new improved head (www.newimprovedhead.com)

It's Our Blog's 30th Anniversary!
a NEW IMPROVED HEAD special report

August 31, 2005

Well, actually it's our blog's 31st anniversary, but we're saying it's the 30th so we can cobble together an article quickly from old blog posts and get away early for the long weekend. Yep, the blog's been giving the NEW IMPROVED slant on the news since 1974. Following are some selections from the years before it went online. They include penetrating comments on current events, insightful analyses of modern culture, and incisive statements of eternal verities – just what you expect from NEW IMPROVED HEAD!

November 9, 1980

The election of Reagan is simply a sign that the Americans have decided it's time to start running the world again. (Posted by Roland Barphe)

December 10, 1982

Despite 12% unemployment and 11% inflation (or whatever), what Canadians get most incensed about is metric measurement. (Posted by Roland Barphe

February 23, 1983

Our "entrenched" Charter of Rights made it to its second birthday before being suspended. So in Quebec now you still have the right to do whatever you want in French, but if you're absent from work you're presumed to be on strike until you prove otherwise. Lévesque's pronouncements on the new laws have been standard. About the only thing he hasn't tried is blaming the teachers for burning down the Reichstag. (Posted by Jason Capodimonte)
January 6, 1984
Shame, n.: That which one feels at not being successful, and a sense of which prevents one from being successful. (Posted by Wentworth Sutton)

July 20, 1984

Somewhere in the Dominican Republic is a guy named Jesus Murphy. (Posted by Jason Capodimonte)

January 15, 1985

I have before me several recent copies of "women's magazines" – Glamour, Redbook, New Woman, Beauty Digest, Canadian Living, Woman's Day, and Mademoiselle.

"Beauty" and fashion are popular topics. We have Beauty Digest, and articles like "How to Look Great When You've Got a Cold" (January Glamour), "Beauty by the Stars" (an astrological guide in January Redbook), "Your Beauty Horoscope" (January Mademoiselle), "NEW! Easy Breezy New Look for the New Woman" (August New Woman, in which "beauty" becomes "image building"), "20 Beautiful Tips from the '20 Minute Workout' Stars" (January Canadian Living), and "How to Take 5 Years Off Your Face" (February Woman's Day) to demonstrate the emphasis on beauty, and a similar list of articles could be provided for fashion. The list just given is not comprehensive, by the way. New Woman offers only one article about beauty, but like the others is loaded with ads for makeup, shampoo, clothes, and the like.

Another popular topic is cooking, and the conclusion to draw from all this is that these magazines teach you how to make yourself attractive to men. That is, a woman's goal in life is to fix herself so that she pleases men. To put it more economically, a woman's goal is to please men, which is also the message of the men's magazines.

Romantic fantasies replace the sexual fantasies of the men's magazines. Instead of how to tell if a woman's hot, we learn if a man is ready to do what is known these days as making a commitment ("Has the Guy Got Commitment Potential?" – Mademoiselle). You can tell by the number of rings he wears, by the way – the articles about men deal in stereotypes a lot.

Then there's the key to the mystification – "Changing a Man: A Realistic Plan" from Beauty Digest, originally from Mademoiselle. If women can be got to believe that they can change men, then they can be got to put up with everything.

I could go on in this vein but the long and the short of it is that men's magazines say it's a man's world, and so do women's magazines. (Posted by Natalie Flemme)

January 7, 1986

Modern society would collapse were it not for the extension cord. (Posted by P. Rice)

May 17, 1986

The number of times they've improved detergents they should be perfect by now. (Posted by J. Brady)

February 7, 1987

If you pay someone else to let you do something, that's entertainment.
If someone else pays you to do something, that's work.
If they tell you how to do it, that's a job. (Posted by Jason Capodimonte)

February 18, 1989

On the whole, contemporary democratic politics is not the art of the possible but rather the art of avoiding the possible. The governments of Ontario, in particular, avoid all decisions as far as possible, and when forced to make a decision make a bad one. The tendency of all democratic governments these days seems to be to put the people more and more at the mercy of market forces – that is, to do nothing. (Posted by Wentworth Sutton)

August 27, 1989

The one heritage no one around here is interested in promoting is the Western intellectual one. (Posted by Wentworth Sutton)

January 6, 1990

The war against Iraq has been scheduled for prime time. (Posted by J. Brady)

May 4, 1990

Meech Lake: Both English and French Canadians are predominantly reasonable people. That they're now at each other's throats over Meech Lake is a tribute to their leaders. (Posted by Roland Barphe)

August 17, 1991

If Canadians weren't such orderly and self-reliant people the country would fall apart. Nothing works, but things get done because Canadians do things for themselves. (Posted by Jason Capodimonte)

August 7, 1994

The Rolling Stones are the Lawrence Welk of the Baby Boomers. (Posted by Roland Barphe)

April 10, 1997

The new fifth column is international business. National sovereignty is being destroyed as a result of the actions of an internationally organized interest group. Europe is uniting, for example, for no apparent reason other than to standardize the market. In this country we have been giving away sovereignty for years. Free trade and GATT are the conspicuous examples. (Posted y Wentworth Sutton)

September 16, 1997

From what I see, the appeal of most new communications technology is that it keeps you from ever having to be alone with your very own self. (Posted by Wentworth Sutton)

 

It's Our Blog's 30th Anniversary © John FitzGerald, 2005

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