AlaskaAir Safety Placard

I’ve always liked looking at the safety placards when I fly. I’ve only been on two trips during 2021, and the current version in the Alaska Airlines 737 struck me as particularly funny.

During Flight

The character is just so hip. He’s got tattoos, a Sub Pop t-shirt, converse shoes, drinking coffee and reading a book.

Oxygen

The oxygen deployment demonstration shows that it’s cool for dads to be taking their daughters on airplanes. It’s also implying that kids like airplanes and are more likely to be engrossed in a toy airplane than whatever is causing the masks to be deployed.

Prior to taxi, takeoff, and landing

There are so many things to love about this picture. The guy standing has a puffy coat. The woman has a laptop covered in stickers. The other woman is carrying a Starbucks coffee. The follicaly challenged man is wearing cuffed trousers and boots. Everyone pictured is narrow and fit looking. The amount of knee room between the seats compared to a real airplane just seems cruel.

Summit Coin

My Summit Coin arrived yesterday!

I ordered this on May 25th, when I thought it was funny and not too expensive. It arrived on August 28th, after I’d given up on it’s arrival entirely. That’s three months after paying for it via a sketchy looking paypal address.

The paperwork was folded in three, both directions, to make it similar sized as the coin itself. That is why it wouldn’t lay flat in my scanner.

The white house gift shop is an interesting company. It claims to have been created under charter from President Harry Truman, but has nothing to do with the US government at all.

The details of this coin blew up on both cable media and social media when Donald Trump announced he would be meeting with Kim Jong-Un, and then further announced that he wouldn’t. After the announcement of the cancellation, the price on the coin dropped under $20, convincing me to buy one as a funny souvenir. After I ordered it, the summit was rescheduled and actually happened.

When I didn’t receive the coin in the first few weeks I looked back in my mail history and couldn’t find any confirmation that I’d actually ordered it beyond the pay-pal receipt. I remembered that I’d ordered the item using the web browser in my phone, while sitting in a coffee shop in another country. I mostly decided to chalk it up to an inexpensive learning experience.

Further research led me to this series of articles, which were interesting details about what the white house gift shop really is, and any relation to the government. WTF Is The White House Gift Shop? A TPM Special Report and White House Gift Shop, TPM Investigation Continues! I recommend reading each of them.

 

Strange Cereal Box Artwork

I recently bought some cereal and the back of the box struck me as fairly odd.

I was initially thinking that the really odd part was simply the expressions on the kids faces and how much joy or fear they seemed to be expressing. I’m not a morning person and I rarely express much joy while eating my breakfast cereal.

Because I know that I find looking at old consumer goods interesting just a few short years after they seemed normal, I decided I needed to scan a copy of the box. After I was looking at the pictures just now, I realized that the image could be titled Colon-Blow and seems to be something I might not want to be eating.

 

My First PC

I found the receipt for the first PC my father bought this last weekend. They are in the process of significant downsizing, and while I don’t want to uselessly clutter up my own space with things that were in their garage, having a PC in my home for my final years of high school affected my entire life.

How much did you pay for your first PC and enough software to make it useful?

My father paid $6512.45 in 1983.

This was for a 64k PC running DOS 2.0, a word processor, and a printer.

MicroAge Computer Store IBM PC Invoice Page 1

MicroAge Computer Store IBM PC Invoice Page 2

The Hayes 1200bps Smart Modem alone cost $699.00.

This machine had two 360k floppy drives. I ran a bulletin board system that booted and ran from one floppy drive, and stored files available for download on the second drive.A box of 10 360k floppy disks cost $50.

The printer adapter was not built into the machine and had to be purchased separately for $150. One extravagance he purchased was the microbuffer for $349 that went in-line between the computer and printer, allowing the computer to send more of its print job to the microbuffer and the microbuffer would feed the printer at the speed it could accept it. This was long before anyone would think about using multitasking in a home computer, or even think that printing might be a separate task.

Old Humor: Age and Success

At age 4 success is not peeing in your pants.
At age 12 success is having friends.
At age 16 success is having a drivers license.
At age 20 success is having sex.
At age 35 success is having money.
At age 50 success is having money.
At age 60 success is having sex.
At age 70 success is having a drivers license.
At age 75 success is having friends.
At age 80 success is not peeing in your pants.

Old Humor: New Baby

yet another old story:

Once a woman was in labor; she was having a really tough time dealing with the pain. The doctor came to her husband and her and told them of a new experimental drug that allows the woman to transfer 25% of the pain to the father. The husband feels really bad for his wife so he decides they will try it.

The wife takes the pill and a few minutes later the husband says, “I don’t feel a thing. You women are babies. Take another pill I can handle this.” So the wife takes another pill. Same thing happens. Her husband tells her to take another pill. Same thing. By now she has transferred 75% of her pain to her husband. She is feeling a little pain but her husband is still feeling nothing. He is convinced that women are complete wusses. He tells her, “Take another pill. This isn’t hurting me at all. Let me take all the pain away.” So she does. Now they are both feeling great.

A few hours later, the wife gives birth to a beautiful baby boy. The next day they take their newborn son home, and there they find the mailman dead on the doorstep.

Old Humor: Three Tortoises

Another old story:

Three tortoises, Phil, John and Dave, decide to go on a picnic. So Dave packs the picnic basket with beer and sandwiches. The trouble is the picnic site is ten miles away so it takes them ten days to get there.

When they get there Dave unpacks the food and beer.

“OK Phil give me the bottle opener.”

“I didn’t bring it,” says Phil. “I thought you packed it.”

Dave gets worried, He turns to John, “Did you bring the bottle opener?”

Naturally John didn’t bring it. So they’re stuck ten miles from home without a bottle opener. Dave and John beg Phil to go back for it.

But he refuses as he says they will eat all the sandwiches.

After two hours, and after they have sworn on their tortoise lives that they will not eat the sandwiches, he finally agrees. So Phil sets off down the road at a steady pace.

Twenty days pass and he still isn’t back and Dave and John are starving, but a promise is a promise.

Another five days and he still isn’t back, but a promise is a promise.

Finally they can’t take it any longer so they take out a sandwich each, and just as they are about to eat it, Phil pops up from behind a rock and shouts……..

“I KNEW IT!!. ………………….I’M NOT F**KING GOING!”

Old Humor: The Electric Chair

Another old story:

Three women go down to Mexico one night to celebrate college graduation. They get drunk and wake up in jail, only to find that they are to be executed in the morning – though none of them can remember what they did the night before.

The first one, a redhead, is strapped in the electric chair and is asked if she has any last words. She says, “I just graduated from Trinity Bible College and believe in the almighty power of God to intervene on the behalf of the innocent.” They throw the switch and nothing happens. They all immediately fall to the floor on their knees, beg for forgiveness, and release her.

The second one, a brunette, is strapped in and gives her last words. “I just graduated from the Harvard School of Law and I believe in the power of justice to intervene on the part of the innocent.” They throw the switch and again, nothing happens. Again they all immediately fall to their knees, beg for forgiveness and release her.

The last one (you know it), a blonde, is strapped in and says, “Well, I’m from the University of Texas and just graduated with a degree in Electrical Engineering, and I’ll tell ya right now, ya’ll ain’t gonna electrocute nobody if you don’t plug this thing in.”

Old Humor: Play Your Age

Another saved story:

A woman is having a bad day at the roulette tables in Vegas. Down to her last $100, completely exasperated, she cries, “What horrible luck! What in the world should I do now?”

A gentleman next to her, trying to calm her down a bit, calmly suggests, “I don’t know… Why don’t you play your age?”

He walks away. Moments later, his he is intrigued to hear a great commotion at the roulette table. Maybe, she won!

Rushing back to the table and pushing his way through the crowd, he is stunned to see the lady lying limp on the floor, with the table operator kneeling over her.

He asks, “What happened? Is she all right?”

The operator replies, “I don’t know, buddy…. She put all her money on 29. When 36 came up she fainted!”

Old Humor: Jesus & Satan Programming Contest

I’m cleaning up old text files on my machine and came across this story..

Jesus and Satan were having an ongoing argument about who was better on the computer. They had been going at it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, “THAT’s IT! I have had enough and I am going to set up a test that will run for two hours, and from those results, I will judge who does the better job.”

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed away.
They moused.
They faxed.
They e-mailed
They e-mailed with attachments
They downloaded.
They did spreadsheets.
They wrote reports.
They created labels and cards.
They created charts and graphs.
They did some genealogy reports.
They did every job known to man.

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was faster then hell! Then, ten minutes before their time was up, lightning suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain poured and, of course, the power went off!

Satan stared at his blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld. Jesus just sighed!

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them restarted. Satan searching frantically, screaming……. “It’s gone! It’s ALL GONE! “I lost everything when the power went out!

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all of his files from the past two hours of work. Satan observed this and became irate. “Wait!” he screamed…. “That’s not fair! He cheated! How come he has all his work and I don’t have any?”

God just shrugged and said, “Jesus Saves.”

I don’t know the origin. If you can legitimately claim it, I’ll definitely add an attribution.