The Consumer Category
We bring you the chic and unique, the best and most bizarre shopping offers both online and offline. We offer you tips on where to buy, and some of the less mainstream and crazy, individual and offbeat items on the internet. Anything that can be bought and sold can be featured here. And we love showcasing the best and worst art and design.
How To Cure You Sick Addiction To Hoarding
WHY do we hoard things? David Wallis notes:
[S]ome of the same brain areas that are underactive under normal circumstances become hyperactive when hoarders are confronted with their possessions. David F. Tolin of the Yale University School of Medicine asked participants in a study to decide whether their old papers can be shredded, while monitoring their brain activity. He found that hoarders’ brains zoomed into overdrive like a seismograph measuring an earthquake—compared to healthy controls. (That didn’t happen when they watched someone else’s papers being ditched.) “The parts of the brain involved in helping you gauge that something is important are kicked into such overdrive that they are maxed out, so everything seems important,” Tolin explains.
Monika Eckfield, a professor of physiological nursing at California State University, San Francisco, concurs that many hoarding patients struggle with processing information. To avoid the anxiety of throwing something away, they simply put off the decision to do so. “This is common to all of us,” Eckfield says. Like the neuroscientists, she believes hoarding becomes abnormal as a result of “mis-wiring” in the brain’s executive functions. Chronic hoarders “have a much harder time following through,” she says. “They get distracted. They get disorganized. They end up adding to the pile, and the idea of sorting through those piles is very overwhelming.”
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Posted: 28th, February 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
A History Of Controversial Children’s Books: Sex, Sambo And Obscene Rebellion
ANORAK’s history of controversial children’s books: sex, drugs, sambo’s gay lover and anti-authoritarianism in the classroom.
The Little Red Schoolbook
In 1971 the proprietor of Stage 1 publishers was found guilty of having in his possession obscene books for publication for gain. Richard Handyside was fined £25 on each summons and ordered to pay £110 costs.
The obscene publications were copies of The Little Red Schoolbook written by two Danish schoolteachers, Søren Hansen and Jesper Jensen – and then rewritten by a group of British adults and schoolchildren, including a young Hilary Benn. It urged young readers to question authority and challenge social conventions, and described adults as ‘paper tigers’. Pupils were encouraged to disrupt lessons that they found boring.
The book was widely regarded as an invitation to anarchy, and it was banned in Italy and France. An abridged version was eventually passed for publication in the UK, but it had by this time achieved considerable notoriety. Ironically, the main area of contention was not the political message, but the section giving basic sex education and advice – particularly concerning masturbation – most of which would be on the school curriculum these days. This was of course the convenient pretext chosen the DPP in order to suppress a book that they regarded as socially subversive.
An extraordinary documentary can be heard here.
Noddy
Enid Blyton is by no means the only venerable authoress to find her books falling out of favour as popular opinion changes over the decades, as Richmal Crompton will have known only too well.
She remains the most high-profile example, however, thanks to her ‘Gollywog’ series, which related the adventures of Golly, Woggy and Nigger, who liked nothing better than to stride along, in Blyton’s own words, ‘arm-in-arm, singing merrily their favourite song – which, as you may guess, was “Ten Little Nigger Boys”.’ These books are not currently available in most children’s libraries
More famous are her Noddy books, in which they feature once again. In one particularly pointed incident, Noddy is attacked by golliwogs, who steal his car and leave him stranded.
Luckily the Toyland police were very efficient, and always at hand.
Not all gollies are bad, though. In Golly Town we find a Mr Golly, who is one of Noddy’s best friends. He owns Toyland’s garage, looks after Noddy’s car, and is an all-round bloody good bloke, as this picture proves…
The Tale of Little Black Sambo
Another former staple of junior school libraries that fell out of favour (though it remains popular in Japan). In 1996, Fred Marcellino produced a set of new pictures, renamed the characters, and republished it under the title The Story of Little Babaji.
Tintin
One could be charitable and say that Hergé’s most controversial Tintin adventure merely represented the condescending views of Belgian (and British) society at the time.
Post-war, they seemed anachronistic and offensive, portraying as they did a nation of stupid, lazy, infantile savages in need of a clever white master. The book quickly fell out of favour (and out of print).
The Brave Cowboy
A similar trick was pulled with Joan Walsh Anglund’s charming best-seller, in which scary ‘Indians’ were removed and replaced by white bankrobbers and other ne’er-do-wells.
Jenny Lives With Eric and Martin
This otherwise unremarkable tale relates the everyday life of five-year-old Jenn, who lives with her dad and his boyfriend.
In 1986 it was reported that the book was in the library of a school run by the Labour-controlled Inner London Education Authority, and this was a major factor in the Tory government passing Section 28 of the Local Government Act, which prohibited the ‘promotion’ of homosexuality. The full, bizarre story can be found here…
And Tango Makes Three
This modern-day ‘Jenny’, based on a true story about two ‘gay’ penguins in New York’s Central Park Zoo has the distinction of having had the most had the most ban requests in the USA in 2006, 2007, 2008 and 2010. In 2009 it came second.
‘It’s regrettable that some parents believe reading a true story about two male penguins hatching an egg will damage their children’s moral development,’ said co-author Justin Richardson. ‘They are entitled to express their beliefs, but not to inflict them on others.’
Posted: 28th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comment
Thick Bible Stops Bullets From Killing Man (Kindle Too Thin)
Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Books, Strange But True | Comment
Those Tax Dodging Scumbags At Zara!
WE’RE well used to hearing stories about how the tech companies, Apple, Google and the like, are dodging taxes all over Europe. But people are starting to realise that it’s not just that sector. Many other multinationals are indulging in very much the same behaviour:
Another reason for Inditex’s industry-best profit margins of almost 15 percent: the company uses the kind of tax loopholes coming under increasing scrutiny from international regulators.
In the past five years, Inditex has shifted almost $2 billion in profits to a tiny unit operating in the Netherlands and Switzerland, records show. Although that subsidiary employs only about 0.1 percent of Inditex’s worldwide workforce, it reported almost 20 percent of the parent company’s global profits last year, according to company filings.
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Money, Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Sick and Full of Burning: 13 Regrettable BookTitles
FAR be it from me to stifle creativity – an author should be able to title their work as he or she likes. However, there is a limit to my tolerance. Sometimes, the title is so terrible that it simply must go; creativity be damned. Here’s a handful of vintage reads which suffer from just such an affliction.
12 Chinks and Woman by James Hadley Chase (1941)
I understand people weren’t as sensitive to racial issues back then, but this is ridiculous. The novel’s title was later changed to The Doll’s Bad News; a wise move, but you can’t undo this level of epic racism. This from the author who gave us these other great titles: The Marijuana Mob (1950), There’s a Hippie on the Highway (1970) and Goldfish Have No Hiding Place (1974).
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Posted: 26th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts | Comments (6)
British Diner Burns His Knob Shagging A Domino’s Pizza
DOMINO’S UK has been in a twitter conversation with a customer:
.@Dominos_UK HELLO I’VE JUST MADE LOVE TO ONE OF YOUR PIZZAS AND BURNT MY PENIS SEVERELY. PLEASE ADVISE ON YOUR TERMS FOR A REFUND. THANKS.
— LAD_VIGO (@ITK_AGENT_VIGO) February 24, 2014
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Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
1960s Horror Food: The Luminous Metrecal Diet In A Can
IN the 1950s and 1960s, Mead Johnson’s Metrecal promised to get you into shape. What that shape was, we people of the future can only guess at – and we guess it was a human form jackknifed over a toilet.
Mead Johnson spotted Sustagen, a composite blend of mix of skimmed milk powder, soybean flour, vitamins, minerals, corn oil, minerals and vitamins spooned into hospital patients not up to eating solids. Pressing ‘Go’ on the random-name-generating computer, produced Metrecal, the weight-reducing miracle. It looked like baby powder. It tasted like baby sick. But – buy – it sure cured your appetite.
Take a drink and get slim. But do stick to the 900 calories of Metrecal a day.
This advert for the vile goop is from 1965:
The keen-to-be-slim could chow down on Metrecal milkshakes, Metrecal cookies, Metrecal clam chowder (New England style) and Metrecal tuna and noodles. Remember, so long as you kept to 900 calories a day, you’d be thinning. And nothing was better at building the new you than the liquid lunches, dinners and breakfasts.
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Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comment
Special Offer: 100 Plastic Pennies For $3.49
THE economy can be saved. Keep your bitcoins – invest in plastic pennies:
Spotter: Bits and Pieces
Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Money, Photojournalism, The Consumer | Comment (1)
Great Moments in Phallic Occurrences
HERE are a few vintage phallic instances (either real or inferred) which have gained a bit of notoriety over the years. Read on – your inner idiot will thank you.
1. THE RIFLEMAN’S LOG
This Rifleman comic book has experienced a certain degree of notoriety for what can only be described as a horrifically uncomfortable cover. How is it possible that the subtext went unnoticed before printing? Looking through old magazines, comic books, etc. it’s easy to stumble onto accidental phallic imagery. Perhaps it’s because they weren’t as jaded as we are these days, always finding the tawdry in the innocent. Or maybe published adverts and illustrations generally weren’t as polished, edited and re-edited as they are today. Who knows? Yet, the phallic nature of this one seems so extreme, it couldn’t possibly have been missed by even the most obtrusively naive,… right?
2. THREEPIO’S UNIT
This Star Wars trading card has also received some well-earned notoriety. It appears that C-3PO is sporting a golden metallic erection of impressive proportions. The robot was supposed to be a “protocol droid”, but this picture has one wondering if C-3PO had other useful functions not fit for a family movie. According to the official Star Wars site:
It appears that the extra appendage is not the work of an artist, but rather a trick of timing and light…. At the exact instant the photo was snapped, a piece fell off the Threepio costume and just happened to line up in such a way as to suggest a bawdy image.
According to Snopes, whether this was intentional or not remains undetermined.
3. SEARS CATALOG PROTRUSION
This unfortunate event occurred in the 1975 Sears Fall/Winter catalog. Extending below the boxer shorts emerges what appears to be a glimpse of this model’s manhood. A lot of squinting, enlarging, and Photoshop exploration has occurred over the years trying to get this mysterious object into focus. Can it truly be what we think it is? Or is it simply a smudge? We may never really know.
This phallic incident even inspired a novelty song “The Man on Page 602” by Zoot Fenster, released not long after the catalog was published.
“The picture’s got me out of sorts, because I don’t understand,
Are they advertising boxer shorts, or are they trying to sell the man?”
4. THREE’S COMPANY SCROTAL EXPOSURE
God knows, shorts certainly lived up to their name in the 1970s. So, you can hardly fault John Ritter for what took place in episode 161 of Three’s Company. In this now infamous sitcom episode, he takes a seat on a bed and in the process reveals portions of his junk for the camera. If you blink you miss it, and it’s not exactly in high definition either…. But, make no mistake, Ritter’s naughty bits are definitely there. The incident yielded one of my favorite quotes of all time. When asked by The New York Observer whether they should edit the scene for future broadcasts, Ritter responded:
“I’ve requested that Nickelodeon air both versions, edited and unedited, because sometimes you feel like a nut, and sometimes you don’t.”
5. POPSICLE OF SHAME
I present to you this highly troubling Evel Knievel Popsicle ad. It hasn’t garnered any notoriety yet, but it’s high time it did. Spread the word.
THE END
More here.
Posted: 25th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback, Key Posts, TV & Radio | Comment
I Was Julian Assange’s Ghost Writer: The Fantastic Story Of ‘Swedish Whores, Pentagon Bores And Being Hitler
ANDREW O’Hagan’s wonderful essay on ghost writing Julian Assange’s autobiography is better than any book on the Wikileak’s puiblisher.
Highlights from it are:
Assange didn’t want to write the book himself but didn’t want the book’s ghostwriter to be anybody who already knew a lot about him. I told Jamie that I’d seen Assange at the Frontline Club the year before, when the first WikiLeaks stories emerged, and that he was really interesting but odd, maybe even a bit autistic. Jamie agreed, but said it was an amazing story. ‘He wants a kind of manifesto, a book that will reflect this great big generational shift.’
…
At 5.30 the next day Jamie arrived at my flat with his editorial colleague Nick Davies. (Mental health warning: there are two Nick Davies in this story. This one worked for Canongate; the second is a well-known reporter for the Guardian.) They had just come back on the train from Norfolk. Jamie said that Assange had poked his eye with a log or something, so had sat through three hours of discussion with his eyes closed.
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You Can Still Buy Those Ridiculous ‘Too Cool To Do Drugs’ Pencils
DID you own a “Too Cool To Do Drugs” pencil in the 1990s? So long as you weren’t a pencil user, the message was succinct and pure. But those of you who like a sharpener or several, realised that the more pencil you used, the more the message changed.
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Posted: 22nd, February 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment
Comedy Books On Sale At The Dachau Concentration Camp Museum Teach Germans About Those Funny Jews
EXIT via the gift shop. Goldblog spotted one at the German”s Dachau concentration camp. Rachel Salamander’s bookshop “Literaturhandlung”, in the visitors’ center of the Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, “specialises in the history of Dachau Concentration Camp and those persecuted by the Nazi regime, but books on related topics are also available. There are also a number of books on Jewish culture and literature.”
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Posted: 21st, February 2014 | In: Reviews, The Consumer | Comment
Mr Porter Fail: How Annette Bening Ruined Warren Beatty’s Reputation For Dating Beautiful Women
READING the Mr Porter mail-out magazine Ronan Fitzgerald @rmkf spotted a segment on Warren Beatty. As he says, “Pretty harsh on Annette Bening”:
Posted: 20th, February 2014 | In: Celebrities, Fashion | Comment
Vintage Adverts: 1970 Landlubber Bellbottoms For Men Who Ride Sidesaddle
“In real life, the guy’s hair would be matted down from the helmet. The chick would be your woman instead of a New York model. And you’d be eating exhaust from a bus instead of grooving in farout fields. However, the Landlubbers are real, and they are mildly but honestly transcendent.”
Posted: 19th, February 2014 | In: Fashion, Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Worst Books Ever: Sex And The Single Child And The I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!
IN 1970 Whitney Darrow created I’m Glad I’m a Boy! I’m Glad I’m a Girl!
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Posted: 19th, February 2014 | In: Books, Flashback | Comment
17 Insane and Disturbing Trading Cards
NON-SPORTS trading cards around the 1970s generally were aimed at kids and revolved around a popular movie or TV program. They were meant for fun; for collecting and trading on the playground. Nothing serious. Subsequently, it’s all the more unsettling when you run across an old trading card that takes a walk on the dark side. Here are a seventeen insane and disturbing examples. Enjoy.
MOD SQUAD ASSAULT CARD (1968)
This doesn’t look like a child’s trading card. This looks like something a serial killer would pin to his bedroom wall.
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Posted: 19th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, Key Posts, The Consumer | Comments (2)
A Peek Inside Belgium’s Hotel Shaped Like An Anus
BELGIUM has given the world chips and mayonnaise, Poirot and bakelite. Add to that is the Hotel Casanus, a hotel shaped like an anus.
“On a small island nestled between Antwerp and Ghent in Flanders, Belgium lies what could be the most remarkable hotel ever. Shaped like a giant anus, Hotel Casanus just screams, stay inside me!”
It’s ideal for travellers you are – just passing through…
Find it at the Verbeke Foundation Art Park.
Posted: 18th, February 2014 | In: Strange But True, The Consumer | Comment
Classic Books: Peggy Treadwell’s The Working Couple’s Cookbook
IN this study of 1970s life, we look at Peggy Treadwell’s The Working Couple’s Cookbook (1971). In the go-ahead 1970s of free love and wife swapping parties, the book was aimed at not only wives and husbands but “roomates, soulmates, playmates, or wedded mates”.
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Posted: 18th, February 2014 | In: Flashback, The Consumer | Comment
Fitbit’s Wristbands Cause Nickel Dermatitis: Just Like The Euro
THIS amused me: the new wristbands containing all sorts of lovely electronic gizmos to aid in monitoring your health actually make you ill. Fitbit, the company that makes them, apparently forgot about how you’ve got to be careful of the nickel content of something that you’re going to put onto a human being who then starts sweating:
Fitbit, a maker of wristbands that track physical fitness, says it is “helping people lead healthier, more active lives.” But complaints continue to mount from users who say Fitbit’s newest product, the Force band, is causing blisters, rashes and itchy dry patches on their wrists.
User forums on Fitbit.com, the website of the San Francisco company that also makes other wearable devices, include hundreds of comments about skin problems from wearers of the $129 Force.
One woman said she developed a burn-like red patch on her wrist that required medical treatment after wearing the wristband for seven weeks. She said Fitbit offered her a financial settlement, which she declined.
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Posted: 17th, February 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
Browse Harry Houdini’s Magical Sprapbooks
THANKS to the digitisation and Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin, we can browse scrapbooks owned by the great Harry Houdini (1891-1926). The University has had the archives in its possession since 1958. But only now are they on the web, and free to view.
The scrapbooks are full of adverts, stories, and reviews on Houdini’s twin passions: magic and spiritualism. It’s great to think of Houdini and his peers selecting item for inclusion, then sticking them into place, editing the story of magic and live showbiz in the first two decades of the 20th Century.
Everyone should like collecting and sticking things in books with an artistic flourish. These books create wonderful memories of your life and your view of the world. They reveal what delighted you, what you did and what made you think.
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Posted: 16th, February 2014 | In: Books, Celebrities, Flashback | Comment
Edible Christianity: The Double Crisp Chocolate Jesus Hands
SUNDAY service brings the double crisp chocolate Jesus hands:
Spotter: Christian Nightmares
Posted: 16th, February 2014 | In: The Consumer | Comment (1)
New York Fashion Blog Treats Homeless Man In The Most Epically Hopeless Way
WHEN Scott Schuman published a picture on his Sartorialist fashion blog of a homeless man in New York, he called it “NOT GIVING UP”:
I don’t usually shoot homeless people. I don’t find it romantic or appealing like a lot of street photographers, and if you asked homeless people they are probably not to happy about their situation either. That’s why I was surprised to be so drawn to taking a picture of this gentleman.
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Posted: 15th, February 2014 | In: Fashion | Comments (4)
The School Holiday Travel Trap: What Is It That People Don’t Understand About Markets?
THIS is one of those stories where you just have to put your head in your hands at the gross stupidity of our fellow citizens:
When he vented his frustration about holiday prices shooting up during the school half-term break, Paul Cookson struck a chord with other parents.
His rant to 250 Facebook friends quickly went viral as outraged parents shared his post about rip-off prices 143,000 times.
Now the issue may even be debated in Parliament after more than 100,000 signed an online petition calling for the Government to curb prices.
Yep, 100,000 people are entirely mystified about why the price of something might rise when more people want it. Completely blind to the way that prices, supply and demand interact. You wonder how they manage to exist in a market economy really.
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Posted: 15th, February 2014 | In: Money, The Consumer | Comment
