Throwback Thursday: Bazooka gum!!

It was always the cheapest candy at the store — it cost a nickel in the 1980’s, if memory serves.  And you got a free comic strip too, along with a fortune!!  We had an unwritten rule on the street I grew up on — you had to pass the comic around to whatever kids you were with so that they could read it too.

It tasted pretty damned good too.

They actually stopped including the comic strips in 2012, and now there are puzzles in the wrapper.  (Rome burns.)  But now, confusingly, you can buy a “wallet pack” of the gum in which they do include the comics?

I got a bunch of it in my Christmas candy.  That was awesome.



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Photo credit: Parka Lewis at English Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 3.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0&gt;, via Wikimedia Commons

He wants you to scratch his belly here, I think.

I just found this picture cleaning out some computer files.  It’s from … 2017, I think?  Was that when we had the locusts?  I don’t know.  I’m losing track of all the various portents and apocalyptic events.

I know the whole raining frogs thing hasn’t happened yet.  That I would have remembered.



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“After the Rain,” Arkhip Kuindzhi, 1879

Oil on paper mounted on canvas.

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The old Raj Food Mart on Shenandoah Avenue, Roanoke, VA

This is from a few years ago, before the bodega was remodeled (and maybe under previous ownership?).  This is a stone’s throw from Peters Creek Road.



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“Le pont de l’Europe,” Louis Anquetin, 1889

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Is it really a “fortune” if I knew it already?

“Never underestimate the power of sleep.”  I’m right there with ya on this one, Bazooka Joe.

Yes, I am a 50-year-old man who is not only chewing Bazooka Joe gum, but also reading the comic strip.  What of it?

And, as far as the fortunes go, I’ll bet their success rate is as good as astrology’s.



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“Spirit,” George Roux, 1885

Oil on canvas.

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I don’t follow this rabid woman. Yet she is constantly there.

Her leering, simian face has eyes that are paradoxically both vacant and filled with primitive hatred.

If I wanted that face glaring after me, I’d punch an albino silverback gorilla and abscond with its children.

Why, Elon? Why have you unleashed your online MAGA Frankenstein to grunt and bark and parry after my sanity?



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Purple haze.

I don’t know what the hell I did to my computer camera — or if it just came like this.  Everything is hazy.  I might have cleaned it with something I shouldn’t have, and damaged the lens?  I’ve heard that’s a thing.

Kinda sucks.


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Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander, photo by Felice Beato, circa 1868

V0037661 Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander
V0037661 Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander Credit: Wellcome Library, London. Wellcome Images images@wellcome.ac.uk http://wellcomeimages.org Koboto Santaro, a Japanese military commander, wearing traditional armour. Coloured photograph by Felice Beato, ca. 1868 1868 By: Felice BeatoJapanese landscapes and portraits. Published: – Copyrighted work available under Creative Commons Attribution only licence CC BY 4.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

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