Albuquerque: The City That Cares

There's this pile of old newspapers that's been on my desk at work for a few weeks now. It'll probably be there for a few more, too, because I've got way too many things on my to-do list at the GUBAM to worry about a few tore-up and yellowing papers that my boss wants priced way too high anyway. See, he likes to buy stuff that nobody wants and then mark it at prices that nobody will ever pay. Apparently he doesn't like it when people actually buy his merchandise. He seems to want to keep it all forever and then build himself a big fat honkin' pyramid (actually, he wouldn't build the thing, it'd be more like "have Dan do it") so he can take it all with him when he dies. Not quite sure how he plans on finding anyone to mummify him in this day and age, however. Maybe he knows somebody that'll do it for trade credit.

Anyway. I digress.

So I'm leafing through these newspapers this morning, really just kinda wasting some time since I don't get to take smoke breaks anymore, when I come across an Albuquerque Journal from Friday morning, October 16, 1964 (RUSSIA OUSTS KHRUSHCHEV). In the upper left of the front page there's a smallish blurb with the heading "Today's Smile." I'm an inquisitive guy by nature, so I think to myself "hmm, I wonder what people were smiling about in October of 1964?" Also, I'm not quite done wasting time yet. So I read it.

Today's Smile
New Delhi (AP) - The exasperated city government has decided that about 100 slum families can just stay in the slums. They were allotted 240-square-foot tracts on which to escape their filthy ghettos and start life anew, but they quickly sold the plots to big landowners and moved back into the slums.

Ha ha! Those crazy poor people!

Is this really the sort of thing that America found amusing 40 years ago? Wow. Never mind if these poor folks desperately needed food, or if maybe they had a roof over their heads in the ghetto and kinda liked living indoors during monsoon season. Excessive poverty and human suffering are hilarious!