the good old days

Start your day with a bit of blasphemy…

Of course I “Love My Country.” But let’s be real for a minute on this day and remember that the “Founding Fathers” would probably not have associated with you unless you wore a powdered wig and banged your slaves. It’s fine to celebrate our past, but don’t color history in such majestic and glorious shades that you repaint it entirely.

We still have a long way to go as a country. We are just as divided today as we were then. 40-45% of the colonists supported the rebellion. 15-20% of the population remained loyal to the British Crown and the remaining 35-45% attempted to remain neutral.

Hear hear. History is useless — indeed, dangerously deceptive — if it is incomplete. For instance, did you know that there weren’t “Presidents” before 1789? It took a long time to get things sorted out, even after hostilities with Great Britain were finished.

Since the 4th of July is symbolic, one day on which to try to celebrate decades of turmoil and upheaval during the founding of a nation, just settle for enjoying your burgers, beer, watermelon, and fireworks. Save serious thought for tomorrow.

This post is dedicated to great-great-great-great-great-uncle correction: first-cousin-seven-times-removed Thomas Mifflin, who served in the Continental Army and was the fifth President. Of course, that’s President of the United States in Congress Assembled, before there was a Constitution… but I’ll take what I can get.

For snarky humor aimed at the clumsy advertising of yesteryear, Kitchen Retro is always good for a laugh.

What 1936 Betty Crocker advised us: Men are incompetent housekeepers who transition from mooching off their mother to mooching off their wife, and of course are never satisfied with the cooking of the wife.

Which, if you think about it, means that cooking skills are quantitatively getting worse with every generation. In another few centuries, we’ll all be putting dirt on plates and sobbing apologies for not being able to get the worms “just like mother used to make”.

Maybe I should stop thinking about it.

Anyway, the biscuit-loving husband picture is a riot. Can’t say it much better than Lidian did…

Check him out, holding up the Bisquick biscuit and grinning. Getting to be a swell cook? Getting to be? How many goddamn batches of biscuits does a person have to make and shove down his throat before he coughs up an unadulterated compliment!

Gee, isn’t that swell?

In a recent post from the Feminist Finance blog, describing the artificially inflated price of diamonds.

DeBeers, which controls the vast majority of diamond sourcing around the world, has spent the last several decades bottlenecking the diamond trade to create an artificial global sense of diamond scarcity and thereby to inflate prices…. Truly: who would buy these rocks at these prices if they knew just how common they were, when there are adequate, in some cases identical, substitutes that are less pricey? Why?

It’s all about PR. Mikimoto, cultured pearl king, didn’t become a success by announcing, “Hey, look at this, I’ve got a manufactured pearl,” and then sit back while “real” pearl sellers touted theirs as better because they were natural. He plastered them everywhere. He sewed them by the thousands onto gowns worn by celebrities. He made fabulous jewelry worn by celebrities. He made a Liberty Bell replica for the 1926 World’s Fair coated in, guess what, cultured pearls. He even destroyed, with great public fanfare, pearls made by his oyster farms which didn’t meet quality standards — showing just how many pearls he had and just how high his standards for beauty and perfection were. He also was quite canny to call them cultured pearls instead of manufactured, manmade, or any less-fancy word.

If today’s diamond makers want to have any chance of challenging the international diamond cartel, they need to get a good marketing team together to combat the vast publicity power of the diamond miners. Of course, they could always specifically target the nerd market. The only reason I’ve got a real diamond on my engagement ring is that it’s an antique, passed on to my husband by his grandmother. Otherwise I’d probably be happier with a manufactured diamond, because I’m weird like that and like technological sciency stuff. Besides…

they can also be cultured in different shapes–like flat, as for a window of a spaceship.

Who wouldn’t want diamond windows in their house? (Or diamond windows in their hydrogen-powered car, while I’m fantasizing…)

Comic books weren’t the only source of questionable (or ridiculous) advertisements back in the day. See page 2 of an article about photography in April 1930 Popular Science…

Yeah, birdhouses. That’ll make you rich.

That’s a modern equivalent $48 to $72 an hour. (I found this one extra funny because my father worked in a lawnmower repair shop while he was in high school. Even though it was the 50’s, I still don’t think he was making $4 an hour…)

At least this stuff is funny, because you can think, “Poor sap, buying instructions on how to make hundreds of dollars building birdhouses!” and laugh a bit at his expense. The modern version is endlessly repetitive “stock tips” and “business secrets” cramming my inbox…

In celebration, let’s review Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Crazy fairies, magic love potions, and a bit of bestiality, what’s not to like?

The ultra-condensed version:

A Midsummer Night’s Dream
By William Shakespeare
Ultra-Condensed by David J. Parker and Samuel Stoddard

Hermia, Lysander, Demetrius, and Helena: We’re all in love with each other the wrong way around.

(Everyone goes into the woods. They have wacky experiences, pair off correctly, and live happily ever after.)

THE END

Photo: Vivian Leigh as Titania, 1937

Canadian Club Whisky is about timeless masculinity, unpretentiousness and being mannerly… –Dorene Wharton, Marketing Director at Beam Global Spirits & Wine Inc.

This is a quote from a press release biased blather regarding a survey about what drinks are more masculine conducted by Beam Global (Canadian Club’s parent company). And, from the end of the release…

For more information on Beam Global Spirits & Wine, its brands, and its commitment to social responsibility, please visit www.beamglobal.com

Great, what’s that, in your own words?

Beam Global Spirits & Wine aims to set the standard for tasteful, responsible marketing and advertising to legal purchase age adults who choose to drink. –Beam Global’s FAQs

Taking a leadership position in social responsibility is a way of doing business at Beam Global. We seek to make a positive difference in the countries and communities in which we live and work…. We are proud to be the leader in the industry in working with all aspects of the community to address irresponsible use of beverage alcohol…. Beam Global has led the way in working with others to end alcohol misuse and we have also taken the lead in marketing our products responsibly. –Beam Global’s Social Responsibility

Two points to consider here: their commitment to social responsibility seems to be quite limited to addressing alcohol abuse, and they don’t tightly adhere to their goal of “tasteful” marketing. Here’s another example of their tasteful advertising strategies (via Michelle Schwartz Chronicles again)…

On Friday, Canadian Club Whisky will host a spoof protest outside Toronto showings of Sex and the City to “protest the rise of the pink, girlie cocktail and the demise of the masculine cocktail.”…

“It’s kind of reminding people that there are other options,” said Ginny Homewood, brand manager for Canadian Club Whisky. “You can have a sophisticated cocktail that doesn’t look like a martini.”

Dorene Wharton and Ginny Homewood are not impressing me with rampantly sexist advertising strategies.

I originally thought I should just boycott Canadian Club, but I’m happy to include ALL these Beam Global products in the list of alcohol brands I will no longer purchase for myself or others. My annual liquor bill is a few hundred annually (including gift purchases) and they won’t be seeing a damn cent.

• Jim Beam(R) Bourbon
• Sauza(R) Tequila
• Canadian Club(R) Whisky
• Courvoisier(R) Cognac
• Maker’s Mark(R) Bourbon
• Laphroaig(R) Scotch Whisky
• Teacher’s(R) Scotch Whisky
• Knob Creek(R) Bourbon
• Starbucks(TM) Liquors

Awesome…

… when people start waxing about how it’s more natural and that’s how they did it in the old days, I think “menstrual huts” and wonder why people seem to think that undernourished, illiterate people who didn’t get out much from the past were somehow magically smarter than we are now.

…from the end of an anti-anti-vaccination rant.

I want that on a t-shirt.

This afternoon, my four-year-old daughter manufactured her first memory.

She has a cow-shaped book with a little microchip and button setup; when you squeeze a certain part of it, it says (surprise) “MOOOOO”. Since we were on a fairly long road trip, she didn’t have a lot to do except push the button over and over and over and over.

MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO
MOOOOO

Amazingly, I didn’t go bat-shit insane during 10 minutes steady of MOOOOOing. After a while, though, we noticed that the cow seemed to be getting a little tired.

MOOOOo
MOOOoo
MoooOO
MooOOo

So, I used this as a great excuse opportunity to preserve the cow’s power, and told my daughter it needed to take a break or the battery would die.

This fascinated her, and she discussed how hard it would be to change the battery. I agreed it would be hard (cutting the book open, figuring out the little circuit and where its battery lived, replacing the battery, fixing the book) and thanked her for stopping.

Five minutes later, she was discussing how when she was a baby, she had made the book MOOOOO so much that the battery had died. “No, dear, that hasn’t happened yet. I asked you to stop so that battery wouldn’t die.” She kept insisting I had already replaced it once, though.

I suppose I’d far rather have her recovering inventing a memory like that, than twenty years from now deciding we’d put her through extensive physical and sexual abuse.

Late in World War II, the US Department of the Treasury put out Mr. and Mrs. America to encourage citizens on the homefront to buy war bonds.

Get the latest Flash Player to see this player.

Full of images of death and more death, it also offers optimistic promise that eventually this will be over. The bond not only wins the war, but secures the peace. “The America To Be: Where will you stand in it?” I loved seeing immigrants and minorities included in the testimonials of bond buyers, but the dull narration by the head of the Treasury rather ruined its impact.

One thing odd about “modern” wars is how little involvement is asked of civilians. Unlike wars before 1950, today there is no request for Americans to sacrifice or participate. Obviously we all pay for it with our taxes, but that’s somewhat indirect; it’s not immediate, like growing a Victory Garden, rationing, or conserving fuel. The burden today falls almost fully on military families, and is almost fully emotional.

Yesterday’s For Better or For Worse annoyed me. Not because it’s really offensive or something like that; it’s just sort of vapidly stupid.

Elizabeth and Anthony haven’t declared a date yet? What modern fiddle-faddle! These young people with their indefinite declarations of commitment — bah!

Uh, how old are you, neighbor lady? Thirty-ish years ago when you got married, there were plenty of engaged people who didn’t finalize their wedding plans the instant a ring went on their finger. Back a hundred years ago, “engaged” was not synonymous with “our invitation is in the mail, please save the date”. There has always been a great deal of leeway given to an engaged couple, because people’s circumstances (both financial and emotional) vary widely and it’s not always feasible to declare definite milestones. It’s not like they’re going to forget to get married, especially with you asking every day, “So when’s the big day?”

Maybe in 8,000,000 B.C.E., Caveboy and Cavegirl went to their respective caveparents, announced their engagement, showed off the engagement rock (literally, of course, a rock), and informed them the date was already set. I mean, according to Clan of the Cave Bear, everyone just shacked up and had lots of sex whenever they felt like it, but since Clan of the Cave Bear is a terrible book, I’m pretty sure that our hypothetical cavecouple would have done The Right Thing and scheduled their caveceremony promptly.