Friday Ephemera (655)
Best not to look down just yet. || Big trees. || Just breathe. || Coffee substitute. || Thirst quenched. || Selling lemonade. || It’s a thing, apparently. || I’ll just leave this here. || Legally haunted. || At last, a practical application for fluid dynamics. || The pretending can get competitive. || How to land a plane, a big one. || Go on, tickle his belly. || It’s noisy, but the view’s not bad. || “Observing whiteness.” It’s intersectional science, baby. || A day at the beach, 1928. || The thrill of Green Shield Stamps and “instant mashed potato,” 1977. || Incoming. || Outgoing. || It wasn’t me. || Attention, Seattle taxpayers. || Toy ads of yesteryear. || An uncanny transformation. || And finally, for the love of God, don’t tell your mother.
It wasn’t me.
Alert! Alert! Alert! The Nothing has broken through to our dimension! Prepare your interstitial transporters now! Active your escape plans! Hold your loved ones close! Now the Day of Screaming will commence!
Just breathe.
Small child, two dogs and a white couch…?
Morning, all.
Heh. It’s all a bit Sapphire & Steel. Some kindly, clueless ghost hunter will have to be sacrificed to avert an interdimensional meltdown.
The thrill of Green Shield Stamps and “instant mashed potato,” 1977.
That’s a nostalgia rabbit hole. I remember my nan letting me stick them in the book (it was meant to be a ‘treat’).
‘Go on, tickle his belly’
Probably would, though it’s sure to be venomous!
Yes, despite the humdrum subject matter – the price of cat food and instant mashed potato – I found it oddly compelling and had to watch to the end.
I’m still getting used to the fact that Julia can now come and go as she pleases and isn’t locked in an eternal struggle with Typepad’s temperamental spam filter.
Oh, happy days.
Because it can be done.
Just breathe.
The dogs… 🙂
The dogs
As a wee seedling, I was once found in the ‘dining room’, which was largely unused except for storage, standing next to an old, equally unused, writing bureau that had apparently caught my eye. I was holding a spray can of silver paint, which I’d found among the stored items, and had been playing.
There was some commotion, as I recall.
And who remembers Embassy cigarette coupons?
The thrill of Green Shield Stamps
The only brand I remember is S&H Green Stamps, although I know there were others. the job of pasting them into the books was always delegated to us kids.
“Green Stamps were all she gave. Green Stamps were all I took. Green Stamps were all she gave, and I pasted them into my Green Stamp book.”
and “instant mashed potato,”
The varieties I ate in early childhood were noticably inferior, although they did improve over the years. And they were a god-send to Mom who sometimes did not have enough time to make everything from scratch.
Speaking of convenience foods, remember when frozen vegetables only came in solid bricks from which you had to hack off as much as you wanted to defrost?
A drive-through liquor store. Los Angeles 1948.
The thrill of Green Shield Stamps and “instant mashed potato,” 1977.
Instant mashed potato makes instant coffee look good.
Data collection of Tiffany’s mood swings has been an ongoing effort ever since the infamous speed boat incident of 2018 deconstructed in [2]. As 1970s mood ring accuracy has been long debunked by popular science, a more active approach has been required [3]. Mood swing severity has been logged and time stamped with a subjective empathic pain scale, as well as time and monetary loss.
https://jabde.com/2021/05/23/girlfriends-mood-time-series-analysis/
Looks like Bill Mumy in a couple of ways.
Frequency 121.5. Yes. I’ll remember that.
Defense attorney: “He’s a violence prevention counselor.”
A drive-through liquor store. Los Angeles 1948.
Louisiana says “hold my daquiri” – now in the economy size!
I don’t recall liquor per se but for keg parties, our local drive-through beer distributors in Florida were quite useful/convenient. There was considerable tut-tutting about them back in the 80’s however. Mostly from the kind of women who have some sort of perverse need to express disapproval at damn near any convenience. Especially if they can make a moral connection.
“Observing whiteness.” It’s intersectional science, baby.
Next time just set fire to $500,000.
Attention, Seattle taxpayers.
Next time just set fire to $1.37 million.
An unusual flashlight.
A drive-through liquor store. Los Angeles 1948.
From where I come from it all seems very civilized.
In the not too distant past in Canuckistan our liquour stores were like Consumers Distibuting. You entered the store; approached a table/counter covered with pencils and small paper forms; looked for the number of your favourite hooch on a sheet of paper listing all the hooch available; filled out your form; trudged to the cashier; handed him your form; paid; waited for your hooch to be brought from the back in a brown paper bag. It all felt very Soviet-style. You weren’t even allowed to look at the booze.
I’m sure I wouldn’t know.
I remember in 1st grade, which was my first experience with school cafeterias, I told my mother that the mashed potatoes there tasted like air. This was an ongoing mystery with her and my 6-year-old self until one day we were at some restaurant and I said that those mashed potatoes were just like the school ones. A light went on in her head and it took a little bit of explanation for me. Up to that point I had no idea what instant food in general was. It was food. It was there. In my mind it mostly was all “instant”. It got made somehow. Even “instant”. I think it was at that point that I became suspicious of everything I was being told in school.
Heh. Proper mashed potatoes, as conjured into being in this kitchen, should be at least 42% butter.
Heh. Proper mashed potatoes, as conjured into being in this kitchen, should be at least 42% butter.
Or sour cream and chives. Or bacon and cheese.
And most properly, mashed. As in by hand. With that weird tool that causes chaos in an overfilled utensil drawer. My sister-in-law and her husband would put on a fantastic Thanksgiving feast but I would insist on mashing the potatoes myself rather than her using her mechanical devise. Those things tend to be overused and create a similar “air” taste. She would require that they not be lumpy at all and I was good with that. I’ve never understood the market for instant mashed potatoes. It’s about the simplest thing to make. On an institutional level, like my 1960’s/1970’s school cafeteria, it did make some sense due to the volume involved and the physical limitations of the aging Spanish-American/WWI widows who worked there. But families at home? Maybe in a house of a half dozen kids…maybe. Even that, put a kid to work on it. They might even enjoy it.
The only brand I remember is S&H Green Stamps,
They were pretty ubiquitous at all the major grocery stores when I was little – and I remember helping stick them into books for mom. I believe our first set of tv trays were from the Green Stamp store. But, at least in the San Fernando Valley, most stores took up with their biggest competitor, Blue Chip Stamps by the mid-60s. Mom got several things from their store before all these reward programs went bye-bye in the late 70s.
[ Softens lighting, leaves pot of moisturiser on bar. ]
I’ve never understood the market for instant mashed potatoes.
I think I only tasted them at school – sort of flat, gooey white stuff with no taste. Now be sure, mom had a box of them in the pantry … but for emergency only if we were to find ourselves with a hankering for potatoes but none in the house and the stores were closed. (there was a time when almost all retail closed on Sundays and most certainly major holidays).
They got rotated out on an annual basis.
mom had a box of them in the pantry … but for emergency only … They got rotated out on an annual basis.
Glass jars and freezers are the way to make grains, pastas, and cereals stay fresh a long time.
Silver writing bureau? 😀
Going downtown. This time I’m prepared.
Partly, yes. And a partly silver child. And, I think, some of the floor.
Can we agree? If the US beats England, it’s called soccer. If England wins, it’s football. A draw? As you were.
Proper mashed potatoes, as conjured into being in this kitchen, should be at least 42% butter.
*Takes notes*. Any more recipes?
Any more recipes?
Gordon Ramsey suggests equal quantities of single cream and warm (not boiling) milk along with the butter.
The once ubiquitous “potato ricer” pulverises the potato into a suitable state of submission to accept and absorb what at first appears to be infeasible levels of dairy product.
Strangely, this was not where you caught the shuttle to the space station in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
“A bas la france!”
Nil Nil. As you were.
“There are three things, young gentlemen, which you are constantly to bear in mind. Firstly, you must always implicitly obey orders, without attempting to form any opinion of your own respecting their propriety. Secondly, you must consider every man your enemy who speaks ill of your king; and thirdly, you must hate a Frenchman, as you do the devil.”
–Lord Nelson
The shortest research paper ever published.
Just to be even-handed, here is a reason to hate the English.
Is it too soon to re-post this Nativity scene?
Watched the last 25 minutes or so of that. Not only was it mostly dull given the nil-nil circumstances…even for soccer…but the US side’s pathetic effort on that final indirect kick opportunity was pathetic. If people don’t understand why Americans…well what traditionally used to be called Americans…don’t like soccer, that would be it. Not that I was a huge soccer fan. I mostly like it. I used to watch the WC and even went to the WC games when the US hosted back in ’94. I went to many NASL games when I was younger. But as things have gone more lefty and internationalist, I increasingly find it tiresome.
Just asking for it.