Yesterday I had to start a post over again that my computer wiped out completely just as I was finishing it. I had intended to rewrite the post today, but found key parts of it that I really liked were gone from my diabetic old memory. Life is like that. We get old and we get all futzed up, and no… the computer did not malfunction and save me from using a bad word there. I meant to say “futzed”.
It is a Yiddish sort of word… so I guess you could argue it is not a real word. Yiddish, after all is a language intended by God to provide Jewish comedians with words that sound like insults but really aren’t… and words that don’t sound like insults that really are. (Have you ever looked up what “putz” actually means?)
But that is what the Mickian computer has been up to. It mashes, mangles, impedes, and implodes my writing. If it wasn’t so handy for coming up with a funny post about fighting with a computer, I might actually become aggravated enough to throw this old computer out the upstairs window and into the sickly, green, unused swimming pool below.
I have used my computer daily and put it through all sorts of contortions and convolutions in the past three years of ill health and bed-ridden retirement. It is probably no wonder it is wearing out. I not only write and turn drawings into jpegs on it, I use it to mess with photography, play Facebook games, and keep up with the international clown show that other people generally refer to as politics. I shed beard hair on my keyboard. I drop popcorn on it when I am trying to jam too much in my mouth at once. And I occasionally baptize it with a juicy sneeze or projectile cough. I confess that I probably deserve the revenge it wreaks upon me.
Besides randomly deleting my posts and instantly saving the changes, it will also shrink the view of the entire page so that I can’t even read what I type with a magnifying glass. The only way to correct the problem is shift to a different browser for a while until Firefox or Chrome stops hating me long enough to reset. I have also had problems with the computer blowing things up. One time I was trying to write on WordPress when only three huge letters at a time would fit on the screen. That can make it quite hard to pull the old train of thought out of the darker parts of the tunnel of stupid ideas. (I also just now had to re-type the part in italics when the computer deleted it. I am making a back-up copy on Microsoft Word, but sometimes I can’t copy and paste fast enough.)
Truthfully, something is seriously wrong with this laptop. The mouse pad malfunctions and the control key sticks. I may have to buy a new computer soon. But this one has given me numerous goofy smiles, and I will miss it when it joins the pile of old dead computers in the garage.
If you haven’t quite figured it out, these are some of the numerous goofy smiles.
Catch a Falling Star 
Coca-Cola Mind Control
If you’ve read very much of my goofy little blog, you’ve probably run across the fact that I am something of a conspiracy theorist and strange-twist believer… sometimes referred to as a tinfoil-hat-wearer, or that old uncle you don’t want your kids sitting next to at the Thanksgiving dinner table. And I’ve got another one for you. I discovered while obsessing about nostalgia and old ads in the Saturday Evening Post, that the Coca-Cola company is probably responsible for warping my mind as a child.
My plan in revealing this hideous conspiracy is to take a look at ads and illustrations that I saw as a kid addicted to reading Saturday Evening Post every week at Grandpa and Grandma Aldrich’s farm. I will scour them for hidden meanings and try to reveal to you the insidious plot underlying these mind-altering illustrations. Keep in mind that you should probably take everything I say in this article with a grain of salt. No, really, salt can protect you from subtle mind-control messages.
And, yes, I realize that not all the messages are that subtle. Sometimes they shout at you, “Drink Coke and you will have more sex!” And you have to remember we are trying to avoid that kind of mind control. We have to fight every instance of ad companies trying to take control over us by exploiting our baser animal urges.
So, let me take a momentary interlude, a break if you will. I have this big glass of Diet Coke I just bought at QT, and…
Well, that was good!
Coca-Cola has been at this for a while. This ad from the 1940’s is apparently attempting to win World War II through choice of soft drinks. Look at this feisty brew the soldier is about to quaff. It is actually struggling in the cup to get out and go bite some German soldier’s face off. Any American soldier who can choke this stuff down is tough enough to take on the Axis powers, Napoleon after Hitler dug him up and used Frankenstein’s scientific breakthroughs to re-animate him, and even several countries we weren’t actually at war with. Even Rush Limbaugh and his weird lesbian-farmer-subsidies theory can’t compete with Coke on this level of propaganda wars.
I also think Coca-Cola ads may have something to do with why I became a Cardinals fan when I lived in a place full of Cubs and Twins fans. I admit, I added the dialogue and the commentary, but I used to do the same thing in my head when I was eight and the Cardinals went to the World Series… and the Cubs could not win it all even with Ernie Banks on their team. The Cardinals beat the Yankees in 7 games!
I blame Coca-Cola. Especially their ad department. Cause the generic manager is telling the generic Oubs player to “Relax… take it easy.” But the Cardinals won because Bob Gibson had that laser-intensity stare that bored holes through Mickey Mantle’s bat! (It is Oubs, not Cubs, by the way. Look at the big “O” on his jersey.)
And you can’t tell me that the Coca-Cola ad seen here, the one with the white-haired goblin child casting a spell on you with his crazy eyes and pointing at your dark, delicious master isn’t seriously trying to mess with children’s minds. There used to be a big five-foot-tall metal sign with this very picture on it in the one and only alley in Meservey, Iowa. The one time I went to the barber there to get my hair cut I had to sit in that barber chair and stare at this evil thing staring back at me from the alley across the street. It warped me. For one thing, I never went back to that barber shop again… at least until I was in college and the sign was gone.
So, I seriously believe Coca-Cola was messing with my mind as a child. They did it through subversive ad illustrations in Saturday Evening Post Magazine. And if I’m completely crazy now, I blame them. You don’t see that kind of thing going on today, do you? Well, I mean, we should be very worried. Because it probably means they have gotten better at it.
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Filed under autobiography, baseball, baseball fan, commentary, conspiracy theory, foolishness, humor
Tagged as coca cola, conspiracy theory, humor, mind control, propaganda