Terrible Analogies

I’ve written about odd children’s books in the past, and instead of deriding them I whole-heartedly celebrate them. Sure…Goodnight Moon, Guess How Much I Love You and The Very Hungry Caterpillar are well and fine, there’s something oddly entertaining and subversive about reading your child age-appropriate books about vampires, questionable elephants, and in this case, zombies:

10 Little Zombies: A Love Story, written by Andy Rash (if that is indeed his real name), is a look into the short and ill-fated lives of tiny innocents on the run from the undead.  And yes, love does/doesn’t conquer all at the end.  Sorry, I can’t give away the ending, but trust me when I say that it’ll put a satisfyingly awkward smile on your face.

See, shotguns are a useful defensive weapon, and one I’ll have at my side when the zombie wars break out…

Say there, niiice grouping, and only one missed shot.  Have you kids been practicing?

I was going to say something witty like “Don’t eat yellow acid,” but thought better of it because, frankly, it wasn’t all that funny, but it was the best I could come up with on short notice, so we’ll just pretend that I never wrote it, um-kay?  Thanks.

Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to go read to Tyler before we put him to bed.

Have a great weekend, everyone!  As always, many thanks for stopping by, and I’ll see you next week…

Bored during my one day off from work this week I found myself thumbing through my copy of Edward R. Tufte’s The Visual Display of Quantitative Information when I happened upon this old advertisement from a 1938 Johnson & Smith Catalogue hocking “Luminous Glasses”.  Apparently these gimmicky eyeglass frames were coated with a layer of luminescent paint which, if worn in a dark environment, would glow in unusual patterns.  

Was this some sort of a fad in the late thirties?  Did people spend an unusual amount of their time in dark alcoves and gothic recesses, generating the desperate need for glow-in-the-dark eyewear?  Was this fad akin to wearing an onion in your belt, swallowing live goldfish, sporting conk hairstyles, or wearing Member’s Only jackets?

This fad must have stayed in the public consciousness long enough to allow the manufacturer time to expand their eyewear line to include “Window Spectacles” and “Spectacles & Nose” models, the latter making the wearer look like some sort of twisted neoprimitive medicine man running wild on an all night bender of illicit stimulants washed down with Red Bull & vodka.   

Ya know, the more I look at this advertisement, the more it gives off an awfully powerful psychedelic vibe making it seem more at home in a Timothy Leary testimonial, a Tom Wolfe / William S. Burroughs novel, or a Victor Moscoso poster than in a 30′s novelty catalogue.