Makes My Teeth Ache

This is an interesting bit of breakfast cereal lore that dates back to the mid 1960s.  Post Sugar Sparkled Rice Krinkles and their animated mascot, an Asian boy named So-Hi (because he was ''so high").  I missed-out on this opportunity as this cereal wasn't part of our household line-up; nevertheless, each box included the So-Hi Rickshaw Racer.

For the time it was rather nifty; including easy-to-assemble parts featuring a tiny figure of So-Hi pulling a two-wheeled rickshaw.  The kit included some string and a small plastic bucket which functioned as a counterweight.  Tie the string to the rickshaw, put a coin in the bucket, hook it over the edge of the kitchen table and let the weight drop.  The falling weight would cause So-Hi and his rickshaw to zip across the table at high speed.  Fun stuff and you were always one box away from a replacement once it broke.

At the time Madison Avenue didn't have any of today's qualms about cultural tropes like gongs, a broken-English accent, conical hats or rickshaws. So-Hi was intended to be a fun and lighthearted replacement for an unsettling clown mascot dating back to the 1950s; he even had a role as a regular character on Linus the Lionhearted, a Saturday morning cartoon show funded entirely by General Foods (Post) where the characters were literally cereal mascots.

Naturally, this era used cultural characters to foster instant identity.  Frito Lay had the Frito Bandito, Pillsbury used Funny Face drink mixes with flavors like Injun Orange and Chinese Cherry.  Post had So-Hi.

Post eventually retired So-Hi realizing that Rice Krinkles didn't need the baggage of a clown that creeped-out children or a mascot becoming a textbook example of racial stereotyping.  In 1971 they repurposed their puffed-rice operation and launched a licensed and inoffensive mascot; Fruity Pebbles.  Fred Flintstone and Barney Rubble became pitchmen for sugary children's breakfast cereal.

 Now you know the rest of the story. 

Is It Real, Or Is It Memorex?

This was a popular advertising slogan from the 1970s for cassette recording tapes that Millennials are unlikely to identify-with as they're not going to recognize the marketing campaign.  Nevertheless, if you are a baby boomer you already know that the Memorex brand audio recording tapes claimed to offer such an authentic playback experience that the listener would not be able to differentiate a live performance from an audio recording. 

I still have a soft-sided case of Memorex mix tapes in my pick-up truck that are the industry's contribution to bootleg music recordings.  But I digress.

I'm sharing this anecdote as further evidence that nowadays you cannot expect that everything you see on the interweb or social media is real.  It may very well be an AI fake.

For instance this advertisement for the Spacematic Food Spinner 2000, boldly marketed by the Spacematic Corporation as The Futuristic Food Preparation Center for Today's Space Age Family!   According to the ad it is an all-in-one tabletop unit that can spin, mix, blend, heat and serve an entire meal visualized thru a See-Through Dome.  It comes equipped with a One-Touch Control Panel and a Revolutionary Gyro-Mix Feature that cooks food evenly in individual wedges.  All of this George Jetson Family space-age technology is yours for only $19.95 (plus tax).

Pretty cool, eh?

Nope.  It's all made-up.  It never existed.

This is a clever piece of AI-generated art that perfectly captures the atomic-age aesthetic of the late 1950s or early 1960s.

How to tell?  

The text lacks any specific details ordinarily included in a vintage Sears or Montgomery Ward advertisement. The capsule structure behind the tidy nuclear family looks like a spaceship instead of a suburban kitchen.  The food in the spinner is indistinct and doesn't include any jello.  Finally there's the RetroFuture Vault watermark in the bottom right corner.

It's certainly entertaining; but you won't find one on EBay....

What's The Tab On The War So Far?

The dollar figures are sketchy as the administration has left out the replacement cost of lost aircraft and the rebuilding of damaged bases; but here's a start.  Casualties on our side; 18 dead, 482 wounded and counting.  Deaths among the Gulf States, including Iran, and merchant seamen are estimated to number into the thousands.

 

Excluding aircraft and base losses the war in Iran has officially cost the United States $37.5 billion so far, according to recent testimony by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. However, intelligence officials and independent analysts  estimate the total cost exceeds $100 billion.  

 

Supporting the higher estimate consider that earlier this week Defense Secretary Hegseth and General Caine, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, appeared before the Senate appropriation Committee seeking $70 billion more to cover costs of the conflict and replenish depleted weapons stocks.

Sounds like the tip of an iceberg.  

 

Nevertheless, insofar as nobody can put the toothpaste back in the tube and hardly anybody wants to cut the troops off at the knees during wartime I think we're stuck with paying for a conflict of choice begun by one guy.  An impulsive choice, likely made against the advice of the Vice President, Secretary of State and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; but that's a discussion for another day.  

 

What do we have to show for our expenditure of lives and treasure?

 

The Strait of Hormuz remains closed.  The Red Sea's Bab el-Mandeb (Gateway of Tears) is now threatened by the Houthis.  U.S. bases throughout the Gulf States remain vulnerable to attack.  And oil is trading close to $100 a barrel.  Mr. Trump has set in motion a cascade of destabilizing events that have dangerous consequences for global stability, security and the world's economy.   

 

By all outward appearances this has all the elements of an open-ended cluster.  Some have suggested this could develop into another costly and grinding conflict that might persist into the next administration.  Iran is near certain to obtain a nuke.  This is Mr. Trump's Jimmy Carter moment - on steroids.  Time will tell how this plays-out.

 

And not a single MAGA supporter I'm acquainted-with will admit that their guy might have fallen under the thrall of Bibi Netanyahu.

Or just, plain and simply, miscalculated….

 

Friday Comedy

Jiminy Glick is one of comedian Martin Short's most brilliant and chaotic alter egos.  He has been described as a satirical masterpiece weaponized against the usual standard of softball celebrity interviews.

Buried in a massive fat suit and outrageous facial prosthetics and sporting signature thick-rimmed glasses, Glick is fictional celebrity journalist from Akron, Ohio.  The character is completely uninformed, deeply self-absorbed and utterly unbothered by his own total lack of preparation.  All of which is a near-perfect set-up for Short's improvisational comedy skills as he interviews. real-life celebrity guests. 

A typical interview is marked by near zero attention span, bizarrely insulting questions, high-pitched outbursts ranging from a breathy lisp to maniacal giggles and constant snacking. 

In 2001 Short brought the character to Comedy Central for Primetime Glick interviewing Bill Maher and Steve Martin as his first guests. Over two years and 30 episodes Glick hosted a long list of Saturday Night Live alumni including Dennis Miller, Bill Crystal, Janeane Garofalo, Molly Shannon, Chevy Chase, Jon Lovitz, Chris Elliott and Rob Schneider.  In 2003 Glick earned Short an Emmy nomination for Outstanding Individual Performance in a Variety or Music Program.

Primetime Glick wrapped up after three seasons, yet the character kept going.  In 2004, MGM released Jiminy Glick in Lalawood, a feature film co-starring Jan Hooks that was mash-up of Glick interviews and murder mystery. 

I hope this brings a smile to your lips...

Fawns

From a recent trip along the trail camera trapline fawns and their mama have been showing-up regularly.  Some days you'd think we were running a deer farm or ranch operation.

Little-known factoid.  The white spots on a fawn's coat do not show when a trail camera is operating on infrared (IR) mode.

 

Smoke 'Em If You Got 'Em

From the New York Times there is this: 

2.4 trillion

— That is how many cigarettes are sold in China each year, nearly half the global total.  Xi Jinping, the country’s president, may have quit smoking years ago.  But his government hasn’t done much to help its people join him.

Cigarette sales are falling in most countries.  In China, the numbers are going up. Smoking there rose 39 percent from 2003 to 2023, even as it fell 26 percent in the rest of the world. And while younger people are smoking less, older ones are smoking more, in part because it’s an inexpensive habit in China: A pack costs roughly $3. 

In contrast, if you want a pack of Marlboro Reds from my local bodega?  That’ll be $20.

Joy Dong, who reported on all this from Hong Kong, says it shows how powerful China’s state tobacco company is. It’s a literal monopoly: A single agency both regulates the cigarette industry and makes most of the smokes.

The government’s brand, the China National Tobacco Corporation, generated roughly $244 billion in profit and tax revenue in 2025. That’s about 7 percent of national government revenue and nearly what China says it spends on defense. 

Big numbers!

Smoke 'em if you got 'em... 

Oleo Wars

Reprint from the pages of "Hoard's Dairyman" magazine issued to influence public opinion in Wisconsin where the sale of colored margarine was prohibited by law 

Once upon a time margarine was illegal in Wisconsin. 

That’s right. For over 70 years, Wisconsin banned the production and sale of buttery-yellow oleomargarine and we were the last state in the nation to uphold oleo bans.  As a child my dad and his brother would periodically team-up and make a run across the Illinois border where there was  a thriving business selling cases of margarine to Wisconsinites  who would drive back over the border with trunk loads of bootleg oleo. 

59 years ago on July 1, 1967, the sale and production of yellow oleomargarine was finally legalized in Wisconsin.  

Oleo was seen as a substitute for butter and gained popularity during the butter shortage of WWII. Dairy distributors didn’t like this imitation-butter one bit, which led to Wisconsin upholding oleo bans for more than seven decades.

Nevertheless, Wisconsin state law still strictly regulates butter and margarine in restaurants and it is a criminal offense to substitute margarine for butter unless a customer specifically requests it.

The law on the books is Wisconsin Statute 97.18(4), which explicitly states:

"The serving of colored oleomargarine or margarine at a public eating place as a substitute for table butter is prohibited unless it is ordered by the customer."

 Learn more about the oleo wars here.