The Origin of "It's 10 pm...do you know where your children are?"

Halloween PSA: Drive Safe, Be Safe

Whether out having party-time fun or just trick-or-treating watch out for pedestrians and drive safe!

Some handy tips

Holiday Driving & Halloween Safety Tips

  

Halloween Safety Tips (Pamphlet in English and Spanish)

Don’t make Halloween a Nightmare: Follow these Driving Safety Tips

Halloween Safety Guide

Independence Day PSA for 2013

Hey, while you are all out and about this July 4th and adjacent days the holiday is being observed I would really appreciate if this Independence Day I could have independence from bonehead drivers. My wife is driving to work during the evening. So if any of you want to watch the pretty sparkles in the sky pull over, don't abruptly slow down to a crawl or stop on the highway every year, like so many of you idiots do.

You know who you are so no, I'm not going to be nice about it. If having spouse almost die in a wreck because you really shouldn't be driving anything more dangerous than a Radio Flyer prompts me to be impolite so be it and screw you.

PSA: Teach Your Children Well

Have a safe July 4th

From Girl's Love Stories #1 (Aug-Sept 1949).

And once again my wife, son and I are working the evening of July 4th, so if you want to go "OOOH" and "AAAH" at the pretty lights then pull the [expletive deleted] over and off the road.

Let there be fireworks

A special message for those driving tonight: If you want to watch the fireworks then don't be a jerk. Take the time to pull over off the road to enjoy the spectacle.

Why the PSA? Historically, there are multiple accidents along I-5 near the Mission Bay area during a fireworks show. I'm going to be passing through the area about that time taking my wife to work and I don't want our lives ruined by the gawker behind the wheel who is distracted by the pretty shiny up in the sky.

UBER CHICLE

In the post Bibimbap is the shizznit a while back I posted about the unfortunate practice of 'affinity scams', where a member (or pretends to be) of an ethnic, religious or professional group takes advantage of perceived and expected trusts to defraud a member of the same group.

On a recent visit to one of the local Asian markets in San Diego I picked up one of the fliers for a particularly heinous scam that targets the Asian community using the social and cultural pressures inherent to an affinity scam. In this post is a real advertisement for a ridiculously expensive miracle rubber that the seller claims will cure whatever ails you. I changed the name of the product, the logos and removed the inventory numbers because I don't want some poor fool looking this quack garbage up and buying it through any leads I might provide.

"Uber Chicle" (as I call it) is basically the rubber of the kind you would find in any wetsuit. In fact, the seller even admits that a wetsuit manufacturer supplies their materials. From the samples I've seen the rubber is clearly mass-produced and bears the typical quality control issues one would find in long sheets of this material such as smeared cement on the edges, seams and frayed threads. While I find the rubber indistinguishable in any way from similar wetsuit material stock the seller claims the Uber Chicle is special in some way. The advertising materials make the usual unsubstantiated nonsense text-salad claims that the special rubber (made from rocks) enriches human cells and recycles the magnetic waves the human body emits (mostly in the infra-red range) all to enable the body to retain the natural biological rhythm. Whatever that means.

This is an example of a woo-woo claim that is clearly immoral if not criminal. These pieces of rubber are sold at high prices using questionable claims of efficacy and healing powers or functions that are nothing short of magical. I worry that people with real illnesses are spending money on this junk believing and hoping it will help cure them of their afflictions. This is a very real concern as sales tactics vary depending on the customer. I have experienced this first-hand. Sales reps will variously ignore, treat with hostility or suspicion or deflect any inquiries I have based on what I presume is my race and a few other factors. Without missing a beat the very same salesperson will pounce upon my wife with spiels about miracle cures and awesome magical properties of whatever device is being sold. Often, it happens while I am standing right beside her.

Keep in mind that the average price for neoprene sheeting is about $25 dollars a yard. There is no shortage of the gullible and desperate. If I was evil, I'd be rich.

Click the picture to mark up 1000%

Sadly, it is very difficult to shut predatory scams of this nature down. This a little fish kind of problem in a very big pond and often the most that would happen is that false advertising charges would be levied, a small fine would be paid and business as usual would continue even if under a different name. Caveat Emptor rules the marketplace. Administrations that should protect consumers often look the other way or are toothless in the face of huge profits and influential dollars flowing into political coffers. The few victims that realize they are scammed are reluctant to file complaints or eagerly go on to the next quack-cure convinced that the next one or the next or the next will work as promised. Attempts by private individuals and Governments to educate the public is a slow process and feels despairingly futile sometimes. Unfortunately for every rational warning there are 500 attention-whoring celebrities praising the magic healing power of a pill, book or magnetic shoe insert.

The fact is, if any of this crap worked as advertised the world if not our marketplace would not be recognizable as it is now. This special knowledge and technology, if it was real, could not be contained or controlled by a select, special or powerful few. As most of the advertising claims the knowledge is everywhere, part of everyone and can be manipulated and touched. It is natural and miraculous and cures all ills. There would be no need for specialists or sales reps as every person on Earth would be at their ultimate potential of health just by common everyday exposure to these natural fantastic elements. Medical science, Doctors and hospitals would exist only so far as to ensure each individual died without pain and with dignity, though a comfortable hospice with a bucket of crystals in each room would conceivably replace the function of the physician in regards to the transitioning soul also. Keeping what is claimed to be so reportedly fundamental out of the hands of the average layman would be like trying to control the secret of making fire 10,000 years after the first bonfire was built and used to cook Mammoth steaks.

Please. If you are sick, visit a Doctor. A real one.

Comic Book PSA: Chicken-Shift

Safe driving PSA by Alex Toth from the magazine that pretty much defined the culture of  wreckless driving, Drag Cartoons #8 (October 1964).

Caution: Children at Play

These installations of silhouettes on the median fencing of a busy street in San Diego isn't an April Fool prank but it certainly gave me pause the other night. I was heading up the hill when a descending car coming down turned onto the street. The other car's headlights back lit the figures just as I passed by them. For a second I thought a group of kids was playing in the center of the street and I imagined that one kid was going to run in front of my car, thereby making me swerve in avoiding hurting one child instead cause me to run over the jaywalking pregnant woman and her toddler.


That these silhouettes are installed in this location makes a bit of sense as there are several schools nearby and there may be the intention to cause drivers to pay more attention to their vehicle operation when they are in the area. I do wonder however if the figures are serving instead to desensitize drivers, particularly ones that frequent the vicinity, to any actual pedestrians who may be walking in the street illegally.

Jonnie Love Speaks out!

Groove on the picture to make it a happening, man!

I'm convinced that weird, nosy old guys with cautionary slogans tattooed onto their foreheads shouldn't be hanging around places young teens congregate.

From Time For Love #11 (July 1969).

Comic Book PSA: Make War No More

In the late 60's to the early 70's DC comics inserted into the stories of their successful line of war titles this Make War No More tag. Obviously, a response to the prevailing public sentiment about the Vietnam conflict.

As PSA's for comics go these are probably the ones I am most cynical about for a few reasons. The first being that the tags only showed up in the combat titles full of gleeful mayhem and nazi-smiting. I have not yet seen these in any other DC books of the era. The other reason is that everything I have read about Robert Khaniger is that he leans way to the right. So the addition of the MWNM tag only seems a shallow attempt, as a marketing ploy, to blunt the pro-war message the books had.

Also, the tag often would interfere or disturb the layout of the art, though this was mostly solved a few years later as editorial policy changed.

Great Joe Kubert panel, made claustrophobic by the addition of the tag to open sky

Less intrusive than many

The Unknown Soldier is wearing a protest button?

In reading the war titles during the Vietnam era I've been left with the impression they were allegory (like the film Aliens) of the Vietnam or Korean wars. In the early 70's many of the stories dealt with "reluctant soldiers" or "cowards" who nonetheless came through for their buddies or the mission. This was probably the best theme the writer could push through, having to balance the tone of the book with the effect of public opinion on the market. The reluctant hero aspect of many of the stories and anti-war tag would have satisfied those parents who bothered to check the content of their children's entertainment. Parents that were pro-conflict or didn't care would be satisfied by the exploding Nazi tanks.

After a few years of the tag being present in the final panel of stories it was exiled to the letters page.

Excerpt from a 1973 issue of Star Spangled War Stories, Bob Rozakis letter

By 1973 the United States had begun to pull out of the Vietnam conflict and soon after the MWNM tag was no longer included in the books. Many of the war titles also were eventually cancelled as interest in the subject material waned. Soon, the Star Spangled War title had covers that included a horror element in the title bar, and the letters page featured a ghoul on the header (the Unkown Soldier's true, ravaged face, apparently). This may not have been too unusual since that title also previously featured the classic War That Time Forgot "Tank vs Dinosaur" stories and The Haunted Tank, but it was more likely an attempt to boost sales by attracting the growing horror comic market by superficially resembling the Weird War Tales book also published by DC.

For those of you who can't get enough of Joe Kubert's combat-themed art, be sure to check out PS Magazine (a military preventive maintenance magazine originally founded by Will Eisner). Joe has been illustrating it for years.