You don't see ads like these anymore

Got these from a buddy today via e-mail. I'm old enough to actually remember a couple of them, and some of them just scream "What the fuck?!".

I vaguely remember these ads. Nothing too outrageous for the day.

A typically deliciously sexist ad from the late '60s-early '70s.

Remember when I said some of them scream "What the fuck?!"

Seriously, I have NO idea what this ad is about.

Here's another one I sort of remember. The text reads:

Though she was a tiger lady,

our hero didn't have to fire a shot to floor her. After one look at

his Mr. Leggs slacks, she was ready to have him walk all over

her. That noble styling sure soothes the savage heart! If you'd

like your own doll-to-doll carpeting, hunt up a pair of these he-

man Mr. Leggs slacks. Such as our new automatic wash wear

blend of 65% "Dacron®" and 35% rayon-incomparably wrinkle-

resistant. About $12.95 at plush-carpeted stores.

You don't even SEE cigarette ads anymore, let alone something like this

I definitely remember this ad campaign. Love's Baby Soft was popular

with young teens, and only now does this ad seem really creepy.

Gloria Steinem, please call your office

Kellogg's vitamins for women? Really?

I wasn't sure at first if this was an ad or a Village People album cover

You don't hate your wife, do you? Now go and buy her some of this crap.

Who knew there was a "Soda Pop Board of America" to make sure we got hooked young?

I've been a very naughty girl for buying stale coffee, and I deserve a spanking!

I may have to start watching "Mad Men" to get a glimpse of the guys who came

up with ads like this one.

Smoke two packs and call me in the morning.

More "get 'em while they're young"! An excerpt from the text:

this young man is 11 months old - and

he isn't our youngest customer by any means. For 7-Up is so pure, so wholesome,

you can even give it to babies and feel good about it. - By the way, Mom, when it

comes to toddlers - if they like to be coaxed to drink their milk, try this: Add 7-Up

to the milk in equal parts, pouring the 7-Up gently into the milk. It's a wholesome

combination - and it works!"

Update on freaky "ghost" picture

Image taken at 12:10pm

Image taken at 12:11pm

Second image taken at 12:11pm

Update on the earlier post.

Something I learned today is that uploading pictures to Blogger will result in reduction in size, so here are fresh images uploaded directly from the CD. They're still reduced, but at least they're all consistent.

For clarification...the first picture I put up (the one with the "ghost") in the original post was the one Rick e-mailed to me last night. The two I later added came from my wife's PC, which I uploaded to Blogger, and then later downloaded from my blog to my PC. That's where the differences in the file sizes originated...Blogger reduced the images.

Adding to my earlier suspicions were slight differences in the EXIF data. My wife uses Picasa for image management, which apparently modifies the "Creation Software" EXIF attribute to read "Picasa 3.0". The one Rick e-mailed me simply said "V.1.0". That's how all three of these read, taken directly from the CD.

So, the mystery of the "ghost" of St. Peter's Basilica remains, and I'd certainly appreciate someone who actually knows something about digital imagery taking a look and giving me their opinion.

If you want the original image files from the CD, just leave a comment with your e-mail address, and I'll be happy to send them along. To avoid your e-mail address getting picked up by a spambot, just put it in "name at provider dot whatever" format, e.g., jsmith at yahoo dot com.

Freaky Halloween post

Last March, Mrs. Pool Bar went to Italy with her friend June. While there, they toured Rome, Pompeii, Florence, and a bunch of other places I'm still jealous over not seeing. They traveled with June's ex, Rick, and his wife (not at all awkward) and made the obligatory stop at St. Peter's Basilica in Rome. At the end of the trip, Rick burned the pictures to CDs for June and my wife to bring home.

Tonight, seven months later, June was flipping through the pictures on her computer and saw something that startled her. She called Rick and told him to look through the pictures from St. Peter's and look for one with an "angel or ghost" in it. When Rick saw the image above, he called me, and since we were out of the house, I told him to e-mail it so I could see it on my BlackBerry. Mrs. Pool Bar and I were sure that both Rick and June were putting one over on us.

So, when we got home we pulled out my wife's copy of the disc and sure enough, there was the same image on the picture. There were several other pictures of the same scene taken at the same time, and none of them showed the ghostly image you see in this one. I opened up the picture and zoomed in 400x and to my untrained eye, I could see no evidence that it was photoshopped into the original.

I post the image here in the hope that someone with expertise in image manipulation might be able to take a look and tell me if the photo has been doctored in anyway.

Despite the timing, this is NOT a Halloween prank. The only thing I myself have done to the image is to rotate it 90 degrees for proper orientation.

You can grab a copy of the picture by clicking on it, then right clicking on the full-size image, and then select save. EXIF data will be intact.

Update: As I promised in the comments, here are a couple more shots of the same subject, without anything weird. Check the EXIF data to confirm the times they were taken.

Update 2: But wait...something's fishy here. The file size of the picture with the "ghost" is four times the size of the pictures without. I'm calling BS. I know jack about Photoshop. Do such alterations usually significantly increase the file size like that?

Update 3: Back to the drawing board. I found the CD with the original files my wife brought home from Italy. All the files are of similar size. I guess some compression occurred when I uploaded from my wife's computer to my blog, then downloaded the images from my blog to my computer. Bottom line, the source of the "ghost" is still a mystery, and I can't get hold of Rick until tomorrow. Working strictly from the original files on the CD, I can't find any evidence of tampering. Rather than try to clean up this post with the images directly from the disc, I'll put up a new post with all three.

See update to this post here.