Archive | April, 2010

Come on Baby, Do the Locomotion

small girl riding in buggy pulled by alligator

Capable of doing zero-to-sixty in less than ten seconds, the Flannigan Repto-Buggy was a big seller right after President Rutherford B. Hayes started building the Great Chicken Highway.

Thousands of tender birds were released on the roads every day, giving the Repto-Buggy the fuel and encouragement it needed to help fuel the Gilded Age.
This period came to a tragic end, during the Poultry Depression of the early 1890s, and several ensuing lawsuits after many of the Repto-Buggy owners were consumed by their vehicles.

Pictured: Shelly Van Crampington and Repto-Buggy Engine 2179 (known to its mechanics as “Bud Lizard” shortly before Shelly’s legendary savaging.

Alltop is into poultry. Photo via Vintage Photo.

Hello, My Name Is Indigo Montoya

young child sparking up a ciggyBilly was up to three packs a day, but it was okay; he was in training for the All-Tar Olympics. His coach said he was a natural, and he had several lucrative endorsements even before he won any medals. He might have been worried about the nagging cough, the chunks of ochre phlegm he horked up after every set of smokes, but Billy was sanguine.

His twin brother, Jimmy, had a perfectly fine set of lungs just waiting to be cut out of his useless chest.

Alltop smokes stogies. Photo via Twisted Vintage.

Tell Me About Your Mother

toddler in cageon side of buildingYou awake each morning screaming, your mouth dry and your eyes red from the tears that bath your Pillow of Ennui. You had the dream again. Of falling. Of dogs tearing at your carcass, broken on the dirty pavement of a city where you never lived. Your days blur together in an existential nightmare that would cause Camus to shit himself.

And each morning you look at the scrap of an old newspaper. All that remains is the headline, and you wonder: what was Doctor Salathial’s Toddler Control System?

Alltop is the current patent holder. Photo via Tigęrr Risin-Ẃińgs