nancynall.com » Evolution and solar radiation.
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Evolution and solar radiation.

A while back I believe I men­tioned that scrap­ping is so vir­u­lent here that busi­nesses have taken to secur­ing their rooflines — the fron­tier that must be crossed to get at the valu­able rooftop air con­di­tion­ers, with their coils of tasty, yummy cop­per — with razor wire. That was so 2006. Note the adap­ta­tion of this gas station/mini mart on the Grosse Pointe bor­der:

A taste­ful cage. Adap­ta­tion! There’s hope for us yet.

In honor of Hell Week, more three-dot linka­li­cious­ness:

First came the earth­quakes, great heav­ings of the earth the made a mock­ery of all man’s works. San­dra Bul­lock won the Oscar for wear­ing a blonde wig and sport­ing the worst south­ern accent since com­mu­nity the­ater. But mankind didn’t know it was doomed, that this truly was the first rum­blings of that rough beast, its hour come round at last, until sunspots drove all the Toy­otas crazy.

Roy Edroso is leav­ing New York for love. Best of luck, Roy. That must be some love to trade Brook­lyn for Bryan (Texas). He’ll still be blog­ging, at least until he gets shot in a bar for being a filthy hip­pie.

The New York Times busi­ness sec­tion takes a look at the sticky topic of fem­i­nine hygiene adver­tis­ing. Hmm. Well. OK:

Mer­rie Har­ris, global busi­ness direc­tor at JWT, said that after being informed that it could not use the word vagina in adver­tis­ing by three broad­cast net­works, it shot the ad cited above with the actress instead say­ing “down there,” which was rejected by two of the three net­works. (Both Ms. Har­ris and rep­re­sen­ta­tives from the brand declined to spec­ify the net­works.)

“It’s very funny because the whole spot is about cen­sor­ship,” Ms. Har­ris said. “The whole cat­e­gory has been very euphemistic, or pater­nal­is­tic even, and we’re say­ing, enough with the euphemisms, and get over it. Tam­pon is not a dirty word, and nei­ther is vagina.”

I’d like to see the script that uses that word before I pass judg­ment. Vagina may not be a dirty word, but it’s cer­tainly an overused one. I’ve car­ried one around every day of my life, but it only took about 18 months from the day you started hear­ing it on broad­cast tele­vi­sion to get thor­oughly sick of it, espe­cially at an all-star event like a Joan Rivers roast. I’m with the screen­writer of “The Oppo­site of Sex” on that one:

Lucia: Vagina, vagina, vagina. Does that word do any­thing for you?
Bill Tru­itt: I don’t think it does much for any­one, gay or straight.

The ad exec­u­tive com­plains you can’t say “vagina” in a tam­pon ad, but I’m not sure I want to see it there. “Buy Tam­pax tam­pons! Your vagina will thank you!” (That could work, actu­ally.)

J.C. was clean­ing out his video archive and sent this. Always nice to remem­ber the good times.

Posted on Tuesday, March 16th, 2010 at 9:37 am in Current events, Detroit life. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.


41 responses to
“Evolution and solar radiation.”

  1. Peter said on March 16th, 2010 at 9:50 am

    Thanks for the photo – I’m send­ing it to some of my clients.

    I’ve done a few projects for mechan­i­cal con­trac­tors who need a per­mit to replace the units that have been van­dal­ized. I’m still stunned at the lengths that some scav­engers will go through to get the cop­per. On one job, the only way I could check the dam­age was to sit in a har­ness and be brought up to the area BY A CRANE. On another project, I was shown where the cop­per, the remain­der of the con­denser and the scav­enger all wound up – at the bot­tom of a shaft.

    They’re lucky to get $100.00 for the cop­per, while the owner will need to pay at least $10,000.00 to get the unit replaced.

    The sad­dest part is that more often that not, the local street gangs will wait until the cop­per has been brought down from the roof, then steal it from the orig­i­nal scav­enger.

  2. Dorothy said on March 16th, 2010 at 9:52 am

    Did your heart catch just a lit­tle when you saw Spriggy jump­ing towards the cam­era? And my good­ness, the big brown eyes of baby Kate! What a cutie!

  3. Jeff Borden said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:07 am

    Peter,
    A friend of mine who lived way north in Man­hat­tan had a father who was a limo dri­ver. One morn­ing he went out to the car and it wouldn’t start. He popped the hood and found his bat­tery had been stolen. He replaces the bat­tery, dri­ves to work. Next morn­ing? Same thing. The thieves had stolen a bunch of old bat­ter­ies from cars on the block know­ing the own­ers would have to replace them. It was the brand new bat­ter­ies they were seek­ing.

  4. brian stouder said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:14 am

    Any­body who has watched a Mucinex com­mer­cial, with the talk­ing sub­ver­sive din­gle­ber­ries, would be slow to loosen (so to speak) on the word ‘vagina’, and see what they unleash upon us.

  5. nancy said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:38 am

    Lately thieves are steal­ing cat­alytic con­vert­ers from parked cars, too. They get under­neath and just saw them off the exhaust sys­tem, approx­i­mately a jillion-dollar repair for a few bucks worth of what­ever metal is inside.

  6. John said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:45 am

    Those talk­ing mucous globs are dis­gust­ing, yet they are not din­gle berries. For some rea­son, that com­mer­cial reminds me of the TV show Dinosaurs from almost 20 years ago.

  7. nancy said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:48 am

    Din­gle­ber­ries are the cling-ons on the lit­tle ani­mated bear’s butt in the toilet-paper com­mer­cial. Alan howls about that every time it comes on.

  8. moe99 said on March 16th, 2010 at 10:58 am

    Anal humor was very big with my younger broth­ers grow­ing up. Dingleberry(ies) was a word used fol­lowed by much laugh­ter. My bros even clas­si­fied their farts into 3 cat­e­gories: Toby (for the noisy ones), Rose (sweet and sticky), and SBD (silent but deadly). Good thing they have their older sis­ter around to remind them of the good old days.

  9. Jolene said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:01 am

    The inge­nu­ity of peo­ple steal­ing old bat­ter­ies to get nwa ones is impres­sive. Reminds me of kids who went to great lengths to cheat in school. Always seemed to me that it required at least as much effort as doing the work and tak­ing the test, but I sup­pose the idea of get­ting away w/ some­thing made it more attrac­tive.

  10. coozledad said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:16 am

    My wife was read­ing me some of the text from a box of san­i­tary nap­kins and from the sound of it you’d think they were equipped with with nano AC units:”Inspired by high-performance ath­letic fab­rics, Ther­mo­con­trol tech­nol­ogy quickly pulls mois­ture away from the body and allows air cir­cu­la­tion.” For some rea­son I was pic­tur­ing some old guy at the raque­t­ball court with a bunch of them taped to his chest.

  11. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:16 am

    I annoys me when vagina is used to mean vulva. I find myself try­ing to visu­al­ize how some sit­u­a­tions involv­ing a vagina could pos­si­bly have hap­pened with­out seri­ous con­tor­tions, an OB/Gyn’s exam table, or at least a step lad­der. Then I real­ize it’s a vulva, not a vagina that is being talked about.

  12. MichaelG said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:30 am

    I’m par­tic­u­larly enchanted by the toe­nail fun­gus com­mer­cials they seem to show only while I’m prepar­ing din­ner.

    TV is won­der­ful. They’ll show tor­ture, beat­ings, mur­der and other felo­nious activ­ity in lov­ing detail. But sex, (which is still legal in most places as far as I know) oh, no. That’s evil. Bog­gles the mind.

    My house was bur­gled last fall. They took TVs, stereo, com­puter, etc. I was very con­cerned after I had replaced every­thing that the bad guys would be look­ing for the brand new stuff as Jeff B. notes.

  13. brian stouder said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:39 am

    I gotta say – this has been an edu­ca­tional day at good ol’ nn.c! Now that I grasp din­gle­ber­ries(!), pos­si­bly Mary will enlarge upon the vulva (this reminds me of Sein­feld, and also over-stuffed loveseats, for some rea­son)

  14. Jenine said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:39 am

    @ 11 LA Mary, Right on! Vulva is a word I hope will get more use. It’s good to be spe­cific. In 1991 I saw a tiny lit­tle but­ton that I had to lean in to read: ‘Viva the Vulva!’ Yay. “Down there” makes me roll my eyes until they hurt.

  15. beb said on March 16th, 2010 at 11:55 am

    The teme today sounds like some­thing right up theal­ley for my wife, her two sis­ters and (alas) my daugh­ter. Vul­gar? I’d never call them that. I just die a lit­tle bit from embarass­ment.

  16. Scout said on March 16th, 2010 at 12:48 pm

    I used to have a Vulva. I had one of those cute boxy ones first, then I traded it in for the mid 80′s stream­lined ver­sion which I liked alot less.

  17. ROgirl said on March 16th, 2010 at 12:57 pm

    In the words of Eve Ensler: What do you think about your vagina?

  18. Deborah said on March 16th, 2010 at 1:07 pm

    Scout, I had to read your com­ment twice and then I laughed out loud (at the office so couldn’t explain why). Din­gle­ber­ries, Toby, Rose and SBD, not to men­tion old guys with Kotex taped to their chests… pure gold today!

  19. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 1:15 pm

    Scout, they have those cute sporty vul­vas now. Not so boxy.

  20. nancy said on March 16th, 2010 at 1:19 pm

    I once saw a spec ad online for Tam­pax — i.e., an ad done by for someone’s direct­ing port­fo­lio that the client passed on. A beau­ti­ful woman stood in front of a brick wall in a white bikini. She pulls down a pair of gog­gles, and is blasted with a vir­tual fire hose of red paint. It stops, she pulls off the gog­gles and looks down at her bikini bot­toms. They’re still pris­tine and white. Looks up, know­ing smile, Tam­pax logo, out. Not a word spo­ken, very clever, entirely on point. No one has to say “vagina” or “absorp­tion.” So of course they passed on it. Some­one might think Tam­pax pro­tects you from paint attacks, I guess.

  21. moe99 said on March 16th, 2010 at 1:44 pm

    My real name, Regina, always been pro­nounced with a long ‘e’ in place of the ‘i’. So, even though if we were in Canada the name would rhyme with vagina, mine does not. Plus, I am not the queen, as much as I might like to be.

  22. John said on March 16th, 2010 at 2:05 pm

    To moe: Dolores!

  23. Rana said on March 16th, 2010 at 2:32 pm

    Oh, gah, the toilet-paper bears. Those are dis­gust­ing. In our house­hold, we’re mildly bog­gled by the tout­ing of the absorbency of the stuff they hawk – I mean, you don’t want to be using waxed paper, but other things, like, I don’t know, cov­er­age, seem more impor­tant than absorbency in that par­tic­u­lar prod­uct. I mean, who dain­tily blots their ass with a sin­gle sheet, other than red bears with toilet-paper pills stuck to their butts?

  24. Dexter said on March 16th, 2010 at 2:37 pm

    I used to drive to both Chicago and Detroit about ten times each per year, and 25 years ago, even as the Sony Walk­man prod­ucts were at their zenith, in both cities many cars sported “absolutely no radio” on card­board signs; some­times a vari­a­tion. In Detroit the old clunk­ers were called HoopDees, and some­times I would see an old car with NO RADIO spray painted right onto the door. In those days, a dri­ver fre­quently car­ried a boom­box in the car and took it with him when he left the car.
    My brother was a sales­man who lived in NW Indi­ana and was in The Loop fre­quently.
    Once he parked in a sur­face lot to quickly deliver paper­work to a client, was gone ten minutes…smashed in side win­dow and the car cleaned out, brief­case, radar detec­tor, radio-tape combo…all but the cig lighter.
    Other times he had cars bro­ken into on the north side; cars just were never safely left unat­tended.

    Before that, in the late 1970s, bicy­cles were the big tar­get. I had a cou­ple stolen right here in my lit­tle town. Now, my neigh­bors and their kids just leave fairly new bikes out , unse­cured, night after night and no one touches them. I sup­pose it’s because bikes are so cheap. After many years of metic­u­lous locking-up every time I run into a store for a minute, now i am not so care­ful. Where have all the bike thieves gone? Kids today also are less likely to try to “door” a bicy­clist (yes, a car­load of kids almost got me with an opened door , but that was 20 years ago) or throw nasty stuff at a cyclist or scream obscenities…what hap­pened to the really cre­ative , nasty, mean high schooler who would yell “Fuck you retard!” or the girls who would yell “hey old man wanna f*(l<?" and then laugh like the morons they were. Not that I miss all that crap­ola.

  25. ROgirl said on March 16th, 2010 at 2:47 pm

    What cre­ative geniuses hit on the bears shit­ting in the woods angle?

  26. cosmo panzini said on March 16th, 2010 at 2:51 pm

    Whatever–vaggina, vulva, shmulva, what’s wrong with Da Poooossss­sayyyyy?

  27. alex said on March 16th, 2010 at 3:34 pm

    My fave din­gle­berry story…

    One time I took some Hoosier friends to an Ital­ian eatery in Chicago with real Ital­ian wait­ers. My friends thought they’d have fun with the waiter and ask him for Ital­ian vari­a­tions on Amer­i­can slang and curse words. Lots of stuff sim­ply doesn’t trans­late, but that didn’t stop them from con­tin­u­ing to ask. Finally one of my friends asked what’s the Ital­ian word for din­gle­berry.

    “Tarzanella,” the waiter replied.

    “Tarzanella?”

    “Yes. You know Tarzan, he swing from the vine? Tarzanella.”

  28. ROgirl said on March 16th, 2010 at 3:59 pm

    Vagi­nas and vul­vas and bears, oh my.

  29. Colleen said on March 16th, 2010 at 4:16 pm

    We always gig­gle at the Activia commercials…there is always a sweep­ing hand ges­ture that indi­cates just what kind of “action” the yogurt helps along.

    Activia. The yogurt that makes ya poop.

  30. Sue said on March 16th, 2010 at 4:25 pm

    And let’s not for­get the Pepto-Bismol Diar­rhea Dance, Colleen:
    http://​www​.splen​dad​.com/​a​d​s​/​s​h​o​w​/​1​5​2​2​-​P​e​p​t​o​-​B​i​s​m​o​l​-​O​f​f​i​c​e​-Dance

  31. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 4:36 pm

    I can’t ever remem­ber need­ing Pepto Bis­mol and feel­ing like danc­ing at the same time.

  32. john c said on March 16th, 2010 at 4:56 pm

    I guess I’m puz­zling over the ban­ning of vagina, while “erec­tile dys­func­tion” seems to be not only allowed but encour­aged. Just ask my 11-year-old sports nut of a son.

  33. Jim Neill said on March 16th, 2010 at 5:25 pm

    I mean, who dain­tily blots their ass with a sin­gle sheet, other than red bears with toilet-paper pills stuck to their butts?

    Cheryl Crowe

    http://​www​.guardian​.co​.uk/​e​n​v​i​r​o​n​m​e​n​t​/​2​0​0​7​/​a​p​r​/​2​3​/​m​u​s​i​c​n​e​w​s​.music

  34. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 5:51 pm

    Aren’t those bears blue? Red bears are com­pletely dif­fer­ent in how they wipe their butts.

    Nope, I just checked. They’re red. I guess I don’t watch enough tele­vi­sion to have formed a clear mem­ory of the bears with paper stuck on their butts.

  35. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 5:53 pm

    I feel less senile now.

    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​T​A​v​7​d​z​d​k​3​v​0​&​a​m​p;NR=1

  36. Rana said on March 16th, 2010 at 7:21 pm

    I think there were some blue bears at one point. They may even have been gender-coordinated.

    Ew. I don’t want to know why the female bears are red.

    Hmm, inter­est­ing. It used to be that some­times the female bear was blue.

    I don’t know that I want to spend any more time think­ing about these crea­tures’ col­or­ing…

  37. LAMary said on March 16th, 2010 at 8:14 pm

    The blue bears use Charmin ultra soft. The red ones use the reg­u­lar stuff. I’ve learned this from watch­ing three Charmin com­mer­cials on youtube and I’m not proud of know­ing it.

  38. Rana said on March 16th, 2010 at 8:38 pm

    *laughs*

  39. MarkH said on March 16th, 2010 at 8:39 pm

    Strictly OT, Nance, every­one: All Things Con­sid­ered had a nice piece on Elmore Leonard today, plug­ging the new series, Jus­ti­fied, tonight on FX. Had no idea his book tally is now 43.

    EDIT: Here’s a link.

    http://​www​.npr​.org/​t​e​m​p​l​a​t​e​s​/​s​t​o​r​y​/​s​t​o​r​y​.​p​h​p​?​s​t​o​r​y​I​d​=​1​2​4​736822

  40. Dexter said on March 16th, 2010 at 9:11 pm

    Well, we’re proud of you any­way, LA Mary. How­ever, I am not too proud of myself for send­ing this out to the world:
    http://​www​.youtube​.com/​w​a​t​c​h​?​v​=​B​P​G​F​s​g​K​D​m​_​U​&​a​m​p;NR=1

  41. Denice B said on March 17th, 2010 at 12:23 am

    My mom had a habit of jot­ting down tid­bits in a jour­nal. She would write her thoughts about this or that lit­tle thing. Some­times she would write down a weird com­mer­cial she liked. After she died after a short ill­ness, my sis­ters found her jour­nal. The last thing she ever wrote in it? “Have a happy period!!”. When­ever we see that com­mer­cial, we always laugh. And yes, Beb almost always blushes when us girls start the va-jay-jay jokes…

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