The Quarterly Grain Report

The Death of 1970's Man

The brown paper bag. A device which essentially exists to serve two purposes, but is no longer successful in either.

Firstly, unless equipped with sturdy, stapled handles, the brown paper bag has to be the most awkward approach ever conceived to transfer recently purchased goods from the counter to your car. It would be more effective to wrap all your items up in a cloth, and carry it on a stick over your shoulder. Hobo-style. And if you try carrying more than two bags at once, attempting to do any other thing becomes physically impossible. Such as opening a door, or signing up for an upcoming raffle.

But in addition to making sure that all attempts at carrying groceries are unwieldy and destined to fail, the brown paper bag also been the method of choice in obscuring terrifyingly uncontrollable, convenience-store pornography addictions for generations. Though today, the said paper bag method does not completely hide from view your shameful problem. It only serves to cloak whether you have decided on Enormous Asses, King-Size Queens, or instead opted for Juggs Jamboree. This is no fault of the bag, mind you, but rather the consumer of today, because all but the most savvy of sexual deviants will inevitably be exposed. Primarily because there is no logical reason for discreetly concealing a copy of say...Car and Driver, and tightly clutching it against your breast as you hurry nervously down the sidewalk, glancing from side to side. The paranoid reader of bagged literature is thus revealed, and ostracized from a gasping, child-shielding society.

But such hasn't always been the case. The possible interpretations of passersby would not be limited to under-the-table exploits if this were the 1970's. The golden age of closet addictions of every kind. This was a time when 1970's Man could simultaneously carry on with a cocaine dependency, and also be a well-respected, prosperous, Cuban drug lord. A time when the only thing more shameful than indulging in the fleshly periodicals from time to time, was not doing so. But most importantly, this was an era rife with obscene LP covers. From Alice Cooper to The Stones, Top 40 radio wouldn't let you on the airwaves unless your album art offended somebody. This provided our Man with an extremely convenient and plausible excuse. For if Little Timmy Thompson were to approach 1970's Man, and begin to bombard him with ceaseless, stereotypical, childish questions (Whatcha got in the bag, Mister... and so forth), he wouldn't hesitate to answer: "A John Lennon album. Now run along, you little bastard."

Alas, this artistically creative decade has long passed, and it has taken the upstanding, confident, brown bag literature man with it. It has left in its wake a weak, trembling shell of 1970's Man. A man who can hardly be considered a man at all. For without a viable excuse of what is contained within the brown, magazine-shaped bag, Present-Day Man can only respond with: "Uhh...the um...I don't really...well...you see my wife...uhh...heh heh...is into...birthday card. It's Birthday cards."

Birthday cards indeed.

posted by Arthur Croft Yates @ 8:13 PM