WATCH List 2009 - The Land of the Misfit Toys

This is the anniversary of my 2008 post on the list of worst toys - in terms of danger, not of taste and aesthetics - of the year.

Well, the new list of the most perilous toys for 2009 from WATCH - that's World Against Toys Causing Harm - is out. WATCH, a Massachusetts non-profit, has been speaking out on rotten toys since 1973, which means they're now into their third generation. You'd think by now that toy manufacturers would have figured choking hazards out, wouldn't you?

I was most disappointed to see a book on the list - and a Curious George book, at that. But, as anyone who's been to a Borders or a Barnes and Noble looking for kids books lately can tell you, for every book-book there's some sort of book+ merchandise thing - plush this, whirling that, lunch box whatever - to accompany it. It's almost as though if a book doesn't come with a TV show or add-ons - think Dora the Explorer -  it's not worth carrying on the shelves. Thus, the last set of baby books I purchased came from one of the last indie bookstores in the area, the Harvard Bookstore, which doesn't sell book avec crap. There, I found some very nice books - one, in fact, was a counting book -  that I haven't seen going and coming.

This Curious George counting book comes with an embedded abacus. That's a 6 1/2" metal rod, you got there. Man in the Yellow Hat beware! You could poke your eye out with that! And it's easy enough to see a kid wanting to pry those colored beads out and pop 'em in his mouth.

If you want to buy a counting book, there are plenty of them out there that don't include a built in attractive nuisance.  Besides, a lot of families will already have some sort of abacus toy - not to mention that, before you bring your baby home from the hospital, you must  be able to demonstrate that you have the rainbow-colored Fisher Price stack o' rings you can count on. This must be the case.  Certainly, I don't recall ever being in a home with a baby that didn't have this classic.

And weren't we just talking about poking an eye out?

Could happen with this Disney Pixar Wall-E Rocket Launcher which is, apparently, jet propelled enough to shoot the rocket 20 feet.

I'm sure I'd feel different about this if I actually knew a kid who lost an eye because of this toy, and maybe this should be for kids much older than three, which is the stated over-under, but kids really love launching something and seeing it take off. Pea shooter, sling shot, baseball bat, in-person/on-person throwing arm... Who doesn't love a 'that she blows' toy. (One of my brothers had a toy tank that shot big, red, soft plastic shells. We thought it was incredibly cool for the twenty minutes it worked before we broke it. Nobody lost an eye or a tooth during those twenty minutes.)

In fact, WATCH is not being a purse-lipped kill-joy here. The problem with this toy is its labeling. It states in bold that the toy is FOR ALL AGES, but makes a smaller mention that it's not recommended for kids under the age of three.

Inconsistent labeling is a recurring theme with WATCH. People do tend to trust what's on the label, figuring that the toy has been vetted. But they may not look at all the fine print, or notice that fun for all ages really comes with a qualifier.

What else is on the list?

There's something called the Moon Board Pogo Board - which looks to combine a wheel-less skateboard with the bounce of a pogo stick -  used to perform tricks. It comes with so many warnings about wearing protective gear, that it's certainly easy to see that kids would like it and parents would hate it.

Then there's the caveat “Do not attempt ‘tricks’ beyond your skill level.” Name me one child in the history of the world - other than child-me, who would have decided immediately that I had no skill level and would have avoided this one to begin with - who would read and heed that warning.

Then there's the Batman with the sharp, pointy ears. (You can poke your eye out!) The xylophone for the 18 month old with the easily removable drumstick to plunk on it with - that could be sucked on and "occlude a child's airway." (Note to parents: Remove drumstick tethered to xylophone. Press on xylophone to demonstrate to child that fingers work.)  The stuffed Maltese puppy with the strangulation hazard leash....

Frankly, while the toys on the list all have problems, the problems seem solvable if a parent observes a couple of rules:

• Read the front and back of packaging, including the small print, and trust the highest age recommendation. I.e., if the front says 3 and over, and the back says "not for children under 5", go with the "not for children under 5" warning.
• Don't give a baby/toddler a toy with any small, easily removable pieces. Tug on everything first.
• If you give your child anything that shoots a projectile object, make sure they're wearing goggles - which the kids would probably like, anyway.

And then there's Rogers' rule: for every plastic piece of crap you buy, buy a book, preferably one without an embedded abacus in it. You could poke an eye out with that!

Anyway, if you're buying toys this Christmas, as always, you'd better watch out.

Crime may not pay (but Bernie's auction sure did)

Just a brief post today to let folks who may have missed the news know that the Pieces of Bernie and Ruthie auction - sort of like the "results" that Madoff delivered -  exceeded expectations.  But, unlike Madoff's financial results, which occurred only on paper, the auction off of B&R's personnel effects brought in cold, hard cash - about $1M. Twice what the auctioneers thought they'd get going in.

That Mets jacket that Bernie won't be needing in the stir?

The auctioneers had valued it at up to $720, but some sport forked over $14.5K for it.

Bernie's Hofstra College Class of 1960 ring brought in $6K. The pre-auction estimate was $360.

Bernie's gold irons also went for an order of magnitude beyond the estimate.

Ruthie's diamond dangle earrings went for $70K per pair - pre-auction worth was set at $9.8 and $21.4K.

One of the items that under-performed was one of Bernie's 17 Rolex watches. Someone got that for a $65K song - $10-20K less than its appraisal.

Of course, there must have been many other under-performing assets, or the auction would have brought in more than double what was expected. I.e., everything obviously didn't go for a multiple of 10. (Wonder what the cow creamer and the Post-it notes went for?)

But, overall, the auction was a mega-success. Kinda sorta like the results that Bernie's victims thought they were getting, no? An interesting parallel.

I'm assuming that most of those who paid inflated prices did so anticipating that the value of anything Madoff will increase. Hard to believe that anyone would pay a real premium for this stuff.

But in terms of the value increasing, that may not happen A couple of years from now, Bernie Madoff may well have faded completely out of our individual and collective consciousness. (Think Bernie Ebbers.)

Meanwhile, a separate auction of Bernie's yachts (and Ruthie's Mercedes) took in $2M.

Source: AP article from the Auction Central News site.

Cogito Ergo Tweet

Time has come up with a wonderful compilation of the greatest inventions of 2009.

Talk about a treasure trove!

Okay, so the first - and best, according to Time - on the list is the Ares Rocket, an invention that I'm afraid to say bores the space suit off of me. (How did it beat out the AIDS vaccine, by the way?) I guess I was just one of those whom the space program just blasted right by.

I remember our first astronaut - Alan Shephard - mainly because it was the first time that we had a TV in the classroom. Some parent must have lent us the little black and white "portable" with rabbit ears. The space shot would have been more thrilling if Alan Shepard had been a Catholic, of course. Oh, well. Maybe we got to watch it to begin with because the President was a Catholic.

A year or so later, I thought the John Glenn orbit was kind of cool.

But other than enjoying the laugh riot that was Bill Dana's HIGH-larious Mexican astronaut, José Jiménez - it was a different time, not so much a kinder, gentler time, as a time when you could tell ethnic jokes, make fun of people's accents and actually laugh out loud - I never paid much attention to the space program. (I did watch the moon landing, and look at the moon that night; and I loved the movie The Right Stuff.)

So the Ares invention doesn't do it for me.

But tank-bred tuna does. Sure, I know the rap on aquiculture is that it produces the plumped up, hormoned to the gills equivalent of the factory chicken. Still, it's good to know that when the oceans get tuna-fished out, we'll still be able to have an occasional sandwich featuring a salad made of the chicken of the sea.

I also like the Yike Bike, which kind of looks like a rabbit corkscrew on wheels. Yes, steering by leaning does seem like a major invitation to falling off and breaking a shoulder - no thanks - and the top speed of 12 m.p.h. is a tad frightening. But it looks so much like a tech-ish little tricycle, you have to just love it.

As I plan on cultivating vertical farming at a later date - by blogging about it, not actually doing it - I didn't even click through on this winning invention. 

I'm glad someone invented a $20 knee, as I will probably be needing one at some point. But I'm not so glad that someone's cloning puppies - to the tune of $144K per clone. Not that I don't understand doggy-love; I just think that full-body cloning is on the downside of a steep and very slippery slope. Ugh.

Of the first 25 inventions on the list, though, my favorite is something called Tweeting by Thinking. I will admit that, when I first saw it, my initial thought was, 'oh, great, now the mindless twitterers won't even have to risk Twitter Thumb Syndrome, they'll just be able to think their 140 character bon mots."

Then I read the description of it.

It's not really Twittering by Thinking at all.

It's a way for those who are "locked in" - paralyzed but with their minds still working - to communicate by focusing on a character board while wearing an electrode cap.  Locked in people can communicate now, but I believe it's only/largely by having someone count their blinks. This new method will let people communicate on their own. So far, it's slow going: the most rapid tweeters - and, yes, Tweeting is the first application they're using - only run at about 8 characters per minute. But the rate will only be going in one direction.

Yes, I can think of many creepy applications of this down the pike, but I'll probably be tweeting from the great beyond before anyone figures out how to really read an unwitting someone else's mind. But for the here and now, this is a terrific development. It's thrilling to me in a way that no Ares rocket's ever going to be,- although once we completely despoil the earth - something else that will likely be post-my-humous - it won't be a bad fall back position if those with the right stuff can hop into a rocket and check out the next universe to see if we can make a go of it there.

Until then, bravo to the Twitter by Thinking inventors. Cogito ergo tweet is one small step for the locked in man and woman, but what a might leap that small step will mean.

Dream on Studios

A while back, we locals started hearing about the Major Motion Picture Studio that was going to be built in Plymouth, Massachusetts.

Plymouth Rock Studios was variously the brain child and the love child of David Kirkpatrick, former head of Paramount Studios, and yet another one of those famous-people-having-to-do-with-the-world-of-entertainment-that-I've-never-heard of.

Plymouth Rock Studios was gong to be a very ambitious undertaking, based on:

...a $650 million plan to build 14 sound stages and a virtual entertainment city in the woods of Plymouth, making Massachusetts the production center for countless movies and TV shows.

Needless to say, the locals all got big old stars in their eyes on this one.  PRS was not only going to mean jobs, it was going to mean glam jobs. For who among us has not, for at least one brief shining moment, harbored the fantasy that they were going to be a star.

Of course, putting away our childish things, most of us realized that a) we weren't going to be a star; b) being a star is often accompanied by all sorts of terrible invasions of the privacy snatchers and other rotten things that could make day to day life miserable. (Truly, who wants to see a picture of themselves using a pooper-scooper in the pages of US Magazine. Movie stars: they're just like us.)

Still, I wouldn't mind writing a novel that got optioned. And having it up for an Academy Award. (What to wear, what to wear. Would I have to get contact lenses for the occasion? Does anyone other than Martin Scorsese wear glasses to the Oscars?)

And if Matt Damon stopped me on the street and asked me to play his older fling, or, more likely, his mother-in-law, in a new movie, I might say 'yes.' He is, after all, a nice local boy.

Not to mention that it's kinda-sorta fun when a movie's being made in the 'hood.

Why, Tom Cruise, Katie, and Suri, plus Cameron Diaz, were apparently trick or treating on Beacon Hill a few weeks ago. I, personally, did not observe them in the crowds, which I was happy to escape for a nice quiet dinner. (Nor did I see John Kerry giving out candy, although there was quite a gathering outside of his mansion hoping for a glimpse. Wonder what he gave out. Packets of Heinz ketchup?)

Anyway, the Plymouth Rock Studios idea has - at least for the time being - run aground, and Plymouth will not be turning into Hollywood East anytime soon.

The funding is gone, baby, gone, Kirkpatrick's group having parted company with the Prosperity International LLC of Florida:

...which had approved a $550 million construction loan to the studio developers, has falsely claimed credit for projects it has not been associated with. It is run out of a rented house near Disney World by a man who has been through bankruptcy himself.

The Magic Kingdom weeps.

The Kirkpatrick group has raised $11M and spent $15M.

You do the math.

They're under the waters of Plymouth Harbor as surely as is the hull of the replica of the Mayflower.

Kirkpatrick himself has had his own money woes, having gone through a recent personal bankruptcy, and been:

... reduced to making small-time videos - “Merry Christmas Babies’’ sold 23 copies - and relying on a loan from his mother in Worcester to make ends meet, court records show.

Mother. In. Worcester.

Does the story get any better?

Well, yes it does, and it include a nasty-gram from Anne Rice, the writer who formerly specialized in vampire-related novels, who was doing a project for a religiously-oriented entertainment group that Kirkpatrick had gotten involved in that was going to provide something called 'Spiritainment.'  (The group was promised backing by an ex-con named Bobbitt. You cannot make these things up.)

Enough. You can read the entire convoluted story in The Globe. (Source of the quoted material above.)

I actually do hope that Plymouth Rock Studios gets funded and, better yet, actually takes off - even though the entire project reeks of  'Hey, kids, the economy's broken. Let's put on a show!'

I'm behind having a little Tinseltown come our way. (Hooray for Hollywood!  Hooray for Plymouth!)

And, having broken my head trying to follow the ins and outs of this one, I'm even willing to offer David Kirkpatrick a suggestion.

Forget Anne Rice. I think that he might want to start out with remakes of The Music Man, The Sting, and Elmer Gantry.

Steve Burton, a man in someone else's uniform (So why is this a federal offense?)

Well, I've always wondered just what the Uniform Code of Military Justice is. But now I'm beginning to piece things together and figure out that the operative words may be "uniform" and "military." Or so it seems, if you're following the case of Steve Burton, who went to his 20th high school reunion sporting a Marine uniform, bedazzled by a number of medals, including the Navy Cross. (Source: CNN.)

Trouble is, Burton is not now and never has been a Marine, let alone a decorated Marine, and he's now charged with:

"unauthorized wearing of military medals or decorations." The federal misdemeanor charge carries a maximum penalty of a year in federal prison upon conviction.

Semper fee, fie, fo, fum. Someone smells the blood of a Palm Springs bank officer, not a mega-decorated jar-head.

That someone was Navy Commander Colleen Salonga.

She was also at the reunion - apparently in mufti - when see spied Burton's chest o' medals and, knowing the rarity with which the Navy Cross is awarded, grew suspicious.

Apparently, Salonga didn't do what a kinder, gentler classmate might have done - ask a probing question or two, and then whispered in Burton's ear that if those really weren't his medals, he needed to take them off.  Or write it off as a bad joke Halloween costume - the reunion was held on October 31st of last year. No, Salonga asked the unwitting Burton to pose with her for a picture. Which she put down her swagger stick long enough to send to the FBI.

Despite the perpetual threat of terrorism and the large number of what I might loosely call crime-crimes, the FBI had time to investigate. (Including a search of Burton's home.) They discovered that Burton had never served, let alone won any medals, and that he'd been blogging about his exploits in Afghanistan and Iraq - questionable taste and judgement surely, but not a federal offense as far as I'm aware.

He also had picture of himself posted online, again in uniform, this time having humbly demoted himself from high school reunion lieutenant colonel to lowly gunnery sergeant. The medals were fully intact. (By the way, "even if a medal is a replica, wearing it still violates federal law." Who knew?)

Burton hasn't spoken, so it's difficult to say what his intentions were here, but if I were the betting type, I'd place a couple of bets.

First, Burton lives with his partner of eighteen years. If we were to put two and two together, one might be able to imagine that at some point or other during his time served at Alhambra High School, Burton was ridiculed or bullied. Nothing terrible, mind you. Just the occasional trip in the halls, the odd book toss, the hip chuck into the lockers, the stray epithet hurled his way.

What better way to show up the jocks who scorned him as a 98 pound weakling than to show up at the 20th reunion as a decorated Marine?

Second, like a lot of folks - especially those who haven't led particularly glamorous or exciting lives - Burton may have fantasized and romanticized about being a hero. One bit of wishful thinking led to another, and there you are online writing about your combat exploits. (Note: the work-based exploits I occasionally write about on Pink Slip are true, all true, however filtered through the years and through my own desire to make myself look good...)

If it's the first - revenge of the nerd - this story is kind of funny.

If it's the second - well, this is sad and more than a little pathetic. Definitely conduct unbecoming a bank officer.

When I was a kid, we had an expression we used when someone over-reacted to something: "You don't have to make a federal case out of it."

Maybe my moral compass is way off here, but is Burton's offense something we need to make a federal case out of?

Sure, you can make the case that Burton vaguely took away from real heroes by posing as one. But what's the real harm? He wasn't swanning around the Pentagon giving advice. He wasn't cadging health care from a VA Hospital. He wasn't giving interviews crowing about his heroism. He wasn't endangering the lives of others in battle.  He wasn't trying to get a free ride - front row tickets, upgrades to first.

He was pretending he was something he wasn't so that people would think he was brave, a hero, someone to look up to.

Embarrassing, shabby, pathetic? Yes. (Or maybe just a joke of dubious taste, given that there's a war on. Or, rather, two wars on.)

Deserving of a poke in the nose from a real winner of the Navy Cross? Probably.

Worthy of a year in the slammer? Absolutely not.

Burton's trial date is set for early January.

I'm not a big one to complain about waste of taxpayers' money. But isn't this a colossal waste of taxpayers money?

I'm sure that the blogosphere's chicken hawk brigade will be squawking for Burton to do time for this affront to their world, but I'm hoping the government prosecutor comes to his senses and drops the trial, with a warning to Burton that he better not show up at his 25th reunion wearing any "fruit salad".

As for Colleen Salonga...

Come on, Colleen. Sure, it may have been a little awkward to broach the topic with Steve Burton. But, if you had your suspicions, wouldn't voicing them to Steve have been a bit more upright than cagily getting him to pose for a picture that you could send on to the FBI? Couldn't you have used your network to check out the Navy Cross story on your own - surely there's a list somewhere, surely this information isn't secret. And surely you could have contacted Burton once you found that his name was AWOL from any Navy Cross list, and told him off  and warning him that he'd better cease and desist.

The best spin I can put on this is that maybe you wanted to 'make sure' before you made an accusation, and the FBI, lamely, decided to run with it.

But isn't this a consequence that you should have been able to foresee?

(If there's some end-of-days situation and they end up drafting old geezers, and I find myself serving under her, I'm heading to sick-bay.)

As for the FBI. Once they got their wind up on Burton, how about a sternly worded letter to him? Or a knock on the door and a  'you may not be aware' conversation with the local G-man.

Sure, wearing medals you didn't win is pathetic and somewhat distasteful, but it's not such an obvious crime, is it? I mean, it's not up there in terms of 'but of course', heinous offenses like grand theft auto, beating someone's brains out with a tire iron, or stealing military secrets and selling them to Al Qaeda.

Yes, it's "only" a misdemeanor, but there seems to be an awful lot of over-reacting for something that's really fairly peccadillo-ish in the grand scheme of things. (A possible year in jail? Yikes!)

As for poor Steve Burton, he's sure finding out that make-believe war is hell, too.

Pieces of Bernie

If you're not doing anything tomorrow, pieces of Bernie (and Ruthie) are being auctioned off  through the U.S. Marshals Service by Gaston & Sheehan at the Sheraton Hotel in NYC. Don't worry if you won't be in town - the auction's being simulcast.

I first read about this is The Wall Street Journal , by I didn't want to take their word for it, so I checked out the auction house and the Marshals, themselves. They put together a nicely detailed catalog for their National Forfeited Jewelry Auction, and conveniently pointed out that the Madoff lots are 196-299, and 301-386. I think we could tell from the picture alone that not everything being sold-off "belonged" to Bernie or Ruth.

That stunning cap in the lower right corner comes from an entirely non-Madoff lot. Myself, I'm not a Yankees fan, but if you're a pin-striper with $80-110 of cap money burning a hole in your pocket, the cap is size 7 1/2, and is a special edition (yo!) version. It's made of "black wool/cashmere fabric w/ white gold button top & thread appointments; handmade bullion logo". That would be handmade in Italy. Comes with its own mahogany box.

But the Mets jacket, of course, was Bernie's, and it's kind of too bad he couldn't hang on to it, since those complementary colors sure go with an orange jump suit, no?

To browse the catalog is a little stroll down consumption lane.

Bernie liked watches. Lots of them. Cartier, Rolex, Piaget. And if you can't afford $50-60K to bid on a watch, he also had a lot of watch bands.

Ruthie, I'd say, was more into bracelets and pocketbooks. Especially pocketbooks.

Talk about in came the lady with the alligator purse. And the crocodile purse. And the lizard purse. And the snakeskin purse. Apparently, there's no such thing as too many Vuitton or Hermes bags.

Ruthie's fancy silver, china, and glassware are also up for bid, including 12 individual sterling salt shakers (with salt). There are also more humble little items like her corn on the cob plates, and her ceramic cow creamer. (I have one of those, too! Of course, mine is this goofy purple cow one my mother gave me years ago, and not the cool white version from Williams Sonoma, or Crate and Barrel, or wherever the cool one comes from.)

You'll be able to bid on lots of swell stuff, including a couple of boogie boards with "Madoff" written on them in black marker, Ruthie's golf shoes (size 8, Footjoy), and Bernie's money clip.

You can bid on the Madoffs' his and hers personalized writing paper - comes in the lot with some pens, and a partial (1/5) stack of personalized Post-it notes. Curiously, the 7 Ella Fitzgerald stamps (0.46 euro denomination) aren't in the lot with the paper and pens. They're lumped in with a couple of Ruthie's wallets and a messenger bag. (Wonder if there are any messages still in it!)

There may be TMI contained in the catalog. (Do I need to know - let alone repeat - that Ruthie wore a 28" belt? [All those 32" belts must have gone over heavy sweaters.])

Alas, I won't be going to the auction - nor will I be participating in the simulcast. But I did want to pass the info on to my readers.

And even if you miss the jewelry, etc. auction, you'll still have a chance to get a piece of Bernie, when his yachts - Bull, Sitting Bull, and Little Bull - hit the auction block in Ft. Lauderdale next Tuesday.

Happy bidding!

"How Not to Act Old"

For the life of me, I don't know how I've missed Pamela Redmond Safran's How Not to Act Old, but - thanks to my (younger) sister Trish - I now know that there are little things we need to avoid doing if we don't want to appear (yuck!) old.

And we're not talking just the obvious ones like getting your hair kinked, fried, and sprayed weekly at Al's Golden Chateau. Or  sitting on the subway with your arms clutched, Heimlich Maneuver tight, around your pocketbook. Or reacting with pinched-faced disapproval whenever the name Kanye West is mentioned.

We're talking about things that I hadn't (yet) realized signified geezerhood.

I first learned about Safran from a WBZ TV link to a post by Kate Merrill that Trish sent me on the topic, and here's the handful of must avoids:

• Wearing a watch Forget that cool looking Skagen you're sporting, let alone Lady Bulova you got for your high school graduation. You need to know what time it is? What do you think your iPhone's for.
• Leaving a voice mail. I had pretty much figured out that leaving a voice mail for anyone under 30 was a waste of breath. I guess it's still okay to leave a voice mail for a fellow traveler. Unless you want to demonstrate that you've joined the vanguard of those who know that it's such a waste of precious time to listen to a tedious voice message, let alone respond to it. We live in the moment - and that moment is shouting TXT.
• Cosmos.  Even though I never saw "Sex and The City", a cosmo - or some variation on the martini theme: Appletini, Lemon Drop, whatever - has always made me feel, along with the light attendant buzz,  kippy and cool. According to Safran, the cosmo is "the official drink of menopausal women." Of course, I'm now of an age when it's flattering to be thought of as a menopausal woman. We're not told what's the beverage in today's fountain of youth - Hendrick's gin? - but I think I'll stick with the occasional cosmo. I tend to be drinking one in the company of fellow geez-ettes, in a decidedly non-hip venue, where a kindly and aging bartender is looking out for us.

Sure, all this is good for a laugh or two, but we also know that folks of a certain age hit big time age discrimination in the job market, so Merrill includes a couple of "must avoid" tips from career counselor Kathy Robinson.

• Don't use long, formal e-mails as part of your job search. Keep it cas, bro. Nothing screams oldster like formal, stilted language. A while back, a friend of mine (roughly my age) was told by her 20-something manager that she shouldn't use words like "picayune" or "recapitulate" because no one would know what she was talking about. (I posted about this here.)
• Don't use an AOL or Hotmail address. These just holler out of it. You need to be on gmail, verizon.net, or comcast.net. I'm so hip, I have two gmail addresses, and a comcast.net one. But who needs them to begin with, since no one wants to read e-mails anyway. Especially the long, boring ones from old timers who use words like picayune and recapitulate.

Hey, I'm no different from the next aging Baby Boomer. I don't want to get old, look old, feel old, or act old.

On the other hand, as I grow old, I become more and more convinced that not wanting to deal with all the new-fangled everythings that never really seem to make things any better than they used to be, is part of nature's way of making us feel that it's gonna be okay to fall into the Big Sleep.

I'm nowhere near ready to put my head on the pillow yet. Still...do I really want to live in a world where wearing a watch is the equivalent of carrying an hourglass or a sundial around?

Bleccchhhh.