A Long Way, Baby

Consider this advertisement from the 1950's:

The actual text reads, in part:

"A man marries a woman because he loves her. So instead of blaming him if  married love begins to cool, she should question herself"...in other words, it's her fault for smelling like a woman when she should be smelling  like a janitor's bucket.

And what is hubby doing behind that closed door?

It could be worse.  In the advertisement below, the husband is leaving the house at night, almost certainly headed for a tryst with a ten-dollar  whore off to do the mercenary bop on the rubber sheets at the local No-Tell Motel because his wife is 'unclean'...his mistress  uses Lysol and never loses her "precious air of romance"...she might have sex with a dozen different men every day, but  she douches with  Lysol, otherwise that sort of behavior might be considered distasteful and unattractive to the man.

His wife, on the other hand, is perfect in every way - except for her lack of  'daintiness'. This lack, according to the ad, makes her seem disgusting to her husband.

 She gets no love until she cleans up her act with Lysol.

There are worse advertisements. This is one of them:

Nothing says "Lie Down and Take it Like A Woman" louder than a pair of  permanent-press polyester trousers. This clipping doesn't simply imply that women should be treated as objects and possessions, it mandates it.

This next one sends a not-very subtle and wholly sociopathic  message:

"If she doesn't give it to you, get it yourself", it advises the male- note that it isn't aimed at women (the purported givers of cologne gifts), but rather at the man, who just takes stuff. If he doesn't get what he wants from the woman, he should get it himself. If she objects...too bad. She's just a throw-rug with no human feelings, you might as well take what you want, right?

Hmmm...if you can't get laid without cologne, you probably can't get laid with it either, but that doesn't excuse the ad.

Instead of woman-hating disinfectant ads, there should be advertisements aimed at men:

"Are you lonely?  Has the fire left your marriage? Does your wife go 'bowling' twice a night and three times on Sunday, yet she doesn't even own a pair of shoes or balls? Well, stop blaming her and instead think about your balls. When was the last time you washed them? Can she even find your tiny mast of man-hood in the overgrown tangle of your intimate area? Restore the love with soap, water and a pair of scissors...give yourself a bath and a trim before she does it for you!"

In a sign of some sort of progress, there are now ads aimed at women that seem to imply that men are no longer even needed. I saw this in the reception area at work, it is the inside front cover to a recent issue of a magazine called 'Marie Claire'. The address label had been torn off the cover and the picture of the product was missing. I have no idea what this is intended to sell:

I think it says:  "He's a jerk, so do it yourself."

The Lighter Side of Cremation

Yesterday,my cousin and I told my great-aunt that her son was dead. I don't know if you are prepared to read about what that was like but I do know that I'm not ready to blog about it; suffice it to say that in the aftermath, I was delegated the task of researching what to do with my cousin's physical remains.

His mother and sister have chosen cremation for him and he is a Coast Guard vet, so he is eligible for internment in a National Cemetery, which I think he would like. His body is in Baltimore, pending autopsy, which is kinda odd because he didn't die in Baltimore...anyway, after the examination, we will have him cremated in Maryland, sent here for the service and then interred at a National site TBD. My cousin has her hands full of grief already, so I am handling the morbid logistics at the moment.

Have you ever shopped on-line for a cremation? It's a surprisingly poetic and enlightening experience.

The first thing that struck me was the language. My initial cursory search ("cremation") returned sites and phrases such as:

-Cremation Society: A social fabric woven from human ashes? Intriguing, but it's really just a name for a business association of crematoriums. It makes me think of Pompeii and what it would be like to be vulcanized at the height of an orgiastic frenzy.

-Funeral Depot: I find the combination of funereal and railroad imagery to be deeply unsettling. I hope you know why. Don't let yourself forget.

-Urn Mall: Thousands of urns to choose from, including hundreds for pets. Pets? Human (and presumably, feline) ashes have a consistency not unlike that of cat litter. Be careful who you choose as executor, is what I'm sayin'.


-Dignity Blanket: This is the shroud that the cremator drapes over the crematee. I'm thinking of purchasing one early in hope that it helps with my personality defects.

-Full Body Donation :I won't need a Dignity Blanket after I die. There are a number of places where you can 'donate' your entire body to science. The funeral provider picks up your body and disposes of it at no cost, selling the remains to medical schools for
a profit. It's both a ghoulishly practical option for the heir-free indigent such as myself and another vivid historical reminder.

Second, I noticed that when it comes to cremation products, there are more distributors than products...link after link carrying exactly the same line of merchandise at slightly varying prices. If I didn't know better, I'd speculate that the Internet is lousy with third-party middlemen.

Last, I'd like to forget about death for a moment and announce that we successfully installed our new studio at the radio station and are now officially broadcasting from Studio One! The sudden bad news caused me to miss the final testing and transfer, along with my radio show, but I was gratified to turn on the radio this morning and hear our DJ loud and clear.

Listen.

That really loud humming sound that you DON'T hear? I was the one who figured out how to get rid of that noise. I knew exactly what the problem was, but I spent twelve hours over two days fucking-up and bungling on purpose because I didn't want to show off by appearing to know what I was doing. I find that maintaining a veil of incompetence helps lesser mortals overcome their natural tendency towards intimidation when confronted with my daunting combination of expertise and humility.

Actually, it was a team effort and 99% of the work was done by people who weren't me, although I do think I can make a fair claim to having some of the best facial expressions and worst jokes:

Q: What's the difference between a DJ and a large cheese pizza?

A: A large pizza can feed a family of four.

Hilarious.
So much for my Dignity Blanket.

Speaking of the radio, I just heard a snippet of this story on our news programming and I had to check it on-line. It's extremely fucked-up. I can find humor in death and funerals but I can't find any in domestic violence. Canadian ad agency DDB Canada should be buried in an unmarked grave for running an ad campaign that thinks pictures of battered women are funny. I wonder if DDB Canada are the folks who came up with the moniker 'Funeral Depot?'

Well, I gotta go change moods. See ya on the flipside.