Angels, Crucifixes, and Corpse Factories

Working from home today, because of inclement weather and a night of allergies.

My co-worker n_scale emailed me to ask if I'd ever read any Arthur Machen. I'd not, and my wiki search for the name led to some fascinating religious/superstitious beliefs of the First World War.


The Angels of Mons. This was a widespread belief that angelic warriors (in some versions, St. George himself) appeared on the battlefield in support of the British in August 1914. The belief stemmed from a piece of fantasy fiction written as a "false document" by Arthur Machen.


_{Photo by M. O'Leary, 2006.}
Second, Canada's Golgotha. A story with local interest! Sergeant Harry Band of Brantford, Ontario (about 20 km from here) was supposedly crucified with bayonets on a barn door in April of 1915. It quite possibly never happened, though Band was indeed killed in the war. The details of the supposed event were exaggerated through the war, and in 1919 a bronze sculpture, "Canada's Golgotha", was made depicting the incident. The controversy over it meant that it was actually banned from public view until 1989.


_{KAISER (to 1917 Recruit). "AND DON'T FORGET THAT YOUR KAISER WILL FIND A USE FOR YOU — ALIVE OR DEAD."}

Finally, the Kadaververwertungsanstalt, or corpse factories, supposedly used by the Germans to made lubricants and soap out of fallen soldiers. This legend apparently originated from a 60 word "filler piece" in a German newspaper about what happens to dead livestock. Of course, WWII made the legend of the Kadaververwertungsanstalt seem positively benign...

Meh.

The Rainsoft sales lady just told us we had radium and pharmacueticals in our water.

She also told us about their 160,000 square foot facility in Illinois and all the charity work the company does. Oh, and they exceed industry standards!

They also sell a water softener for $4000! $6000!

*eyeroll*

Now she's complimenting velvetpage on her brains, and saying "You have a good brain on your shoulders, but do you think you could do more research than NASA?"

And now she's working into the "So, how much do you spend a week?" thing.

I was totally wrong!

It was actually $11,400.

I came very close to losing my temper with the woman when she told me she wasn't selling anything. After a two hour presentation about Rainsoft.

Pyat and the Hard-Soft-Water-Sale

The interaction was as follows:

The sales rep ("Kathi") tried to get velvetpage to sign a purchase agreement tonight, saying that we will forfeit $4000 in special soap that she can give us, but ONLY IF WE BUY NOW. velvetpage asks to think about it till Friday. Fine, says Kathi, but you won't get the $4000 of soap.

I was putting the girls to bed when this was being said, but came down when I heard Kathi talking about signing. I'd also been in the living room for most of the pitch. I ducked out as soon as I'd seen the product samples, about 2 minutes in. Anyway, I stomped into the conversation like a surly dinosaur and told Kathi we would not be buying tonight.

I should note that my hair was disarranged and standing up, and I was generally wrinkled and untucked from wrangling the girls. Kathi didn't seem impressed by me. I should have been wearing an undershirt, carrying a beer bottle and smoking a stub of a cigar, to complete the picture of clumping male Archie Bunker stereotype.

(I should have growled, "I hear soft water is for homos and commies!")

Kathi objected that I'd not heard her sales pitch, or seen the demonstration. What she didn't know is that I'd been busily googling and doing price research in the living room while listening to her spiel in the kitchen. The bulk of reviews that struck me as detailed and informed were along the lines of "It works fine, but it very overpriced." And, I'd been turned off by her patronizing sales pitch, which was also rather misleading, as we shall see.

I told Kathi that we'd been told she was coming to test our water on behalf of a "community service organization." I told her that velvetpage had asked the appointment setter, point blank, if they were selling anything, and was told they were not.

Said Kathi, "Oh, I'm not selling anything. I'm here to demonstrate the problem with your water, and show you a solution that we have."

That comment made me very mad, and the following interaction was rather terse.
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