God bless America’s secularized public school system for teaching generations of students the proper habits of good citizenship, public safety and personal hygiene. But don’t count out the scores of church schools who had their heavy hands in the game as well. Sure, they had a lock on the materials devoted strictly to religious instruction, but devotional institutions of learning also showed an interest in seeing that their students’ time on earth was as long and trouble-free as possible. And though classroom filmstrips might be more likely to, say, celebrate the studious habits of a young Abe Lincoln, they didn’t shy away from a good old traffic safety fear fest either.

Cathedral Filmstrips’ “Bicycle Safety” is kind of like a “Mechanized Death” for the Saturday morning cartoons crowd. Not gory by any means, but definitely designed for extreme impact — in a Saturday morning cartoons kind of way. The art itself is entirely in the style of the classic matinée short. The harassed citizens pop their eyes and flap their tongues comically. The foolish children show their agony with stars, corkscrews and tweety birds. But the underlying message remains grim: those deviating from cycling best practices face grievous injury, possible death and certain ridicule.

I wish I could you who’s responsible for the wonderful drawings in this filmstrip, but I fear that’s something best left to the experts over at the ASIFI Animation Archive. Though I’ve enjoyed that site for years, I was reminded of it once again after the recent demise of Will Elder. But thought I came for the Elder, I stayed for the Fearless Fosdick.

In those days, I had a whole arsenal of characters. Kee-Lah was a blithe, childlike everyman, protected from the effects of his awesome self absorption by the sheer fact that he was fictitious. Painman was one of many deconstructionalist superheroes. He seems to derive his power from the jaded assumption that his use of physical force will achieve the desired outcome. The narrative treats his victory as a foregone conclusion, concerning itself merely with the inevitable restoration of normalcy. Prez is another meta-character whose only purpose is to follow the conceit of his conception to its logical extreme.

As for the Burger Family, perhaps the less said about them the better. They do lead me to suspect however, that spending most of your day sitting in front of a notebook might be a practice greatly aided by a certain deliberately induced state of mind.

The three stamps in the “For Defense” series were actually issued in 1940 to help convince the public of the inevitability of American participation in the war. Once that inevitability finally arrived, the very snappy purple cheerleading number came out. Nowadays, you can get these attractive designs on eye-catching tee-shirts, sure to please both the ironist and the patriot on your gift list. And they have no cancellation marks.

Britain, on the other hand, was having its own problem managing public buy-in. Specifically, could the country stomach a monarch that not only advocated fascism but willingly consorted with a divorcée? Not so much, as it turns out. A quick abdication was engineered, but not soon enough to stop the presses. So a very sharp series of Edward VIII stamps saw light of day, featuring a crisp stark profile that would have even satisfied his friends and family over in the Third Reich. The public liked it as well, but since they all horded their copies hoping they might be worth something someday, it is in fact extremely common.

Using the profile of your own local strongman has long been a widely accepted practice among the various developing postal entities here on earth. But if your country’s political climate is unstable and your man isn’t as strong as initially hoped, sometimes it’s better to hedge your bets. I like the route taken by the Togolese Republic. When in doubt, you can always celebrate the availability of the coconut while you wait out the political storm.

Soon the girlfriend moved out and the roadie decided to follow another band to Seattle. He tried to mitigate the money he owed me by leaving a bunch of his junk behind in a storage room adjacent to the garage. One afternoon, in a fit of reclamation, I got rid of it. I traded the records for credit, donated the clothes to charity, hung on to a couple of interesting publications, including the stamps in this series, and threw the rest out.

I can’t believe my old roomate ever collected stamps; he must have hung on to these for sentimental reasons. Or else, he acquired them himself from another past roomate who owed him money. They are definitely not the coolest dustcatchers lying around my house, nor the most valuable. I’d have to devote my life to researching the variances in printing and postmark to see if I have any profound rarities. Otherwise, I’d probably have to pay a collector to take them off my hands. The only real value they have to me is creating a nice big Flickr checkerboard.



After a couple hours of leisurely research, we made our choice: a new vacuum cleaner! I spent the rest of the weekend eagerly sucking incredible quantities of dirt and pet hair out of our lives. But Monday returned as it always does, and with it, another week of petty dramatics, inefficiency and indifference. Not to mention the stuff my co-workers do that bothers me.

What kind of person counts the minutes at work so he can spend the weekend doing housework? Well, around my house, you never know what treasures you’ll find once you start moving things around. I discovered these fabulous ruins under a particularly intractable clump of pet hair. The product of a previous attempt at organization, these crumbling artifacts were glued to old sheets of scratch paper and discarded in a corner. I know: if I don’t want my collection to end up in the belly of my vacuum or clinging to the linings of my sinuses, I need to move the whole mess to a climate controlled underground bunker somewhere in Montana. Believe me: I’m working on it.

In the meantime, I offer consolation to the also-overworked among you. It could be worse: It could be 1944. People worked in conditions far worse than yours and mine. And the consumer distractions available back then were meager at best.


Job security — Nazi style

Plan on eating with us at your convenience

Ah, the fifties! When innovation blossomed, conformity abounded and paranoia lurked behind every tree! (Or so I hear — I wasn’t alive then.)

Rather than offer fresh historic perspective, don’t these laboriously culled excerpts merely serve to confirm our own self-serving predjudices? We love to laugh at these tatters of media ephermera, at the unashamed nakedness of their bias, at the barefaced innocence of their wrongheaded arrogance. Otherwise, we’d be forced to admit that we have more in common with our former selves than we care to admit.

Let’s face it: we’re no less xenophobic and consumption obsessed today than the folks from back then. It’s just that our ad design isn’t as clean nowadays, and the quality of our news reporting isn’t as good. No matter how much we may slap each other on the backs over the clarity of our insights and the industry of our endeavors, we’re still grounded in the same old dead end. At the end of the day, it’s all about grinding out survival via the buying and selling of goods and services.

Consider the poor bastard who sweats through the pursuit of a liberal arts degree and lands himself a good job on the local newspaper. There, he discovers a life of working until three in the morning, cranking out mindless copy to fill holes in the layout. “Through These Columns Pass Announcements of the World’s Finest Products Offered at Interesting Prices.” Fifty years later, the sour stink of self-loathing jumps right off the yellowing page and cuts right through the mold and mildew.


When getting and spending, happiness our aim, life can be beautiful:

Ezy Angel Mix has ‘em all talking
The king of cottage cheese
No more dust
Sales are up when heat and humidity are down
Let a check do it for you
I sure wish all my customers paid by check

Fighting the good fight:

The Red Braid
A staunch believer in advertising the product
Fallout from the “Couppee incident”

The view from the funnies:

Clean up the breeding place
Homework=Schoolwork
Thanx to many grocers
The other red menace

Here are excerpts from some more old newspapers I found in my file cabinets, this time from the Rocky Mountain News, circa the late 1930s. They may have been left behind by an old roomate, or I might have acquired them from a used book shop during a visit to Denver. The truth is, I don’t remember where these came from.

I do know where they are now. Old newspapers corrode if you don’t look after them, until they’re all over your hands and up your nose, and I do mean mold. They make much better landfill than they do office clutter.

Even better than that, they provide a marvellous snapshot of a slumbering giant at a vital juncture of history. Facing unrest at home and chaos abroad, America and its craven lapdog (the press) respond much the same as they do today: with bubble-headed reporting, unfortunate coverage choices and oppressive deceitful advertisements. But these are things that cause me great joy. Why else would I share them with you?

Confusion abounds in the halls of our annointed leaders. One member of the public offers a solution.

America salutes peace by glorifying war

The Pope covers his ass

A fundamental of American political strategy revealed

We’d never suggest that our competitor’s product is shit, but we must insist that the men who run their company are scoundrels. On the other hand, our product does all the things you would expect a product like ours to do. We can’t tell you what that is, but we know you trust us.

Delicious and digestible

Streamliners and Challengers

Continental Can Company

150,000 grocers can’t be wrong

A sincere endeavor to maintain fine quality

The right amount of important and necessary bran

Swift and firm is the punishment for any woman who strays from her prescribed role. But toeing the line can be equally dangerous.

Humiliation and embarrassment

Keeping the pressure on

Avoiding interference in the family’s interest in important food

Better weight loss through chemistry

Another chemical remedy