Mister Lister

 Here's a fun list from the good folks at Mental Floss! It's a roster of everyday household items which were ubiquitous in the 70s and are now rarely seen, like a turn signal on a BMW.

• The Percolator: as in who makes bubble covfefe anymore? 
• The Fondue Pot: we got married in 1973, which was probably the peak year of fondue gifting in America. I think we got three, never used any, and I am far too self-conscious to regift a device for dunking chunks in molten cheese. Hello, Goodwill!
• The Aluminum TV Dinner Tray: they still had these by the time microwave ovens came into vogue, but try nuking your Stouffer's that way! Sparks and short circuits for the microwave and a still-frozen pot pie you had to eat like a Popsicle
• Avocado Green Appliances: We had a green blender and were proud to put it out for the years we lived in Glenmont Apts, with the green kitchen decor. Once we moved to our first house, that avocado blender that never blended an avocado wound up in storage next to the unused bread maker.
• The Popcorn Ceiling: that first house had one of these, and let me tell you, the edges on those joint compound ripples are razor sharp! Ask my right hand.
• The Rented Telephone: An odd concept to grasp. It was said to be illegal to hook up a phone to the Bell System, even if you owned a phone. We didn't.
• TV Guide: 15 cents a week back in the day and that included listings for all the shows on all the stations our antenna could pull in. Plus the easiest puzzle on earth, with the exception of Junior Jumble.
• The Encyclopedia Set: Many a term paper and report on World War II had their start in our good blue World Book, the three-ton printed Wikipedia of its time.
• The 8-Track Player: Never had one.
• The Kodak Carousel: Parents had one. Everyone's parents had one. Labor Day weekend always featured a slide show with pictures of everyone's days at camp, doing cannonballs in the pool, and eating crabs. 
• S&H Green Stamps: it was my job to fill the books with stamps. I used to use a soggy wad of paper towels to moisten the pages of stamps that would give us that long-wanted electric can opener or fake wicker picnic set. 
  
  
  

• The Glass Fever Thermometer: run it under hot water for a second and get another sick day out of it!

Some day, future generations will fight over antique Keurig machines and long-dead cell phones, but they won't know the thrill of setting up a new one of either!

Bear fact

If you have ever been in one of those situations where people are sleeping in one of those platonic setups, no slap-and-tickle going on, just honest slumber at, say, an open dormitory or firehouse or jury panel, you know there are people who just can't wait to try to wake people up and make it look like they weren't trying to wake them up...

The loud rustling of papers, the overloud sneeze, the accidental doorslam...and then, "Oh, you're awake! Well, Janeen is going for crullers, do you want anything? And can you spot us ten bucks?"

Leave people to sleep! Polar bears too!

Here's a story about a boat operator near Norway. Last week, he was fined over $5,000 for blowing his foghorn to wake up a sleeping polar bear!

There they were, happily steaming along the coast of the Svalbard archipelago, some 620 miles away from the North Pole, earlier this month when the operator airhorned the poor ursine awake and made it more, according to CBS News.

“Its occupants are said to have spotted a polar bear sleeping on land,” Lars Fause, governor of the territory, said in a statement. “A person on board then used the ship’s foghorn, waking the animal, which moved to another location,” he also said.

So if you decide to sail over that away, leave the polar bears alone. And try to figure out why you would want to annoy a huge animal like that!

Under local rules, “It is forbidden to needlessly disturb, attract or pursue a polar bear,” which was declared a protected species in Svalbard in 1972.

So, sail on and leave the bears alone, whaddya say?