Saturday, January 13, 2024

The Story Behind the 1998 Pizza Hut Commercial That Featured Former Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev

 From Vintage Everyday:


In the commercial, Gorbachev and his then-10-year-old granddaughter, Anastasia, are shown walking through Moscow’s Red Square and stopping at a Pizza Hut. Spoken in Russian with English subtitles, the commercial focuses on Pizza Hut’s new Edge Pizza. A family of diners spots Gorbachev a few tables away and starts arguing about whether he took them to “the edge of economic ruin, the edge of chaos.”

“Because of him, we have freedom,” a young man tells Gorbachev’s critic. An older female sympathizer gets in the last word: “Because of him we have many things, like Pizza Hut!” This prompts others to raise a slice to chants of “Hail to Gorbachev!” The commercial hawked pizza, but it also had political overtones of Gorbachev’s policies of glasnost (openness) and perestroika (restructuring).

Better known in the US, here's Ronald Reagan at History.com - "Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wall!"

Wednesday, January 10, 2024

My newest (and presumably last) granddaughter was born today. :-)


Today we're welcoming Miss Deborah Jane Witt (named after her grandmothers), seventh child and fourth daughter to my older son Charlie and his wife Mai Lea. Deborah was born at 4:59 this afternoon, weighs 7 pounds and 11 ounces, is 20 inches long, and has all of the appropriate body parts, in the appropriate amounts.

WELCOME TO THE WORLD, DEBORAH!

It is a pleasant thing to reflect upon, and furnishes a complete answer to those who contend for the gradual degeneration of the human species, that every baby born into the world is a finer one than the last. 

Dickens, Nicholas Nickleby, Ch. 36

Infant Sorrow by William Blake

My mother groand! my father wept.
Into the dangerous world I leapt:
Helpless, naked, piping loud;
Like a fiend hid in a cloud.

Struggling in my fathers hands:
Striving against my swaddling bands:
Bound and weary I thought best
To sulk upon my mothers breast.
The younger, female contingent of sisters
 and cousins seeing the first picture. :-)

Song To Be Sung by the Father of Infant Female Children

by Ogden Nash

My heart leaps up when I behold
A rainbow in the sky;
Contrariwise, my blood runs cold
When little boys go by.
For little boys as little boys,
No special hate I carry,
But now and then they grow to men,
And when they do, they marry.
No matter how they tarry,
Eventually they marry.
And, swine among the pearls,
They marry little girls.

Oh, somewhere, somewhere, an infant plays,
With parents who feed and clothe him.
Their lips are sticky with pride and praise,
But I have begun to loathe him.
Yes, I loathe with loathing shameless
This child who to me is nameless.
This bachelor child in his carriage
Gives never a thought to marriage,
But a person can hardly say knife
Before he will hunt him a wife.


I never see an infant (male),
A-sleeping in the sun,
Without I turn a trifle pale
And think is he the one?
Oh, first he'll want to crop his curls,
And then he'll want a pony,
And then he'll think of pretty girls,
And holy matrimony.
A cat without a mouse
Is he without a spouse.

Oh, somewhere he bubbles bubbles of milk,
And quietly sucks his thumbs.
His cheeks are roses painted on silk,
And his teeth are tucked in his gums.
But alas the teeth will begin to grow,
And the bubbles will cease to bubble;
Given a score of years or so,
The roses will turn to stubble.
He'll sell a bond, or he'll write a book,
And his eyes will get that acquisitive look,
And raging and ravenous for the kill,
He'll boldly ask for the hand of Jill.
This infant whose middle
Is diapered still
Will want to marry My daughter Jill.

Oh sweet be his slumber and moist his middle!
My dreams, I fear, are infanticiddle.
A fig for embryo Lohengrins!
I'll open all his safety pins,
I'll pepper his powder, and salt his bottle,
And give him readings from Aristotle.
Sand for his spinach I'll gladly bring,
And Tabasco sauce for his teething ring.
And an elegant, elegant, alligator
To play with him in his perambulator.
Then perhaps he'll struggle through fire and water
To marry somebody else's daughter.

Back to the Future: Power Dishwashers!

 At Marginal Revolution:

  • Why do today’s dishwashers typically take more than 2 hours to run through a normal cycle when less than a hour was common in the past? The reason is absurd energy and water “conservation” rules. These rules, imposed on dish and clothes washers, have made these products perform worse than in the past, cleaning less well or much more slowly. One of the best things that the Trump administration did (other than Operation Warp Speed, of course) was creating a product class–superwashers!–that cleaned in under an hour and were not subject to energy and water conservation standards. The Biden administration reversed these rules but the 5th circuit just ruled that the reversal was “arbitrary and capricious.”

I'll be moving later this year, but I'll take my 30 year old washing machine with me.