This advertisement wins at adjectives (and adverbs):
NEOTERIC TROUSERS CUTTING, In Alamodal Style and Material, are scientifically constructed and symmetrically adjusted to the anthropological flexibilities, for a thaumaturgically minute, prompt, monetary gesticulation at the GENTLEMEN’S CLOTHING ESTABLISHMENT, 136 QUEEN STREET, R. ORSMOND, Proprietor, where your commands will be executed with rabdological exactitude, and melliloquent courtesy.
It’s from the 22nd October 1853 edition of the Hampshire Telegraph & Sussex Chronicle.
Stupid formulae for the perfect cheese sandwich, the perfect day, the perfect breasts etc. that have appeared in the always-trustworthy Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph.
Science: do it properly or not at all.
Link [via]
Reading this newspaper article from the Amarillo Daily News of 11 April 1951, I get the distinct impression that the reporter might is perhaps being just a little sarcastic:
A new book speculates that pilots of flying saucers are super-bees from Mars, two inches long and quite beautiful.
[…]
One report was that flying saucers travel 18,000 miles an hour, with sudden stops and turns. Heard says no pilot shaped like a human being could withstand the force and pressure of such movement. But insects might—and so maybe the Martians are bees.
‘A creature with eyes like brilliant cut diamonds, with a head of sapphire, a thorax of emerald, and abdomen of ruby, wings like opal, legs like topaz—such a body would be worthy of this super-mind.’
[…]
The super-bees have been real gentlemen so far, taking care not to crash into man’s airplanes. In fact, ‘they have behaved with a deportment which shows not merely savoir-faire, but real considerateness.’
The full article is here. According to the Wikipedia article on the author of Is Another World Watching?, Gerald Heard, he started taking LSD in the 1950s. This is possibly not unrelated.
Adverts aren’t what they used to be. There’s just not as much overt racism used in marketing in these politically correct times as in the good old days, at least compared to this advert for a laundrette from a 1900 edition of a newspaper called The Evening Democrat:
The Chinaman
generally speaking, is crafty, cruel and morally extremely filthy. All this has been well understood, but the Chinaman has been tolerated, yes, welcomed, made much of and encouraged in every way. Today he is murdering and outraging the friends of those who have, in the past, defended and befriended him. Do you take your linen to a Chinaman, when you can patronize an American? We have the only “line of” Domestic Machinery in the city.
This Chinaman sounds like quite a guy.
