Showing posts with label Tests. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Tests. Show all posts

Thursday, January 14, 2021

Sewergators (Barney Miller episode) – Cigarette Brand Slogan on Test – Soviet Mincing Machine

“The Mole.” Barney Miller, season 2, episode 22, 18 March 1976.

A thief (Ron Carey) is chased by cops through the New York sewers, captured, then brought back to their precinct house. Later on, one of the cops (Max Gail) is irritated when the thief starts to limp.

“Now what’s the matter?”

“I banged my knee when I tripped over that alligator.”

“What alligator?”

“Didn’t you see it? It was about two feet long! Sewers are full of them. You know, Jewish kids bring them back from Miami and then they flush them down the toilet.” He sits in a chair, rolls up his pant leg, and points to his calf. “Here, look. Teeth marks!” He adds, “It’s a jungle down there.”

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https://www.theadvocate.com/baton_rouge/entertainment_life/smiley_anders/article_aa9d6218-53b6-11eb-a5d7-23096b98c85f.html

The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA], 11 January 2021

Smiley: Is there ever too much chocolate?

BY SMILEY ANDERS

Initial reaction

Mike says, "My late father-in-law, Warren Weilbaecher, was a Jesuit High graduate.

"He told about one of his quick-witted fellow students. Instead of putting the abbreviation 'A.M.D.G.' (Ad Maiorem Dei Gloriam, the Jesuits' Latin motto, meaning 'For the greater glory of God') required at the top of all tests, this student put L.S.M.F.T. (Lucky Strike Means Fine Tobacco), the advertising slogan for Lucky Strike cigarettes.

"When called for an explanation by the teacher, who did pay attention to such things, the student quickly blurted out that it meant 'Lord and Savior My First Thought.'

"Though the teacher knew better, he had no response.

"Warren said that student went on to a distinguished career as a trial lawyer — which made good use of his ability to think quickly."

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Florian Huber, “Promise Me You’ll Shoot Yourself.” The Mass Suicide of Ordinary Germans in 1945, tr. Imogen Taylor (New York: Little, Brown Spark, 2020), 98-9.

The tanks of the 65th Soviet Army rolled down the main street [of Alt Teterin] early on the morning of 29 April, on their way to Demmin. Some families hid in the woods or in a ditch just outside the village; others stayed in their houses. That night, groups of soldiers went on the prowl, raping women and rounding up men. They took the men to the neighbouring village of Stretense.

As the people of Alt Teterin waited, tense and frightened, they heard a strange, menacing noise coming from the direction of Stretense – a hideous, nerve-shattering drone, like nothing they had ever heard before. It was to become the soundtrack to the horrors of that night; in the minds of some, the grinding, pounding sound became linked to the propaganda they had heard about the Soviet steamroller. Among the women, the rumour soon spread that the Red Army soldiers in Stretense had started up a ‘hell machine’ – a gigantic mincer, like a huge motorised human press, which they were feeding with the men they’d rounded up and led away.

[Source: Günter Jacobi, in: Nils Köhler, ‘Das Drama von Alt Teterin 1945 – ein Projektbericht’, in: Zeitgeschichte regional. Mitteilungen aus Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, 14:1, July 2010, p. 93.]

Saturday, February 10, 2018

Uncommon Words in Clever Student’s Newspaper Ad




The Advocate [Baton Rouge, LA]
6 February 2018


Smiley Anders

An easy A

"The discussions by your readers of big words," says Loren Scott, "reminds me of an ad that appeared in the Kansas City Star back in the early '70s.

"It was in the classified section under 'Personals,' and it read: 'insidious, innocuous, annihilate, extrapolate, fratricide, audacious, euphemism, ludicrous, euthanasia, and fastidious.'

"It was signed Mark Johnson. When the editor of the paper saw that ad, he called in his crack cub reporter and said, 'I want to know who Mark Johnson is and why he put those 10 words in my newspaper.'

"The cub reporter did his job well. As it turns out, Mark was a sophomore at Shawnee Mission High School in Shawnee, Kansas, and his English teacher had told the class if anyone could find those 10 words in the newspaper that semester she would give them an A in the class."

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La Crosse [Wisconsin] Tribune, 14 March 1958, p. 1.

“KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP)--The classified ad in the Morning Kansas City Times read simply: ‘Infallible, intrinsic, amity,  minimize, blazon, scrutinize, emulate, compunction, deride.’ Puzzled newsmen discovered it had been inserted by Mrs. Mildred Beal. She explained that her 17-year-old son Terry received as an English assignment two weeks ago the task of finding 10 specific words in a newspaper. He found only one – contemporary. The deadline was at hand so she inserted the ad – in the personals column. Mrs. Beal said she did not know whether her son’s teacher would accept the idea, but even at an outlay of $1.36 for the ad she thought it was worth trying.”