“Baby hungry,” and other Utahspeak

 I wrote parts of this is in 2009.  I am re-posting it with some editing and updating.

This cartoon was posted on Facebook recently with a question, “Is the term ‘baby hungry’ specific to Utah?” According to people from other areas of the country who had never heard it, apparently so.  I remember when I first heard “baby hungry” several years ago. Even then I knew it means that a woman is longing to have another baby, but I found the phrase as ghoulish as this drawing.

Some linguists can trace a regional dialect to within 50 miles, and I assume that means they can also track down words and phrases peculiar to a particular area or local population. Utah definitely has some peculiarities specific to local speech.

At age five I was singing, “Hell, hell, the gang's all here,” when my mother corrected me. She told me that I had turned a long “a” sound into a short “e”. She corrected me often in my speech and set me off on the correct path, but she couldn't ever change my dad. Both Dad and Mom came from a rural area in the center of Utah and Mom did not want to talk like the “hicks,” as she called them.

Utahns often pronounce a word like “hail” as “hell”; they also pronounce “meal” as “mill”. My brother and I did jokes about going to a restaurant and having a “rill mill.” It was a lot to do with our father. Dad had a pronounced Utah dialect, where he turned long vowels into short. He also had a strange Utah way of turning an “or” sound into an “ar,” examples being harse, sharts, and the one that tickled me, fartunate. I’ve heard some people with that speech habit do a reverse, and also turn the “ar” into “or” as in “I drove my cor.” And speaking of cors, my dad also called a Chevrolet a Shiverlay.

Watching some local television commercials recently I heard a furniture store manager use the short e sound in referring to his “knowledgable sellspeople,” and a car dealer loudly exhorting us to “test drive a Shiverlay.”

Many of my fellow Utahns communicate through Utahspeak, with expressions understood by locals but puzzling to outsiders. We in Utah know the exclamations, “Oh, my heck!” and “good hell.” “Good hell” comes from the Mormons. They use it rather than “good heavens” because decades ago some church leader apparently said it’s disrespectful to use heaven — a holy place — in an oath. Local folks who use these terms often don't realize they are indigenous to Utah.

Jeff Foxworthy made a living out of Southern dialects that sound funny to non-Southerners, but only in Utah can you hear someone who mangles the word “ignorant” to sound like “ignernt” and means rude rather than “without knowledge.” Other examples of Utahspeak are “sluffing” to mean playing hookey, or “baby tending” when babysitting. It’s too regionalized, unfartunately.

I realized at some point that Dad couldn't be corrected because he couldn't hear what he said. It sounded correct to his ear. He asked me once, “How do you pronounce s-h-o-r-t-s?”

I said, “shorts,” pronouncing it with the short “o” sound.

He said, “I was talking to this guy from New York and he was making fun of the way I say that word! But I say it just like you, sharts!”

Only in Utah: The Red State Blues

With the Utah Legislature in session it seems that every day our daily newspaper, The Salt Lake Tribune, has more of the nefarious, silly and downright comical acts of our legislators.

For one, choosing a Commemorative Gun for 2015. This tradition has been going on without apology for several years. This year’s honor goes to the AR-15. They even got a special deal. The weapon cost them only $650! There was no mention as to whether those were taxpayer dollars.

As one commenter to this picture of Rep. Keven Stratton holding the gun noted wryly: “He looks like he has just given birth.”

Only in Utah.

Photo by Chris Detrick. Copyright © 2015 The Salt Lake Tribune

At the same time as legislators were getting their jollies with the AR-15 the Trib ran another article, headlined: “The oath: Utah first, feds second,” another legislator proposed a new oath for elected officials. Right now it reads “[I] swear to support, obey and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of this state.” One clueless legislator wants to switch “this state” with “the State of Utah,” putting it ahead of the Constitution of the United States. As another, much smarter legislator put it, “[the U.S. Constitution is] the supreme law of the land.” A state constitution cannot be above the U.S. Constitution. (From a story bylined Robert Gehrke).

Only in Utah.

Paul Rolly is a Tribune columnist who likes to hold Republican feet to the fire. He is critical of most of their shenanigans and points them out as often as possible. He wrote about Rep. Lavar Christensen, who a few years ago drafted the bill that defined marriage as being between a man and a woman. It became law, but then it was challenged and Utah became one of those states where a federal judge declared such a law in violation of the 14th Amendment. Rolly asked, by drafting that law did Christensen in fact become the LGBT community’s best friend? His law paved the way for a federal judge to become involved. (What we mean when we mention the Law of Unintended Consequences.)

 Samuel Johnson said, “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.”

Christensen, who is a Latter-day Saint, also used a “the Lord told me to” card against a legislator who had filled his seat when he resigned to run for higher office. When he lost his bid for U.S. Congress, he wanted his legislative seat back. He told his successor he wanted her to give up her seat, according to Rolly, because “the Lord had told him that he needed to be back in the Legislature.” Well, Lavar Christensen is back, so did the Lord arrange for him to get back there? My question would be, why didn’t the Lord just tell Lavar’s successor to quit, rather than have Christensen deliver the news? It certainly sounds self-serving. Christensen denies ever having said such a thing, but he wouldn’t be the first LDS elected official to claim he had God speaking to him.

Only in Utah.

This editorial cartoon by the Tribune’s Pat Bagley, is about Utah’s desire to switch the method of execution at the State Prison. The chemicals to kill someone on death row might become hard to get, or might not even work. Our lawmakers think it would be a swell idea to go back to execution by firing squad. Yep, it worked for our Utah ancestors for over a hundred years, so why not bring it back?

Copyright © 2015 The Salt Lake Tribune

Utah is a state that believes in capital punishment. Many other states do, also, but Utah was somewhat infamous for years (and the answer to a trivia question) by giving the condemned a choice: hanging or firing squad. Some chose hanging, most chose the firing squad. You might remember Gary Gilmore, who was the first prisoner executed in the United States after a hiatus of a few years in the seventies. Gilmore was shot through the heart at the Utah State Penitentiary in January, 1977. Norman Mailer did a book about him called The Executioner’s Song, and his story was even featured as a two-part TV movie with Tommy Lee Jones as Gilmore.

What people in Utah have apparently forgotten is that there was a third choice of execution, and that was beheading. No one ever chose that way to meet his maker. It makes the Bagley cartoon all the more ironic.

An editorial asked if it wasn’t time to put all of this behind us and eliminate the death penalty once and for all. I could practically feel the breeze from the legislature, as representative after representative in unison briskly shook their heads “no.”

Only in Utah.

Finally, Trib editorial writer George Pyle recently wrote about why people in Utah don’t vote. We have the lowest voter turnout in the nation. He surmised, and I believe correctly, that people are turned off by elections because Republicans always win. We live in a state where almost every elected official is a Republican. Osama bin Laden would have won in Utah had he run for office as a Republican.

My natural contrariness to establishment and herd mentality comes in here. I vote in every election, city, county, state and national. Even though my candidates usually lose I win for myself by casting a ballot. My wife is the same way. If our fellow Democrats felt like we did then the red state of Utah might be a little bluer.

We aren’t because our Democrats are intimidated by Republicans. By not voting the defeat of their candidates is a self-fulfilling prophecy.

Only in Utah.

Haters love to hate

Barack Obama has been the target of a tremendous amount of bile and rancor, much of it racing around the Internet, posted by disaffected citizens either disturbed by his politics or his color. Or both. Even Kim Jong Un, the portly dictator of North Korea hit below the belt. To insult the President he said Obama “has the shape of a monkey.” This from a fat guy with a bad haircut. But no one has heaped scorn upon Obama like his own countrymen. In the past six years they have left no insult unsaid, no indignity unexpressed.

I wondered how Obama, or any President, handles all of this negative energy, this continual vibe of the malcontents, filling their blogs and newspaper columns and radio programs with invective and malice. Questioning the President's decision making, his programs, or his ability to lead, leaving out any tone of civility or good manners with the continual Obama-bashing.

I discovered something while contemplating. Historians know it, but its truth just took a while to whack me on the noggin. A President knows he will be hated by many of his fellow Americans. What President Obama knows, also, is that everyone who had the job before him had the same problem. The technology is different than it was a few years ago. It is a more high-tech character assassination than it has been in the past. The Internet, 24-hour news programming and Fox News have raised the bar on angry stupidity. But it will be no different for anyone who follows him, no matter what party they represent.

During his time in office a President is too close to the situation not to create degrees of discontent and partisanship. He is supposed to set the agenda for the country, which causes dissension and controversy. Where he has the advantage is that history will be the ultimate judge of how well he pulled off his agenda. Surviving former Presidents, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush, Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton are banking on history to save their reputations.

Bill Clinton showed that just finishing up his second term, which was historically one of the worst for a modern President, immediately took him out of the line of fire. As an ex-President he became an “elder statesman.” This is a value of an ex-President, being able to get things done in a diplomatic way. Clinton even went to North Korea to help free some prisoners. It was a huge deal for the North Koreans, who had a man who was once the most powerful man in the world on their doorstep asking for a favor.

The fact that every President goes through this crucible is well documented. Even men who are rated as the most important Presidents in American history have been, during their time in office, hated. The book, The Hater's Handbook by Joseph Rosner, published in 1965, gives some high points of President-hating from George Washington through Lyndon Johnson. The author quotes Harry S. Truman, who was dragged through hot coals many times during his time in office as saying, “A public official, particularly the President, is always abused; if he isn’t, he’s doing nothing, and is of no value as the Chief Executive.”

 “Give 'em hell, Harry,” got his share of hell from his political enemies.

George Washington, who has universal acclaim today for both his skills as a General and President, was the subject of a 60-page letter from Thomas Paine, who accused him in part of “. . . your treachery in private friendship . . . and [you are] a hypocrite in public life, this world will be puzzled to decide whether you are an apostate or an imposter, whether you have abandoned good principles, or whether you had any.”

The grandson of Benjamin Franklin, Benjamin A. Bache, published The Aurora, a newspaper in Philadelphia. He said of Washington, “If ever a nation has been debauched by a man, the American nation has been debauched by George Washington.”

George Washington: treachery and debauchery? With over 200 years of good press since his presidency it would be hard for Americans now to believe the worst in him.

Our third President, Thomas Jefferson, although highly regarded as the author of the Declaration of Independence and President of the United States, had his own secrets, which over the years have become public. Having a slave as a mistress and fathering children by her is not something smiled upon by people of either the 18th or 21st centuries (or the centuries in between). Whether Thomas Hamilton, who wrote this in 1826, knew of Jefferson’s personal matters is unknown (it was not mentioned in The Hater’s Handbook), but he seems to give a clue in what he said: “The moral character of Thomas Jefferson was repulsive. Continually puling and whining about liberty, equality, and the degrading curse of slavery, he brought his own children to the hammer, and made money of his debaucheries.”

“Puling and whining” sounds like people who point fingers and complain about today’s President.

Two other men who have gone down in history as amongst the greatest Presidents were Lincoln and Franklin Roosevelt. But that is history’s verdict. In their times they were both excoriated. Lincoln was found in disfavor by both Northern and Southern newspapers (where he was, like Obama, compared to a simian). No one had kind words for Honest Abe until he was killed by John Wilkes Booth. Booth hated Lincoln enough to murder him. He was surprised to read in newspapers, before he was killed by captors, that he wasn’t a hero for assassinating the President. He believed that he would be revered, and Lincoln despised.

Being assassinated is a good way to end attacks by political enemies.

Business leaders were so threatened by Franklin D. Roosevelt that they tried to arrange a coup (known now as the Business Plot), with retired Marine General Smedley Butler at the head of an army of veterans. They were ready to march in and take over the office. Butler, who remained a patriot, strung the plotters along and gave them up to the House Un-American Activities Committee. The whole affair was widely disregarded because some newspapers pooh-poohed the idea of such a plot. The Presidency was kept intact, but for a time, as told by Butler, the businessmen wanted Italian-style fascism. They wanted someone else to be President, and Roosevelt to be like a do-nothing co-President. That would take a major change of the Constitution, which was unlikely. Apparently this gang of Capitalists thought their plan would work.

Attacks on Roosevelt also got down and dirty on a personal level, with his political enemies calling him “half a man,” because of the polio that had rendered his legs useless. What they did not reckon was his legs may have dangled, but his mind was as sharp as ever. Roosevelt’s legacy is safe because history decided he was one of the great Presidents.

 Born rich and privileged, the only thing he had to fear during the early years of his Presidency were his fellow rich and privileged.

Harry Truman, again, has the most succinct comment of all about the Presidency: “If you can’t stand the heat, get out of the kitchen.” The most dynamic Presidents, the most do-something Presidents, have the heat on them continually. The great Presidents — the ones who take the greatest heat — are remembered; the others are just names on a list.

(The portraits shown in this post are from the Topps 1956 U.S. Presidents bubblegum card set. I found them online. I do not own these cards.)

The Black Hand

“The Black Hand,” by Charles Gardner Bowers, appeared in the January, 1931 Amazing Stories. It is a story of an arm transplant, but it is also part and parcel of the execrable history of racial attitudes in America.

A white man, the artist Van Puyster, has gangrene of his right hand. The physician/surgeon, Dr. Evans, has a plan to replace the man’s arm with one from a black man.

The temper of the times in its treatment of the black characters shows how the author felt about them. While the white people in the story have names, the African-Americans who are singled out have no names. They are known as “a condemned criminal,” “a negro [sic] valet,” and “a porter.” In this story, the African-Americans are just props.

Author Bowers’ clunky prose is mostly in the form of dialogue, and some of it sounds pedantic, like an article from a medical journal. In those days of early science fiction the emphasis was on the science, and the literary quality of the fiction was secondary. That didn’t stop some of the writers from over 80 years ago from going on to develop their talents — a young Jack Williamson, called in his later years “The Dean of Science Fiction,” contributed a story to the issue — but none of the authors were ever going to win any awards for fine literature.

What struck me also was the endorsement in the editor’s introduction of “an eminent physician and well-known writer” (Dr. David H. Keller, M.D., perhaps. In Keller’sWikipedia biography, his writing is described as “hostile to feminists and African-Americans”). The “eminent physician” said the story “is a clever conception and a fine piece of work,” and, “the surgery is far better than anything I could have written.” I have even more suspicion of it being Keller, who was a psychiatrist. He adds, “The psychological phases of it tickle me pink.” An interesting choice of words.

A spoiler for the story: Having a black arm drives the white artist crazy, and he commits murders of several black people. That is told off-camera, so to speak, because of the method of the story’s construction.

“The Black Hand” is only noticeable nowadays by the plot device using race, and the blatant bigotry of the writer, the editor, and the physician who endorsed it. It is just another example of the gulf between whites and blacks in that era, and in today’s sensitive racial climate is a curiosity and a reminder from a time of outspoken racism.

Click on the scans to make them larger.

Bag lady and the burglar

It has been a week for me recognizing people I know. At the auto show last Friday I saw two retired people I worked with at the school district. Yesterday Sally and I went to a thrift store where I spotted an old classmate from art school 45 years ago, Cheryl R.

I have run into Cheryl several times over the years. She is easy to pick out of a crowd. Her appearance is bizarre, and she does it to herself with her unusual make-up jobs. She has always used bright blue or green eye shadow under penciled on eyebrows, and she does some little tricks with mascara around her eyes. Yesterday I saw she had drawn three little lines, about 1/4" long, at the corners of her eyes. She also has darkly rouged cheeks, which gives her a clownish appearance. My impression was a stereotype of a bag lady. I saw Cheryl putting little trinkets, cheap little ceramics of kitties and puppies, into her cart. I wonder if her house looks like something from the Hoarders reality show.

The thought struck me, seeing Mimi during a re-run of the old Drew Carey Show, that actress Kathy Kinney might have picked up some make-up tips from Cheryl.   Man, I am cruel, aren’t I? Years ago I remember seeing Cheryl with a young woman I assumed was her daughter. I wonder if the daughter worries about her mom. I felt sad for Cheryl, but then maybe she was looking at me and thinking, “I remember that guy from when he was young, and now he’s an old man!”

On our way home we stopped for lunch. In the restaurant I recognized another former co-worker. Gene P. was an accountant for the school district. Gene was fired from the school district because of some bizarre and criminal conduct on his part. I don’t know if he stole from the school district (keeping it confidential, no one in the Accounting Department would have told me if he had), but I found out he had been a house burglar.

Gene definitely had some problems with depression and family issues. I don’t know if he was on medication. The story was that he was burglarizing his neighbor’s homes. The talk around his neighborhood was that someone was breaking in, but no one would have suspected Gene. Gene, the square guy, the accountant, church-going family man. One night a neighbor came home and found Gene in his house. The jig was up.

That was one of his problems. The other was his teenage daughter. (Since the incident I am talking about took place in the early nineties, the daughter would be in her late thirties by now.) Before he was fired Gene took me aside one day to tell me the woeful tale of his daughter, who was stalking magician David Copperfield. We live in Northern Utah, and Las Vegas, where Copperfield was performing, is quite a long way to drive. But Gene’s daughter, who had decided that if David Copperfield, who did not answer her love missives to him, were to meet her he would see what a wonderful person she was, and how happy she could make him. She stole Gene’s car and took off for Las Vegas. Gene called police, and the Highway Patrol picked her up in St. George, Utah. She was carrying a large kitchen knife. Gene told me his belief was if she couldn’t convince David to love her she might kill him. When I heard that story I was flabbergasted. Some people project feelings onto celebrities, even stalk them or try (and sometimes succeed) in killing them. But not the teenage daughter of someone I knew.

I came quickly back to earth. We really don’t know what goes on in families, do we?

I hope Gene’s daughter got the help she needed. Since David Copperfield, as of this writing, is still alive and well I know she didn’t get to him with her big knife. I also hope Gene got the help he needed. He could have spent some time in jail. I never heard, and it never got into newspapers. It was in the very early days of the Internet. If it happened today the story would probably end up online.

David Copperfield’s ability to fly might help when confronted by love-struck teenagers with butcher knives.

I don’t think Gene saw me in the restaurant. I did not say anything to him. I thought talking to me might be a reminder of some very dark days.

Selma — the savage season

I have not seen the movie, Selma, but I remember the event on which the movie is based. The Civil Rights movement of the sixties was marked by being newsworthy. After all, citizens being beaten, gassed and firehosed because they asked for their Constitutional rights made for dramatic footage on television news programs.

Unfortunately for the beaters, gassers and firehosers, that footage went all around the world. It made a mockery of America and its self-righteous proclamations of freedom and “all men are created equal.” It also made the cops look like bullies with clubs attacking innocent people. It was an especially bad public relations image for the State of Alabama.

Life magazine for March 19, 1965, has the story of that event. I find the cover photo riveting; it is the peace just moments before the brutality. Knowing the history makes the image portentous.

Copyright © 1965 Time, Inc.

God of anger or god of love...a god for gag cartoons?

I wrote this in 2012. After last week’s attack on the Charlie Hebdo offices and murder of four cartoonists by two terrorists, it seems to still be pertinent. I added some more cartoons to what I have shown in the earlier post. The New Yorker seems to have a lot of fun with God, heaven, hell, and religion in general, just as Charlie Hebdo does. So far no machine-gun firing fundamentalist Christians have blasted The New Yorker.

Is God a hardass, angry and vengeful? Is God a nice guy, forgiving of human foibles? Does God have a sense of humor? I'm not qualified to say, but I am qualified to say that in the U.S. and other countries which have the great gift of free speech, visualizations of deity have long been available. And that includes visualizations that lampoon and disrespect God. I've got some cartoons I've culled from the New Yorker, and even a couple from the Sunday funnies. To some Christians these are probably blasphemous. But no matter how they feel about the cartoons they don't foam at the mouth, then form an angry mob looking for someone with whom to go to war. (Literally, that is. If angry letters are a form of weaponry then they are known to lob a few nukes on cartoonists and those who publish them.)

I'm speaking solely from my own position as an agnostic, but when I think about religious people I wonder how they can all profess to love the same God, and yet view him so differently.

The past few days some Muslims have been showing some outrage over some corny 14-minute YouTube video. They feel it disrespects their religion. I'm willing to bet that most of them haven't actually seen it, but are willing to go into an anger meltdown, enraged with the United States, ready to spill blood over what they've heard of it from the hardliners who manipulate the faithful.

Imagine how they'd react if these cartoons were about Allah or the prophet Mohammed.

Copyright © 2011, 2012, 2013, 2014 The New Yorker:

Copyright © 2012 King Features Syndicate:

Hostile or humorous? The GO F*CK YOURSELF hat

Last Sunday night we ate dinner at a Chinese buffet in Western Pennsylvania. It is in a semi-rural area and the restaurant was very busy, attracting a wide range of customers. As we walked out I noticed a scruffy twenty-something guy who was wearing a baseball cap that said GO FUCK YOURSELF.

We were with our granddaughters, ages 10 and 8 1/2. I was glad they had taken a different route out of the restaurant and missed seeing this fellow exercising his First Amendment rights to tell everyone who looked at him to GO FUCK YOURSELF.

After all, my young Catholic schoolgirls may or may not have heard that word before, but even if they have I would not have wanted them to confront this man, because then they might be fooled into thinking that somehow the word had slipped into acceptable usage. You can wear a cap that says HAVE A NICE DAY, or PITTSBURGH STEELERS, or CAT. But none of those hats would arouse anyone’s curiosity or ire, would they? People would assume that the wearer of the first cap is a nice person passing along a positive admonition, the second a football fan (and in Western Pennsylvania I think at least half the hats I see are STEELERS hats), and the third you might think is a farmer who got his hat when he went to see the new line of Caterpillar tractors. I did not have the time, nor the inclination, to confront the GO FUCK YOURSELF man. But instead over the past few days in my mind  I have run an imaginary conversation, speaking to the man about his hat that tells me in plain language GO FUCK YOURSELF.

“Excuse me, sir,” — note I call him sir — “I was wondering about your cap. I wonder what it means because it says GO FUCK YOURSELF.”

“You read it, din’tcha? It means GO FUCK YOURSELF.”

“Yes, but my question would be, are you saying GO FUCK YOURSELF in a hostile way? Are you mad at the world or something? Are you shouting an obscenity from your hat because of your positive hatred of society, refinement and decorum? Or would it be that you are making a joke, a satire on those rules of society that give you the right to wear such a message on your head, but you are testing the reactions of onlookers. Are you privately amused that they react as I am, for instance, to seeing it said so blatantly: GO FUCK YOURSELF.”

His scowl, which I noticed when I first saw him, would tell me something of his intentions. I am sure he would also tell me in person. “It means GO FUCK YOURSELF, asshole.”

Okay, then. So the message is not humorous, but hostile, which I took from his body language, facial expression, body odor and mud on his cowboy boots. So even though I would never wear it on my person, on a cap or t-shirt or even a bumper sticker on my car, I would respond back to him, “Well, you GO FUCK YOURSELF, too.”

The difference would be that I would be laughing. Until he slammed his fist into my face, that is.

I created this version of what I saw by digitally manipulating a photo from the Internet. It does not exist except here, in this electronic form. Because it doesn’t exist this hat is not for sale, so do not write me asking if you can buy it, and shame on you for thinking of it.

The attraction distraction

If you have ever been to a Toys “R” Us store you are aware that it is a large, warehouse-sized superstore, packed wall-to-wall with toys for all ages of childhood.

The stores are neatly arranged and very attractive. The colors of the toys on display are bright, just right to catch a child’s attention. Or possibly cause nerve damage to aging eyeballs like mine.

We went with our son and his two daughters, ages 10 and 8 1/2, to a Toys “R” Us in Western Pennsylvania. It was our older girl’s 10th birthday just that day, as a matter of fact, and she was being allowed to pick out something she would like as a birthday present. As another matter of fact, when you have two children so close in age there is no exclusivity in gift-giving. Both must get gifts on each other’s birthday, lest one feel left out. I don’t know if that is true in your family, but it is in ours. So the younger girl also got to choose a toy.

 As you can see from this photo, our girls have a dollhouse which needs to be continually replenished with new doll tenants.

The younger one is much quicker to decide, the older...well, not so quick. In discussing it with her dad we wonder if her problems with making a choice is that she is a perfectionist, and she does not want to get it wrong. But it was not just her who had a hard time deciding on this day. Just about every child who was in the store with a parent or grandparent (and there were at least a couple of dozen) were having the same problem.

What I heard were a lot of adults telling a lot of children words to the effect of, “Come on, we don’t have all day. Make up your mind.” Or, “You said you wanted a Barbie. Here are the Barbie dolls. So why are you looking at the Monster High School dolls?”

Or like one exasperated older man, “Now look, dammit, I’ve got a lot better things to do today that watch you look at every toy in this goddam store. MAKE UP YOUR MIND AND LET’S GET THE HELL OUT OF HERE!” Oh, wait, that was me who said that. Except I didn’t really say it. I thought it very strongly, though, hoping my ESP might plant the idea in my granddaughter’s mind.

Finally the choices were made and we headed out the door. Across the parking lot was a Barnes & Noble store. Knowing how much the older girl likes to read I found myself talking before I had thought it out: “Why don’t we go to the bookstore and let Grandpa buy you both a book?” And the same thing happened as in Toys “R” Us, but this time it was my doing. Eventually, though, even choices were finally made, except they both got more than one book. I like to encourage reading but I think some of it had to do with them not being able to make a final decision on just one book. And the experience of waiting in a bookstore is a lot different than waiting for a child to make up her mind in a toy store. In the bookstore I looked at art books, graphic novels, and even a couple of magazines while the children went about making their choices.

Children are not naturally able to make choices in such situations. They have not yet developed critical thinking abilities, which can weigh the relative benefits of one purchase to another. But adults who design and build toys trade on that childish immaturity. Every product for children is designed in such a way that it is all enticing, all exciting, all promising a level of happiness and a near-nirvana state if the child chooses it.

Children grow up. We eventually learn to be consumers and make wiser choices. Or do we? Products for adults are sold the way toys are sold, and often we pick them out the same way kids do. You will be happy, deliriously happy if you pick this car/detergent/smart phone/pair of shoes...etc., etc. We all know it isn’t possible to be totally satisfied because in this world of consumer products there is always something that is sold as better, more hip, more cool to own. Apple has been selling that throughout their history.

A Humbug kind of Christmas

Harvey Kurtzman, who created Mad in 1952, left his publisher, William M. Gaines, in 1956, and edited two issues of Trump, another humor magazine, for Playboy publisher, Hugh Hefner. Trump had high production values, like Playboy. (Kurtzman later went to work for Playboy producing the comic feature, “Little Annie Fanny.”) After Trump Kurtzman and fellow artists formed a company to publish Humbug.

When I saw Humbug in 1957 it was on the comic book spinner racks. Retailers really did not know what to do with it. It was the size of a comic book, printed on cheap paper in two colors. It was printed and distributed by Charlton, along with their regular line of comic books. But unlike the full-color comic books which cost 10¢, Humbug was priced at 15¢.

Mad, which was very popular, was magazine-sized, cost 25¢, and had several imitators. It went on the magazine rack along with issues of Time, and yes, even Playboy. After nine issues in the comic book size, Humbug went to a full-size format with issue number 10, and lasted two issues priced at 25¢. Humbug died. The folks in on the enterprise lost their shirts.

This Christmas issue of Humbug, is a nostalgic favorite of mine. I bought it off the comic book spinner in my local drugstore in Seattle, Washington, in late 1957. I was 10-years-old, did not understand all the humor, but was fascinated by it, anyway. I have scanned my personal copy of the magazine.

In 2008 Humbug was reprinted.  The folks at Fantagraphics Books published all of the issues of Humbug, using original art when possible (see my last post, which features some original art from Humbug, by Jack Davis.) They did a wonderful job and created a two-volume slip-cased, deluxe set. It is published in a format that its creators could not have dreamed of nearly 60 years ago.