We’re going to be really easy on the eyes this week. Time to settle into nice summertime mode and relax a bit.

It’s not that I lack for things to write, but do you really want to hear about my problems with Photoshop, and how it’s bombing every time I use it, and this means I am faced with a choice of going with their ($*%#$*$#!#)_@# subscription model (NO) (NO THANK YOU) (NO) to pay monthly in perpetuity for software that expires the minute I don’t pay? Or how it means I use an overpowered program that does most of the same things with an interface I don’t like, or an underpowered program that does most of the same things with an interface I don’t like for different reasons?

Or the fact that my main web-creation software will die with the next Mac OS, unless I subscribe to Adobe (SEE ABOVE, NO, OP CIT) or use another program that’s missing two or three key things I must have?

I’ve worried for a long time that I’d become too dependent on certain programs, and it seems the day is coming. But do you really want to hear about that? No.

See? I know when not to bore you with unnecessary things.

I’m three eps into Stranger Things S3, and I like it - but not enough to watch it every night. This is the new standard for television. There are those savages who watch several eps at one sitting, which is like eating all the ice cream and then feeling empty when it’s gone and you’ve no ice cream left in the house, which means you have to go to the store, which means getting out of the house and driving somewhere, perhaps, and seeing if they have your flavor, and wondering whether you should try another flavor. I mean, there are so many. Hey - Lunds has a BOGO on ice cream scrounds, and they have the Kemps stuff, it’s pretty good, and one of them has actual shards of Thin Mints embedded in the minty ice cream. But mint ice cream is always something of a disappointment, mostly because it’s not minty enough. Then again, it gets to mintalicious, it’s like toothpaste ice cream, which might not be a bad idea if it had chunks of Thin Mints but chances are you’re going to notice the chocolate more than the mint. See? This is why you stick with your favorite.

If you walked to get the ice cream because you watched four eps of Stranger Things in one sitting you might find it’s melted by the time you get back, and that’s the death of ice cream. It will refreeze, but like a dead body buried in the Pet Sematary, it comes back wrong. But, you say, I didn’t eat all the ice cream when I watched four eps. You’ve conflated actions with the simile.

Yes. I did. Shut up. I was at Lunds looking at the BOGO Ice cream sale tonight, and was a bit disappointed by the variety. I’m sure it’s carefully calibrated for the demographic, more premium the the stuff at Cub, and certainly no prominent display of the depressing gallon tubs of VANILLA. They had the aforementioned Thin Mints flavor, and I passed. They had a version of my favorite, which is a budget line ($3.50 a scround) that has thick veins of peanut butter, my favorite thing in ice cream. The BOGO, which should be BOGOF, did not extend to “novelties,” which is ice cream in shapes or stabbed with sticks or sandwiched between cookies. I ended up buying nothing. If any manager had asked why I left empty-handed, I would have shouted “insufficient scround variety” over my shoulder as I left.

This ties into “Stranger Things” because a mall ice-cream store features in the story, and also the marketing, and because the soundtrack at the grocery store was all 80s.

We have the architecture of the 20s and 30s, but no one listens to the music.

We have a non-representative sample of the music of the 50s - wasn’t all rock and roll, kids - but we threw away the architecture and adopted a parody of the interiors and clothing styles.

We revere every aspect of non-dominant 60s culture and believe it was the over culture, not the counter culture, although we simultaneously laud it for being rebellious.

We have reduced the 70s to Saturday Night Fever, even though the music was more diverse than any other decade (not necessarily better, just more diverse). We have some of the architecture around but don’t think of it as “70s” because no one really knows what that means.

We have lots of 80s architecture around, but because it’s not Miami Vice, no one thinks it’s 80s. We have almost no TV references except for music videos, and the music has been boiled down to a hit playlist.

And I’ve been listening to it for three and a half decades, and it never recedes. That’s the thing. All the culture of the past is fixed, and even though I get older I don’t feel farther away from it. But then I see the scenes in “Stranger Things” set in the physical 80s, the mall, and it’s like seeing scenes from Paris in the Belle Epoque.

An item like this brings it all back in a way a song never could.

More 1947 Grocery-Day newspaper ads.

It looks like a party and it tastes like a party

It’s a Grennan cake! A Grennan Cook-Book cake! A Grennan Cook-Book Gold Ring cake!

It was a chain of bakeries. The first google result is a lawsuit, filed by a guy who worked for a competing bakery, complaining that a Grennan agent beat him over rack space.

The defendant Smith, feeling aggrieved and angered because of what he considered encroachment on his space and interference by plaintiff with his display rights in some stores served by them, determined to put an end to the alleged wrongs. To this end, he sought plaintiff, whom he found in Hussey's store. Hussey was a customer of Continental but not of Grennan.

At that time plaintiff was in Hussey's store selling him Continental products in the course of his employment. Smith had no purpose in going into Hussey's store except to adjust his differences with plaintiff. It is undisputed that, when he entered Hussey's store, Smith cursed and swore at plaintiff and accused him of taking too much space on racks shared by them in other stores.

In order to avoid having trouble in the store, plaintiff suggested that he and Smith step outside. After they got outside, Smith again cursed and swore at plaintiff, renewed his accusations, and told plaintiff to take off his glasses. Plaintiff asked Smith what he meant, and Smith thereupon said, "Here is a sample of it," and hit plaintiff in the eye, causing injuries necessitating its removal.

Let’s step outside. Take off your glasses. The good old days; the basics were respected.

Glop and crunchy stix:

More glop from the competitor; at least no one’s said Ah, so yet

Sub-Seuss with a janky meter:

No one in the Fritos marketing department ever suggests bringing “digestibility” up again as an attribute.

When was the last time you bought some Smoother?

It’s rich! It costs so little!

What the hell does it taste like, though?

Bonnets, doffed:

When I was growing up, this product mystified me. If the milk had evaporated . . . then there wasn’t any, right?

Puny man who will get no sex! Why don’t you consume the grains that bear the name of a strict religious order?

Let's drop in on the far-away yet oh-so-relatable world of 1916, as seen through the work of Clare Briggs. See you around.