Oopsies, Robyn's post for National Sea Monkeys Day missed its scheduled 10 AM slot but you will still get your usual Saturday Robyn firstpost at 3:30 PM EDT, it'll just be last. And I have a thing for in-between, too. (it's a freeze-dried news story, just add distilled water)
I hope Robyn will affirm that Sea Monkeys were the most disappointing of '60's/'70's children's playthings. Well, maybe Rocket Pops, but those were just murderous, not disappointing.
Those back-of-the-comic-book ads featured some hilariously cheesy toys, but at least they offered equal access to any kid, no questions asked.
I wish something like Let Toys Be Toys had been around when I was five. I'm still kind of ticked about it, apparently. https://www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/blog
I go back a bit further and remember two wonderfully-murderous toys. Exhibit A was a ring with a tube that contained a bit of radium--an atomic ring, they said. You'd go into a dark closet and watch the little sparklies in the tube. That they were passing along a bit of radioactivity to you, you lucky kid, was an added bonus.
Exhibit B was, during WW II, a toy company made a device that dropped bombs on targets. The device was a box with a sight glass and mirror system. You held the box, walked over the target board which was lying at your feet and pushed buttons when the target (assume Berlin) was in the crosshairs. No big deal, except that the bombs were actually darts with very sharp needle points. If you missed the target but hit your toes, hilarity ensued.
And that leaves out the Gilbert chemistry sets with all sorts of neat chemicals to play with....
Science nerd moment. Radium decays be emssison of alpha particles, which are nuclei of helium atoms. they are unable to penetrate skin, glass, metal or other solid materials and so there is negligible risk from your ring. Even if you broke it and still wore, it, it would be ok. On the other hand, if you ground it up and ate it, that would be not so good.
My mistake. It wasn't radium; it was polonium. Here is a description:
"Looking through the toy spinthariscope’s plastic lens while in a dark room revealed flashes of light. These scintillations were the by-product of an interaction of radioisotopes caused by polonium alpha particles striking the ring’s zinc sulfide screen."
Further reading gives polonium a half-life of 140 days. If you find one on eBay, etc. it "should be" safe. However in 1947, when I got mine from The Lone Ranger for some change and two Kix cereal boxtops, I'm not so sure.
I had Gilbert chem sets. Loved the ferrocyanates (copper ferrocyanate was green but another one was purple) that released cyanides when reacted properly.
I have memories of going to get a clacker-related hand x-ray in our tiny, seatbelt-free Metropolitan, the metal dashboard of which had a small dent and some paint missing from a collision with my sister's face.
Ah... those were the days. How many hundreds of miles did I ride my Schwinn Varsity without a helmet? 45 mph on a busy, windy mountain road. Great fun!
Perhaps my first memory is getting rear-ended at a low speed in our 1961 Ford Galaxie wagon and my mother's head hitting the right-angled steel dashboard, giving her an nasty gash. She had a scar for the rest of her life.
I remember an old ad in an old Marvel comic book for Sea Monkeys and thought it was about the corporate infused teen band the Monkees. I wanted to impress a tween crush at my school by owning something adjacent to the band so I sent the money order and waited. Six weeks later I was crushed to find out there wasn't no Monkee cachet in the Sea Monkeys, only a hard learned lesson on reading all the fine print. And my other crush sailed away with the captain of the basketball team on the sea of teen angst.
She sounds like, "The governor is like, giving away free diapers, right? And that's all totally lame, amirite? I mean, 140 million, or whatever, you could all like do a weekend in the Hamptons if you didn't go see the really good stuff. Well, poor people could. But it's the principal, yo?"
Well... I am not in favor of destroying property. I mean, everything is made from something that is extracted from the Earth, and now those things are landfill. The melon I approve of though.
Got rid of the Post about a year ago. Don’t miss it a bit. The smugness of these teet suckers — off the billionaires- is disgusting. Hardly better than Föx
“If Trump really wanted to help families, he wouldn’t be starting wars with no plans on what to do after day 2 because he wouldn’t have to. He’d be boosting prosperity and opportunity. He’d be lowering the cost of living, dealing with crime, making energy more affordable. He’d be tackling those day-to-day quality of life issues.”
This is why I get my news from Wonkette. They have the three vital portions of what I consider essential news: 1) reporting: "Look at this fuck of a shit that happened. Look at it." 2) commentary: "That fuck of a shit is fucking stupid. These assholes need to fucking stop." 3) Martini Glambassador showing us cute animals. Has CBS considered adding five minutes of cute animals to their shows? No. Because they are bad at news.
Also, I'm increasingly sure that the problem is the abundance of nepobabies. These are failures of people who have no understanding or knowledge, but have a dad who could get them a slot at the Harvard Crimson, so they've been able to fail upwards ever since. Previous generations of journalists actually had to be decent to get a national job, but those decent people don't have the funds to do a five year unpaid internship, so they go into some other field.
🎶Propaganda, propaganda, oh propa-propaganda, propaganda [pop] / Bah da dun dun🎶
"Second of all, does this rejected Jeopardy contestant think... "
No, ladies and germs, she does not. She responds, she reacts, she drones and blathers, she apes and parrots and respins tall tales and logical fallacies; failing that, she profusely pedantically pontificates 🧐
I know this is an obvious one, but since he has the power to use that lie to decimate one of the crown jewels of democracy, stay with me for a minute ... especially since you know he's not a good lawyer (gasp! I know) and a lot of Confederates are made dumb by virtue of their constant leaning into the delusions of their overactive amygdalae.
It's very simple.
The gerrymandered maps WILL NOT WORK if EVERYONE who is eligible to do so VOTES.
Re: WaPo, if they were good at talking, they'd be in front of cameras for a living. (I say, from personal experience. Not me with the garbling and the spoonerisms!)
Oopsies, Robyn's post for National Sea Monkeys Day missed its scheduled 10 AM slot but you will still get your usual Saturday Robyn firstpost at 3:30 PM EDT, it'll just be last. And I have a thing for in-between, too. (it's a freeze-dried news story, just add distilled water)
Never stand on ceremony. Stomp on it til it stops moving. 🤣
🙇♂️ Mea culpa aphorism, corrected: "Revenge is a dish best served never." 🤓
I hope Robyn will affirm that Sea Monkeys were the most disappointing of '60's/'70's children's playthings. Well, maybe Rocket Pops, but those were just murderous, not disappointing.
Now Magic Rocks, on the other hand,..
Those back-of-the-comic-book ads featured some hilariously cheesy toys, but at least they offered equal access to any kid, no questions asked.
I wish something like Let Toys Be Toys had been around when I was five. I'm still kind of ticked about it, apparently. https://www.lettoysbetoys.org.uk/blog
Sorry, but no ...
https://store.maxmotive.com/cdn/shop/products/IMG_2190.jpg?v=1612021897
The pictures that they used to illustrate those ads in comic books, of these whimsical/majestic seahorse-type creatures, amounted to blatant fraud.
For those who don't know by now, what the kids got was freeze-dried brine shrimp eggs, which would hatch when rehydrated. Maybe.
You wanna' talk about fraud?
I can't tell you how many pairs of " X Ray Specs" I bought. Those fuckers.
i am god of Sea People
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ju3UEDnI5PM
Cartman sucking “sea-men” out of a “hose” in an alley is just a big no.
Mine hatched but the didn’t live long enough to get crowns and learn tricks (the trick had to do with them going from shade to sunlight, IIRC).
Go to Mono Lake. Plenty there.
I nominate both lawn darts and clackers as murderous toys from my youth...
A corvair. No seatbelts. Chronic nasty odor from a sibling vomiting which leaked who knows where.
A 1971 BBC report on the science behind Clackers [Child's Toy or Murder Weapon?] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tf8OKf-JM9o
I go back a bit further and remember two wonderfully-murderous toys. Exhibit A was a ring with a tube that contained a bit of radium--an atomic ring, they said. You'd go into a dark closet and watch the little sparklies in the tube. That they were passing along a bit of radioactivity to you, you lucky kid, was an added bonus.
Exhibit B was, during WW II, a toy company made a device that dropped bombs on targets. The device was a box with a sight glass and mirror system. You held the box, walked over the target board which was lying at your feet and pushed buttons when the target (assume Berlin) was in the crosshairs. No big deal, except that the bombs were actually darts with very sharp needle points. If you missed the target but hit your toes, hilarity ensued.
And that leaves out the Gilbert chemistry sets with all sorts of neat chemicals to play with....
Yes, we survived. Sort of. At least I did.
Then there were the “quicksilver maze” toys of the 70s in which you maneuvered blobs of mercury around a maze.
Science nerd moment. Radium decays be emssison of alpha particles, which are nuclei of helium atoms. they are unable to penetrate skin, glass, metal or other solid materials and so there is negligible risk from your ring. Even if you broke it and still wore, it, it would be ok. On the other hand, if you ground it up and ate it, that would be not so good.
https://www.epa.gov/radiation/radiation-basics#alpha
My mistake. It wasn't radium; it was polonium. Here is a description:
"Looking through the toy spinthariscope’s plastic lens while in a dark room revealed flashes of light. These scintillations were the by-product of an interaction of radioisotopes caused by polonium alpha particles striking the ring’s zinc sulfide screen."
Further reading gives polonium a half-life of 140 days. If you find one on eBay, etc. it "should be" safe. However in 1947, when I got mine from The Lone Ranger for some change and two Kix cereal boxtops, I'm not so sure.
Radium and polonium, like the Americium in many fire detectors, are alpha emitters so the same observations apply to all 3
Isn't real radium also hella expensive, too?
I had Gilbert chem sets. Loved the ferrocyanates (copper ferrocyanate was green but another one was purple) that released cyanides when reacted properly.
I have memories of going to get a clacker-related hand x-ray in our tiny, seatbelt-free Metropolitan, the metal dashboard of which had a small dent and some paint missing from a collision with my sister's face.
Ah... those were the days. How many hundreds of miles did I ride my Schwinn Varsity without a helmet? 45 mph on a busy, windy mountain road. Great fun!
Perhaps my first memory is getting rear-ended at a low speed in our 1961 Ford Galaxie wagon and my mother's head hitting the right-angled steel dashboard, giving her an nasty gash. She had a scar for the rest of her life.
baby blue '63 ford falcon, metal dash, suicide knob and bubble wrap on the seatsoh the halcyon daze.....
We still have our set of original Jarts. Great fun, if you're nimble.
I'm glad I never bought any. I really wanted to. Traumatising children with outright lies. For shame!
All I wanted as a child was X-Ray Specs.
"And the Lord sayith "If the eye doth see too much! Pluck it out!" " And he did.
Ray Miland, in a movie.
Oh, me too! I wanted to see people's bones.
Suuuuure you did.
LOL! I was 9 years old.
Boss goes to Hawaii, everyone hits the substance of their choice early cause WEEKEND!!!!
Chaos ensues!
I was hoping for hilarity.
Ugh. "Just add distilled water." Dok's gonna brag about his EV again.
Don't they prefer the term 'brine shrimp'?
Depends. If you're buying them in a pet store to feed your fish, they're called brine shrimp.
Brines!
Coming this fall to CBS!
The Swimming Dead!
It's nice to have grownups in charge.
Until then, there's us.
You promised pictures. You did. You know you did.
Do I just pour the water on my phone, or do I save the story file and water that?
See what happens when the boss lady is out-of-town?
shh, don't tell mom
Mom's sitting on a beach sipping Mai Tais and earning 20%.
"(it's a freeze-dried news story, just add distilled water)"
Will rum work?
Unfortunately, given the likelihood of it being good news, I have this horrible suspicion that you're really supposed to rehydrate it with Malort.
Sounds like a capital idea.
Sea Monkey(tm) pic header for a Saturday > Anything from the current news . . .
I can't wait for the Sea Monkey Day story, who fucking knew there was such a day?
I remember an old ad in an old Marvel comic book for Sea Monkeys and thought it was about the corporate infused teen band the Monkees. I wanted to impress a tween crush at my school by owning something adjacent to the band so I sent the money order and waited. Six weeks later I was crushed to find out there wasn't no Monkee cachet in the Sea Monkeys, only a hard learned lesson on reading all the fine print. And my other crush sailed away with the captain of the basketball team on the sea of teen angst.
Sea Monkeys know. The Sea Monkeys know this is their day.
yeeeeees!
Congratulations comrade; enjoy this day, you’ve earned it. 🫡
Not Sea People...?
You mean the Sea People who were probably the ancestors of the present day Palestinians? That brings the story up to date.
Suitable for everyday use, that story?
The Sea Monkey fans will be going over Robyn's copy with a fine-toothed comb.
Comb? Interesting notion otherwise....
oops
Sea Monkeys for everyone!
hooraaaaaay!!
Spoiler: They suck! They don't do tricks. They don't have little crowns on their heads, either.
I had some as a kid, they were delicious.
Shrimp sampler! XD XD XD XD
Nobody tell Red Lobster!
ROTFL!
Those little bastards. I think you're entitled to damages! Does ten billion dollars seem about right?
For me, $100,000 would do it. I'm not greedy, after all. XD XD XD
Or we'll take a 1.6 Bn shakedown, yer cherce.
LOL!
Lol. Barrel of Monkeys they are not!
I remember Barrel of Monkeys!!!
They were at my grandma’s house
those 4 yapping idiots trying so hard to be relevant and edgy is maxxcringey
She sounds like, "The governor is like, giving away free diapers, right? And that's all totally lame, amirite? I mean, 140 million, or whatever, you could all like do a weekend in the Hamptons if you didn't go see the really good stuff. Well, poor people could. But it's the principal, yo?"
The Bari Weiss Experiment? Is that like the Alan Parsons Project?
Well... I am not in favor of destroying property. I mean, everything is made from something that is extracted from the Earth, and now those things are landfill. The melon I approve of though.
Isn't this just a podcast for what four Washington DC insiders care about? Not what we really care about.
4 white people sitting on a couch in designer clothes bitching about Those People Getting Free Stuff?
Sounds about Reich.
And I am glad you started this piece with a screen shot of the Thursday Colbert cold open! Love it!
If Tony D. didn’t have a vi
Got rid of the Post about a year ago. Don’t miss it a bit. The smugness of these teet suckers — off the billionaires- is disgusting. Hardly better than Föx
Thanks for the HOPE!
“If Trump really wanted to help families, he wouldn’t be starting wars with no plans on what to do after day 2 because he wouldn’t have to. He’d be boosting prosperity and opportunity. He’d be lowering the cost of living, dealing with crime, making energy more affordable. He’d be tackling those day-to-day quality of life issues.”
There. Fucking fixed it for everyone.
This is why I get my news from Wonkette. They have the three vital portions of what I consider essential news: 1) reporting: "Look at this fuck of a shit that happened. Look at it." 2) commentary: "That fuck of a shit is fucking stupid. These assholes need to fucking stop." 3) Martini Glambassador showing us cute animals. Has CBS considered adding five minutes of cute animals to their shows? No. Because they are bad at news.
Also, I'm increasingly sure that the problem is the abundance of nepobabies. These are failures of people who have no understanding or knowledge, but have a dad who could get them a slot at the Harvard Crimson, so they've been able to fail upwards ever since. Previous generations of journalists actually had to be decent to get a national job, but those decent people don't have the funds to do a five year unpaid internship, so they go into some other field.
Colbert had the cute puppies that were up for adoption.
Sung to The Chordettes tune Lolipop
🎶Propaganda, propaganda, oh propa-propaganda, propaganda [pop] / Bah da dun dun🎶
"Second of all, does this rejected Jeopardy contestant think... "
No, ladies and germs, she does not. She responds, she reacts, she drones and blathers, she apes and parrots and respins tall tales and logical fallacies; failing that, she profusely pedantically pontificates 🧐
ALITO LIED
I know this is an obvious one, but since he has the power to use that lie to decimate one of the crown jewels of democracy, stay with me for a minute ... especially since you know he's not a good lawyer (gasp! I know) and a lot of Confederates are made dumb by virtue of their constant leaning into the delusions of their overactive amygdalae.
It's very simple.
The gerrymandered maps WILL NOT WORK if EVERYONE who is eligible to do so VOTES.
That's it.
From LDF Esq
https://youtube.com/shorts/KufGgysWr-I?si=XiBcdyskTizArrAQ
https://youtu.be/-XLWoyJo4Hc?si=Kt9g4Zg4LQh1hT1y
Just... wow. No words for CBS.
Re: WaPo, if they were good at talking, they'd be in front of cameras for a living. (I say, from personal experience. Not me with the garbling and the spoonerisms!)