You Can Take It With You

Years and years ago, when Massachusetts voters were considering a soda can and bottle refund law called The Bottle Bill, there was substantial opposition from an "astro-turf" lobbying group that produced a series of commercials threatening the most awful consequences if the law were enacted.

On television, we were presented with scenes of a frail elderly woman precariously making her way down a narrow steep rickety staircase with a wheeled shopping cart loaded to overflowing with returnable soda cans and bottles, headed for a certain crash, no doubt followed by death or at least a hip replacement.

On radio, we heard dire threats that massive hoards of unwashed soda cans festering in supermarket storage rooms would breed new species of venomous, plague-carrying roaches.

Finally, a clever political activist/advertising copywriter fought back with a brilliant radio ad mocking the absurdity of these panic-mongering appeals.

"If the Bottle Bill passes, old ladies will fall down stairs! If the Bottle Bill passes, old ladies will fall UP stairs! Swarms of rats and roaches will infest grocery stores! The Black Plague!"

as he built to a hysterical climax,

"The White Plague! The Greeeeen Plaaaague!! Earthquakes!!! Floods!!! Tidal Waves!!!! GODZILLA!!!!"

he shrieked before, presumably, collapsing in exhaustion and terror.

It was brilliant, perfectly timed and perfectly pitched to puncture the nonsensical claims of the anti-Bottle Bill lobby. (Just how did that old lady get all those bottles up those narrow rickety stairs in the first place?) I admired the spot at the time, and had the privilege of meeting its creator a few months later. (My apologies to him, as I no longer remember his name, and can't find the old tape cassette holding my copy of the spot.) I've never forgotten how one really good ad can hit its bulls-eye.

Right now there's a new spot promoting "portable" health care, i.e. coverage not tied to your crappy job. It's playing at YouTube of course, and it might be the Godzilla spot for this campaign. It's pitch-perfect, funny, memorable, and makes a clear simple point. It's promoting Senator Ron Wyden's Healthy Americans Act, and it could be a winner.

CareYouKeep.com

The Bottle Bill? It passed, by a good margin. And when news organizations went to call or interview the opponents, they found... an empty office and an unanswered phone with no forwarding information. Not a concerned citizen in sight, just the leavings of an industry political front group. It's been more than 20 years now, and still no attacks by Godzilla.

A Little Quiz -- another hint

Regarding that Little Quiz from a couple weeks ago, here's another hint. (Although, really, this makes it too easy.) Anyway, the hint: consider a sequence of numbers that begins 2, 80, 53, 34... (okay, here's the rest...) ...92, 93, 94.

His cold dead hands...

No word on whether gun-control advocates finally took their opportunity.

A Little Quiz

List #1: Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn. List #2: All the other planets.

Question: what theme differentiates the two lists?

First prize, for the first correct reply: a very small prize. Second prize, for the next correct reply: an even smaller prize. Third prize: a smug look of dismissal from the other two winners.

If needed, a barely-useful hint will be posted tomorrow.

---

Okay, here's the hint: if you include the Sun and the Moon, they would both be on List No. 2. And now you really have no excuse for not getting this.

The Adventures of Phil in the Blanks

Let me steer you to Tuna Fish Ice Cream, the new blog of one Philip A. Goldman, formerly of ImprovBoston, Indonesia, and points unknown.

Sometime around the winding down of the whole Iran-Contra thing, Phil abruptly left town and was thereafter only sporadically heard from, usually in unlikely rumors from mutual friends. "Phil's in Hawaii, living in a tree," or "Phil's working as a waiter in Hong Kong," or "Phil's on a tiny island, in a Buddhist monastery," or "Phil's in Thailand, working as a jungle guide". With Phil, you never knew.

Well, Phil has returned from wherever to someplace nearer, and fortunately for all of us, has begun to write about his adventures in his new blog. You're probably not doing anything more interesting at the moment, so go read it. And tell him I said hello.

Here, let me help you

What they sent:

> WEBMAIL MIT EDUCATION:
> P O Box 02139-4307 77 massachusetts avenue cambridge, ma
> (Customer Services)
>
>              INTERNATIONAL WORLD  SCAM  ALERT
>
> This is to inform you that mails are been sent to email address all  
> over the world and they are all scams. So be more carefull on how you 
>  get along with them. So please you have to co-operate with us on how 
>  we fight them please send the following informations so we put up a  
> scam alert on your emil address....
> Alert Code:,iwsamitc175
>
> 1.Name in full:
> 2.Home Address:
> 3.Age:
> 4.Grade level:
> 5.username:
> 6.E-mail password:
> 7.Phone Number:
> 8.Nationality:
> 9.Sex:
>
> please contact as soon;
>
>
> Email:mitcustomer_service@yahoo.com
> Phone Number:+191 73336663
> Remember to quote your alert code number in all correspondence.
>
>
> Sincerely,
> Mr. Gate Woods
> WEBMAIL MIT.EDU

What I replied:

If you can't even the good English being write, then I am not forward the believing of you. Maybe your brain picture over me is stupid, but that truth of reality is not of it! Seeing spam into your message.

with cromulence,

Mister Recipient

Sometimes I just like to help the Russians and the Nigerizens with their Englishing lessons.

Staking one out

Okay, I'm planting my flag here, so if anybody else gets the same idea later on, they'll have to recognize my prior claim.

A couple days ago, I was watching some damnfool on teevee talk about, and threaten to prepare, a "Turducken" -- which is of course that well-known and popular dinner entree, the chicken, stuffed inside a duck, jammed into a turkey. ("That was a nice enough turkey dinner, Louise, but wouldn't it have been better if there'd been a whole duck stuffed inside of it? With a chicken inside of that?") Lovely. Just the fact that the new made-up word begins with "Turd" should have given someone second thoughts, wouldn't you think? But no.

Okay, so stuffing one fowl into another into a third is kind of impressive, but does it really stretch the boundaries of abusive, post-modern gluttony? I think not. Hence my new culinary concept...

Dear friends, let me present the "Ewebuffapotamus" which is, obviously, a whole sheep stuffed into a buffalo (preferably the north American buffalo, or 'bison') and all of that wedged into the boneless carcass of a hippopotamus.

Say it with me, "Ewebuffapotamus". Melodious, and perhaps even mouth-watering. Tonight the world changes. At this moment, as I type this, a Google search of "Ewebuffaotamus" returns zero results. But in just a little while, all that will change. We are at the dawn of a new era.

And, dear friends, need it stop there? Why prepare and serve a mere Ewebuffapotamus, when with a little extra preparation you might create a Pigewebuffapotamus, or the exotic Platypewebuffapotamus, or the down-home Squirrecoonewebuffapotamus, or for a larger crowd, even the Bunnypigewebuffapotamusephant?

The frontiers of culinary science have been forced wide open. And now a piglet, stuffed inside a sheep, shoved into a bison, crammed into a hippo, has been thrust down its waiting gullet. Let us rejoice.