Election Results!

Preposition 1: Will Brian go to work today?

   Yes 111,110     No: 85,109     Passing

Amendment A: Will Brian take the trash to the curb on Wednesday night, as in past Wednesday night?

   Yes 191,688     No: 4,531     Passing

Proposition B: Will Brian J. read a portion of one or more books as recreation this evening, whose summaries he will report on his blog to the great acclaim of Just D?

   Yes 8     No: 1     Passing

Household Leader: Who will run the household?

Brian (Daddy): 1
Heather (Mommy): 781
Jimmy Ray (Dep.): 2,548,159

In other words, more of the same.

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Altria Takes Note

Back when I was a kid, these were called “candy cigarettes”:


Candy Sticks

Of course, back when I was a kid, you could buy dried tobacco products ready-made. But that was before eager taxation proponents passed continual waves of legislation designed to raise money on a socially-unaccepted product. Waves of legislation that had unintended consequences.

Which is why we’ll buy dried tobacco in the produce section someday soon. Because dried tobacco isn’t cigarettes, you see.

Neither are “candy sticks”, but it’s good to see that all the candy cigarette machinery didn’t get rusty.

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How Many Of These Things Are You Old Enough to Remember?

In a sidebar to an article entitled “Whatever Happened To….” by Rose Madeline Mula, the Saturday Evening Post asks that question. Here’s the list, with the ones I remember in bold:

  • Blackjack chewing gum (It and its cousins made a brief comeback in the 1980s.)
  • Wax Coke-shaped bottles with colored sugar water
  • Candy cigarettes
  • Soda-pop machines that dispensed bottles
  • Coffee shops with tableside jukeboxes (Come on, some retro places still have these.)
  • Home milk delivery in glass bottles with cardboard stoppers
  • Party lines (We had them in Jefferson County, Missouri, until 1987 or 1988.)
  • Packards (But I do remember Packard Bells.)
  • P.F. Flyers (But I do remember Radio Flyers. Metal Radio Flyers.)
  • Butch wax
  • Peashooters
  • Howdy Doody
  • S&H Green Stamps (Not Eagle Stamps. See this post from April 2006.)
  • Hi-fi systems
  • Newsreels before the movie
  • 45-RPM records…and 78-RPM records (I still own some 45s.)
  • Telephone numbers with a word prefix (e.g., Olive-6933)
  • Metal ice trays with levers (See this post from March 2006)
  • Mimeograph paper (And the glorious smell of the ink and the warmth of the fresh copies.)
  • Blue flashbulbs
  • Rollerskate keys
  • Cork popguns
  • Drive-in theatres
  • Studebakers
  • Washtub wringers

That makes me 14 of 25, and I am not yet 35. So although this list shouldn’t make me feel old since its items are not older than the 1980s in many cases, I think the ery fact that I have a subscription to the Saturday Evening Post should suffice.

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A Little Inference Never Hurt Nobody

When you’re married, sometimes you let a little inference work for you. It’s not deception, exactly. For example:

    I said: Should I take the leftover Halloween candy to work?
    She inferred: To share with coworkers.
    I really meant: For lunch.

Everyone’s happy. Except maybe my coworkers.

UPDATE: Number of SweeTarts that it takes until you begin to hallucinate: 597.

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The Midwestern Way

In a story in yesterday’s Wall Street Journal (sorry, no link) entitled “‘Honey, I’m Thinking of Having an Affair’: Therapists Advise Confessing Temptation”, we get a sidebar advising how to “Affair-Proofing A Marriage”:

To guard against damage from affairs, experts suggest couples:

  • Acknowledge the risk of an affair occurring
  • Discuss circumstances that might pose a risk
  • Agree to talk about temptations before acting
  • Disclose any affairs promptly
  • Agree not to counterattack if a spouse strays
  • Learn to ask, give and receive forgiveness

These sentiments and the bolding itself might embolden Manhattanites to stray and to talk about it with their therapists and therapist-talking, possibly cheating spouses. However, here in the Midwest, in circumstances where loving your spouse or remaining faithful out of moral obligation don’t hold enough power, the following single tip can help to affair proof the marriage without the mumbo-jumbo:

Remember, your spouse knows where your family keeps the guns, knives, hammers, baseball bats, and other Improvised Blunt Traumatizers (IBTs), and you have to sleep sometime.

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True Urban Legend

In Octobers when the St. Louis Cardinals go deep into the playoffs, not only does the sales of Cardinals apparel spike in the Midwest, but sales of white clothing and underwear also spike as hundreds of thousands of Midwesterners wash their new apparel without bleeding it first.

It’s on the Internet, and you can take it to the bank.

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A Phrase Whose Time Has Gone

Attention all marketers, copywriters, and advertising folk:

Please, from this day forward, stop using the following phrase, because you obviously lack the logical skills required to infer the implication:

Second to None

I heard this phrase on the radio again today, and its earnest presenter assured me that a local grocery store’s pharmacy offered customer service that is second to none.

Oh, really, I thought; so the customer service presented by the cut-rate employees of the discount chain are actually not as good as when the store offers no customer service at all? I mean, that’s what none is; it’s the lack of the very thing offered, and when you say you’re second to none, that doesn’t mean that you’re first; it means that you’re lower than nothing at all.

Oh, I know, you’re going to try to convince me otherwise because you see the inherent logic in the clichés and catchphrases that you parrot in the pursuit of creativity, but really. Trust me, I have a degree in philosophy. You’re just wrong, and you can just as easily parrot some cliché or catchphrase that annoys me slightly less.

Thank you, that is all.

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The Government Organism Learns

About twenty-five years ago, stoplights with crosswalks had two signals specifically for pedestrians. These signals were a red DONT WALK [sic] which displayed solid when the light was read, indicating that the pedestrian should not cross the street and a green WALK that indicated the pedestrian could enter the intersection and probably make it across before the light turned red and cross traffic ground the pedestrian to lunch meat. A third state, akin to the yellow light, involved the DONT WALK symbol flashing, which meant that the light was going to change soon and you probably shouldn’t enter the intersection.

This system, imperfect as though it was, lasted decades. However, some bureaucrat wanted to do something to improve it since people were still dying occasionally in the streets.

So in the 1980s, the conversion from the DONT WALK and WALK paradigm began its shift to the current iconography. The hand replaced DONT WALK and a person walking right to left replaced WALK. This new system would save untold children, the illiterate, and the non-English speaking people who couldn’t understand the DONT WALK and WALK on the signs and who couldn’t puzzle out that crossing with the red light was inherently bad and crossing with the green light was probably safe.

No, our governments enacted expensive changes which required replacement of all crosswalk lights and retraining the young, yet-unnamed Generation X to the new system. To protect the children, the illiterate, and the non-English speaking, you see.

I guess this system isn’t working, either, and that the new iconography doesn’t immediately, universally connect with people and tell them what to do. So now, to protect children, the illiterate, and the non-English speaking who couldn’t handle the old DONT WALK/WALK system–or perhaps adults who can read English but not symbols, the government has come up with this solution:


New crosswalk instructions

After 25 years in which, I assume, pedestrians have continued to occasionally die in crosswalks, the government has added an instruction manual for the new symbols which, apparently, dead pedestrians couldn’t understand. Now the children, illiterate, and non-English speakers get 21 English words explaining the symbols and what they mean. Because the children, illiterate, and non-English speakers couldn’t, apparently, understand 3 English words or 2 symbols without the combination thereof.

It makes me wonder what lesson the governments will learn about pedestrians even after this program does not completely eliminate pedestrian deaths. Perhaps that these instructions are not clear and they need more elaborate details? A manual for understanding the helpful signs at the crosswalks? The sky is the limit, since apparently common sense and budget never will be.

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Schrodinger’s Lotto Ticket

The lottery numbers have been drawn in a city far from here, and I do not know the results. With these tickets I hold in my hand, I am simultaneously a millionaire and myself, the superposition of states, and I will only become one or the other when I check the numbers.

Be that as it may, I’m refraining from clicking the Place Bid link on eBay until I make the observation.

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Those Generic Marauding Political Activists

The story in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch has a headline that describes the hooliganism at a political event: Madison County political fundraiser leads to brawl.

The lead describes some of the mayhem:

A brawl erupted hours after a political fundraiser ended for Madison County Treasurer Fred Bathon when his son punched a prominent funeral home director, police said.

Jacob Bathon punched Mike Weber, owner of Weber Funeral Home, several times in the face at Rusty’s in Edwardsville, said Police Chief David Bopp.

The fight was sparked by Weber’s refusal to place a political sign supporting Fred Bathon outside his business, sources said today.

Never mind, gentle reader, this is a generic young political activist. It could have happened to anyone, much like the political activist adult children who slash tires on election day.

But if you must know, gentle reader, the last line of the Post-Dispatch story identifies, for trivia’s sake:

Fred Bathon is seeking re-election as county treasurer. He is being opposed by Republican Kurt Prenzler.

All indirectly-like, see? The parent of this political activist is opposed by a Republican.

Could be a Libertarian.

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Things You Can Find On The Internet

Back in the early 1991, I was a sophomore in college. I’d finally gotten a PC (we called them “clones” in those days) the year before, but I still had my Commodore 64 hooked up on the desk beside the PC, and I still hung out on C64 Bulletin Board Systems (BBSes). One, called the City of WISE (Waukesha Information System Exchange, as I recollect), I called every night (because in those days, you had to dial up with your modem to connect to a bulletin board system, and you often had to call late at night when you wouldn’t tie up the phone). I ran a trivia message board, and I even started a message board for a Call of Cthulhu game.

Someone else was going to run some sort of roleplaying game on a message board, and I signed up. But that gamemaster never showed. Instead, one of the other users (Brass Orchid, handle derived from a Samuel R. Delany book I still haven’t read) and I started riffing absurdly, playing somewhat to roleplaying game conventions. Eventually, Brass Orchid collected these messages and sent me a copy on disk to see if we could make some sort of story out of it.

Fast forward fifteen years to the present day, and I’m browsing TextFiles.com, a repository of text files from that era, and I get to thinking about The Forgotten Legacy (as the message board was called, undoubtedly some grand sweeping sword-and-sorcery campaign that we subverted to our own ends). So I Google Brass Orchid by his real name, and lo, there it is, on his Web site:

    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    
    12/21/91; 12:43PM
    From: Brass Orchid [3]
    
    We could always play without him. All the GM 
    does is provide structure and coherence to the game.
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    
    12/21/91; 10:39PM
    From: L. S. Creetor [62]
    
    I'll take my bastard sword and stab the Ultimate 
    Reality in the gut.
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=
    
    12/22/91; 5:08AM
    From: Brass Orchid [3]
    
    The Ultimate Reality suffers 120 HP's damage and 
    falls, semiconcious, to the ground, muttering, "That
    Bastard sure knows how to hurt a guy."
    L. S. Creetor collects 20 Exp. Points and finds
    the Medallion of Adaptation.
    Suddenly, the sky splits open and a stairway to
    the stars appears. Branches off of the main stairway can
    be seen, dwindling into the distance.
    Your move...
    =-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=

Suddenly, I’m nineteen years old again, connecting through LotusWorks, and casting spells I made up on the fly. I can see the wood paneling and smell the light must of my basement room, I can feel the keyboard in my lap (because that’s all we had for ergonomics, you damn kids–you could put your keyboard in your lap), and I played late into the night with my short stories, with my bulletin boards, and with simple games without 3D rendering. I had most of college and all of my life ahead of me, and I was as optimistic as a college Objectivist could be.

Crazy, the things you can find on the Internet. I am of the first generation that can find its youth.

UPDATE: Revised a sentence to make clear I looked for Brass Orchid elsewhere but TextFiles.com.

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Stop, Spot! The Alligator Is Not Your Friend!

What kind of messages are our children’s books sending with pages like these?

Spot and Friend

I mean, come on, green or not, the alligator is not the puppy’s friend. The alligator is a carnivore known to come out of Floridian canals to take puppies for a little death roll and snack. They do not sit on the sides of the canals and make garlands like a shepherd and his love.

So you’ll pardon me if I censor my offspring’s literature to provide common sense adages like The grass is green. Oh, crap, it’s an alligator. I knew we shouldn’t have come to Florida for vacation. Cover your ears, Spot, Daddy has to shoot the primordial enemy of man.

Call me insensitive and, yea, prejudiced for not liking things of other colors which would eat me if given the opportunity.

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Wherein I Admit That My Offspring Is A Genius

That is correct, my Post Fetal Creature (PFC) is a freakin’ genius. He’s only six weeks old and he’s already talking. Well, he’s said his first word, anyway. That is correct, at only six weeks old, my heir said, quite clearly, “a.”

What, you noun-and-verb fetishists, an indefinite article isn’t good enough for a first word? No, you want “mommy” or “dada” or “absquatulate” before you’ll consider it a word.

You’re just jealous of my child’s obvious gifts.

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Psycho Hitchhikers Go Berserk

Hitchhiker: You heard of this thing, the 8-Minute Abs?
Ted: Yeah, sure, 8-Minute Abs. Yeah, the excercise video.
Hitchhiker: Yeah, this is going to blow that right out of the water. Listen to this: 7… Minute… Abs.
Ted: Right. Yes. OK, all right. I see where you’re going.
Hitchhiker: Think about it. You walk into a video store, you see 8-Minute Abs sittin’ there, there’s 7-Minute Abs right beside it. Which one are you gonna pick, man?
Ted: I would go for the 7.
Hitchhiker: Bingo, man, bingo. 7-Minute Abs. And we guarantee just as good a workout as the 8-minute folk.
Ted: You guarantee it? That’s – how do you do that?
Hitchhiker: If you’re not happy with the first 7 minutes, we’re gonna send you the extra minute free. You see? That’s it. That’s our motto. That’s where we’re comin’ from. That’s from “A” to “B”.
Ted: That’s right. That’s – that’s good. That’s good. Unless, of course, somebody comes up with 6-Minute Abs. Then you’re in trouble, huh?
[Hitchhiker convulses]
Hitchhiker: No! No, no, not 6! I said 7. Nobody’s comin’ up with 6. Who works out in 6 minutes? You won’t even get your heart goin, not even a mouse on a wheel.
Ted: That – good point.
Hitchhiker: 7’s the key number here. Think about it. 7-Elevens. 7 doors. 7, man, that’s the number. 7 chipmunks twirlin’ on a branch, eatin’ lots of sunflowers on my uncle’s ranch. You know that old children’s tale from the sea. It’s like you’re dreamin’ about Gorgonzola cheese when it’s clearly Brie time, baby.

Well, it’s close.

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