At 16.75 words per square inch (25.96 x10^9/km sq. for you scientific types), this book has over twice the literary nutrition of the average book, with no fat. A bargain! There are 870 short articles, and 36½ pithy profundities styled Deep Thought scattered through the book. Wide-ranging, It's life on Main Street with attitude. And wit. There are hundreds of double entendres and and puns. I even sprinkled in some Greek, Latin, French, and a curse in Klingon in a display of superficial erudition. Below are the titles of a few articles.
Grown-ups Play Peek-A-Boo
The Sound Of One Hand Clapping
Close Encounters of the Canine Kind
Finger Lickin' Bad
Trademark of the Beast
A Human Is Forever
Go Stand In The Corner 'Til You re 21
Shirtwaists are for Pantywaists
Tempis Fuhgeddaboutit
Waste Management
It's a Spinthariscope, Kemo Sabe
Welsh Outsmurf Irish 2 to 1
You'll get vicarious little-guy satisfaction in how I sock it to 'em in a section called David v. Goliath et al. I take on a bank, the post office, New Jersey, a famous cartoon character, and credit cards, including an elegant method of getting even with that rip-off credit card you hate.
Don't be so smug. I'm going to sock it to you, too. (That's the collective you. It means other people.) Joseph's 3 Laws Of Retail Dynamics, Psychopathia Ornamentalis, We've Got Steam Heat, A Diamond as Big as the Ritz, and other tales of the cockamamie consumer give the lie to that customer-is-always-right propaganda.
There are explanations of all sorts of little things that are mystifying to the ornamental civilian, like what the quartz in your watch and the 14 in your karat are. There are also explanations of birthstones, and how-do-they-do-that articles on diamond cutting, jewelry repair, and gem identification. There are longer articles about the Great Diamond Hoax of 1872, the Amber Room, the shameful behavior of DeBeers, the Hunt Brothers silver bubble and the exploits of a legendary gemologist during World War II.
The book includes the Fifties rock and roll themed newsletter. It had 30 references to fifties music with prizes for getting them all. The movie newsletter, with 40 movie titles and 6 movie quotes for you to find is also included. And the answers to both are provided at no extra charge.
Since we're not in the store, I threw in some forbidden politics. The highlight is the Militant Moderate Manifesto. In It's the Economy, Stupid, economics is handily explained in one page, so you can throw out that dense econ 101 textbook you never understood. In The Great Recession, it's the stupid economy that's explained, with two Bulletins from the Department of Good and Evil. In Passing has a lengthy article on hats and short articles on a variety of topics, such as artificial stupidity, the decline of the fudgesicle, and the self-help industry (no, you can't order your Acme Home Counterfeiting Kit from me).
Enrico Caruso brandishing a signed portrait of Teddy Roosevelt to make his way out of the rubble of the San Francisco earthquake of 1906, the trial of W.C. Fields for "torturing" a canary in his act in 1928, a 1903 ad for the Evans Vacuum Cap for growing hair, a hilarious1896 account of a lawsuit in Scotland about a distillery's runoff getting a farmer's hens drunk, and an account of a 1904 debate in the press about shooting automobilists are a few of the articles in The Way We Were section