Category Archives: Over the Transom

Piggly Wiggly Sewing Kit

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Something new on the Weather Underground forecast page for my area this Maundy Thursday morning. A screen shot:

Obviously a day to stay in if you can, for a number of reasons. Back to posting on Easter Monday. A good Easter to all.

There are many oddities around the house. Why have it any other way? Such as a Piggly Wiggly sewing kit, or you could call it a needle kit. Scanned here open, with the back on the left and the front on the right. Or reverse and observe.

Inside the kit. Some needles still in place. A threader, too.My guess is that my grandmother picked it up at a San Antonio Piggly Wiggly in the 1950s, early ’60s at the latest. Most of the time I believe she shopped at the nearby Handy-Andy in Alamo Heights, but she must have occasionally patronized Piggly Wiggly, which existed in South Texas at the time (but no more: HEB is king in that part of the country).

At some point, maybe after grandma died, my mother removed it to her house; and now that’s what I’ve done. I can date it with some certainty to that decade because of a few details. Green Stamps don’t narrow it down that much, since they were around from the 1930s to the ’80s, but I smile at the mention of them anyway.

On the inside it says: Frank Kraus, Los Angeles 36, which puts it before zip codes and during postal zones (1943-63). Since the kit was made in West Germany, that puts it after the war, in fact after the formation of the BRD in 1949. Must have been a product of the postwar recovery, when West German industry was making whatever they could for whomever they could, just as Japanese industry did at the time.

As for Frank Kraus, I’d guess he was the importer. Possibly, but only possibly, this fellow. Or him, though he left California at some point. A little looking around, such as at Esty, reveals that Frank Kraus, whoever he was and wherever he rests now, had his name on other small sewing kits from West Germany.

Movies Unlimited, April 2020

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Today = an actual spring day. Even when a little wind blew and the sun was behind clouds, it was still pleasantly warm. Lunch again on the deck. Breakfast, too.

The April 2020 edition of Movies Unlimited came in the mail not long ago. I will assume for now that the dread coronavirus doesn’t last long on paper and handle my mail. (That’s what it should be called, the dread coronavirus. It was good enough for the pirate Roberts.)

Sounds like a magazine, but it’s really a catalog produced by a company of that name in Itasca, Illinois, only a short drive from where I live. I don’t remember the last time I got one. They come now and then, not monthly. But MU seems optimistic that someday, in a freak of geezer inspiration, I’ll order one of its DVDs or Blu-ray discs. Maybe I will.

“The book you’re holding is NOT the complete Movies Unlimited Catalog,” the company proclaims on the inside cover. “This Is!” it says, with an arrow pointing to a picture of a 432-page catalog available for $8.95. Order it now, it says, “and get ready to be movied like you’ve never been movied before!”

Well, no. But the free smaller catalog has its interests. In fact, MU offers a decent selection — old and new, famed and obscure, color and black-and-white, movies and TV shows, domestic and foreign, in a variety of genres. Much of it for an older audience, such as the wide selection of 20th-century TV series, but not entirely geared to geezers, with a sizable selection of 21st-century output.

There are near-full pages devoted to Studio Ghibli, Disney, the Three Stooges, Ray Harryhausen, film noir, John Wayne, Dick Tracy, Hammer, Little House on the Prairie, Audie Murphy and more, and one full page each devoted to Martin & Lewis and Dark Shadows.

That last one struck me as an oddity, but I guess they know their market. Mostly women roughly my age, I think. Maybe more men than I’d expect, those who watched it in secret during its initial run. That didn’t include me. I think I saw an episode and decided that was enough.

Anyway, someone interested in owning the complete original series on DVD will have to pay $479.99 for 131 discs totaling 470 hours, “packaged in a coffin-shaped, collector’s set and including a 100-page booklet.” If that’s too much, 26 separate collections are for sale for $31.99 each, or you can buy Dark Shadows Bloopers & Treasures.

Quieter Spring, But Not Silent

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For the first time this year, since sometime in October probably, I sat out on the deck and ate lunch. Conditions weren’t perfect for it, but good enough at about 12:30 this afternoon under partly cloud skies. When the sun came out from behind occasional clouds and there was no wind, the deck was a pleasant place to be for a few minutes, lunch or not.

Out in the yard, the dog lolled in the greening grass a time or two. Rabbits have been spotted, though not by the dog today. Early hatching insects can be seen here and there, and early flowers are well established. Birds are noisy in their quest for food and to make baby birds. The only thing missing from the usual early spring sounds are those from the playground behind the house.

The Grim Fate of the Ace of Diamonds, Who Surely Had It Coming

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Back in the spring of 2003, while visiting Manhattan with a coworker, we came across a street vendor selling most-wanted Iraqi playing cards. Officially “personality identification playing cards,” according to Wiki. I’m a little surprised the U.S. Army didn’t refer to them as PIPCs (pronounced PIE-picks). “Sergeant, distribute two PIPCs to each man before 1800 hours.” “Yes, sir.”

I bought a pack from the vendor and it’s still kicking around the house somewhere, along with other souvenir playing cards that I’ve acquired over the years. Such as a pack depicting Elvis — every card a King? — and another one from Mexico City with the Aztec Sun Stone on each card.

That purchase seems like a long time ago. Maybe because it was, though more psychologically than chronologically.

As for the Ace of Diamonds, Abid Al-Hamid Mahmud al-Tikriti, certainly a man with much blood on his hands, a later Iraqi government (2012) showed him the business end of a rope, though that was some years after his boss met the same end.

The Location of Wales

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I have two desks in my office, both of which have drawers that are full of the debris of a home office. That includes a drawer with a lot of business cards in it. Sometimes I throw some of them out, since they date back to the early 2000s, an eon ago in the business world.

Jobs change, titles change, phone numbers change, email addresses change: all the ingredients of bum information in data bases. In some theoretical sense, my drawer of cards is an ancient analog database, but really it’s just a pile of cards. Including one with this back:

Unusual to find a map on a business card. It came with some material from the Chicago office of an organization promoting business development in Wales. It’s graphically interesting and it conveys some possibly useful information, namely that Wales isn’t that far from London or Dublin or various well-known European cities. Then again, it’s Western Europe. Nothing is that far apart in modern terms anyway.

Maybe the main reason the organization included a map is that they were tired of people saying, “Wales, huh? Don’t you guys have a Prince? Now, let’s see — I’m not sure where that is.”

Winterlude ’20

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Though it hasn’t been a harsh winter, it has been winter, so time for a short hiatus. Back posting around March 1.

It turned out to be a good idea to know as little as possible about Parasite before seeing that movie, which we did last weekend, weeks after we’d originally considered going. All that time, I did my best not to read about it. Not knowing the arc of the story helped maintain the suspense, which was as riveting as anything Hitchcock did, especially after the midway twist.

I did know that the movie came highly recommended, and by sources I respect more than the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. Could it, I wondered, be better than 1917? It was. That’s a remarkable achievement all by itself. One of those rare movies that is as good as people say.

I’ve updated my vanity North American map again.
The key to the colors is here. The color scheme is wholly idiosyncratic, so I do have certain ideas about certain places. For instance, if I spent some time in following places, I’d color the respective states blue: the Northwoods of Minnesota; Norfolk and vicinity in Virginia; Mobile, Alabama; and Tuscon, Arizona. If I spent a night in West Virginia or Delaware or Rhode Island or Manitoba, they’d be orange. Just means I need to get out more.

Though cold today, the sun was out. Time to take my new garden gnome outside.

Gnomish Stalin was a Christmas president from my brother Jay, shipped to me from the UK. Cornwall, specifically. For all I know, Cornwall might be the world hub of eccentric garden gnomes.
This year, I got Jay a Russian nesting doll — a political matryoshka doll, made in Russia. He sent me a picture. Nice set, though you’d think there would be room for Khrushchev at least, whom I’d pick for inclusion over Yeltsin.
Coincidence that we both sent Russian gifts — political Russian-themed gifts, no less? Or synchronicity? Who knows, I’m just glad to have a new conversation piece for my summertime visitors.

The Perfect Man

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Yesterday I visited one of the major drug store chains for reasons unrelated to chocolate, but also took a look at the discounted Valentine’s Day candies. Among the supply, mostly Russell Stover, I found The Perfect Man.

Not something I’d ever seen before. There was one left, so I bought it for the reasonable price of 34 cents. It’s one ounce of milk chocolate made by an outfit called Treat Street.

The About Us page on Treat Street’s web site is one of those long on marketing and short on actual facts, but there seems to be an affiliate (parent company? subsidiary?) called My Favorite Company, which is based in Los Angeles. Anyway, the two entities’ specialty is novelty chocolate and other confections.

The Perfect Man, as you can see from this 9.5-oz. version, is wearing only boxers with hearts on them. (What, no version wearing gold briefs?) The package also says Made in Germany, but I have my suspicions that the real makers are a breakaway faction of Oompa-Loompas tired of working for that slavedriver Wonka.

The First Robo-Call, Others to Follow

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A few above-freezing days lately melted our snow cover. That’ll never do, Old Man Winter mutters, and so this morning we had a fresh few inches. At least it’s light snow this time, and proved fairly easy to remove from the driveway and sidewalk.

This was fun to write. Since then, a reader suggested Lex Luthor as a real estate villain. In Superman (1978), he hatched a scheme to sink most of California so his desert land would be the new West Coast, and thus instantly worth a fortune. Not a bad suggestion for a villain.

Still, Luthor’s plot is comic-book logic for you. I’d think the destruction of California would set off a deep economic panic worldwide, and so it might be years before much is developed anywhere. Also, people might be a mite skittish about repopulating the “new” West Coast, even after the economy recovered.

Not long ago, we got the first political robo-call of the year. From an unexpected source. I quote in full:

“Hi, this is Jessica with Mike Bloomberg 2020. We have brand-new yard signs. Will you show your support with a yard sign at your home? Go to w-w-w Mike Bloomberg dotcom slash 2020 slash yard hyphen signs to request one now. Thank you and have a great day. Paid for by Mike Bloomberg 2020.”

Watch the Reindeer Melt! Days of Fun

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Ann brought this to my attention earlier this month, at a crafts superstore I rarely go to, but from which she wanted something. On display was an item that seemed to be sold for Christmas, but which by January was at a deep discount.

One of the stranger holiday items I saw this season, or any holiday season, really. A reindeer figure. Build it! Watch it melt! Watch it melt? Watch it melt?

Walmart’s marketing text about the item is positively demented, which I guess is fitting: “Build the reindeer and watch it melt magically! Fun for days. Completely reusable. Keep building and watch it melt over and over! Perfect stocking stuffer! Miracle Melters! Reindeer! Build it and Watch it Melt!”

Sure enough, someone has made a video about this — toy. I can’t say that I watched all of it, skipping around some, but the point of the item still eludes me. Do reindeer melt in dark Sámi folktales?

Falun Dafa by USPS

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Winter hasn’t been very bitter so far. Yet. All of last week’s light snow has melted. But the polar vortex hammer could still drop. Hard.

Back to posting on January 21. I take holidays where I can get ’em, even in the stony bleak mid-winter.

The following is an example of a small item, a throw-away item — literally, though I’m going to put it in the blue recycle bin — with a long story trailing behind it. Today in the mail I received a high-quality pamphlet, 16 glossy pages, rich bright colors, advertising the Shen Yun dance show in the Chicago area this spring. It’s merely the latest example of advertising created by what must be a deep marketing budget for that show.

Mostly I’ve been ignoring the marketing. Maybe it’s the oversell. “A Life-Changing Experience,” the cover proclaims. Gee, I hope not. Inside: “A Gift from the Heavens,” “Watch 5,000 years unfold before your eyes,” “the Divine Origin of a Glorious Civilization.” Sure, whatever you say.

It’s probably a corker of a show, if you like that kind of spectacle, though I doubt — as the pamphlet implies visually — that any of the dancers can actually fly. Then again, I suppose a fantasy counterpart culture of imperial China has some appeal. Just not for me. Well, I might go if I didn’t have to pay.

More interesting to me is text box on the last page. It says, in bold letters: CANNOT BE SEEN IN COMMUNIST CHINA.

“Traditional Chinese culture — with its deep spiritual roots and profound worldview — was displaced by communism in China. While Shen Yun cannot perform in mainland China today, we are reviving this precious heritage and sharing it with the world.”

Hm. I looked a little further. The return address for the pamphlet, for it did come in the mail, cites the Mid-USA Falun Dafa Association as the sender.

Ah. Falun Dafa (Gong), whom the Chinese government hates so much. Seems like the show, then, is a way for the religion, persecuted as it is in China, to poke the Chinese government in the eye. That’s a sentiment we can all get behind, but I’m still not paying to see the show.