bean artist".

Learn to hypnotize anyone into sending you money for hypnotism course. Your eyes are getting gullible. Veeeeery gullible.

The Test Chamber

Joke #1 - "Okay, Don. The air scrubbers are spinning at 85% efficiency. Choose a Chalupa at random from the containment vessel and start eating."

Joke #2 - "Welcome to the Fairchild test Center, gentlemen. I hope you're ready to be Fairchilded!"

Joke #3 - "Okay, Don, we're about to power up the cyclotron. Try to, uuh, duck if you see any subatomic particles flying out and let us know if you feel irradiated or whatever and we'll take a break."

Joke #4 - The Swiss budget for fondue research is unmatched in all the world.

Joke #5 - "I'm sorry, Don, I can't hear a word you're shrieking about. I can't hear you over all the alarm claxons. Can it wait till lunch?"

Jim D. wrote joke #6 for us, about some kind of movie I never heard of. Thanks, Jim! - We always wondered what Luke meant when he said "that little droid and I have been through a lot together."

Webe Gumbar broke a very long joking fast when he sent in joke #7. Where you been, Webe? - You see Charlie the Oompa Loompas have an uncanny ability to draw invasive Pythons out of the Everglades and into the Slurm-a-tron and that's how the elephant got his trunk. Rochester!?

Frequent flier Mr. HotBlackDesiatoPants_2 transmitted joke #8 through the Sub-Etha, just to keep his idiom consistent. Thanks, MHBDP_2! - Joke # 6- Inside the "Heart of Gold" scientists began hooking the logic circuits of a Bambleweeny 57 Sub-Meson Brain to the atomic vector plotter which was suspended in a strong Brownian Motion producer. Almost immediately, a pair of guided nuclear missiles turned into a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias....

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Western Electric - Go ask White Alice.

Ever wonder what makes your cell phone work? Ever wonder how telephones ever worked at all, ever? Nope? Well, you're normal. If you're the curious type, observe this 1957 Western Electric ad that basically explains how telecommunications worked in the pre-satellite era.

This ad is from May, 1957. The first satellite, Sputnik, wasn't launched (by the Russians) until October of that year. Also, it would be a while after that before that new crazy sci-fi technology would be commercialzed for use by everyday numbskulls like us.

No, back in '57, there weren't satellites yet. So, if you were in Anchorage, Alaska, and you wanted to call your mom in Indiana or whatever, you would have had to take a drive to downtown Anchorage to make the call on The Telephone.

Enter, the White Alice project. It was a way to communicate over long distances by bouncing  radio signals off the troposphere. "WTF the troposphere?", you say? It's the lowest and thickest part of the atmosphere, consisting mostly of water vapor. Western Electric was commissioned by the Air Force to build huge antennas like the one in this ad. It may occur to you that it looks a little like the dish antennas on people's roofs, and that's because it's basically the same thing. See the tower in front of the dish? That's the bit that sends and receives the signal. The huge bowl thing is basically a reflector that focuses the signal into a rough beam shape as it reflects it, making it stronger and more directional.

"Why did the Air Force want these antennas so hard?" you say? Because this was 1957 and  it was the Cold War. With the feeble communications available in Alaska before White Alice, it seemed like a pretty good back door for The Russians come sneak in and invade the heck out of us, with maybe hours before anyone in Alaska could notice and warn the rest of the U.S. Long story short, you could get just about anything funded if you said "The Russians" in a spooky voice and wiggle your fingers around a little bit.

But now, we have privatized satellites making these huge antennas obsolete. The White Alice antennas began to fall out of use in the Seventies, and the last unit was decommissioned in 1985. Here's Louis C.K. explaining how spoiled and impatient we are with our ubiquitous pocket-sized satellite wondertechnology.

Here's a film from 1960 explaining what a geeky erection we had for the dawn of satellite communication. It sounded like sci-fi at the time, but now we have the nerve to be irritated when it doesn't send the minutiae of our daily lives around the globe, to no one in particular, at the exact moment we want it to. I look forward to being spoiled about 3D printing and wireless battery chargers.

As Robert, one of Evil's henchmen said in Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits, "I can't wait for the new techno-lo-nological dawn!"

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New inventions - Forging the crucible of science's tomorrow, of steel.

Mosquito net fits over any hat. Aperture accommodates crucially important smoking of things at all times. Allows dispensing of fatherly advice in horrible, infested swamps.

New mechanical diaper collects, pumps away "baby goop" under high pressure. Still no solution for various problems created by baby's head.

Gordon's Vodka - My bird demands it.

Oh, The Seventies. Is there any stupid thing you won't do, and still take yourself so seriously? No, there isn't. Here, we see The Seventies trying to sell us vodka because we want to be like those cool guys you see going a-falconing. Because you see that all the time.

Here's nineteen seventy dude. Possibly independently wealthy, definitely rustic, out for an afternoon's relaxing falconing, with a neutron star on his shoulder. And he didn't forget his drink: smooth, patented Gordon's vodka. You need to be relaxed when you're falconing.

Birds can sense nervousness, and Gordon's really takes the edge off. Don't be nervous around your falcon. Also, don't go falconing with any vodka but Gordon's, or he'll have his falcon tear your eyes out, and that's not the vodka talking.

Exercycle - Youthful energy for the elderly.

It's all right, citizens. Please return to your homes. There is now a safe and effective method to achieve youthful levels of energy, even if you're really old and decrepit. You know... older than thirty-five.

Yes, contrary to conventional wisdom, you no longer need to go off into the woods and shoot yourself on your 35th birthday, thanks to the miracle nowhere-go-round invention of the Exercycle. The electric motor does all the work. Abandon all your old-fashioned ideas that you must put forth muscular effort to perform vital exercise. You probably believe that crazy garbage because you're thirty five, don't you? Don't be a stupid old jerk. Buy an Exercycle or you'll be dead before you turn thirty-six. See your Exercycle dealer for the special handlebar-mounted ash tray accessory.

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Trade School Sonnets - My Love is like a Multi-Bushing Roller Chain Sprocket

My Love is like a Roller Chain Sprocket

My love asked me "Do you love me, my love?"

I looked through the window at the sunlight

playing upon a Roller Chain Sprocket

on the bench

'neath the spreading boughs of June.

"My love", I said, "is like unto a Roller Chain Sprocket."

"For its teeth are chamfered to prevent wear."

"For it is steadfast, yet freely rotating."

"For it is available with from one to three bushings."

"But," I said, "My heart has but one bushing for you."

"And it is fixed with a pin to the drive axle,"

"which can stick if it hasn't been serviced in a while."

My love sipped his tea with flustered hands.

end