GR translation: the great Killer Weed advertising campaign of the thirties
Mike Jing
gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Sat Feb 21 21:13:02 CST 2015
V580.35-581.17 Imagine the fellow’s plight—got so much money he don’t
know what to do with it all. Don’t go screaming, “Give it to me!” either.
He’s given it to you, though in roundabout ways you might need a good
system of search to unsnarl. Oh, has he given it to you. By way of the
Bland Institute and the Bland Foundation, the man has had his meathooks
well into the American day-to-day since 1919. Who do you think sat on top
of the patent for that 100-miles-per-gallon carburetor, eh? sure you’ve
heard that story—maybe even snickered along with paid anthropologists who
called it Automotive Age Myth or some shit—well, turns out the item was
real, all right, and it was Lyle Bland who sprang for those academic
hookers doing the snickering and the credentialed lying. Or how about the
great Killer Weed advertising campaign of the thirties, who do you think
worked hand-in-glove (or, as grosser individuals have put it,
penis-in-mouth) with the FBI on that one? And remember all those
guy-goes-to-the-doctor-can’t-get-a-hardon jokes? Planted by Bland, yup—half
a dozen basic variations, after having done depth studies for the National
Research Council that indicated an unacceptable 36% of the male work force
weren’t paying enough attention to their cocks—not enough genital obsession
there, and it was undermining the efficiency of the organs doing the real
work.
What does "Killer Weed" refer to here? Googling points to PCP, but PCP
seems to be introduced in the 50's. And what would be the purpose of the
advertising campaign anyway?
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://waste.org/pipermail/pynchon-l/attachments/20150221/350e9b25/attachment.html>
More information about the Pynchon-l
mailing list