Happy Thanksgiving! Enjoy this 1984 holiday commercial from Carvel Ice Cream. (I am linking here to the Youtube channel for The Museum of Classic Chicago Television.)
Tag Archives: 1984
The Ministry of Power?
Seriously, though, has anyone ever noticed that the building for Appalachian power has some goddam Stalinist architecture?
It’s like something out of Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Album cover for Depeche Mode’s “Some Great Reward” (1984)
Mute Records.
Poster for “Giorgio Moroder Presents Fritz Lang’s Metropolis” (1984)
Special edition of 1927 film distributed by Parufamet Films.
“I LOVE LAMP.”
Are these the coolest Valentines goodies ever?!?! That is a Himalayan Salt Lamp up top and that’s a big shiny lapel pin on the bottom. I think the lamp looks like one of the Sankara Stones from “Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom” (1984).
And I think the anatomically accurate heart looks like one of the metal hearts created by Dr. Jacob Farmer in my horror tale, “At the End of the World, My Daughter Wept Metal.” My Valentine didn’t even mean it that way — she just thought the pin was funny … which just kinda makes it awesomely, ominously meta.
Now whoever sees me in my overcoat is forewarned that my hubris will destroy the world. (Clock’s ticking, people.)
“It was the alert, cold face of a man of about five-and-thirty.”
“It occurred to Winston that for the first time in his life he was looking, with knowledge, at a member of the Thought Police.”
— George Orwell, “Nineteen Eighty-Four”
Fun Social Media Game — What is Your Pandemic IQ?
1) Take the number of days you’ve quarantined.
2) Add the number of times you’ve washed your hands today.
3) Divide by Covid-19.
4) Multiply by the number of typos you found in Donald Trump’s last tweet.
5) Subtract by the number of times you tried to scratch your nose through your mask today, because you are an IMBECILE.
6) Multiply by Steely Dan’s “Hey 19.”
7) Add 1984.
8) How do I love thee? (Count the ways and then add them.)
9) Divide and conquer.
10) Goto Line 10.
11) Add a hominem.
12) Explain the steps you took, it in the voice of a muppet vampire who LOVES TO COUNT.
13) Integers. Or something.
14) Cube 2: Hypercube.
15) Subtract Matchbox 20.
16) Snap your fingers wearing the Infinity Gauntlet — so that it’s perfectly balanced, as all things should be.
17) Explain the math of this to Private Rieben. (Show your work.)
18) If your answer is all mixed up by 311, you’ve got to trust your instinct and let go of regret. (You’ve got to bet on yourself now, Star. ‘Cause that’s your best bet. WATCH ME NOW.)
Throwback Thursday: “Where’s the beef?!” (1984)
Here’s the 81-year-old Clara Peller performing her iconic line for Wendy’s restaurants, “Where’s the beef?!” This was arguably the most memorable ad campaign of the 1980’s.
The commercials are pretty funny — the first two are, anyway. All three aired in 1984. Peller, who had emphysema, went on to star in other commercials, including those for Prego spaghetti sauce, Praise dog food, and Ben’s insect repellent. All were allusions to her breakout role for the restaurant (and were presumably unauthorized); Wendy’s then ended its relationship with her.
Cover to “Berni Wrightson, Master of the Macabre” #4, 1984
Pacific.
“The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power.”
Now I will tell you the answer to my question. It is this. The Party seeks power entirely for its own sake. We are not interested in the good of others; we are interested solely in power, pure power.
What pure power means you will understand presently. We are different from the oligarchies of the past in that we know what we are doing. All the others, even those who resembled ourselves, were cowards and hypocrites. The German Nazis and the Russian Communists came very close to us in their methods, but they never had the courage to recognize their own motives. They pretended, perhaps they even believed, that they had seized power unwillingly and for a limited time, and that just around the corner there lay a paradise where human beings would be free and equal.
We are not like that. We know that no one ever seizes power with the intention of relinquishing it. Power is not a means; it is an end.
One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship. The object of persecution is persecution. The object of torture is torture. The object of power is power. Now you begin to understand me.
― from George Orwell’s “1984”
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 