Archeology, pt. III

Yes, it's time for more scans from old comicbooks.

In old comicbooks aimed at males, I noticed that hypnotism was a regular feature of ads from the 60's until at least the early 80's. I remember reading these types of ads when I was little and wanting to learn how to hypnotize people. My guess the reason these types of ads appeared in comics aimed at males and not in comics aimed at females is because of some weak nerd fantasy of getting those mysterious, frightening women to do what you want them to do. Afraid of women? Hypnotize them! BWA-HA-HA!

YOU can make people cry, laugh, shout, stop smoking, recall childhood memories, act like an infant, make water taste like vinegar, get folks to sing, dance...do 1001 things they would never do when not UNDER YOUR POWER. [Like take their clothes off.]

That quote came from the ad shown below. Notice the drawing of a guy hypnotizing a woman.



The next ad is for the really nifty looking Hypno-Coin, which I remember in ads back in the 70's/early 80's. And they show a woman being hypnotized. Big surprise.



The next ad is from the early 80's comes off as considerably more sinister than the two ads above.



So now we're not just hypnotizing girls to take their tops off, no, we're getting people do our bidding. Of course the bidding probably involves girls taking their tops off, but it sounds more frightening.



Those jocks and cheerleaders won't make fun of me anymore! They'll do my bidding!

That's extra fiber

On lunch break, I went out with a couple of guys to a little Italian place that's nearby. Afterwards, when we were driving back to work, the red-haired guy told a story about something that happened at this same restaurant in the past.

"Billy picked up his steak and cheese sub and big wad of hair fell out of it. They didn't even give him his money back, they just brought him another sub," he said.

Guess what both the red-haired guy and I had for lunch? Yep, the steak and cheese sub. Why the hell would anyone go back to this place after witnessing a big wad of hair fall out of someone's food? And not only return, but eat the same thing you saw the hair fall out of? Well, it was a good sub, but I don't think it was that good.

Crud

In Celebration of Crud: The Charlton Comics Story.

Archeology, pt. II

Yes, it's back to the ancient comics again. One of the comics I dug out was a copy of First Kiss from 1964. I like how wildly different the ads are in comics aimed at a female audience. In comics for boys the ads are for body building, whoopie-cushions, etc. In comics for girls the ads are for things like these spiffy pillow cushions shown below.



Let hunky Dr. Ben Casey smirk his way into your heart as you sleep.

Or, if you're a little older:



How happy that woman looks as she uses the amazing Vacutex to suck blackheads out of her husband's neck.

Technological Breakthrough!

They finally hired me on Monday, so now I'm a full-fledged employee of Spacely Sprockets instead of just a temp. Yippee. Anyway, now that I'm an actual employee, I have to start punching the clock. But really there's no clock to punch, instead they have a hand-scanner. I was really impressed when I heard they had a hand-scanner instead of a typically bland apparatus so the employees can punch in and out.

Today, I got to actually use the thing and get instructed on how to use it. You don't simply stick your hand in it, get it scanned, and then go to work. No, you have to punch in your I.D. number, press ENTER, and then scan your hand. If I have to punch in numbers, then why do I have to have my hand scanned? And if I have to have my hand scanned, then why do I have to punch in numbers?

The 21st century hasn't impressed me so far.

Archeology

For much needed inspiration, I dug deep into my closet and into my much ignored comic book collection. (My mother never threw mine away.) What I wanted to look at was the ads rather than the comics themselves. And I didn't want to look at just any ads in just any comic books. Nope. I wanted to look at the strangest, sleaziest stuff from the shoddiest of all the comic book companies. Yes, folks, I dug out the Charlton crap.

This first illustration is from a war comic from 1981. That was back when you could actually go in a drugstore and buy comic books. Now you have to go to some snooty comic book store run by nerds and pay way too much money for something that's been elevated from trash to art, but is still trash.

Skinny men and women are unattractive. Take that, skinny people! Get off our beach with your freakishly elongated bodies!



The second illustration is from a war comic from 1964. Skinny people don't despair, you can develop spaceman strength and endurance. Of course you might just end up looking like the freak in that ad, but that's the risk you take. You should've been born beautiful instead of skinny, you skinny bastard.



By 1968, the company that promised you could develop "spaceman strength" was now telling you could make yourself "astronaut tough". I like to think that they changed the ad because they didn't want people thinking that "spaceman strength" somehow referred to alien lifeforms.



All three ads are reproduced in all their blurry, demented glory below. Just click on them. I dare you. Actually, I double-dog dare you. No, on second thought, I don't care.



And I just noticed that the company from the first two ads is in Great Neck, NY. Spaceman strength and a great neck! Bow before me, skinny earth-man!

Musical

Masterpieces of American Cinema

Something I haven't written about here is that for the past several weeks, I've watched at least one movie every single day. Sadly, since I'm a cheapskate, the movies tend to be schlock I find in the dollar DVD bins at the discount stores.

I've watched three movies today (so far), but I'm only going to mention one of them: Santa Claus Conquers the Martians. This is one of the classics of bad cinema and something I've sort of wanted to watch since the 80's.



What can I say about it? Well, it was bad, but no where near as bad as I'd thought. And I didn't have the overwhelming urge to bludgeon the director, writer, and cast to death with a table leg, which is how I felt after watching I ♥ Huckabees, so that's a good thing.

One thing I will mention is that the Martians had green makeup on their faces, but the print was dark at times the movie looked like a bizarre minstrel show. (Incidentally, that's Pia Zadora as the Martian on the left.)

I told you I wasn't

The MySpace woman from yesterday who thought I was her ex-husband actually wrote me back.

ok good I didn't want to find that mean bastard anyway.

I'm in the clear! But, wait, I thought she had something important to tell him.

No, I'm not

I keep a MySpace account specifically to read one person's blog. I hate MySpace, always have. Mainly, having a MySpace page is just a nuisance because virtually every day I get friend requests that are just porn spam. I know hot girls in thongs don't want to be my friend and I'm OK with that.

Anyway, today I got an actual message from another MySpace member. I read the message and went to their page, but couldn't find a single link to a porn site or see a photo of some woman in a thong bending over. Could it actually be a real message written by a real person sent specifically to me? Apparently so, but it's a strange message:

ok so this is odd. I did a search for you and wanted to see if you are my ex husband. scary how things start falling out of the past. I needed to talk to you so if you are my ex please send me a line. to know its if really you please tell me the month or date we were married.

So, for the first time in my life, I sent a woman an email explaining that I wasn't her ex-husband.

Lack of crazy

It's been pleasantly quiet at work this week without the crazy guy, but, strangely, I'm starting to miss him a bit. I think other people are missing him too. A couple of guys came over to where I was working and began talking about how quiet it was for me without the crazy guy constantly bothering me. Then they began to tell crazy guy stories. One guy told about how he had a friend dying of emphysema and how the crazy guy tried to talk him into getting drugs from the dying guy so the crazy guy could sell them. "I'll give you half," the crazy guy supposedly said.

We live out our insanity vicariously through the crazy guy.

I'm torn

Last Thursday, the crazy guy was high on the job again and acting exceptionally goofy. So goofy that they're making him take the whole week off. And, he might get fired, I think.

On one hand, the crazy guy is quite annoying, especially when he's high, but on the other hand, he's provided me with quite a lot of blog content over the past few months. With him out of work, more than likely I'm not going to have one interesting thing to post this week. And if he gets fired, what am I going to write about?

I may have to get a life.

In lieu of actual content

So instead of posting something relevant to everyone (like a cow comic), I'll post a very short animation experiment I did last year.

I'm peculiar

Apparently, I eat peanuts in an odd manner. The second in command of the machine shop saw me in the break room eating peanuts and laughed because I'd poured the peanuts out on a paper towel and was eating them one at a time. I'm just glad he didn't see me eating M&Ms. There's no telling how hard he would've laughed if he'd seen me arranging them according to color before I ate them.

It's about cows

Marked that one off my list

I have a tendency toward procrastination. For example, back in January of 2001, I taped The Blair Witch Project. I finally got around to watching it this past Saturday. It only sat around for seven years. That's not bad, is it?

That doesn't go in there.

Today at work I was working beside the crazy guy again. He was relatively quiet for the most part, but at one point I heard him using the air hose and it didn't sound quite right. Instead of just a few blasts of air to clear the coolant and aluminum chips off the part, there was a single, long blast of air. And the blast had an odd quasi-vocal quality to it. I looked over and he was shooting air into one side of his mouth. The right side of his cheek was inflated and his mouth was stretched out.



Yes, I know that's a supremely lousy drawing, but I thought it might better illustrate the sight I witnessed. (I once got an A in a college drawing class: strange, but true!)

"You know oil comes out of those," I said. (Microscopic droplets of machine oil come out of air compressors, not just air.)

"Yeah, I know," he said, smiling.

Another exciting episode of Cow

I know the economy's bad, but this is ridiculous

This morning outside of Dollar General, a little girl holding some papers stopped me. I thought she was going to give me a sheet advertising some kind of fund raising car wash or similar. Instead, she asked me if I wanted to buy a picture for 10¢. The pictures turned out to be crudely torn out pages from a coloring book that weren't colored particularly well. I bought one.



I don't know why, but the whole transaction left me feeling depressed. She'll never make any money selling them for 10¢. She should at least sell them for a buck apiece. Don't underestimate the power of guilt, little girl.

A comic

WARNING!!! Filthy words spoken by the insane

The crazy guy outdid himself today in being annoying. I preferred it when he was simply walking around brandishing a snake. I'd been spared most of his annoyingness [I don't even think that's a word] by simply not working around him. He was on one side of the row of CNC machines and I was on the other. But today I had to be on the same side as he was.

At first it was simply things like talking too much, which is typical for him. Later it degenerated into farting. Lots of farting. He was lactose intolerant, he said. Even though he didn't need to be anywhere near me, he stayed close to me. And farted. Multiple times. Then he started touching me.

I should point out that I don't like being touched. The only people allowed to touch me are close family, hot girls, doctors, and my barber. All others should keep their hands off me, especially if it's more than a passing touch. No grabbing. No poking. No caressing.

The crazy guy touched me on the back as he ran by. I shrugged it off as an accident and kept on working. Then, as he went by again, he touched my arm. Actually, he squeezed my uninspiring bicep and admired it. Then he asked me if I'd been working out. No, I don't work out, I said. But he kept on yammering about my "guns". The only thing I can figure is that he was confused by me actually wearing a short-sleeve for the first time ever at this job. Or maybe he's just insane. I don't think he was coming on to me, but, honestly, I don't know.

Eventually, he got off the subject of my upper arms, but what he did next made me wish he would go back to admiring my flabby arms.

As I stood at the drill press, working with an aluminum piece, the crazy guy got right up next to me and began dancing. And then, in a high-pitched voice started saying, "Fuck me up the ass! Fuck me up the ass!" He was practically screaming. A few people walked by, but oddly, most paid him no mind.

I was so glad when he disappeared for an hour and a half at lunch. And, strangely, after he got back, he was very well behaved.

My Record Collection

Nothing interesting happened at work today, so I can't regale you with tales of the crazy guy running around with dynamite strapped to his chest while brandishing several Fleet enemas. No, that'll probably be next week.

Instead of tales of work dementia, I'm posting a scan of a record I bought at the Salvation Army on Saturday morning. It's a Liberace seven-inch 78. No, I didn't know they made 78 RPM records that small either.



My favorite thing about it is that it's a giveaway from the Star Furniture Company. Also, the orchestra was directed by Liberace's brother, George. Remember when Bugs Bunny would imitate Liberace and go on about, "My brother, George"? No? What the hell, people? Didn't you watch cartoons when you were growing up? No? You were watching Meet the Press instead? Madness. No wonder you all turned out like you did.

Where'd you say you found that?

Around eleven or so, I looked over from the CNC machine I was running and saw the crazy guy showing the second in command an odd-looking black rubber coil. I wondered what it was and tried to get a better look. It had scales. At first I thought it was a very realistic rubber snake. I walked over and saw it was a real snake that was quite alive. The crazy guy was walking around the machine shop with a goddamn two foot long black rat snake.

"Where'd you find it," I asked.

"It was way over there on the other side of Billy's desk."

He was holding the snake around the base of its head, the way the herpetologists do on TV.

The crazy guy then went to the machine shop office to show the supervisor. I followed. I doubted I would ever have another chance to follow someone carrying a big snake into an office, so I didn't want to squander the opportunity.

"Hey, look what I found," the crazy guy said to the supervisor.

The supervisor looked up from his computer and said, "What is that?" His reaction disappointed me. You'd think he would have jumped up and screamed, "Get that fucking snake out of here, you lunatic!" No, he just looked at it.

The crazy guy said he was going to take it outside to let it go. Then he went around the machine shop showing it whoever hadn't seen it yet. He was careful not to show it to the women.

Later at lunch I heard someone say that he had actually gotten the snake outside and brought it in. I have no idea if that's true or not, but considering how the crazy guy is, it's not entirely out of the question.

A Day with Grandpa

Unnatural, but quite dull

This afternoon I watched Unnatural, the movie I was poking fun at yesterday. God, was it ever dull. Maybe a restored print with subtitles instead of dubbed English would make it better. I don't know.

The most interesting bit for me was the periodic damage to the print that appeared to be a burn mark. It would suddenly pop up for a few seconds and look like a boiling blob. And when the blob was boiling away on top of something with strong light and dark areas, it would end up looking like a solarized photograph. The screencapture shown below is my favorite example of this strange effect.