Heat Retreat

 

Today is World Refrigeration Day...

...so just chill.

Graphic Grandeur (Dangerous When Wet Edition)

 

Fifty summers ago, this Roger Kastel-illustrated poster made its debut on the exteriors, and in the lobbies, of movie theatres across the nation and around the world, promising filmgoers a terrifying cinematic experience. However, movie posters often promise things that the actual movies then fail to deliver. Did Jaws live up to its poster's promise? Well, if you were a filmgoer fifty summers ago--and most people didn't bother with movies during the summer until this one completely changed the business model--you already know the answer to that question, but play along with me anyway as we watch the trailer: 

Trailers also sometimes promise more than the actual movie delivers, even as it's a slicing and dicing of the actual movie. Trust me, though, Jaws delivered (with a lot of slicing and dicing of a different sort.) Personally, I've always found the film more exciting than out-and-out scary, but that's fine with me. Whatever gets the heart thumping. Based on a then-recent bestselling book by Peter Benchley (Robert's grandson) and only the second feature film by the then-still-in-his-20s Steven Spielberg, it quickly became the all-time box-office champ and remained so for the next two years until topped by another summer blockbuster Star Wars (which in turn was topped a few years later by Spielberg's E.T., the Extraterrestrial which made its debut during--you guessed it--the summer.) One thing that had no chance of topping it--at least not in the commercial sense--was some magazine parody, but that doesn't means my then-middle-school-age-self couldn't get a giggle out of this:

Looks like unsafe swimming conditions all around.

Illustration by Mort Kunstler

 

Vital Viewing (Pulp Christmas Edition)

 

Only four days left to get your official Samuel L. Jackson holiday T-shirt. Hesitant? Not sure it's the right look for you? Perhaps these videos will help you decide:

OK, Jackson couldn't get an F-bomb in edgewise there. At least not one that was picked up by the mike. Samuel is seen and heard to much better effect in this yuletide presentation from the good people at Capital One:

Don't feel too sorry for Jackson. He's paid handsomely every time he references maternal incest in a movie, and that more than makes up for whatever coal he gets in his stocking. As for that other fellow in the commercial, it's proof, as if any was needed, that in this great capitalistic system of ours, even a Sweathog can achieve sainthood.

Vital Viewing (Lavender Labels Edition)

 

Actor, playwright, and librettist Harvey Fierstein was born on this day in 1952. Should I include female impersonator, or is that considered an actor? It's considered a performer and performing in the guise of a woman is what Harvey did, beginning at the age of 15, at various gay venues in Manhattan. There was acting out of drag as well, and since some of that acting was in improv, he realized so too he could write. After a painful breakup with a lover, Fierstein put his acting, writing, and crossdressing skills into the one-act play International Stud, which premiered off-off-Broadway in 1978. Two one-act sequels, Fugue in a Nursery and Widows and Children First! featuring the autobiographical character he created, Arnold Beckoff, soon followed. Eventually, Fierstein decided all three one-acts could be performed in a single night: 

Running for 1,222 performances, the Tonys took notice. At this point I'd like to hand it over to Wolfgang Amadeus Skywalker:

Close your eyes and you can almost hear Froggy in the later Little Rascals/Our Gang shorts, but that's part of Harvey's charm. In addition to Fierstein winning Best Actor, Torch Song Trilogy won Best Play. One of the show's producers, John Glines, acknowledged in his acceptance speech his coproducer and lover Larry Lane, a first-of-a-kind moment for a televised award show.

In 1988, the four-hour play went on a crash diet and, its overall integrity remaining intact, became a two-hour feature film: 

Ya gotta love advertising. Compare the movie poster above to the Broadway poster farther up. The latter's mascaraed, peekaboo eyes seem to promise thrill-seeking patrons of The Little Theatre a walk on the wild side. Hollywood, though, appears to want to take a different tack. The wry phrasing, the camaraderie that seems to exist among the quartet of people pictured, all of it shouts out FEELGOOD MOVIE! I don't think either poster quite nails it. As provocative as the general public may have found the subject matter back in the day, Torch Song Trilogy takes a matter-of-fact look at drag shows and gay hookups, echoing its characters casual attitude towards both. As to how you should feel while watching it, the story does end on a note of cautious optimism, but that's only after first going to a very dark place. But don't let that turn you off. As a comedy-drama, it has solid laughs throughout. And since everyone loves to laugh, that's very much what's emphasized in this commercial for the stage version:

  That makes it seem like a farce. All that's missing is a door slamming. To be fair, the huge bed plays quite a prominent role in the second act, the funniest of the three, though I would hesitate to call this Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice x 2. The trailer for the film version tries to restore some sense of balance between the comedy and the drama, but not at the expense, as I said before, of feeling good:

It skipped over the murder. Ya gotta love editing.

None of this is meant as a criticism of either the stage or film versions. I'm only pointing out how hard it can be to categorize (and market) the uncategorizable. But then that holds true for the LGBTQ experience in general. 

 

There's an ongoing debate in the LGBTQ community between those who may be called assimilationists and those who may be called subculturalists. At least I'll call them that. The assimilationists believe that outside of whom one chooses to sleep with, there's essentially no difference between gays and straights, and to avoid being marginalized, it behooves gays to be as much like straights as possible, be part of the hetero-hegemonic mainstream, with all the employment opportunities and suitable housing that comes with it. It's why some lesbians wear lipstick, why some gay men look and dress like lumberjacks, and why some gay members of both genders are Log Cabin Republicans. All kidding aside, assimilation was and continues to be one of the main arguments put forth for allowing same-sex marriage (of course, there are other, more constitutional reasons, such as equal treatment under the law, and more heartfelt reasons, such as the simple act of falling in love.) I don't know that gays who raise children do it for any other reason than a strong desire to be parents, but that too puts one on equal footing with straights (though minus the happenstance that works so well for the latter group, meaning a gay either adopts or, as an added option for lesbians, undergo in vitro fertilization.) The subculturalists counter that if it's so morally wrong to bend one's sexual orientation to the will of the majority, why is it so morally right to bend in every other direction that the majority insists, and rather than be part of some Reader's Digest social order, LGBTQ people should have their own bars, their own hangouts, their own shops, their own literature, their own clothing, their own hairstyles, their own slang, their own mannerisms, and everything else that goes into the making of an alternative lifestyle (or stereotype.) Leave the kids to the breeders, and as for holding down a job and having decent housing, hey, Li'l Nas is doing very well for himself these days (just as David Bowie did before he switched over to women.)

Because Arnold Beckoff yearns for a relationship that approximates marriage and has plans on adopting a teenage boy, Torch Song Trilogy has been described as a play and movie that argues in favor of assimilation. But I think it's more complicated than that. Back in the 1980s, and maybe even today, Arnold's flamboyant, effeminate personality and occupational crossdressing would have been a tad too subcultural for the mainstream, even if he showed up at the gate in a Dodge Caravan jam-packed with all the Family Ties, Growing Pains, The Cosby Show, Who's the Boss, Full House, Charles in Charge, Mr. Belvedere, Family Matters, Life Goes On, and Our House kids combined. Arnold wants some of what straights take for granted, but on his own terms, terms that go beyond mere sleeping arrangements. He inhabits that great space in-between assimilation and subculture. Because gays are like everybody else except in those moments, in and out of the bedroom, when they're not like everyone else. Gays are the same but different. In fact, gays are the same but different from each other (as are straights.) It's why an ongoing debate in the LGBTQ community is possible in the first place. The differences and similarities are there to be seen and heard in the stage and movie versions' opening monologue. The following is obviously the result of someone pointing a video camera at a TV screen, and at an odd angle at that. But it's not the full cinematic effect that I'm after--you wouldn't get that on a computer or cell phone anyway--but Harvey Feirstein's acting and writing prowess as he recites the lines that he himself wrote:  

Throughout the course of the film version, Arnold is wooed by both Matthew Broderick and Brian Kerwin, so don't feel too sorry for him.

Naughty or Nice?

 I'm sure you've run into the fellow above this holiday season. I don't mean whoever is behind that fake beard, but who he represents. You've seen him on Christmas cards, sitting on to top of a pine tree, on yours or your neighbors' lawn, in advertisements, in animated TV specials, and in the flesh at the mall or department store. Santa Claus, or course. He's a familiar figure, a figure you may even have a bit of affection for...Unless you're devoutly religious, in which case you may just hate his guts. After all, Christmas is a religious holiday, a devout holiday, a sacred holiday. Or should be. How in the world did this fat buffoon in the garish outfit come to represent it? Well, whether you like Santa or hate Santa, the answer lies in the odd, contradictory nature of Christmas itself.

As the first syllable would indicate, Christmas is ostensibly a celebration of Christ's birth. Except the two New Testament writers who describe the event, Matthew and Luke, say nothing about it taking place on December 25. The other two Gospel writers, Mark and John, don't even mention it, figuring the reader is smart enough to know that in order for a man to die on a cross, he has to have been born in the first place. Paul? He sent out a lot of letters, but not one of them was a Christmas card. Nobody back then sent out Christmas cards. How could they? The holiday didn't exist and wouldn't exist for another three centuries. Before we can figure out where Santa came from, we first have to figure out where Christmas came from.

According to most scholars, there was a Christmas before Christmas, a Germanic pagan winter festival called Yule, basically designed to cheer people up during the long, dark days of December, and offer them hope that the sun would some day return. Fourth century Christians (as well as their sponsor, the newly-baptized Roman Empire) basically co-opted Yule (and, of course, the Yule log) partly to convert the many pagans still running around, and partly because the Christians themselves could use some cheering up during the long, dark days of December.

 I'm sure some of you will regard the above paragraph as so much revisionist history. Well, it wasn't secular humanist college professors ensconced in ivory towers that first expressed skepticism about the religious origins of Christmas, but Protestant reformers, particularly those we now call Puritans. Beginning in the 17th century, they downplayed, debunked, and downright dumped on Christmas. The contempt for both the holiday and the sinful practice of people letting down their hair and enjoying themselves, was transported across the Atlantic on the Mayflower to the New World, where it took root. Boy, did it take root! It was banned in New England, just as it had been earlier banned by Oliver Cromwell in Old England. Both bans had been lifted by the beginning of the 17th century, but for the next one hundred years, Christmas was treated as an embarrassment in Protestant countries. Celebrate if you must, but do it behind closed doors and don't shove your tidings-and-comfort-of-joy lifestyle down our throats! Meanwhile, the long December nights remained as dark as ever.

For party animals things began looking up in the 19th century, during, oddly enough, the Victorian Era. Charles Dickens (who I talked about in the previous post) helped popularize the expression "Merry Christmas" and it did indeed become more merry. All the festive holiday traditions were taken out of the closet and dusted off. Decorations, carols, ornaments, desserts, wrapping paper, mistletoe, the necking that took place under the mistletoe, and finally the giving of gifts all gained in popularity during this time. Christmas was well on its way to becoming the glamorous holiday it is today. Now all what was needed was a symbol. Sure, there was the Nativity, but that was best saved for religious observation. As Christmas became more fun (as well as secular) you needed a representation of that fun. A mascot, even.

There were several contenders. Chief among them was the Germanic Christkind, sometimes a cherub, sometimes a beautiful angel, who broke into people's houses in the middle of the night and delivered presents. The Brits had Father Christmas, who at first didn't deliver presents but changed his mind after he found Christkind breathing down his neck. Seeing that the eastern part of what is now the United States was once part of the British Empire, you'd think Father Christmas would be a mascot on this side of the pond, too. But not everybody in the Thirteen Colonies was English. There were German immigrants, whose Christkind ended up being Kris Kringle. And in New York City, formally called New Amsterdam, there were the Dutch...

 

Now, you'd think if the Dutch were to go looking for a Christmas mascot, they'd start it Holland, where there's plenty of snow and ice in December, if Hans Brinker is to be believed. But no, they went south of Holland. Way, way south of Holland, to Asia Minor, today Modern Turkey. It was there that a man named Nicholas held the religious office of bishop, and, after he died, became a saint. But there's plenty of saints. Why make this particular one the mascot for Christmas? Some say it's because miracles have been attributed to him, but that's how you become a saint in the first place! I suspect it has a lot to do with his feast day, December 6,  not quite two weeks before Christmas. The Dutch merely let him hang around for a while. Now, of course, these Dutch speak Dutch, and in their language, Saint Nicholas became Sinterklaas. Dutch immigrants brought the idea to America, where he became the aforementioned Santa Claus. The now Americanized mascot caught on pretty quickly (though he was often still referred to as Saint Nicholas.) Washington Irving mentions him in 1809 in his first book  A History of New-York from the Beginning of the World to the End of the Dutch Dynasty (written under the pseudonym "Diedrich Knickerbocker".) However, Santa got his biggest P.R. boost fourteen years later when a professor of Ancient Greek, Clement Moore, wrote a poem titled A Visit From Saint Nicholas. That's the one that begins with:

'Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, not even a mouse;
The stockings were hung by the chimney with care,
In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there;
The children were nestled all snug in their beds,
While visions of sugar plums danced in their heads

(Not even a mouse? As if an unobtrusive rodent living under the same roof as humans is the exception rather than the rule? They were pretty blase about pest control in 1823.)

Here's Santa up close and personal:

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook when he laughed, like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;
A wink of his eye and a twist of his head, 
Soon gave me to know I had nothing to dread

Pretty vivid imagery there, and he seems much more approachable than that fellow with the halo in the picture above (people with halos are almost never approachable.)

The next person to leave his mark on Santa was Thomas Nast, an illustrator and political cartoonist best known for creating the Republican elephant and the Democratic donkey (but don't blame him for the actual parties.) The picture above is from a then-new edition of Moore's poem. Physically he looks like the Santa we know, but where's the white fur trim? And what is that on his head, a nest? An adjustment was clearly in order.

Subsequent illustrators looked back across the sea at Father Christmas. Much thinner than the U.S. mascot, but he had the right wardrobe.

The Santa we know was almost complete. It was left to just one more man to put on the finishing touches.

Haddon Sundblom (1899-1976), the son of Scandinavian immigrants, took up commercial illustration and quickly rose to the top of his profession. In 1931, Sundblom was commissioned by the Coca-Cola company to do a series of Christmas-related advertisements that ran from 1931 to 1965. It was one of the most popular ad campaigns ever, and I'm sure you seen them here and there even if you were born long after 1965:

I love his style.

Sundblom did a lot of other things as well. For instance, if you've ever ate a bowl of oatmeal between 1957 and 2012 you probably remember this guy:

Ironically, the above company is now owned by Coke's arch-rival Pepsi.

But this is Christmas, and I want to leave you with one final Sundblom image from 1972, the last he ever did before he retired:

Whatever gets you through those long December nights.

Merry Christmas.

Cementimental Journey

In a recent post about Joan Rivers, I digressed just a bit to harp on celebrity endorsements, the idea that we should all run out and buy a product simply because a famous person is paid X amount of dollars to tell us we should buy a product. Well, what follows may very well be the most ridiculous celebrity endorsement of all time: 

Now, I happen to think Doris Day is a very talented individual whose girl-next-door image is occasionally and unfairly held against her in these porn-star-with-silicone-breasts-online times. The Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences should really get past With Six You Get Eggroll already and give her a Lifetime Achievement Oscar before she dies. Day was a fine comic actress and a very good singer, though her lushly orchestrated songs of the 1940s and '50s might sound a bit jarring when contrasted to the more lustily synthesized dance tracks of today. Still, if Lady Gaga can put out an album with Tony Bennett, can't Day maybe do a duet with Usher? Que se-owowowo se-owowowo.

OK, I've established to my satisfaction if not necessarily yours that Day is talented, but does that talent really extend to highway construction? When I first saw the above ad and then blew it up as large as possible to read the small print, I actually wondered if it wasn't a Mad magazine parody or something by Bruce McCall. But, no, as far as I can tell, it's a real ad that appeared in the August 1949 issue of Asphalt and Macadam Monthly. Judging by that magazine's title, it's apparently possible to come up with something novel to say about asphalt and macadam 12 times a year. I suppose it's also possible that state and municipalities all over the country purchased International Harvester Series 56 Diesel Road Rollers for their road crews 65 years ago based solely on Doris Day's say-so.

Still, it's not a good idea to a pave a highway in the hot sun. I hear it can give you freckles.

Graphic Grandeur (Cram for Midterms Edition)

The above ad is from the September 1948 issue of Modern Mechanix. There seems to be very little about it that has anything to do with mechanics, though I imagine some 1940s smartass took one look at the drawing and quipped, "Nice chassis!"

The Professional School of Cartooning, Inc doesn't seem to have had any actual classrooms. A similar ad makes it clear that it offered correspondence courses only. I like the fact that this school felt the need to include "Inc" in its' name, as if not to confuse it with The Professional School of Cartooning, Mom-and-Pop Store. Its doors weren't, or mailbox wasn't, open for very long, I don't think. Every time I google the school's name looking for more information, I get either this ad or one just like it in the back of magazines published between '47 and '50. It seems to have fizzled out  just as the postwar economy was booming. Perhaps things would have turned out different if it had advertised in front of the magazine.

I mean, it does seem like a good deal. Or might if one knew exactly how much the whole thing cost. The first critique is free, except for the mailing charge, but what about the next two years? According to the ad, these weren't famous amateurs looking at your scribbles. An aspiring artist might have to make some sacrifices to continue with such a course. Maybe cancel their Modern Mechanix subscription.

And just how famous were those professionals critiquing your drawing of a five-legged dog? (Oops. Sorry. That last leg's actually a tail.) Well, while probably lacking the same 1940s name recognition of Humphrey Bogart or Bette Davis, they all had impressive enough resumes. Lawrence Lariar was a successful gag cartoonist who also edited Best Cartoons of...books for three decades. According to one web site, Lariar may have also drawn the girl in the ad. Brothers Irving Roir, Al Ross, Salo, and Ben Roth (the latter the only one to use the family name) were also popular.  Adolph Schus did both gag and political cartoons. George Wolfe was a gag cartoonist who later did newspaper strips. Ed Nofziger is remembered best for his talking animal cartoons. Henry Boltinoff worked for DC comics and did funny filler strips that ran between Superman and Batman stories. Anybody out there who knows more about these gentlemen (especially if you happen to have a comic strip-oriented blog of your own), feel free to expound about such knowledge in the comments section.

My point is, to get an A, B, or even a C+ from one of these guys would seem to me to be a big deal. Maybe potential customers/students were just too intimidated by the big names. More likely the big names got weary of all the customers/students stick drawings, and decided to close up Inc.

One last thing. The web site where I originally saw this ad (as I said earlier, it's on several) made mention that CUTE GIRLS appears in capital letters. What it didn't make mention of, but what I noticed anyway toward the bottom, was this:

Approved for Veterans
 

Remember, this was just after World War II. A serviceman returning to civilian life could look forward to meeting cute girls.

Even if he apparently had to draw them himself.

Pop-Up Quiz

(Originally posted on 1/23/2009)

Recently, I was at a Joseph Heller web site, deeply immersed in a discussion of Milo Minderbinder's place in literary history, when I suddenly noticed something in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It wasn't part of the site since it had nothing to do with Catch 22. Here's what it said:

TEST YOUR IQ

CLICK HERE

I thought to myself, hey, it'd be kinda cool to know my IQ, so I clicked .

Ever since I clicked, a box has popped up on the screen every ten seconds asking me to, variously, try a new anti-wrinkle cream, take advice on how to pass a civil service exam, give a gold-plated pendent to that very special person, join a health club, try liposuction, dine at a new Chinese restaurant in a city I never heard of, take pills that will cleanse my body of impurities, buy a Humvee, rent a condo on the shores of Lake Huron, and buy a mousetrap that glows in the dark.

I think I flunked the test.

Blog Vérité: P Removal

The economic recovery still has a way to go. I saw this on a bulletin board not too long ago:

HOUSEMAID FOR HIRE.

WASHING

SWEEPING

DUSTING

SCRUBBING

VACUUMING

MOPING

Moping? I'm pretty good at that already. I certainly don't need to pay someone to do it.

Ad Libs (Burlesque Edition)

I recently told a dirty joke on this blog.

Actually, Eddie Templeton told the joke. Or tried to tell the joke, as he was continually interrupted by Mycroft Ptolemy.

Whoever told the joke, I knew sooner or later the ad box to the left would reflect that particular post's subject matter. I expected maybe a book for sale. 1000 Dirty Jokes And Then Some . Or Filthy Fun For Everyone. Or, possibly, The Portable Potty Mouth.

Or maybe an X-rated video that can be purchased online, though I'm told that's unnecessary as you can just watch one online. (I wouldn't know. Remember, I'm in the library. Those places frown on their patrons viewing porn.)

Instead, the ads are for sexual abuse centers, sexual abuse hot lines, sexual abuse seminars, sexual abuse literature, and sexual abuse videos. There's also an ad that asks (I kid you not), Is My Husband Gay? (I wonder if that one is left over from the same-sex marriage post a while back.)

This is not quite the spirit in which the post was intended.

You really shouldn't try to explain humor to an AdSense search engine, but here goes. The post was a satiric attempt to adapt the conventions of a dirty joke to a real life situation, and--ah, never mind.

To think, it's all because I decided to do a little blue humor as a change of pace.

Man, imagine the ads if Redd Foxx had had his own blog!

Ad Libs

If you just read the blogs on Blogger but don't blog yourself, you may not be aware that we who do blog on Blogger have a "Dashboard". Just like the dash in your car--well, it's not like the dash in your car at all. There's no P R N D 1 2, and no 10..20..30..40..50..60..70..80 , and no dials that swing from Empty to Full, or Hot to Cold, or Low to High. What we who blog on Blogger see instead is this:

NEW POST - Edit Posts - Settings - Layout - View Blog

At least, that's what used to be there. About two weeks ago, I clicked on to my Dashboard, and THIS was added to the above:

Monetize

Monetize? What's that?, I wondered. I mean, I knew it meant making money off my blog, but how?

So I clicked, and found out. With advertisements.

Now, I was reluctant to accept advertisements at first. I didn't want the two top agencies, McCann Worldgroup and BBDO Worldwide, fighting over my business. Plus, I didn't want to make the people who run the NFL jealous when they saw how much revenue my ads raked in compared to the commercials on their measly Super Bowl.

Then I woke up.

I decided to advertise. As it turns out, I don't come in contact with any ad execs, like the ones you see on cable's Mad Men. No smoking cigarettes, swilling martinis, or making moves on the secretaries for me. That's all right. Whenever I've tried smoking, swilling, or making moves in the past, it's just gotten me a cough, a headache, and "My boyfriend is an IRS agent." No, a computer would do all the work. Well, the computer wouldn't smoke, swill, or make moves, but it would choose what ads go on my blogs. How, exactly? By singling out key words or phrases in my posts, then matching them with the appropriate ads. Well, not always so appropriate. There's an odd result every now and then.

I did a post a while back called "Viral Spiral", detailing a cold I recently caught. This has led to ads from Halls and Vicks. Well, that makes sense, as I had a nasty sore throat at the time. But where's the Smith Brothers or Fisherman's Friend ads? What, my phlegm's not good enough for them?

Then there's "Futures Market", detailing my visit to a fortune teller. In the past week, I've gotten ads for astrology, palm reading, tarot cards, tea leaves, crystal balls, numerology, phrenology, and whatever clicking on "love signs" is called. I also got an ad for the top fortune teller in St. Paul, Minnesota. Maybe Al Franken and Norm Coleman should seek him out.

Speaking of politics, my post "Red State Blues" produced the oddest results, ad-wise. That post, like most of my political posts, tended to be somewhat favorable toward the Left, and somewhat hostile toward the Right. But the computer doesn't care about overall mood. It's only concern is how many times "left" and "right", "liberal" and "conservative", and "Democrat" and "Republican" appear. As all those words appeared quite a bit, the subsequent ads were wholly bipartisan. A few asked me (or anyone viewing my blog) to join this or that progressive cause, but there was also one from Rush Limbaugh, enlisting citizens in his crusade to "save America". I thought that had been accomplished this past November.

"Ad Libs" might become a regular feature, if future posts yield some more interesting ads. And who knows? I might just earn a profit along the way.

In fact, I just checked. This past week I raked in a whole nickel.

39 more of those, and I can buy myself a bag of Halls. Or maybe Vicks.

Pop-up Quiz

Recently, I was at a Joseph Heller web site, deeply immersed in a discussion of Milo Minderbinder's place in literary history, when I suddenly noticed something in the lower right hand corner of the screen. It wasn't part of the site since it had nothing to do with Catch 22. Here's what it said:

TEST YOUR IQ

CLICK HERE

I thought to myself, hey, it'd be kinda cool to know my IQ, so I clicked .

Ever since I clicked, a box has popped on to the screen every ten seconds asking me to, variously, try a new anti-wrinkle cream, take advice on how to pass a civil service exam, give a gold-plated pendent to that very special person, join a health club, try liposuction, dine at a new Chinese restaurant in a city I never heard of, take pills that will cleanse my body of impurities, buy a Humvee, rent a condo on the shores of Lake Huron, and buy a mousetrap that glows in the dark.

I think I flunked the test.