Except for Mickey’s, you don’t see too many middle-class white folks drinking malt liquor anymore.
Then:
Now:
I wonder if the same thing will also happen with the word special. " A special discount? What, do they only give it to retarded people?"
Aha! Now I see a connection I’ve wondered about.
In the James Bond novel Moonraker the villain, Hugo Drax, is described as “a Lonsdale type of character”. I always wondered what it meant. Drax is eventually revealed as an ex-Nazi who wants to destroy London with his Moonraker rocket. Evidently Bond saw through the British disguise to see the Nazi underneath. That association of Lonsdale with Naziism must have deep roots, predating any current neo-Nazi associations.
I’ve always wondered if actor Michel Lonsdale got the part of Drax in the movie Moonraker because of that chance line in Fleming’s novel.
Or indeed, the founding of the company apparently. Moonraker was published in 1955 – the Londale clothing company wasn’t founded until 1960.
I think Fleming was more likely likening Drax to Hugh Lowther, the 5th Earl of Lonsdale, who seems to have been something of a celebrity, and would still have been a recognisable name at the time.
i was unaware of that. If he was indeed referring to the Earl, then that might explain it, though.
Except for blue haired women older than Jesus. Once a year or so I deal with someone who refers to her cat as “Pussy”. Imagine how hard it is to keep a straight face as you hear about how her pussy isn’t as active as usual, or worse, her pussy has a bad odor. 
The slang term “gay” really didn’t become widely known in the general culture until the 1960s, although it had been around since at least the 1920s.
From Wikipedia :
Spam?
Not anymore. 
( 
)
To add to the Swastika trivia, up until WWII, the crest of the 45th Infantry Division, now better known as the Oklahoma National Guard, was a red diamond with a yellow swastika, a Native American symbol of good luck (many members of the 45th Infantry Division were Native Americans). For a time after the war broke out, many of the soldiers wore no patches on their shoulders, until the crest was replaced by the Thunderbird (very similar to the logo used by the USAF air demonstration team).
On a related note, Hitler’s personal train car was called “Amerika” until Germany declared war on the United States in 1941, and until soon after the Pearl Harbor raid, the overall commander of the US Navy was titled “CINCUS”, short for Commander In Chief, United States (Navy). (Say it out loud, and you’ll understand why the title was renamed “ComInCh”)
I’m surprised no one has mentioned it yet, but a big thing that’s gone out of style that probably half of all people used to do completely casually is…
SMOKING!
Lite up today and you’re worse than Hitler…
Just to be clear, there are no confirmed witness reports of sightings of Jack the Ripper. The couple of ones scholars think are most likely to have been the killer didn’t feature a bag. In fact the two main Gladstone bag sightings were almost certainly not the killer: one is pretty well confirmed to have been an innocent bystander and the other report has no real reason to be linked to the Ripper crimes at all. But then popular imagination frequently has a life of its own beyond what really happened.
Right. Otherwise you’d have to wonder just what kind of “gay old time” Fred and Barney were having… (Flintstones’ theme song was written in the 50s.)
Never met a Jude or heard “Hey Jude”? And Thaddeus, as a Christian name, is also Judas… the “good” Judas.
My jamaican landlady called the strays she fed her pussies and her… personal one… her kitty. It was hard to keep a straight face, yes.
FWIW, I once had a boss in the United States military with a Hitler 'stache. It was creepy. And it just goes to show that if you have enough chutzpah you can get away with just about anything.
Apropos to gotpassword’s nomination of Ebeneezer, it’s hard to find American kids named Damien these days.
Having been a member of the middle-school geek/outcast/anti-jock society at the time, I saw an explosion of black trenchcoats in geek fashion. Especially since The Matrix was released that year. Black trenchcoats have a couple new niche markets since Columbine, if anything; they represent the alienation the killers felt from their own peer group. I don’t think it’s consciously intended to glorify the Columbine killers (anymore), but it certainly carries the same connotation of feeling misunderstood by society that plays so heavily into modern hacker culture’s persecution complex. And in 1999 it was great for shock value, which means it fit into the goth attire lineup nicely. BTW, a Trenchcoat Mafia sprung up at my school immediately after the shootings. It was somewhat tongue-in-cheek and I don’t know if any of the members even had trenchcoats, but that’s what they called themselves.
In a psych class I took a couple of semesters ago I was made to understand that ECT is way, way, way less common now but that it’s still considered a last-ditch option pretty much everywhere. Actually, a psychiatrist considered using ECT on me as recently as 1998. (Decided not to, in the end.) The thing is, even though its origins must have been guesswork or shabby logic, it works better than it should.
And adidas got its start when Adolph’s new kicks–the first that allowed their wearers to switch the cleats on the bottom–helped West Germany win a World Cup on a rainy field. As clear an example of “Deutschland uber alles” as any, right?