Friday, December 12, 2014

Not Much In the Overnight Mail

Well, not much that would be of general interest, anyhoo.  That said, there was this from the Usual USAF Source:

US Air Force crews ferried two MC-130J Commando IIs, assigned to Air Force Special Operations Command, including the one shown here, from the Lockheed Martin Aeronautics facility in Marietta, Ga., on Dec. 5, 2014, to RAF Mildenhall, England. Lockheed Martin photo.

That looks like a giant slinky trying to eat a Herky-Bird.

The only other thing in the overnight mail was a link to a short article at NPR about catalogs.  The first grafs:
Many things made with paper have become relics because of computers and the Internet: the Rolodex, multivolume encyclopedias, even physical maps.

Now take a look in your mailbox or somewhere around your house. There's a good chance you'll see a shopping catalog, maybe a few of them now that it's the holiday season.
OK, I looked and found four catalogs... one from LL Bean, one from Land's End, one from cigar.com, and another cigar catalog from an outfit called Thompson's.  That was it, and I haven't cracked any of those as yet. That doesn't mean I don't use 'em; I do.  My catalog consumption is way, waaay down from Former Happy Days when I'd receive at least 15 to 20 of the things each and every month.  And I remember, quite fondly, the day the Sears Big Book hit our mailbox back when I was a kid... especially when the fam'bly was stationed overseas and we pretty much LIVED out of the Sears Roebuck catalog.  There was a reading/browsing hierarchy associated with the Sears catalog: Mom got it first, then Dad, then us kids.  Woe be unto you if you tried to browse the catalog before Mom said you could.  Death would have been preferable to what would have happened to you...

And so it goes.  I might be back with a video later; it seems The Tube o' You isn't functioning properly at the moment.

7 comments:

  1. OK, first, I'm flummoxed. WHY is there a giant slinky?

    As to catalogues, we get a couple a day, at least. That's because we do shop out of them quite a bit around the holidays. The SEARS, alas, is not among them. That was the big guy when I was a kid (Spiegel was the other, although looking it up just now I see it was supposedly a women's fashion place, so perhaps I'm remembering that one for different reasons) and browsing the pages and pages of toys was something that could make an entire day pleasurable for a kid like me.

    (By the way, I can never let this pass without mentioning it when the opportunity comes. Chicago, 60609. That was the zip code for Spiegel. I was brainwashed, via TV commercials, so early in life that I remember it to this day. As a matter of fact, I cannot even think the word "Spiegel" without immediately adding "Chicago, 60609". On the other hand, I can't name half my cousins, but they came into my life later than Spiegel.)

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    1. That's water vapor condensing in the propeller vortices.

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    2. Re: zip codes - Funny thing, I still dial Alpine 2 when I call my brother (AL2-XXXX), I think they got rid of the Alpine name in the 60's :-)

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  2. You might enjoy this site. Lots of old Christmas catalogues to look through. http://www.wishbookweb.com/

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