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.
Nativity scene: lots of people are confused. Just down the street from me for years they had the manger and jesus and Santa was bringing presents. There might have been some cartoon characters too.
Nativity scene: lots of people are confused.
And then there are the people who decorate a tree with Star Trek and Star Wars figurines…
“It doesn’t do us any good to know American doctrine, because THEY don’t know it!”
–exasperated German army officer in WWII
Another variety of derangement.
another derangement: If you know absolutely nothing about anything, it is simple to believe nonsense. Blacks ruled europe? ahahahah phew aahahahhah. And the Egyptians looked like greeks/romans until recent times when they imported so many slaves from Africa.
It’s not derangement if it’s what you can get sufficiently large numbers of people to loudly and proudly proclaim as the truth. For instance, were you to say that George Zimmerman did nothing wrong, that Trump did NOT tell people to drink bleach, that George Floyd died mostly due to the drugs in his system and that it is virtually impossible to kill an otherwise healthy 40 something male by putting you knee on his neck…the back of his neck not his throat, without breaking his neck, well I got news for you sunshine…you’re the one who is deranged. Ask me how I know.
“It’s why…I got into teaching,” she says.
The great achievement being to indoctrinate small children by telling them that a toy penguin is “non-binary” and should be referred to as “they/them.”
Sadly, there were times in my childhood when Mom served instant mashed potatoes made with powdered milk. At least she finally learned that one had to add the meat to the hamburger helper.
[ Calls social services, child endangerment department. ]
[ Rolls pickled egg along bar to Stephanie. ]
Dry those tears.
…exasperated German army officer…
The whole joke:
Meanwhile, in this episode of Today in Racism™, This Is CNN.
It’s like some weird compulsion. A mental tic. And I gave up on counting the number of outright lies in the piece.
Season’s grievance-ings.
Speculations about the letter writer’s religion or lack of religion are welcome.
When I was a young kid, there was a house which always displayed “Bah Humbug” in the windows. But demands for the abolition of Christmas on grounds of “inclusion” were very rare.
And I gave up on counting the number of outright lies in the piece.
As did I. We are living in some sort of quasi-Maoist, quasi-fascist Hell-world.
And if there are any racial differences in quality of sleep, why can’t they be due to the patterns of behavior in those “racial communities”? Just one example: the many children and adults in black neighborhoods who are by choice up at all hours of the night, “partying” and raising a ruckus, instead of getting a good night’s sleep before going to work or school in the morning? But then, many of the adults don’t work steady jobs and many of the kids do not make any effort in school. And the homes are devoid of books and other assets of civilization.
And they were a god-send to Mom who sometimes did not have enough time to make everything from scratch.
I don’t hold it against Mom: Time was in short supply. Raising kids was a job in itself, but she was also a part-time artist and she worked a part-time job until we all reached fifth grade. So she experimented now and then with time-saving foods but abandoned anything that didn’t work out satisfactorily.
I remember in 1st grade, which was my first experience with school cafeterias
I must have been very fortunate: My grade school cafeteria was pretty good–the food was tasty and nutritious, and I cannot remember ever being served anything that I hated. My only regret is that I do not remember ever explicitly thanking the cooks–although they could have deduced my appreciation from my occasional requests for second helpings.
Speculations about the letter writer…
The telling thing is that, aside from no return address, that it is just addressed to “Neighbor” which means:
a) The writer doesn’t even know zer neighbor’s name;
b) The writer does know fae’s neighbor’s name but using it would give away who per was;
c) It was sent to everyone in the hood with lights;
d) a and c;
e) b and c;
f) all of the above.
WWII military: The inside scoop on those jokes is that the US military practiced total information for its units. Going into D-Day, the entire unit knew the maps, the mission, so if officers were killed they could carry on. The emphasis on the mission instead of the hierarchy meant that flexibility was high. German and Japanese military were very top-down. If officers were killed, often a unit would just stay put. Top generals were very inflexible. This led to disastrous surrenders of entire armies. German, Japanese and Soviet military were very wasteful of manpower.
Saturday afternoon distractions….
The Audience Choir goes Chromatic..
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/xJABN80sPfo
Unholy – Sam Smith acapella cover meme
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/LGAn3ZZHsFE
Crazy – Gnarls Barclay vocal curl viral..
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/1XzZRn7STfo
The “Sturdy” dance craze
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vkK3zpYhGb0
Even Spiderman is also sturdy
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/cUt_zmEYjjc
Bre, Petrunka – much slower than the versions I’ve heard before.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=darmHfFNOKM&ab_channel=semochka89
When good impressions meet Deepfakes…
Gandalf Roasts rings of power
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/Jjx70u15l0Y
https://www.youtube.com/shorts/XqiufMP38Ng
Meanwhile in Kenya, an intersectional discussion, and in Italy, this will heal the planet, if this in Germany doesn’t.
Today’s word is landfill. Also, meat tenderisers.
Also, meat tenderisers.
Seal hunters?
An historian (she/they) informs us Rome was cow fields till the 1500s. Many of the artifacts “proving” the existence of Rome were Victorian fakes made in Dickensian workhouses.
Cicero was unavailable for comment.
the US military practiced total information for its units. Going into D-Day, the entire unit knew the maps, the mission, so if officers were killed they could carry on. The emphasis on the mission instead of the hierarchy meant that flexibility was high. German and Japanese military were very top-down. If officers were killed, often a unit would just stay put.
And yet as I recall the German military was noted for training all troops for greater initiative and flexibility than most other armies. Which tells us something about the prevailing military cultures of the time, I suppose.
and in Italy, this will heal the planet, if this, in Germany, doesn’t.
These people hate technology so much, they should be shipped off to agricultural communes where they can spend their lives cultivating and harvesting potatoes without any mechanical aids. While living in shacks warmed only by the body heat of cattle and pigs. Seems fair?
There are a number of examples on this blog of institutions which no longer believe in themselves – architects who loathe buildings; historians who dislike history; librarians who hate books. Here’s the latest, a museum which is currently in the process of abolishing itself:
https://twitter.com/ExploreWellcome/status/1596091202381975552
[I]f this in Germany doesn’t.
Such a pity the conductor’s stand isn’t conducting. Fifty thousand volts ought to do it, I think.
‘Inclusion’ involves an inordinate amount of exclusion.
Seems fair?
Not to the cattle and pigs…
Speculations about the letter writer’s religion or lack of religion are welcome.
Nice-looking street in an 85% white town in Minnesota. The tone of a white lady enforcer of Current Year morality (“close the taverns” in the 1920’s, “in this house we believe” in the 2020’s). The prose of an earnest high school essay. Tracy Flick type, with a mother/teacher in the background giving moral reinforcement/extra credit.
Seems fair?
Not to the cattle and pigs…
They won’t mind the smell.
Nil Nil. As you were.
A good example of why high level soccer has had a hard time catching on here in the colonies. I was flipping channels last night and paused at the England – USA game for a bit. I was unsurprised to see that there was no score at the 50-something minute mark and that the players seemed to be spending more time kicking the ball backwards than toward the opposing goals. Then I flipped to a hockey game that happened to be playing at the same time (Tampa Bay vs. St. Louis). My wife asked, “Why do you like hockey better than soccer? They seem pretty similar to me.” Well, yes and no. They’re both played on a rectangular layout with goals and goaltenders at each end . . . but let’s look at the stats. In the England – USA game there were 18 total shots (both teams) in 90 minutes. That’s an average of one shot — which may or may not have gone anywhere near the goal — every 5 minutes. Total shots on target: 4. One every 22+ minutes. By contrast, there were 54 total shots on goal in the 60-minute hockey game; I don’t think they bother to keep track of shots that are blocked or aren’t aimed at the goal.
So it’s not just all the nil-nil ties that turn me off to soccer; it’s that for most of the time nothing seems to be happening. Of course one hears similar complaints (justified, in my opinion) about games like baseball, but at least MLB makes periodic rule changes to try to do something about it. No so in soccer, so far as I can tell.
Of course one hears similar complaints (justified, in my opinion) about games like baseball…
Unless one goes to AA or AAA games – not only are the names better (Isotopes, Trash Pandas, Biscuits, Jumbo Shrimp, Yard Goats, etc.) but there is actual playing going on – last one I went to the vaguely local team won 16-11. Last prior MLB the score in extra innings was 1-0.
Many of the artifacts “proving” the existence of Rome were Victorian fakes made in Dickensian workhouses.
She/they claims to be Jewish – also “Free Palestine” (what self-loathing). So, who built the Arch of Titus?
Via Ace, a tale of woe.
I wonder if she voted for the people who made this mess.
Don’t forget the poor, suffering Yale students.
I like it and the suggestions by the commenters.
Conspiracy theorist? “Twitter’s then Trust and Safety Officer Yoel Roth…quit two weeks later after a feud with Musk over the billionaire’s decision to unban the controversial satirical news outlet The Babylon Bee, as well as conspiracy theorist Jordan Peterson.”
Twitter banned satirists and scholars, while tolerating Islamic hate-mongers and Antifa thugs who used Twitter to plan actual terrorist attacks.
“Trust and Safety Officer”: Make Orwell fiction again.
Intersectionality & grievances: there is an infinitely long history of races/tribes/groups slaughtering each other. This includes many genocides even in the past 50 yrs (Rwanda, Cambodia killing fields, China under Mao). Encouraging and stirring up racial animus is a very dangerous game. Why white people would encourage hatred of whites escapes me.
Sports: I think the soccer net needs to be larger. A score of 1-0 does not even show who is the better team–it is just chance. Some football games are that low scoring too.
Rome: no material culture? has she not driven around Italy? Even in Israel there are so many roman columns sticking out of the coastal dunes that they don’t even bother excavating them. The byzantines considered themselves part of Rome, the remnants of the empire. Our language is full of Latin–all medical and legal terminology is Latin. Scientific names: Latin. Oh, and because Latin survived, we have detailed history and all of Rome: Cicero, Pliny, biographies, poetry, accounts of wars. What a maroon.
As noted recently, to decide what “disinformation” is, and what reality is, Twitter employed a dysmorphic middle-aged fantasist who invents stories about being catcalled and refers to himself, repeatedly, as “really cute.”
Choose the form of your destructor.
Make it go away! Make it go away!
I wonder if she voted for the people who made this mess
Irish Performance Studies??? No question.
JFC.
Seriously, actual JFC.
Spear wound in the chest, vagina, same same to these esteemed academicians.
Right-o, “Hey, what are you doing your thesis on?” “Checking out Jesus’ johnson, how about you?”
*(I am afraid to ask about the erotic ones with the unwelcoming and hostile wazoo)
The purpose of education.
Ms O’Toole has been mentioned here before:
Needless to say, Ms O’Toole thinks herself culturally superior to pretty much anyone who disagrees with her.
Ms O’Toole has been mentioned here before:
Oh my God, that thread… Whatever happened to Minnow? 😀
Our most persistent sophist troll was finally banished to the Phantom Zone in 2014, I believe. In much the same way that hagfish can produce vast quantities of slime to escape predators, no-one could exude rhetorical mucous quite like Minnow.
Irish Performance Studies???
Jedward 1.01?
In much the same way that hagfish can produce vast quantities of slime to escape predators, no-one could exude rhetorical mucous quite like Minnow.
LOL. He was a piece of work.
Having a discussion with Minnow was rather like trying to shovel air into a balloon. For a while it was interesting to watch someone enacting some of the rhetorical manoeuvres I’ve tried to highlight over the years. A live specimen, as it were. Our Little Fish seemed unaware that the imagined merits of his assertions, contrived and slippery as they were, were never as apparent as the psychology behind them.
But there’s only so much neurotically pretentious toss a human mind can stand.