The really boring and totally pointless snippets thread IV

[llondel]

I last wore a suit, which was old, to get married 13 years ago. It was a marginal fit then. Needs to go to the charity shop now.

I was required to buy a new suit for the Westminster show this year. Apart from that I have the jacket I've been wearing for shows, and a suit I bought for my mother's funeral back in 1998, which has also had appearances at a few weddings (including mine) and a few other funerals. I probably did a few job interviews in it too. At the moment it's jeans and a teeshirt, the wonders of a pandemic and Zoom calls.

[TheGreenGoblin]

Maybe his Keller flooded occasionally? A real Königskuchen.

As you imply, was there raisin in his madness?

As a kid I was tormented by the adverts on the backs of the illicit American comics like Sad Sack, Beetle Bailey, Superman, Spiderman and so on, that were verboten in my household (my mother being an Anglophile and snob, who disdained American comics as being inane, common and bubble gum for the young South African boy's mind, in the same way that she regarded the Eagle as being morally improving for boys and Bunty being the right kind of stuff for girls, while the Beano was lauded as being good fun for all and the thinking child's comic).

The adverts I refer to were for a 7 foot sized Polaris submarine that every young boy should have in the family garden, complete with a working periscope and torpedo tubes (I kid you not). Clearly the Americans thought big in every sense and I was suffused with longing for my very own Polaris submarine in our courtyard in Parkhurst but was totally snookered as I couldn't show my mom the advert as it was on the back of a distasteful, banned comic. Not that the said subs were available in SA anyway but a boy had his dreams! Maybe this German chap had, like me, been swayed by the awesome power of the American advertising industry for what was actually a tacky piece of paste board or something like that?

This innuendo filled video mocks an innocent young boy's genuine desire for a nuclear powered sub kitted out to unleash as many megatons as it took to have fun...

[Boac]

"As you imply, was there raisin in his madness?" Again, not unnoticed.......

Where on earth did you get that video? Have you been using BM's 'Little boy's stick' to poke around in the skips?

[TheGreenGoblin]

"As you imply, was there raisin in his madness?" Again, not unnoticed.......

Thanks for humouring me Boac!

[TheGreenGoblin]

Where on earth did you get that video? Have you been using BM's 'Little boy's stick' to poke around in the skips?

Is that like Ken Dodd's tickling stick? On second thoughts, belay that question, perhaps I don't want to know!

Where is Atomkraft when you need him, he should know all about Little Boy with a name like that?

The nuclear puns and bon mots are falling faster than a stick of high powered ordinance tonight.

[PHXPhlyer]

TGG:
Have you checked EBay for your sub?
Don't know what inflation has done to $6.98 plus there is probably a premium as they might be in short supply.
I don't remember ever seeing that ad in Superman, Batman, or any other comic books that I had.
Also hate to consider what my collection would be worth today if my mother (like most of our mothers) hadn't thrown them away.

PP

[4mastacker]

For those who can receive BBC East Midlands Today, there's supposed to be report on the restored lock's official opening in tonight's 22.30 bulletin. I'm wearing a floppy hat and opening one of the lock gates.

[TheGreenGoblin]

TGG:
Have you checked EBay for your sub?
Don't know what inflation has done to $6.98 plus there is probably a premium as they might be in short supply.
I don't remember ever seeing that ad in Superman, Batman, or any other comic books that I had.
Also hate to consider what my collection would be worth today if my mother (like most of our mothers) hadn't thrown them away.

PP

The sub ad was a staple in the US comics I read between about 1966 and the early 70's. Sadly, but not surprisingly, the sub was not quite what it was purported to be. It was made of cardboard. A carboard submarine, now that is even more useless than a chocolate kettle!

You must remember the Sea Monkeys? Charles Atlas? X-Ray spec's? Gum that turned the user's tongue black? Which ad. was your favourite? I am guessing you are a little older than me, but not by much.

Like all kids, I was fascinated by the idea of my very own Sea Monkeys, and as a skinny young boy definitely wanted to look like Charles Atlas or Dave Draper whose ads were prolific in the comics as well! The Sea Monkey ad was a scam of course. All the ads were denominated in US dollars so they weren't specifically targeted at the foreign market, consisting, in small part, of skinny South African hayseeds like me at that time!



Here is a show on all the famous ads that made the US comic books so piquant to a little bloke growing up in faraway Johannesburg, for all those fans, like me and PHP, of the American comic book and its ads that often promised a lot but that didn't necessarily always deliver. Later as a callow teenage I tuned out of comics, and into smutty little books with Candy Samples (RIP) in them, that were actually illegal in SA, and it has been downhill for me ever since!

[OFSO]

Remember the Seebackroscope? The magic crystals? Magic Flowers? Sigh. Our forgotten childhoods. Oh, and indoor fireworks, the Worm, the Volcano? Delights!

[OFSO]

That is a wonderful clip, GG. Thank you so much, after more than 70 years my questions are finally answered....

[handsfree]

Ahh, nostalgia isn't what it used to be.
Always fancied the baseball cap with the spinning prop on top myself.

Sunny this morning and blue sky in prominence but clouds gathering mid to late morning and rain this
afternoon with a 30% chance of thunderstorms this evening. Seems like a good time to get some weed
and feed spread on the lawns.
13°C at the moment, high of 20°C forecast.

Anyone wanting a nuclear sub might make enquiries to a Ms Nicola Sturgeon of Edinburgh. I think she has
some on her doorstep she wants rid of.

[Pontius Navigator]

Of an earlier generation my want was simpler. It was a HUGE beach ball. Perhaps 4-5 feet diameter and actually get able at my father used to go to NY. Fortunately he never got one as desire was much better than disappointment.

Following OFSO, remember a flat piece of paper in a triangle that could give out a sharp crack?

I still remember the plans for one 'horrible' trick one could make. Ingredients were:
A hair pin
A rubber band
A match stick
A sheet of good writing paper
A envelope
AND
some talcum powder though itching powder, anthrax or something similar to icing sugar could be used.

I think you could get anything upwards from a police caution today.

[Ibbie]

Morning folks.

Very hot down here again.

Son is improving slightly day by day. Still on crutches and awaiting a new pair of shoes to be delivered this morning,which will make walking easier. A German company delivered a pair yesterday but wrong size and different model to what was ordered. That was via the River people's marketplace. I've booted the problem back at them and told them to organise collection and immediate refund, as he can't get to a post office and it's their error.

[Pontius Navigator]

Another thing I used to do was cryptography using a substitution cypher. It was from one of my mother's magazines like Womens Own.

You would write a secret message to the magazine and get a secret badge. As you gained experience so you would get bars to hang below the badge. You also got encrypted replies from them.

There was a higher level code too that you could progress too and I became quite adept at writing these secret messages. One time I thought I would be super secure and double encrypt.

I got a reply back asking me to use only one layer of encryption.

I never considered at the time that someone was actually employed to code and encode I don't know how many children's efforts or how much it cost the magazine with sending out individual encoded replies.

Tff jg CPBD tfft uikt

[Alisoncc]

Do remember the ad for Chemistry Sets. Once received one that included a strip of magnesium, and aluminium filings, amongst other stuff. If you placed the filings between two pieces of metal and stuck the magnesium strip into the middle. Then light the magnesium and stand well back. You would end up with a small pool of molten aluminium that once cooled would have welded the original two pieces of metal together. This was freely available through the post with no age restrictions.

[Woody]

Morning everyone, judging by the guesswork for the next few days, grass trimming will be this morning’s activity. According to this article 4Ma needs to spend less time drinking tea and eating cakes and get on with it

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-58069855

[Wodrick]

G'day,
The guess for today is 32c, it is currently 31c and rising.
yesterday at this time it was 21c.
I fail to comprehend.
Blue of course, viz reasonable.

A local holiday today, I intend to remain in splendid isolation.

[TheGreenGoblin]

That is a wonderful clip, GG. Thank you so much, after more than 70 years my questions are finally answered....

Glad it resonated with you OFSO. Good to know that there are folks out there, as well, like me, who wondered about what these things really looked like. I am glad I never got to see or be disappointed by the Polaris submarine. The disappointment might have been too much for my sensitive soul!

[Boac]

The Charles Atlas course never did me any harm

images.jpg (6.49 KiB) Viewed 339 times

I did find my undercrackers were a bit tight, though.

[EA01]

I couldn't show my mom the advert

,.....not with that spelling anyway.......