Another horrific gaffe in retail marketing – one which falls into the category of “grotesquely bad retail marketing decisions which will become a cautionary lesson in future marketing textbooks.” This spectacular gaffe involves a retailer of fashion-trendy and very colorful women’s athletic clothing, Fabletics a company which started online in 2013 offering a subscription plan somewhat controversial since the subscription charges were not always transparent, and branched out into brick and mortar locations. One of the founders is Kate Hudson, daughter of Goldie Hawn, so there probably has been some advantages to a celebrity connection; easy to get that one-on-one with Oprah Winfrey, I presume. The company appears to this point to have been pretty savvy in a competitive field, marketing-wise, so all props to them. I’m not a customer of theirs in any case; the gym and the jogging track are not places where I go to show off my fashion sense. I’m old-school in that I prefer to work out in grey sweatpants and a baggy tee shirt.
Military Affairs
The Year That Everything Happened
Weirdly enough and this apparently happens to authors at random I had a dream about the plot of a new book late this past summer and woke up just in time to remember it all. A novel set in WWII, which is at least half a century or more out of my fictional headspace; I like the 19th century. Got all the reference books, the books or art, a grasp of the vocab and the look of the whole 19th century universe and outlook. But WWII. For me, it is just enough close in time that I knew a lot of people personally involved, from Great-Aunt Nan, who was one of the first-ever women recruited for the WAACs, to any number of high school teachers (some of whom were more forthcoming about their service than others) to the Gentleman With Whom I Kept Company for about a decade, to a neighbor of Mom and Dad’s who had been a prisoner of war in the Far East and fortunate enough to have survived the experience.
In the Field
Sometimes, long after first reading a book or watching a movie and enjoying it very much, I have come back to re-reading or watching, and then wondering what I had ever seen in that in the first place. So it was with the original M*A*S*H book and especially with the movie. I originally read the book in college and thought, “Eww, funny but gross and obscene, with their awful practical jokes and nonexistent sexual morals.” Then I re-read after having been in the military myself for a couple of years, and thought, “Yep, my people!”
The movie went through pretty much the same evolution with me, all but one element and that was when I began honestly wondering why the ostensible heroes had such a hate on for Major Burns and the nurse Major Houlihan. Why did those two deserve such awful, disrespectful treatment? In the movie they seemed competent and agreeable enough initially. In the book it was clear that Major Burns was an incompetent surgeon with delusions of adequacy, and that Major Houlihan was Regular Army; that being the sole reason for the animus. But upon second viewing of the movie, it seemed like Duke Forrest, Hawkeye Pierce and Trapper John McIntyre were just bullying assholes selecting a random target for abuse for the amusement of the audience.
The Imperial Japanese Surrender in Tokyo Bay, Sept. 2, 1945…Plus 75 Years
On September 2, 1945, the surrender ceremony for Imperial Japan occurred in Tokyo Bay with General Douglas MacArthur officiating.
There are several films of this event. There was the official one MacArthur’s Signal Corps camera crew recorded. There is a film from war correspondent William Courtenay and a finally a film taken by Commander George F. Kosco of the US Navy.
I have included in this post several versions of each of these films in black and white and color below.
The end of this ceremony marked the close of the most destructive war in human history whose 75th anniversary passed today.
Happy VJ-Day, Plus 75 Years.
Happy VJ-day!
Seventy five years ago today the Imperial Japanese Government broadcast their unconditional acceptance of the terms Potsdam Proclamation. It would take several weeks to arrange the surrender in Tokyo bay and more time to land an occupation force to begin disarmament. Yet it is this day that is remembered.
Chicagoboyz has commemorated this day — more or less — since 2010.
Below is a link list with thumb nail descriptions of the columns.
2020 – Hiroshima and the Atomic Bomb…Plus 75 Years.
This column speaks to how the US military use it’s secret SIGSALY digital radio-telephone system to communicate about the Atomic Bomb.
2019 — The Collapse of Atomic Diplomacy…Again?
This months delayed column was on a 2011 NHK documentary titled as follows:
“Atomic bombing top secret information that was never utilized
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The NHK documentary answers questions that “Atomic Diplomacy” has never bothered to ask. Specifically “What did the Imperial Japanese Military & Government know about the American nuclear weapon program, when did it know it, and what did it do about it.”