Morons and Child Annoyers

I love the evolution of the English language.

In 1936, a pervert was called a moron and a pedophile was merely a child annoyer. This article describes the final exploits of one Mr. Keane, who, following a "spectacular battle," was killed, even though he was "bent on thievery rather than rape."

Read this article from the Chicago Tribune in the voice of a radio broadcaster from that era and it all makes sense.

This is the height of the Great Depression. That kinda destroys everything I had previously thought. So, it wasn't all, "Brother, can you spare a dime?", soup lines and helping out hobos by offering them odd jobs around the house in exchange for a meal when they came calling at the back screen door while Grandma was cooling a pie on the kitchen window sill, the very window the moron would then peep into, though likely bent on thievery rather than rape.

Things Could Get Ugly...

I've always said the next Great Depression is going to be very different from the last. And by that I meant that the whole "help a brother out" mentality will have totally disappeared. We'll be holed up in our homes with MREs, bottled water and a stockpile of ammunition. "Trust no one" will be the mantra of many. We'll be scraping resources together to keep our cell phones from being turned off or our cable from being cut. We have our priorities. But those brave souls willing to go down to their local church or homeless shelter when they run out of food are going to face a new kind of horror the people of the 1930s could never have imagined.

Forget Your Troubles, Friend! Dance-Band Fame is Yours!

It's the Great Depression and Japan has yet to bomb Pearl Harbor, sending millions to work, and every magazine is filled with ads selling items or ideas that will help John and Alice Dustbowl make some much-needed cash. You can be a tattoo artist, or learn how to make big money in the promising field of cartooning. You can buy a saw-sharpener and go around sharpening people's saws. Learn to stuff birds. Be a baker. Be a diesel mechanic or get into Air Conditioning, "America's next big industry!" Others are just as vague as can be, and only promise happiness, riches, fame and the ability to get whatever you want if you will only send a dime for the book. The modern counterpart to these ads in our tough economy would be, "Learn to be a Social Media Guru in Your Spare Time!"

I liked this guy. He sells marimbas. Now that's a sure route to happy-land.

When Today was a Hyphenated Word

This depressing headline is what happens when you let government agencies create the motivational posters. Heads down, the men arrive to their dreary factory jobs in the cold dim of dawn. It's another day.

(Harp SFX as scene goes to black and white. Transition to factory boss rounding up the crew outside the gate for the morning pep talk.)

It's 1937, you jackleg bastards! And a whole lotta boys ain't got work. At least you have jobs, you ungrateful scoundrels, so why don't you buck up, take your measly daily wage and go buy some whiskey? Drown yourself in the only thing that might temporarily erase the shame of not being able to join the Army like the rest of the able-bodied men of this country. In five years, the Army will take the whole sorry lot of you, regardless of your pathetic conditions. And women...THAT'S RIGHT I SAID WOMEN! will take your shitty jobs. For half the pay! In the meantime, you sad excuses for humanity, get in there and start producing.

And make the day safe, you sunsuvbitches. One more severed limb during the day shift will mean mean smaller portions of horsemeat in your lunches!

Image via Vintagraph.

Pure, Wholesome Refreshment

Return with me now to a simpler time, to another era of economic disaster, when life as an advertiser meant just telling blatant lies about your client's product. Listen as Coke is positioned as the end of all your suffering, the unifier of the masses, the common bond that will take us to a shining city on a hill.

Grab a Shovel in the Shovel Ready Economy

Don't despair, out of work citizens. There are infrastructure jobs for the taking at Infrastructure-Jobs.com, or so this banner ad would have you believe. You'll be building bridges and highways and windmills and solar panels and electric cars and housing for the evicted people. Gonna be a fun time in the world very shortly. This is only one of many helpful sites where friendly marketers are setting up link farms to a bunch of other places, their white spaces crammed with Google AdWords ads.

But it's better than it used to be, or so I hear. In the olden days, when your grandparents and great-grandparents were out of work and looking for "infrastructure jobs," they didn't have some fancy websites where they could pick and choose. They just went down to the government shack by the vegetable stand near the railroad tracks and stood in line for seven days. When they finally got to the window, some mean government employee handed them a piece of paper and said, "Hop the next train to Reno and find a Mr. Williams. He will put you to work. You will be given one bacon fat sandwich per day and a ration of water. Job pays 25¢ a week. And if you don't want the job, you lazy bastard, there's 500 people behind you that do. And bring your own shovel, numb nuts."

The government shack was also adorned with encouraging posters. This was before we realized what was happneing in Europe; when we shared with the Nazis a mutual love for scary patriotic slogans, militaristic fonts and workers depicted as robotic wards of the state.