Throwback Thursday: this 1970’s Slinky commercial!

Slinkys are still sold today — but I’ll always remember it as a staple of the 1970’s, when I was a toddler.  It was one of my favorite toys.

I remember occasionally needing help from an older sibling to get it to “walk” down the stairs, as it was intended to do.  (Again, I was never the brightest bulb in the socket.)  I also frequently got it so tangled up that it looked like one of those razored traps from the modern “Saw” films — and an adult had to fix that.  But it was always fun while it lasted.

There’s a pretty cute story about the toy’s origin right here at The National Museum of Play.

 

Cover to “House of Mystery” #171, Nick Cardy, 1967

DC Comics.

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“April is the cruellest month …”

“April is the cruellest month …”

— from the opening line of T.S. Eliot’s “The Waste Land,” 1922

 

 

Illustration of Cassandra from “The Stratford Gallery,” 1834

Engraving.  New York, D. Appleton and Co.  I am uncertain as to the artist.  It may be K. Meadows or W. H. Mote.

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“May you live in interesting times.”

“May you live in interesting times.”

— Chinese curse (possibly apocryphal?).  There is an interesting examination of the saying’s possible origins here.

 

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Photo credit: By Amannainani – Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=49701557

Cover to “Night Nurse” #3, Win Mortimer, 1972

Marvel Comics.

A2

“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer.”

“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,
“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease.”

—  excerpt from W. H. Auden’s O Where Are You Going?

 

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“Contagion is a Despot Poet,” by Eric Robert Nolan

Contagion is a despot poet. It
releases fatal verses from its throne.
Its alabaster palm will lean to sow
what words will wind within their binding strictures

each arriving low, in permanent cursive,
at the many nadirs of pages — each
to immutable conclusion,
to shared, indelible metaphor:

dirges upon April mornings
eulogies at afternoon
rimes to loss at rayless night, as stars,
so slowly overflying a singing, dim landscape of endowed poetry,

are indistinct, indifferent.

 

(c) Eric Robert Nolan 2020

 

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Photo credit: By Helgi Halldórsson from Reykjavík, Iceland – darkness, CC BY-SA 2.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33782100

Poster for “28 Weeks Later” (2007)

20th Century Fox/Fox Atomic.

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Nurse Your Favorite Heresies in Whispers