For some reason this was unearthed and passed around the internet yesterday, so whom am I to buck a trend. It's a quick Pathe doc on the means by which oily beatniks were scrubbed down and converted into civilized women again. As the narrator says: "It's all part of the deception of a modern woman's life." Well, when you put it like that, who could refuse? Especially filthy Beatnik girls.

Amusing comment on the YouTube page: "We're the beatniks looked down upon?" It's as if people think that "counterculture" was admired and revered in its time. No.

The Pathe archives are an astonishing resource, and they've even put up outtakes. Here's some screen grabs from a short about things you can do to your head that make you look ludicrous forty years later. There's the dead bird look:

And then there's the other dead bird look. Literally:

The whole thing's here.

SCIENCE! In honor of the X-Files returning, here's Inquistr, just throwing out nonsense:

Oh! Well. If the proposal is known as a theory, then we must take it seriously.

Speaking of the X-Files: wouldn't it be nice if they explained everything left up in the air after the movie? The bees? The black oil? The Supersoldiers? The whole fight-the-future alien takeover business? All that hugger-mugger people obsessed about for half a decade?