SteamedPenguin

You know that wonderfully silly saying "Two wrongs don't make a right... but three lefts will!?"

I know I should not expect much when reading the back page of a weekly rag published by the village voice media octopus, but I have to wonder what goes through people's mind when they create ads like this:

San Mei City Pages Advertising

I am not sure what San Mei Rejuvenation Centers is rejuvenating. From the image I would guess that they are concerned for my spiritual growth, if my spirit were housed in my... how do you say... halla-halla... little brown terrorist.

This comes right below the American Apparel ad:

American Apparel City Pages Advertising

I am sure this is an ad for clothing. Hot, scantilly clad, lesbian-for-straight-men clothing. The age of consent bending makeup is bonus. I don't know about you, yeah you, but I don't shop in places where the ads make me feel like I need to register as a sex offender.

I am getting side-tracked though. Back to the San Mei ad. You know when you talk about the tourism industry in South East Asia and somebody cracks "Two Dolla, sucky sucky," causing everybody in ear shot to look around to see if polite society heard that crack? I am not sure what this ad communicates but my first thought isn't about the architecture of this or that dynasty in the 13th century BCE or CE for that matter.

My girlfriend is the most archived person I know. She has tons of space devoted to her life. Fortunately I worship her like the goddess she is so I don't mind. Really though, sometimes I think she goes a bit too far in what she keeps. On the other hand, she knows where these items came from and most likely she can tell you who she was talking to and what she ate that day. I don't have a quarter of the stuff she has but if it is older than three days old I don't know where it comes from. Fortunately for me, my girlfriend does.

Old Macintosh Pricelist 00

All joking aside, she has a phenomenal memory and her level of recall of what happens around her is incredible. She is a multi-sensory information vacuum, with built-in indexing and categorization. Like a vacuum-cleaner she also catches junk that carries a big "Huh" factor. In this case it is three pages of Apple Equipment prices. It is a good price list. Monitors, laptops, desktops, and hardware to go with it. Right now, I am eyeing a sweet "Power Book 500 Series". I think the 540C model with the 12MB of RAM and 320MB of hard-drive sounds about right. Add on the "active matrix color LCD" and it is only 4691.52 USD. What a steal!

Old Macintosh Pricelist 01

It is pretty cool to see this reminder of computer prices of the past. Our family got our first computer in 1988. It was a 4.77 MHz IBM XT knockoff. We had a "four" color screen, no hard drive, and DOS 3. It was great. Sometime in 1993 or 1994 we upgraded to a computer that had a VGA monitor, a 486 DX2 processor, and a Tseng graphics card with 1MB of VRAM if I remember correctly. I am pretty sure our computers were some sort of East Asian knock-off. These weren't high-quality machines but my parents got us these computers as investments.

Old Macintosh Pricelist 02

I think my parents knew that the future was going to make use of computers. I won't pretend that they knew what was coming but they knew enough to give their children the tools to get a handle on the future. They made sure we'd have the tools to be literate so that we wouldn't be held back. When I see people my age in the USA who can't interact with a computer, I thank my parents.

My parents had just moved to Palestine with us in tow, they were up to their eyeballs in debt, and the economy was tanking. Even so they took on the financial burden and bought this equipment which could easily be described as a frivolous luxury. A luxury we didn't even use to the best of our abilities. Looking at these price sheets from 1995 reminds me of the financial sacrifice my parents took and I am thankful to them for giving me the tools to make me literate in a computer-centric work.

Archie doesn't just want you to have a good time, he wants you to partay:

Archie Comics PSA 02: I don't need drugs...

Aside from making sure that the next generation doesn't do drugs Archie also wants to motivate them to better things in life. Archie taunts poor children dependent on subsidized lunches, with images of free time, money for pizza, dancing and streamers. This is for their own good though, by showing them the good life and deepening the disenchantment with their current life these children will aspire to a better life and work hard for it, thereby ending the cycle of poverty.

I don't want to be the wet washcloth, so I am really hesitant to point this out: if Archie cared so much about these kids futures he'd kick some money into vocational programs, basic health care, and housing programs.

Here is another Archie Comics milk carton PSA.

Archie Comics PSA 01: I don't need drugs... to just feel great!

I love the irony in this comic. Considering that the Pine Ridge Reservation has one of the lowest life expectancies in the USA and that the teen suicide rate is four times the national average, having a message saying, "I don't need drugs... to just feel great," seems misplaced. Shit, if I were a teenager having to look at Archie's coked-out mug telling me not to do drugs I'd off myself too.

My girlfriend was going through some old papers she had when she came across some anti-drug PSA's printed on milk-cartons.

Archie Comics PSA 00: I don't need drugs...

I thought they were from the Minneapolis area but she says she got them on the Pine Ridge Reservation, near Sioux Falls, South Dakota. As best as she can guess she got the milk cartons at, what was then, Oglala Community High School. It is likely they came from milk that was part of subsidized school meals.

I won't pretend to know how the subsidized school lunch programs works but I'll make some guesses.

Archie Comics runs these PSA's on milk cartons and for the money they pay they get tax breaks. The dairy also gets tax breaks by giving away the milk at discounts or for free. The children who get the milk get milk of course, and some shitty PSA.

This is obviously money well-spent. Two corporations get tax breaks, making the federal government lose money. The federal government subsidizes this program, losing more money. Lastly, poor kids get milk wrapped in some feel-good sentimentality. In case anyone thinks that I am against subsidized school lunches let me make myself clear. I want every class, from Kindergarten to grade 12, to get at least one nutritious meal a day. This ought to be food of the highest quality, prepared to the best standards and of a wide variety. I want school meals to force a change in how we define cafeteria food.

I want these things and I know they won't happen by giving companies and the federal government a cheap out by allowing them to get by on sloppy and cheap PSA's on the back of milk cartons.

The Economist is a good place to get one's weekly dose of political and economical news. It is unabashedly conservative and espouses so-called free markets without being totally irresponsible towards the world, the way so many magazines and newspapers are in the United States.

In the March 10, 2007 edition of the Economist, in the Leaders section, there is a short article titled, "No comfort for Abe", dealing with Mr. Abe's denial of the coercion of Asian women into sexual slavery by the Japanese military during World War Two. The article rightly castigates Mr. Abe.

No Comfort for Abe

This isn't particularly interesting, until you turn the page and are faced with:

Not Business as Usual

The Economist not only writes an article about women's servitude, they even publish a visual aid. Should anyone miss the point, the advertisement even has the great title of "Not Business as Usual".

I came across these images on a web site somewhere and damn me if they aren't awesome. If after over twenty years of living with the plague of AIDS we still can't put up images like these about the most basic of human behaviors then perhaps we are doomed. In the end, does the cosmos care about 6 billion humans too prudish for their own health? Maybe the void just says to itself 'Fuck this evolution shit, obviously this intelligence is over-rated and just creates more grief than is worth the billions of years it takes to evolve it.

Well I say 'Fuck the cosmos!' I shit on the void. I like my intelligence just fine and I love humanity and I'll be screwed sideways if I let a bunch of jabbering, fundamentalist, short-sighted, sex-hating assholes drag the rest of us down. Pass the images on, post them as far as you can. Educate others.

French AIDS poster - female: French AIDS poster - female

French AIDS poster - male: French AIDS poster - male

Thanks to neuro for pointing out the posters.