McGregor dacron double-knit polyester sport jackets - Your new face is ready.

This afternoon at GO! Tower, there will be an all-staff meeting. We have been remiss in our mission to provide ancient and stupid pictures for any possible need, and the whole staff needs to know how we're going to be addressing this problem. The PAG Images and Scanning Them Brigade, the PAG Antique Store Infiltration Special Unit, the Garage Sale Assault Force, the PAG Graphic Blandishment and Photoshoppery Squad, the Magazine PAG Scouring Image Acquisition Assemblage of Persons, the Equipment Acquisition Squadforce, the Joke Getting and Humor Perception Research Squadron, the PAG Research and Googling team, the Obsolete Foods Alert Forceteam, the PAG Geographic and Temporal Telemetry Forcebrigade, and the PAG Archaeology Guy all need to know that we have recognized a huge gap in our Service.

Today, we shall begin to address this tragic failing. We will now specially identify images that will make really funny forum or network Avatars. Maybe you're a member of a web forum? Maybe you use (ick) social media? Maybe your work uses Yammer or AIM, or some kind of interoffice chat system? And maybe that system allows you to change out your avatar for whatever picture you want? Well, you can now look to Phil Are GO! for any posts tagged with "avatars" to help you find an avatar picture unparalleled stupidness. Just scroll down to the cloud of wee little text in the right sidebar for tags, and look for "avatars". We will be punishing the newly formed PAG Posts Revision Special Unit by making them go through old posts and tagging them with the newly minted "avatars" tag, where necessary. They deserve it for lying down on the nonexistent job for the past seven years.

We begin with the guy in this McGregor ad.

McGregor seems very infatuated with their new breakthrough material, polyester. It's stretchy. It can't be wrinkled. It can't be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop. What McGregor doesn't bother to point out is that it breathes like a Hefty bag, and after a year of occasional use, it will start to "pill". You know... like this?

These pills have not been evaluated by the FDA to treat any condition or illness.

Anyway, here's our inaugural avatar candidate. He's modern. He's trendy. He's smart. He's got a collar that can't be reasoned with, and it absolutely will not stop until. When uploading him for avatar use, crop him carefully. You want to be sure everyone who messages you can see that massive collar that produces twelve hundred pounds of downforce at highway speeds. There's no way this fabulous outfit will break traction under cornering loads.

You're welcome!!!!!

Click for big picture, and gigantic collar.

Click for big.

Baldwin Orga-Sonic - Play with yourself or others.

Time was, if you wanted to be the swingingest (not sexually) family on the block, what you wanted was an organ in your living room. You may think it sounds cheesy, but this was 1964. Yes, The Kids already had frikkin' cool as hell acts like The Kinks, but The Kids' Parents still had their own type of easy listening FM hits to draw upon for evening singalong hour, and in many cases, the Mom and Dad music of 1964 couldn't be made worse by application of amateur organ.

The Baldwin Orga-Sonic. So what's that sound like? I mean, we know what the name sounds like, but what did the instrument sound like? It sounded like this:

Yep. Some organs could rock, like your Hammonds and stuff. The Baldwin Orgasmonic, to my Ears of the Future, definitely delivered your family to squaresville on wings of polyseter. Even when playing the piano solo from Bennie and the Jets, it's pretty corny. At the time, though, the only alternative was another, cooler organ, or a piano. A piano must have seemed horribly old-fashioned in 1964. Plus, without proper tuning and maintenance, the piano would soon enough drift sonically into the realm of jangly cowboy hoedowns.

Baldwin claimed their Orgasmoronic was "more versatile tonally than other organs", enjoying state-of-the-art (at the time) synthesis to vaguely replicate the sound of other instruments... if you squint a little and listen just right. This, to the marketing department of the Baldwin corporation must have seemed vastly superior to the comparatively primitive drawbars used by its older competitors. Ironically, drawbar organs, to our sophisticated Future Ears, have aged more better, and are seriously more kickass, as demonstrated below...

Yeah. You don't see many Baldwin Orga-sumonics on stages at summer jazz festivals. Maybe the name isn't helping? It's hard to make any jokes about a name like "Hammond B-3", but "Baldwin Orga-Sonic"? That's some low hanging fruit. Here are some rejected names for the Baldwin Orga-Sonic.

• Orga-Ironic-Sonic
• Orgas-AAAHHH!!-Nic
• Gaggatronic
• Orga-Tragic
• Vulvasonic
• Premature Orga-Soniculator
• Ejacumatic
• Spunk-o-Sonic
• Orga-Stop-O-Tron

Click for big

Clenchbrook Cheese Supplements

Click for big.

Little Ads - Purely Prurient Again

In 1948, all men were animated by Tex Avery. See below.

Not very prurient, and barely even lascivious, but the barber kind of looks like he's got more on his mind than barbering. He's got kind of a John Waters thing going on. Clip art provided below.

Apparently, in 1948, women responded positively to random sexual intimidation. "Attract more attention than by driving a yellow Cadillac." A bold claim, sir.

Clip art of Low Self-Esteem Suzie below, performing the simultaneous actions of listening and stopping, in one not-at-all awkward drawing. She's ready to perform any sexual act with the owner of the most obnoxious car horn she can find... and possibly the car itself. You're welcome.

Duck Curious

Click for big.

Tinder, 1906.

Clicke for embiggenment.

Dodge Phonograph - Like a record, baby.

You may have heard that, at one time, you could get a 16-RPM turntable installed in your car as a factory option. Here's a page from a Popular Mechanics preview of the new 1956 models from (among others) Dodge, showing their under-dash record player. Does it still count as a 16-RPM record when the car you're driving is spinning at an additional 2 RPM into a ditch because you were dicking around with the 16-RPM record while driving?

The unit was designed for 16-RPM records? What were those? They were 7" in diameter, which was the same size as a 45. However, the 16-RPM standard was generally monaural, and the slower playback speed of the program material brought with it the additional downside of decreased sound quality. This brings into question to Chrysler's name for the feature, "Highway Hi-Fi". Let's not forget that "Hi-Fi" is supposed to mean "high fidelity". Inferior quality, mono audio. That's some good marketing. Name it after the very thing it's farthest from.

More here from Wikipedia...

Some recording, (sic) such as books for the blind, were pressed at 16 2⁄3 rpm. Prestige Records released jazz records in this format in the late 1950s, for example two of their Miles Davis albums were paired together in this format. Peter Goldmark, the man who developed the 33 1⁄3 rpm record, developed the Highway Hi-Fi 16 2⁄3 rpm record to be played in Chrysler automobiles, but poor performance of the system and weak implementation by Chrysler and Columbia led to the demise of the 16 2⁄3 rpm records. Subsequently, the 16 2⁄3 rpm speed was used for narrated publications for the blind and visually impaired, and were never widely commercially available, although it was common to see new turntable models with a 16 rpm speed setting produced as late as the 1970s.

So, a format that found its biggest audience in the blind, offered as a feature in cars. No irony there. Maybe they should have marketed their Highway Hi-Fi to the hearing impaired, too? Wooooo! Take that, Chrysler of 1956!

According to Popular Mechanics according to Chrysler, you could change the record "without taking your eyes off the road". This may sound pretty stupid, but surely no less stupid than typing a quick SMS while driving, right?

Click for big.