Okay, if this isn’t the weirdest thing I’ve read in a long while

It’s a Friday. It’s summer. It’s a summer Friday. It’s the first Friday of summer. So Pink Slip was foraging around for a short and sweet little weekending/summer starting topic. Baseball. Beach balls. Traffic to The Cape. How I plan to spend my summer vacation. And then, this.

Samantha is a sex robot. In fact, it (she?) is the first AI-based, intelligent sex robot. It’s not clear how many Samanthas or other high-tech sex dolls have been sold. It (she?) costs $7K, which is a lot of money that an incel might rather be spending on tiki-torches. But I guess if you’re looking for something more, uh, responsive than an inflatable, unintelligent sex doll, you might want to invest.

Samantha is the invention of one Dr. Sergi Santos, and here’s probably more than you need or want to know about it (her?):

Samantha is a project centered on a robot that is capable of enjoying sex…Samantha likes to be playful and wants to be charmed. She gets sexually excited as you touch her body and by telling her the right thing at the right time. (Source: Synthea Amatus)

And it gets more explicit than that. Among other bits, she has multiple sex modes, including nice sex and not so nice sex.  Which is probably already way TMI.

Santos did his Dr. Frankenstein routine and came up with Samantha to begin with because he just couldn’t get no satisfaction, at least not to the extent that he wanted it. He’s got a wife, but she wasn’t always around when his fancy turned to his fancy. And, by the way, Santos believes the day will come when men will marry their Samantha. (If I were his wife, I’d take him up on this idea.)

But maybe he’s an excellent husband. And maybe she’s fine with sharing her metaphorical bed with a sex robot.  Whatever the case,  Santos does find himself occasionally listening to his actual, real-live, flesh and blood wife, At her urging, he has:

…designed a new artificial intelligence system that allows Samantha to interpret a person’s behavior and shut down if it feels like it’s being treated inappropriately.

The new update is called “dummy mode” (a weird and arguably offensive name choice) and can be activated in a number of situations. If a partner is disrespecting the bot or touching it in an aggressive manner, the motorized parts of Samantha—hands, arms, hips, facial expressions, etc.—will shut down and it will become unresponsive. It will also enter into dummy mode if it is feeling bored by its partner’s advances. (Source: Gizmodo)

Well, I suppose it would serve someone right if Samantha went into dummy mode. Still, there’s something so weird-on-weird about the whole thing.

One more reason to hope my ashes are in the wind by the time The Singularity – when AI, make that A-super-I – will surpass human intelligence, and go beyond where any man, woman, or sex robot has gone before.

With all the wonderful uses that geniuses can make of emerging technology, why – one must ask oneself – this?

How in the Tony Manero did I ever miss this?

Just a few short days ago, I’d never even heard of Gianluca Mech. And then I came across an article on his Italiano Diet products, and scales fell from my very own eyes, even if no lbs have fallen from my actual scale. Of course, I haven’t started on the Italiano Diet quite yet. It’s a bit expensive and I’m a tiny bit dubious. But if Ivana Trump – that’s Ivana (no k) Trump – endorses a product, it must be well worthwhile.

But there’s more to Gianluca Mech than the Italiano Diet.

Why just last December, he threw a big disco-inferno level party to celebrate the 40th anniversary of the release of Saturday Night Fever.

Is it really possible that Saturday Night Fever came out 40 years (and change) ago? Whether you’re having fun or not, as long as your stayin’ alive, time most assuredly does manage to fly.

I don’t believe I’ve seen it since then, but I did enjoy Saturday Night Fever when it came out, one of a flurry of dance-related movies that appeared on the scene in the 1970’s and 1980’s. Flashdance, White Nights, and my personal favorite, Dirty Dancing. (Give me Patrick Swayze – dead or alive – over John Travolta any old day.)

Maybe there are always dance-themed movies – the 1930’s Fred and Ginger and all those Golddiggers, the 1950’s had Singin’ in the Rain and An American in Paris, but that period in the 1970’s and 1980’s seemed especially full of them.

Anyway, Saturday Night Fever was a big deal, as was disco at the time.

I was not a particular fan and never stepped toe inside of a disco. I did enjoy some of the music (including the BeeGees and Donna Summer). I did have a couple of Huckapoo shirts. And I did know how to do The Hustle. Other than that…

But Bay Ridge, Brooklyn was prime disco territory, and that was the setting for Saturday Night Fever. The disco scenes were filmed at the 2001 Odyssey, which is now a Chinese restaurant – a sign not only of the demise of disco as an arts and entertainment category, but of a shift in the neighborhood from predominantly Italian-Irish-German to heavily Chinese.

The Bamboo Garden, site of the old 2001 Odyssey (in itself a marvelously dated name) got a one-night makeover for Gianluca Mech’s party. A $200K makeover. Which seems like a lot of money to spend on a party. But he had his reasons. He wanted:

…to honor a movie that he said changed his life after he sneaked in to see it with his sister in Italy when he was 8 years old.

“When I feel a little tired, when I feel I cannot have success with what I want to do, I watch this film once more and I feel strong again,” said Mr. Mech, who sported a custom-made Dolce & Gabbana designed version of the white three-piece suit made famous in the movie by Mr. Travolta. (Source: NY Times)

I really do love that Gianluca Mech can pinpoint something – a movie, yet – that changed his life. When I was that age, I was watching Darby O’Gill and the Little People. Which in no way changed my life, other than the fact that, on occasion, the ditty “My Pretty Irish Girl” as sung by Sean Connery, appearing in what I suspect was his one and only Disney film, inserts itself into my brain as the daily earworm.

By the way, Gianluca’s Tony-inspired suit cost $5K. But if you’ve got $200K to drop on disco balls and other accoutrements, well, what’s another $5K. I suspect that Tony Manero’s three-piecer didn’t cost any $5K back in the day, but everything’s gotten more expensive.

…the house on 79th Street that served as Manero’s home in the movie is now on the market for $2.5 million.

I’m a betting that $2.5 is an increase of several orders of magnitude.

Gianluca Mech was joined in his party by a bunch of locals from the old days, including folks who appeared as extras in the dance scenes, and for whom the disco era was one of life’s highlights. The party was a prime way for them to call back up the good times (i.e., when they were in their twenties). And when:

“It was all about dancing for us and getting a new outfit every week.”

I don’t know how in Tony Manero I missed this story last December when it came out. Must have been too busy putting up my Christmas tree or something. And my awareness of Gianluca Mech was nonexistent, so I wouldn’t have necessarily been following his where- and what-abouts. But now that I know there’s more to him than the Italiano Diet, the endorsement of Ivana Trump, and his family’s herbal supplement business, well, I’ll be on the lookout.

At least for as long as I’m ah, ah, ah, ah, stayin’ alive…

 

Beware of bogus rentals on Craigslist

Last Saturday, I had lunch in Boston with some friends from Houston who were passing through on their annual trek to Provincetown. It’s the one and only time I get to see them, which I do either here or in P’Town. Their usual rental on Bradford Street – a quirky and charming flat in a rambling wooden house that reminded me of Mrs. Madrigal’s apartment building in Armistead Maupin’s Tales of the City – has been sold, so they’re in new digs this year. They found it on Home Away and, once they settled in, reported that it’s quite nice.

Fortunately, they hadn’t tried to rent through Craigslist, or they might have found themselves dragging their roller bags down Commercial Street on a foggy, drizzly Cape night.

The Cape, it seems, is the frequent target of scams in which folks pay for a summer rental, only to show up and find out the place doesn’t exist or is already occupied.

The rental problems with Craigslist was the subject of a recent consumer issues column in The Boston Globe. The article focused on a couple in Provincetown. Owners of a two family home with a permanent tenant occupying the second apartment, Jonathan Scott and Mike McGuill have a permanent note attached to their front door:

It is addressed to “Craigslist Renters.

“You have been scammed,” the note says, the words underlined twice for emphasis. “You have lost all your money. This home is not for rent.”

The note advises those who have been duped to go immediately to the police to report the fraud.“We are sorry,” the note concludes. “But Craigslist is at fault.” (Source: Boston Globe)

They haven’t had any scammed vacationers show up this season. Yet. But they have had people stop by who wanted to check the rental they had seen current ads on Craigslist for. So they’re anticipating that, at some point or another, some would-be renters will spill out of a car, or walk over from the ferry, looking for their keys.

The ad that have suckered the poor scammees in was for a luxury 2BR apartment, and the come-on is the pictures showing off polished wood floors, a modern kitchen, and all that Cape light. The same pictures that were used on a real-estate site when the house was for sale a few years back.

Scott and McGuill have tried to get Craigslist to take the ads down, flagging them as fraudulent whenever they spot one.

“There are scammers everywhere and they are to be condemned,” said Jonathan Scott…“But what Craigslist is doing is aiding and abetting them openly, blatantly, and with impunity. That’s the real problem.”

Yes, scammers are everywhere. And lot of them do seem to have found their way to Craigslist. Of course, getting scammed out of a rental deposit you wired to god-knows-who/god-knows-where isn’t as bad as being murdered. Over a hundred murders are tied to folks answering an ad or having a murderer answer their ad on the site.

Me? I’ve never used Craigslist. And once I watched the made-for-TV movie about Philip Markoff, The Craigslist Killer, I’m pretty sure I never will. For those who’ve forgotten, Markoff was a married medical student who murdered three women advertising massage/escort services on the site. He hanged himself in the jail just down the street from where I live. (Not that I would be placing ads for massage services, but the Markoff story was really creepy and definitely put me off of Craigslist before I ever got on.)

Anyway, for potential renters, an excellent tip is to never wire money to god-knows-who/god-knows-where. If there’s a scam on, well kiss that dough goodbye.

Scott and McGuill have made numerous attempts to get Craigslist to remove the fraudulent ads.

They have never received a word in response from Craigslist.

“Trying to contact a live person or customer service at Craigslist is absolutely impossible,” said Scott. “It’s the black hole on the Internet.”

Sean Murphy, the Globe consumer ombudsman, didn’t have any better luck with his multiple attempts to contact Craigslist.

Craigslist keeps its cost low by operating a bare bones website that looks like it has never been updated, and keeping staff to a minimum.

Craigslist is a $700M company with 50 employees. That’s pretty hefty revenue per capita. And they’re not spending much of anything on their site. I just took a peek, and the interface looks like something out of the pioneer days of the Internet. So precious little of their revenue goes there. Which means they should be able to afford to do something about all those scammers and psychos using their site. But, hey, if you can get away with doing nothing, why not?

So, if you’re looking to getaway, beware of bogus rentals on Craigslist. You may end up out your deposit – and holding your bag on someone’s front porch, reading a sign that reads “You have been scammed.”

Obvious Info 101

If only I’d known that it’s a dumb idea to eat spaghetti at a business dinner.  If only it had dawned on me that spaghetti is something that’s nearly impossible to ingest without at least one slurping, reverse-whistle of a long strand – a slurping reverse-whistle of a long strand that is likely covered with red sauce, and is likely to spray teenie-tiny dots of red sauce over a pretty wide arc, depending on the velocity of the slurp. If only I’d known that the spray could reach your boss. Or a client.

You’d think I might have figured all this out. After all, I’m one of those rarest of the rare spaghetti eaters who never quite mastered the technique of twirling spaghetti onto a spoon.

If only I’d known.

If only I’d known that you’re supposed to look someone in the eye when you meet them. If only I’d known that you shouldn’t be checking for text messages or playing Candy Crush during a business lunch – unless it’s a designated working lunch, and then the message checking is okay (but not the Candy Crush).

If only a course like the Plaza Hotel Finishing Program with Beaumont Etiquette had been available when I was starting out my career, who knows how far I might have gone.

Sigh, oh sigh.

But for the fortunate millennials who signed up and forked over – correct fork, by the way – $125 for the course at Boston’s Fairmont Copley Hotel, well the world is their oyster, now that they know how to eat an oyster. (I actually don’t know whether oyster-eating is covered. But here’s my bit of advice: don’t order raw oysters unless Mr./Ms. Big wants them, then follow their lead on whether to slurp or oyster fork it.)

According to the course instructor and program founder Myka Meier,

…displaying good manners in business settings and elsewhere isn’t about stuffiness or keeping up appearances. “We’re in a time where the world needs more kindness,” she said. “That’s really what etiquette is about, spreading kindness and respect.” (Source: Boston Globe)

Well, yes and no. Maybe because I was raised in a home where we used the same fork for salad and dinner, and where the one cardinal etiquette rule was you couldn’t plunk a gallon milk jug down on the table, I don’t see how knowing which fork to use or how to butter a roll has much of anything to do with “spreading kindness and respect.”

But Meier’s got a loftier pedigree – “she trained under a former member of the royal household.”

The recent course in Boston covered more than on utensil usage. It included:

…training on social cues,…business strategies for networking and client hosting, including how to select wine for the table, and tricks for remembering names. Exhibiting authority and confidence in a business setting, she said, is all about body language and tone of voice.

Well, that last point seems as if it would owe as much to Margaret Thatcher as to the Queen Mum, but the royals I suppose are always a good place to start.

Meier also provides MeToo tips like:

…in 2018, it’s inappropriate to compliment a colleague’s body or appearance. “While it’s acceptable to say ‘I love your dress,’” she noted, saying “you look great in that dress,” is not.

Which reminds me of the most PC moment I’ve ever had in my life.

I was at a fundraiser for a school in Ethiopia and the food served was, not surprisingly, Ethiopian. The woman I was speaking with said, “This food is terrific.” I was nodding in agreement while swallowing a bite of terrific Ethiopian food when the woman did a bit of a recoil. “Oh, I beg your pardon. I’m awfully sorry. I should have said ‘I like this food,’ not that ‘it’s terrific.’” It took me a moment to realize that she was apologizing for making a value judgment rather than making a statement of fact.

So, over-PC can be over PC. But I do see why you might not want to say “You look great.” That said, I don’t mind people saying it to me. And there’s a big difference between someone saying “you look great in that dress” and someone leering “your boobs look outstanding in that dress.” But these days, I guess it’s best to avoid anything that could possibly come off as untoward.

Still, it seems to me that what cost $125 at an etiquette course could be had for a few bucks on Amazon – or for free from The Google.

The terrain covered sounds to me like Obvious Info 101.

But who am I to deny someone the opportunity to find their best self via an etiquette course. After all, I am a graduate – certificate and all – of the etiquette course my high school forced us into, way back in the day. I’m sure the woman who ran it didn’t cover not eating spaghetti at a business lunch. Who among us could conceive of the circumstance under which a woman would attend a business lunch?

The two takeaways I remember from NDA’s etiquette course are how to gracefully get out of a car seat when you’re wearing a skirt – swing your legs out first – and that no girl or woman should ever open a car door for herself if there’s a male around. One of the dating tips to ensure this was that, if the boy hadn’t figured out he was supposed to open the door for you, you were to rap your hand lightly against the side of the car and tell the boy that your hand was injured and you needed his help.

I suspect that etiquette has come a long way since then, but, you know, sometimes etiquette is not about kindness and respect. Sometimes it’s about things that don’t matter – like which fork to use – and sometimes it’s so obvious that you really don’t need a course to teach you about it.

I vana talk about the Italiano diet

Been wondering why we haven’t heard all that much from Ivana Trump?

Me neither.

Too busy obsessing about the rest of her family (kids and ex) to spend any fret time wondering what Ivana had been up to, given that she’s long finished playing Eloise (or Zsa Zsa Gabor) at the Plaza Hotel.

And then, out of the clear blue, doesn’t she pop up promoting the Italiano diet, which lets you eat pasta (special pasta) and cookies (special cookies) and still lose weight. I knew it had to be special pasta and special cookies, because I know up close and personal that eating non-special pasta and non-special cookies doesn’t help me lose weight.

Anyway, the Italiano diet was cooked up by one Gainluca Mech – that’s him with Ivana – the scion of an Italian family that made it big in herbal extracts, and who’s infusing his diet products with herbal extracts.

Ivana,

…who once appeared in commercials for Pizza Hut and Kentucky Fried Chicken, said she agreed to talk up the Italiano Diet because “obesity is like a calamity in America,” although she said that she herself did not need to shed pounds. (Source: NY Times)

Obesity may well be an American calamity, but as anyone who’s watched an episode or two of the reality-TV show My 600 Lb. Life can attest, the demographic that struggles with morbid obesity probably can’t afford “$20 cookies dipped in dark chocolate, $24 crunchy bars with strawberries and raspberries and, for $14, fusilli pasta.” 

Gianluca Mech test kitchened his products in a restaurant in Italy, where they swapped out real menu items for Mechs. Ivana was one of the diners that found herself eating diet food when she thought she was supping on the real deal. She found the food “very tasty,” and Mech sent some back to NYC for her. (I can’t believe it’s not butter.)

And now she’s there, swanning around the Plaza Hotel – formerly her Plaza Hotel – talking up the Italiano diet brand.

Not that I’m going to be buying anything on the diet – not the fake Nutella (on sale for $4.90), not the 45 Day Luxury Kit for Women – good for a 45 day weight loss of 15-20 pounds (currently marked down from from $1,073 to $749). I don’t like Nutella to begin with . And that seems like a lot of dough to pay for 45 days worth of diet. But you do get to she those unwanted lbs…Only $37.50 or $50 a pound, depending how successful you are.

Anyway, I went over to the Italiano diet site to check out some of the products on offer.

There’s the Instant Herbs Flavored Omelet Mix that sets you up with four omelets while setting you back $20. Here’s what it contains.

Powdered egg white and yolk (50%), milk protein (emulsifiers: soy lecithin), Tisanoreica® Activator (acacia fiber gum, papaya dried extract fruit, pineapple dried extract juice fruit, mallow dried extract flowers, star anise dried extract fruit, fennel dried extract fruit, artichoke dried extract leaves, dandelion dried extract leaves, lespedeza dried extract aerial parts, griffonia dried extract seeds, frangula dried extract bark), salt, herbs (chives, tarragon, chervil) (1,3%), spices (curcuma, pepper), anti-caking agent: magnesium carbonate anti-caking agents: magnesium carbonate, parsley, encapsulated freeze-dried melon juice (maltodextrins, lyophilized melon juice, glazing agent: shellac).

Lespedeza dried extract aerial pats? Griffonia dried extract seeds? Frangula dried extract bark? Leaping lizards! And shellac? Huh?

The magic’s in all these extracts, but I’m guessing that having a shellacked omelet on your plate might take some appetite and calories away.

Mushroom flavored soup mix (four packets for $14) has a similar line up of extracts. Plus 2% champignon de Paris – that would be 2% mushroom. And, of course, shellac is there as the “glazing agent.”

Since when does soup need glazing?

As for that $14 fusilli, here’s what’s so great about it:

Food with digestive and cleansing plants, helps fight cravings. Proven by science (This statement has been not evaluated by FDA.)

Proven by science? Who really needs science. I mean, it is Ivana plumping for it, not some nobody. And she’s probably as honest as the next Trump. But rather than take their word for it, I think I’ll wait until the statement is evaluated by the FDA.

Meanwhile, I’m off to rustle up a non-shellacked omelet.

Get on the bus, Gus

A few weeks back, there was a provocative headline in The Economist. It read “Can coach companies lure business people on board?”

I’m going to stick my neck out there and say, ah, no. That is, unless the only other ways to get from Point A to Point B is on the back of a hyena or via Mr. Toad’s Wild Ride. And I even take that partially back. I’d prefer a wild ride on Mr. Toad’s fliver.

I really and truly don’t like bus travel.

Even local buses I find irritating.

Let alone longer hauls.

Give me planes, boats, trains, and Uber, any old day.

I am, however, no stranger to inter-city bus travel.

I went to college in Boston and took many a bus ride back and forth to/from Worcester. And hated every moment. The bus station in Park Square, right next to the Hillbilly Ranch, was completely seedy and depressing. The longer haul Greyhound Station a few blocks away wasn’t much better. Just bigger.

While in college, I went on my longest bus ride ever: from Boston to Washington DC and back, on a yellow school bus with no padding on the seats and no bathroom on board, to protest the Vietnam War. It was stuffy, overheated and uncomfortable, and on the way back the folks seated near me were passing around Southern Comfort. So I spent that trip feeling nauseated by the smell of it. All that said, while I wouldn’t exactly say the trip was fun, it was purposeful and rewarding. And I got to see my only Beatle performance: John Lennon leading the crowd of half-a-million or so in “Give Peace a Chance.”

I spent a year in grad school in NYC and the only way to get there from Worcester, other than when my cousin who lived in Manhattan was driving home, was the bus. I didn’t come home all that often, but it was generally via bus.

My worst bus trip from NY to Worcester was when I came home on Thanksgiving Eve. (Where was my cousin when I really needed him?) I got on the bus at the GW Bridge, as that was a smidge closer to Columbia than was Port Authority, and immediately fell asleep. When I woke up several hours later, we were just nearing Yankee Stadium – a distance of a couple of miles. All in all, that trip – which should have been 3-4 hours ended up taking 8 hours.

Oh, and I think that by the time we got to Worcester, there was a blizzard on.

On another trip from NYC to Worcester, I paid a couple of bucks extra for the new luxury “business class” service the bus line was trying out. There was a stewardess on board and she served ghastly little egg salad sandwiches on white bread. I don’t believe the service lasted beyond the trial runs. (Egg salad! Come on!)

For most of my adult, Boston-living life, I’ve been carless, so over the years, I took plenty of bus trips to Worcester to see my mother. These days, there’s a commuter train, but Worcester used to be farther from Worcester, commuter-wise, and there wasn’t one then. The bus ride was a bit under an hour, but there was always something depressing and downside about being on a bus.

I’d also on occasion take the bus to visit my friend Marie in Providence, but as soon as there were more frequent trains, I switched transportation modes.

I’ve taken limo coaches to NYC a couple of times, and they were comfortable enough, but they weren’t that much cheaper than the train, so there was really no point.

And I do take the bus when I visit my cousin on The Cape. (When I visit my sister, who lives on the other end of The Cape, I get to take the bus to P’town, which is a far finer experience.)

Bus? Blech!

And other than on the Limoliner, I don’t recall ever seeing a business traveler on one.

But in Germany, Flixbus coaches actually do carry business folks. I.e., people in suits, a type I am well familiar with by having spent a few career years making regular, often weekly, runs between Boston and NYC on the Eastern Shuttle, The Big Apple, Delta, People’s Express, PanAm and – I do believe – even the Trump Shuttle.

Flixbus’s raison d'être is to expand the market through lower fares and attracting new demographics to try long-distance coach travel…The firm has already had great success at doing this: since Flixbus launched its first route in 2013, it has grabbed 90% of the market in Germany, and [launched] in America on May 15th.

So far, they’re only operating out West – California, Arizona, Nevada.

I did once drive from Las Vegas – I was there for a business conference – to Flagstaff to visit my brother, and if I ever had to make that trip again (which I most assuredly will not, as Tom no longer lives in Flag and I no longer attend business conferences in Las Vegas), I would consider taking a bus.

The drive is just so monotonous, and there are plenty of sections where on long swaths of the road there’s nothing but cactus, sand, mesquite, barbed wire, the odd ranch house, the odder gas station, and the oddest cattle skull.

When I took this solo trip, cell phone coverage was spotty out West, and there were a number of times when I was feeling pretty isolated and alone. Which, of course, I was. Not to mention a tad bit scared that some old Cactus Pete with a shotgun was going to leap out from behind a saguaro and plug my tires.

It didn’t help that the sun was broiling, the car was black, and the AC punked out right after I crossed the Hoover Dam.

So, much as I despise bus service, I would consider taking Flixbus from Las Vegas to Flagstaff, should the need arise.

Flixbus is counting on their trips being “cheaper than flying and faster than by rail”. There’s a similar startup in Britain that “hopes to lure business people on his routes, using luxury buses with tables and Wi-Fi for working that are used by Premier League football teams during the week.” (Smile on my face thinking about NFL teams on a bus trip any further than from the stadium to the airport.)

But coaches still have a long way to go before they become a mainstream form of travel for business people in a hurry and for one big reason: road congestion.

Yep, you’re leaving the driving to someone else, but you’re still sitting in traffic. Not to mention that you’re on the bus, Gus.

I’m holding out for Elon Musk’s Boring Co. to bore some of them there hyperloop tunnels from here to there.

PABNABbed

I spent all of my career in the technology sector, and a good slug of it in technology for financial services, so I am no stranger to rampant sexism in the workplace. Or in the tradeshow place.

One company I worked for ran a print ad that showed the rearview of a leggy blonde in a miniskirt. She was standing at the entrance to an office, her legs spread in a wide V, and within that wide V you could see the leering faces of Wall Street types pretending to man their terminals. I’ve forgotten what the ad was for, but I wish I’d kept a copy as a reminder of the good old days.

Then there was the meeting of the strategy team for financial services at one of the late, unlamented companies I worked for. I was the lone woman on the team, and boys being boys, one could not resist saying that our strategy was so brilliant that “fin serv would be lying there, legs outstretched” – that V again – “eagerly waiting for us to penetrate.” Ho, ho.

At one industry trade show I went on yet another company’s behalf – an expo run by some security industry association (perhaps even the Security Industry Association) – there were models in micro-mini French maid outfits, complete with fishnet stockings and spike heels, walking the floor giving out packets of Twinings Tea for British Telecom. At least I wasn’t at that conference to talk about AutoBJ (Automated Box Jenkins forecasting), a product that I was gloriously the product manager for. (Believe me, I’ve heard every AutoBJ joke there is out there.)

Plenty of trade shows I attended had plenty of companies which staffed their booths with eye-candy spokes-models who knew nothing about the company or products they were representing. The goal was to lure the guys into the booth, and then have someone with half a clue talk to them. At one such show, I actually needed to get some product information from a company. I scoped out the booth and noticed that, among the beauty queens in skimpy black cocktail dresses and high heels, there was a perfectly average nice looking woman in a sensible black dress and sensible shoes. I walked right by the booth babes  - not that they wanted to talk to me, either – and spoke with Ms. Sensible Shoes who was, in fact, a product manager who knew her stuff.

But this was all decades ago. Should not the world have smartened up a bit? Should we not be a bit beyond the most overt and idiotic use of women for come-ons and worse in a professional setting? (In which the profession is something other than providing sexualized entertainment; I’m all for Beyonce.)

The answer, sadly, is no. At least for attendees at the recent BIO International Convention, held in Boston in early June, the greatest show on earth for biotech innovators.

The convention itself wasn’t the problem. It was an after-show-hours party known as PABNAB, the Party At BIO Not Associated with BIO, and event with “a reputation for bringing over-the-top themes and festivities to an industry networking event.”

Attendee Kate Strayer-Benton was expecting edgy, but ended up:

…shocked and frustrated by what she saw: At least two topless women dancing on mini-stages, their bodies painted with logos of several of the companies that had sponsored the party.

In a photo that Strayer-Benton took at the event and shared with STAT, a dancer wears only a crown of flowers, a pair of boots, and bottoms resembling a bikini; her body is painted with the logo of the investment firm Alpha Blue Ocean on her abdomen and the biotech company Selexis on her right thigh.

“It felt like a line had so obviously been crossed,” said Strayer-Benton, director of strategy at Momenta Pharmaceuticals. “Objectifying women — in this case, even physically branding them with sponsorship of companies in our industry — it just felt so wrong.” (Source: STAT News)

Strayer-Benton wasn’t the only one disturbed by this spectacle. The chairman of the group that runs the conference:

…told STAT he was “horrified” to learn of the party. He said BIO is warning member companies that sponsored this year’s PABNAB that if they sponsor the event again in the future, they’ll be kicked out of the trade group.

This might be a bit of an overreaction, as it doesn’t give PABNAB the chance to agree to rein things in a bit next time around. But PABNAB does sound like a piece of work. Several sponsors of this year’s event claim they had no idea how their logos would be used. They thought it would be on drink glasses and bracelets – not on the bellies and thighs of near-naked women.

PABNAB has long been edgy/artsy, but, I take it, more along the lines of Cirque du Soleil style acrobats. They did get in PETA-esque trouble a few years ago for having attendees party with a camel.

The theme of this year’s party was supposed to be the Day of the Dead.

Even though June is not Day of the Dead territory – that would be November 1 (All Saints Day) and November 2 (All Souls Day – this them could certainly have been plenty edgy and artsy without resorting to logos painted on bellies and thighs.

“We can talk all we want about diversity on panels and in the boardroom, but when events like this are commonplace, I just think it undermines all the progress” being made by industry groups and drug companies, Strayer-Benton said. “I just think we take giant steps backwards when something like this is considered acceptable.”

I’m with Kate.

There’s plenty of place for naked dancing women out there, mostly in strip clubs along the Route 1’s of the world. Just not at industry-related events where people network and even get down to business. All something like the PABNAB event does is set up an environment where women (and any man who might find himself offended) find themselves sidelined or written off as spoil-sport prudes.

Enough.

Jockeying for position on the front lawn

When I was growing up, my family took a lot of “spins” – my father’s word for hopping into the car and driving around to look at things. We took spins on summer evenings, and winter Sunday afternoons. Sometimes the spins were purposeful, like going to Brookfield Orchards for a bushel of macs. During Christmas week, we took a rare winter’s night spin to see the decorations. But some spins were less mission-driven: just drive around and stop somewhere for ice cream. Summer spins always involved ice cream from the Cherry Bowl, Verna’s, Smithfield, DQ…

When we drove around, one thing we liked to observe was the decorations that people had on their lawns.

Our neighborhood was bathtub Madonna territory. Gazing balls. Pink flamingos. The odd birdbath.

My favorite house passed on the spins was a white, late 19th century farmhouse out in one of the burbs. It had a lovely front porch and a sloping front lawn that featured a small pond with sail boats in it.

It wasn’t on a spin route, but my all time favorite lawn-decorated house ever was the “elf house”, which was near my grandmother’s in Chicago. Shortly after we arrived on our biennial visit, we would clamor that my father take us on a walk to see the house with all the elves in their yard. Elves on swings. Elves splaying cards on toadstools. Those folks knew how to live! What I wouldn’t have given to have a few elf statues in our yard. But we didn’t even have a bathtub Madonna. We just had trees, shrubs, and flowers.

Back on the spins, we could tell we had entered a classy, high-tone neighborhood by the presence of lawn jockeys, holding their lantern to guide people on the path to the house.

Back in the day – we’re talking 1950’s and 1960’s – the lawn jockeys tended to be black, with Negroid features. At some point, black jockey statues were no longer acceptable, and I remember seeing a couple where the faces were painted over with white paint. Yes, white paint. Not pinky-tan, or the color in the Crayola 64 box formerly known as “flesh.” The whitewashing looked really silly.

Anyway, I no longer go on spins, and I haven’t given any thought to lawn jockeys in ages.

That is, until my sister Kath texted a picture of a custom-painted lawn jockey, with the comment “Alas, too pricey for Yankee Swap.”

We may need to raise our $20 limit, given how awesome the custom-painted lawn jockeys are at Saratoga Signature Interiors.

It, of course, makes plenty of sense for a shop in Saratoga to sell lawn jockeys. It’s a racetrack town – completely charming (I’ve been there) – and I’m guessing that it’s a lot of fun to have one of these buddies out during track season.

Horse owners, breeders, jockeys and horse racing fans alike enjoy the heraldry associated with these 40″ statues.

Dan Czech of Saratoga Signature Interiors is the interior designer now jockey artist who paints each jockey. Registered silks are always popular but making up one of your own is fine too. The statues are 100% aluminum so can stay outside and not be effected by weather. Jockeys are shipped all over the country by UPS.

Aluminum is something new, I’m thinking. Lawn jockeys of yore were cast iron, and you can play plenty for one of them (in some cases, over $2K) on eBay, where they have both black and white lawn jockeys. Collectible Americana.

Saratoga Signature Interiors doesn’t mention the use of lawn jockeys as Yankee Swaps, but they do put this idea out there:

Consider a custom painted jockey as a wedding gift to the groom (or bride). Customize using your wedding colors, date on base and a gold ring instead of traditional black.

Imagine the surprise, the sheer delight, when the bride (or groom) opens that gift.

There are a lot of different options, by the way: corporate logos, college or university, sports teams. Whatever fits your fancy.

Here are a couple of my favorites:

That jockey sporting the powder blue is representing Columbia University, which would have been my alma mater if I’d stuck with the PhD program. Which I most decidedly did not.

Then there’s the Irish boyo, with his nifty tri-color jacket and shamrock. (I’m happy to see that it’s a shamrock, and not a four-leaf clover, which in my book is like saying Patty’s Day rather than Paddy’s Day.)

The jockey with the identity crisis – half Red Sox, half Yankee – is, of course my favorite. What an awful idea. I suppose there are mixed marriages. But still. And what’s up with that strategically-placed bat?

The boyo, or a full-bore Red Sox jockey would, I must say, make an ideal Yankee Swap item: weird, impactical… Maybe this year we should raise the limit.

Even more of the nth degree. (This is it. Promise.)

The last two editions of Pink Slip have been more or less Public Service Announcements on interesting and slightly out of whack degrees that can be yours for the asking. The list of such degrees came from a piece published on Fastweb . Here’s the remains of this very entertaining list.

Is it me or does it seem a bit odd that Texas A&M – which is landlocked, smack-dab in the middle of Texas – would offer a degree in Nautical Archaeology? Not that they don’t have every right in the world to provide study of “the remains of boats and ships and the cultures that created and used them.” One of the courses offered is called outfitting and sailing the wooden ship 1400-1900. Now I don’t imagine there’s a lot of call for this, but the article does list job prospects in maritime archaeology and conversation. I suppose that’s a typo for conservation, but, hey, wooden boats can be a conversation starter (or ender), too.

This, of course, puts me in mind of one of the worst movies I ever saw. Coaster is a documentary about some guys from Maine who hand-built a schooner and then took it on a voyage to deliver lumber to Haiti and return with a cargo hold full of rum. Anyway, the entire enterprise was just ridiculously pretentious – including the schooner-builders singing authentic sea chanteys while they handcrafted their vessel – and the even more ridiculous upshot was that the schooner sunk off the coast of Long Island and the Coast Guard had to rescue the crew. Anyway, my sister Trish and I were laughing so hard when we left the Exeter Street Theater that we had to sit on the curb to compose ourselves.

Oceanography and Coastal Sciences at LSU seems to be a completely valuable and relevant program. We need a lot more folks to help figure out what we’re going to do before salt water starts lapping the ankles of folks in places like landlocked College Station, Texas. But some of the courses? Fisheries acoustics? Fish recruitment? We offer an open office environment, and leading-edge benefits including flextime and tuition reimbursement?

I will admit that one of the most fun colleges I took in college – back in the day when college wasn’t exactly known for fun courses – was a film class in which, each week we watched a movie and then shot the shit about it. The only film I remember was Birth of a Nation, which included a subtitle that read “The love strain is still heard above the land’s Miserere.” Which I remember because for months/years after one of my friends and I would put on fluty magnolia accents and repeat this line while fluttering our eyelashes. So who am I to criticize a degree in Popular Culture, where you study “Everyday life, including but not limited to everything that is mass produced by us and for us. Its subject matter is the world in which we live, relax and have fun.” This degree can set you up for a job in PR or advertising, in marketing, in teaching, in museum work. And, as degrees go, this sounds like one big BS-y chunk o’ fun.

As opposed to Puppet Arts. Which sounds scary. Not clown scary, but scary enough. What are they thinking down there at UConn? But it sounds like a kinder and gentler degree than one in Race Track Industry, which for all the mint julep grandeur of the Kentucky Derby and the Triple Crown just sounds kind of sleazy.

We’ll all have a lot more free time when the robots and AI take fully over, so a degree in Recreation and Leisure Studies could prove valuable. And since we’ll all have a lot more free time when the robots and AI take fully over, a degree in Sexuality Studies might come in handy as well. Think I’d skip the course in primate sexuality. Yes, I realize that we’re primates. But I did have an odd experience many years back in which a young bonobo (pygmy chimpanzee) whose belly I was scratching grabbed my hand with one of his feet and guided it down to his erection. Which pretty much put me off primate sexuality, as it relates to that kind of primate. 

Surf Science and Technology is offered, not as one might imagine in Southern California or Hawaii, but at Cornwall College in the UK. Surf’s up, dude. Gnarly.

Theme Park Engineering is a degree on offer at Cal State. It involves studying electrical, civil, and mechanical engineering – all of which seem to me more practical degrees than Theme Park Engineering.  At Penn State, you can get a degree in Turfgrass Science. Sorry, but the very thought of golf makes me yawn. But I get that this is a big deal for those running golf courses. And, oddly enough, this is something I know a tiny bit about, as my husband’s aunt and uncle (who were my virtual mother- and father-in-law) partly owned and totally operated a golf course. They converted their tobacco farm to do so. Bill and Carrie’s house was pretty much on the golf course, and over the years I learned plenty about greenskeeping, the pro shop, running a family business, and local and familial politics.

This series of posts was prompted by an article I saw on an MBA in Wine offered by Sonoma State, which got me looking for other offbeat degrees. For an undergrad degree in Viticulture and Enology, where you study “the science and practices of growing grapes and making wines,” you can head to Ithaca where, high above Cayuga’s waters, you can get a degree at Cornell.

Wildlife sounds like a fine degree. Who doesn’t want someone who wants to preserve species, enhance wildlife habitats, and control wildlife problems?

Anyway, that’s it for the degrees you could have had if you hadn’t been slogging through English or Economics or Engineering.

Thank you Elizabeth Hoyt of Fastweb for pulling this marvelous list together.

More of the nth degrees

Last week, I came across a piece on Fastweb on “weird-but-cool” college majors. Sure, you may already decided that it’s worth going back to school for your nth degree – this time in Bagpiping or Citrus or Bowling Alley Management. But just in case there was nothing in the first part of the list that caught your academic fancy, here goes some more of it.

Comic Art students at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design learn how to work as cartoonists or as comic book authors/illustrators. Well, you can luck out and end up with all sorts of cool, East Coast elite, brainiac cartoons in The New Yorker and become the next Roz Chast. Or you can hit comic strip paydirt and create a strip (think Dilbert or Garfield or the granddaddy of ‘em all, Peanuts) that turns into a merchandise empire. Or you can prick a lot of balloons with political cartoons. But even if you don’t strike it rich, comic artist would be a fun way to (try to) make a living. And with graphic novels – which, for the most part, I don’t enjoy; other than Maus -  becoming more popular, you never know.

If you’re at Florida Southern and you’re not interested in studying Citrus, they also offer a degree in Diving Business and Technology, where you can learn, among other things, how to deal with the bends. And if you decide to transfer to Brown from Duke, you might have to surrender your Canadian Studies degree for one in Egyptology. I’m a big believer in a liberal arts education, but I don’t think that there are many parents who’d be thrilled to write a check for $75K each year to find out that their offspring had taken a course in ancient Babylonian magic and medicine. Forget “my son the doctor”. Think “my son the ancient Babylonian medicine man.”

At the University o Nevada Las Vegas, you can study Entertainment Engineering and Design, setting you up for a career doing casino shows. I suppose if you actually wanted to live in Las Vegas, a degree that happens in Vegas may let you stay in Vegas.

Maybe I’ve been hanging around a PT clinic that specializes in the care of runners – don’t ask what I’m doing there -  for too long, but studying Exercise and Movement Sciences at UVM doesn’t sound particularly odd to me. There are a ton of folks interested in fitness and wellness, and as the Boomers get older and grayer it’ll be critical to have folks who’ve studied fitness for specific populations.

Both my grandfathers ran family businesses. For my Irish grandfather, it was the Rogers Brothers Saloon. The Saloon went out with Prohibition, and my grandfather went out shortly thereafter. (The other Rogers bro didn’t even make it to Prohibition – both died young, but at least my grandfather made it to his 40’s.) My German grandfather had a grocery store that my Uncle Jack, who was 21 when Grandpa Wolf died, somehow ended up running. (Can this be possible???) My Uncle Bob, who was 11 when my grandfather passed away also worked at the store. I remember seeing him there. Bob was 10 years older than me, so he would have been in his late teens. “The boys” turned the business into a ships chandlery, servicing merchant ships in the port of Chicago. (Got to go make a delivery with “the boys” one time. Very exciting being with my handsome uncles as they hefted cartons of supplies down the gangway.) I don’t know quite when and how that business disappeared. But I’m guessing “the boys” could have benefited from someone with a degree in Family Enterprise, a major at Stetson U that “emphasizes ‘self-awareness, family systems, utilizing family involvement as a strategic advantage and how to consult with family enterprises.’”

Before he figured out that the car would replace the horse and wised up and opened his bar, my grandfather Rogers was a blacksmith. Without the benefit of having studied Farrier Science, I might add. And he ran his saloon without the benefit of any knowledge of Fermentation Sciences and without having taken any course the covered the sensory analysis of beer.

Floral Management is a major at Mississippi State. Isn’t knowledge of “sourcing, purchasing, distributing, marketing, designing with, and selling floricultural products” – that would be flowers – the sort of stuff you used to learn on the job? Kind of like horseshoeing. And bagpiping. Is there really a need for degrees in certain professions?

Anyway, if you (or my grandfather) wanted to go beyond the horseshoe aspects of blacksmithing, Southern Illinois offers a degree in Metalsmithing/Blacksmithing. Among other things, this concentration sets you up for be an independent artist. One of my college friends dated, and later lived with, a fellow who dropped out of MIT to become a metal sculptor. He was actually pretty good, but fast forward 20 years. I ran into him at a tech conference and he’d become a software developer.

Mortuary Science sets you up for working a funeral home. Or managing the corps des corpses at a medical school. Or in other places where you deal with the deceased. If theories of embalming and disposition sounds like fun, have I got a degree program for you…

At the other end of the circle o’ life, Sullivan University (a for-profit outfit) lets you study Nannying where, among other things you learn “how to prepare nutritious meals and snacks”. This seems to me to be something that you can learn by googling “how to prepare nutritious meals and snacks.” It also offers more up-level course on child development and learning opportunities for kids. Maybe a degree in Early Childhood Education would get you the same credential without having the limiting title of a degree in Nannying.

Still haven’t found the major of your dreams? We’ll be wrapping up this highly educational series tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll find something there.

To the nth degree

The other day, I saw an article on Bloomberg on what I took to be a pretty unusual business degree: an MBA in Wine. It’s offered by Sonoma State University (which makes plenty of vineyard-y sense). Across the pond, there are a couple of business in/of wine degrees offered, including one from the Burgundy School of Business.

For those looking to own or run a winery, the degree from Sonoma State makes sense, as it’s very focused on networking with wine biz execs.

John Stayton, executive director of SSU’s graduate and executive business programs, points out that many of their graduates are now in executive roles, or are even winery owners.

In other words, the courses are a good way to skip the traditional ladder-climbing in learning to run a winery, which usually starts with pouring wine in a tasting room or working in the office. For owners, they offer a quick way to gain essential knowledge, whether their wineries are tiny startups or entail lavish investments. (Source: Bloomberg)

MBA’s didn’t used to offer such pinpoint concentrations, at least not when I was in business school. Not that I actually have an MBA. When I was at Sloan/MIT, ahh, nearly 40 years ago, they didn’t offer an MBA degree. You got a Master of Science in Management, which no one in the hiring world understood unless they’d also gone to Sloan. My class was a big advocate for normalizing the program, and shortly after, Sloan started conferring MBA degrees.

My concentrations were completely geeky: Applied Economics and Applied Marketing, which set me up perfectly for my first post-MBA MSM job developing forecasting models for the corporate world. Talk about geeky. (Talk about nonsense…)

Anyway, the article on the wine MBA got me wondering just what other out-of-the-ordinary degrees there are out there.

The Google brought me to a piece on Fastweb on “weird-but-cool” college majors. As someone with a decidedly non-weird/non-cool undergraduate degree in Sociology (with a Political Science minor), I was naturally intrigued.

To get a degree in Adventure Education, I wouldn’t have to go that far. Just up to New Hampshire to Plymouth State, where I could take courses in fundamentals of rock climbing and canoe paddling.

There are a couple of schools where you can get a degree in Astrobiology, which is an “exploration of life outside of Earth.” Since we’re currently on the glide path to wrecking this Earth, I’m delighted that there are students studying planetary habitability.

There’s a community college that offers a degree in Auctioneering. Among other things, you learn the “auctioneer’s chant”. Forget economics. This is something that my husband could have easily taught. No, he never actually worked as an auctioneer, But he went to plenty of tobacco auctions when he worked on his uncle’s tobacco farm in Western “Massachusetts. (Yes, there are tobacco farms hereabouts. They grow shade tobacco used for cigar wrappers.) And Jim had a fast mouth. One of his parlor tricks was doing a tobacco auction spiel. “Gimme twenty-dollar bid…”

Carnegie Mellon offers a degree in Bagpiping, which qualifies you to work as a bagpiper or teach bagpiping. As long as there are Irish-American cops and firefighters in particular, and Irish-Americans (and Scots-Americans) in general, I suppose there’ll be a demand. Last Saturday I did a walk for ALS run by one of those Irish-Americans, and we had a piper (kilt and all) piping for us at the halfway mark.

Bakery Science is offered at Kansas State, where you can take a course in flour and dough testing. Which seems a lot more practical than getting a degree in Beatles, Popular Music and Society. It’s gear! It’s fab! It’s offered at – where else? - Liverpool (UK) Hope University. And it sets you up to become a Beatles historian. (This is a career path?)

Hipsters aside, I’ve read that bowling is on its way out as an activity. So it might not make all that much sense to study Bowling Industry Management and Technology and take courses like pinsetter maintenance. Job prospects would be, I imagine, pretty grim. A stat I found in USA Today from a few years back says that:

From 1998-2013, the number of bowling alleys in the U.S. fell to 3,976 from 5,400, or by about 26%.

There will, I suspect, always be a demand for a Citrus degree, however.  So Florida Southern College will likely keep offering courses like citrus grove management.

At Duke, you can get a degree in Canadian Studies. They have a program that “seeks to provide the student with an understanding of Canada.” Talk about something I’d like to understand. We look an awful lot alike. So how’d they get to be them while we got to be us? The degree qualifies you to teach or work in a museum. I propose that they add a course in why Canada gets Justin Trudeau and we get Donald Trump, and another course in applying for immigration. Eh?

Chemical Hygiene and Safety seems like a safe career bet, as there will always be science labs to run. At least I think so. Science still exists, no? At least it must in Canada.

Plenty more interesting degrees where these came from. Pink Slip will be back with a few more of them on Monday.

Recycling direct to landfill…

I’m pretty religious about recycling. Oh, every once in a while I’ll sneak a pair of worn out shoes into my trash bag, knowing full well and guiltily that those worn out shoes will gradually – very gradually – rot away in a landfill somewhere in Upstate NY. Sure, there’s the best case scenario that those worn out shoes will be incinerated in some incinerator with the temperature of the inner circle of hell. But that leather isn’t getting repurposed, that’s for sure.

The odd shoe aside, I’m mostly an avid recycler.

Most recently – i.e., Tuesday afternoon – I went to H&M on Newbury Street to recycle two bags full of clothes that weren’t good enough to bring over to St. Francis House. I had finally done a more-ruthless-than-usual culling of my stores of clothing (including plumbing the depths of an ironing basket that had last been empty in ought-four), and was searching for a place to dump them (other than the dump). Online, I found that H&M has a recycling program which has these three components:

• Rewear – clothing that can be worn again will be sold as second hand clothes.
• Reuse – old clothes and textiles will be turned into other products, such as cleaning cloths.
• Recycle – everything else is turned into textile fibres, and used for things like insulation. (Source: H&M)

Plus, for each bag your surrender, you get 15% off your next purchase. Now I just need to find someone who shops at H&M…

Anyway, clothing from now on will go to H&M. Just as magazines, junk mail, catalogs, pasta boxes, tuna cans, jam jars and just about everything that can and should be recycled goes out back, Monday or Friday, in a clear plastic recycling bag.

And I assume that, from out back, it all decamps to some recycling center, from whence it will find its glorious way back to me at a later date in some transmogrified new form.

But I may be living in a recycling fools paradise.

In recent months, in fact, thousands of tons of material left curbside for recycling in dozens of American cities and towns…have gone to landfills.

In the past, the municipalities would have shipped much of their used paper, plastics and other scrap materials to China for processing. But as part of a broad antipollution campaign, China announced last summer that it no longer wanted to import “foreign garbage.” Since Jan. 1 it has banned imports of various types of plastic and paper,and tightened standards for materials it does accept…

“All of a sudden, material being collected on the street doesn’t have a place to go,” said Pete Keller, vice president of recycling and sustainability at Republic Services, one of the largest waste managers in the country.  (Source: NY Times)

Unfortunately, some of it’s finding a place to go: landfill.

Another outcome of the China policy change is that some of the items that had previously been allowable recycling matter, like egg cartons, are no longer recyclable. (They must mean those god-awful plastic egg cartons, not the old-school cardboard ones. Surely, those are still good to go.) I’m guessing Boston hasn’t been especially impacted by the Chinese change of recycling heart – most of the areas caught up in it are in the West. In any case, the city hasn’t sent out info on changes. In fact, the last communication I recall is the one letting us know that pizza boxes are okay if you pick the goop out of them.

In reading the article in The Times, I also learned a new term: aspirational recycling, which means putting stuff in the recycling bin (or, in the case of Boston, those clear recycling bags) that you’re hoping is recyclable. Some of those aspirational items were pretty wild.

Mr. [Brent] Bell, the Waste Management executive, said he had seen everything from Christmas lights to animal carcasses to artillery shells come through the company’s recycling facilities. “Most of our facilities get a bowling ball every day or two,” he said.

I do believe that, had I one or the other in my possession, I would have been able to figure out that artillery shells and bowling balls don’t belong in the recycle bag. But I must confess that I have probably been guilty on occasion of some aspirational recycling, slipping in the odd frayed power cord, assuming that, surely, this can be reused somehow. Guess I’ll have to figure out something else to do with the yards and yards of bright orange Ethernet cabling occupying cabinet space in my office.

While the Chinese situation is mostly hitting the West, we haven’t been exempt locally.

Ben Harvey, the president of E.L. Harvey & Sons, a recycling company based in Westborough, Mass., said that he had around 6,000 tons of paper and cardboard piling up, when he would normally have a couple hundred tons stockpiled. The bales are filling almost half of his 80,000-square-foot facility.

Wonder if some of my old Economists and LL Bean catalogs are biding their time out in Westborough. Hope not.

I hate to see my faith in recycling undermined, my hopes dashed.

But I should know better.

I once worked at a company that equipped each office with a regular wastebasket and a bright blue recycling container. One day, when I was working late, I watched as the cleaning person rolled her trash barrel down the aisle, stopping at each office to grab both the wastebaskets and recycling containers and dump them in to her barrel. Single stream trash vs. single stream recycling?

I have observed our guys often enough to know that the trash guys pick up the black plastic bags and the recycle guys take the clear plastic bags. So I’ll keep on recycling, managing my waste the best that I can.

Sorry I missed this chance to get me a flamethrower…

I’ve seen a lot of war movies, so I know what flamethrowers are used for, which is mostly to flush out the enemy from their caves, tunnels, and bunkers. I’ve watched a lot of news, so I know what flamethrowers are used for in non-military settings, and that’s to quell a wildfire. As in fight fire with fire.

And I suppose farmers could use flamethrowers to clear their fields of weeds.

When I was little, there was a field in back of my grandmother’s house (where we lived until I was six-and-a-half). Nanny’s next door neighbors were an ancient German immigrant couple – as far as I can tell, the only other Germans in Worcester other than my mother. Anyway, the Ladners had been in farmers back in the old country, and each spring, Grandpa Ladner – well into his nineties – would set the field on fire. It wasn’t his field, and it wasn’t planted with any crops, but Grandpa L was having some sort of flashback to his prior life and, so, set what he thought was his field on fire to clear it for his crop growth. Thankfully, Grandpa L didn’t have a flamethrower.

But I hadn’t really thought that any civilian (non-soldier or first responder), other than a farmer, would have any use for a flamethrower.

Elon Musk, however, apparently has 1,000 friends who dropped what they were doing and made their way to one of his outfits,The Boring Company HQ in California, to pay $500 for a Boring Company flamethrower.

Sure, we’ve all worked for boring companies at one point or another in our careers, but if you’re not familiar with The Boring Company:

To solve the problem of soul-destroying traffic, roads must go 3D, which means either flying cars or tunnels. Unlike flying cars, tunnels are weatherproof, out of sight and won't fall on your head. A large network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). The key to making this work is increasing tunneling speed and dropping costs by a factor of 10 or more – this is the goal of The Boring Company. Fast to dig, low cost tunnels would also make Hyperloop adoption viable and enable rapid transit across densely populated regions, enabling travel from New York to Washington DC in less than 30 minutes.

Well, if The Boring Company can get someone from NY to DC in less than 30 minutes, that pretty much means they can get someone from Boston to NY in less than 30 minutes. So, let’s go, The Boring Company!

One of the ways that Musk engages his fans and helps fund The Boring Company is selling them stuff.

In this case, the first 1,000 who signed up for the latest sale paid $500 for a flamethrower. If my arithmetic is correct, that would amount to $500K, minus the cost of the flamethrowers. Boring had previously sold 50,000 ball caps for $20, which rolls up to $1M. And they’ve also sold another 20,000 flamethrowers. That’s a cool $10M.

So, the grand (gross – pre cost of goods sold) total seems to be $11.5M. Factor in the additional cost of the free churros that Musk fed to the 1,000 flamethrower buyers, this doesn’t seem like a lot of money to go towards funding a company that’s going to cut the time to get from NYC to DC to 30 minutes by boring – get it, boring – a tunnel. But I suspect that these sales are more about publicity than about raising money. And there’s always Kickstarter…

Anyway, Musk-ovites came from near and far to claim their flamethrowers.

“Imagine if you had the opportunity to get a kite and a key from Benjamin Franklin,” said [Dennis] Dohrman, 45, an environmental scientist who drove 39 hours from Hampstead, North Carolina, referencing the Revolutionary War-era inventor and statesman. (Source: Bloomberg)

I don’t know if this analogy quite holds up. I don’t believe that The Boring Company will be using flamethrowers to bore their tunnels. And I don’t know if Ben Franklin funded his experiment by selling souvenir kites and keys. But the mention of BF has, of course, set me off in a direction that my brain didn’t need to go in.

Imagine if you had the opportunity to get a phonograph needle from Thomas Edison? Imagine if you had the opportunity to get a slug of type from Gutenberg? An air sickness bag from the Wright Brothers?

The other direction my mind has been set off in is making a brain beeline to a ditty we sang in grammar school that included the words:

Benjamin Franklin, inventor was he.
Out in a storm with a kite and a key.
Found how electric that lightning could be…

Ah, but we’re hear to talk about flamethrowers, not Benjamin Franklin. And 1,000 folks lined up find how flaming a flamethrower can be:

At the front of the line, customers wielding demonstration flamethrowers roasted marshmallows as staff showed them how to power the flames…

While a few in line said they planned to resell the limited-edition $500 flamethrowers online, where they already fetch a premium, most said they plan to keep them.

I guess if you’re looking for something just slightly overkill-y to toast your marshmallows, The Boring Company flamethrower’s your man. As for other ideas:

Musk offered suggestions for those wondering how to use their new flamethrowers, such as lighting fireplaces and barbecues. "No more need to use a dainty ‘match’ to ignite!" he wrote on Twitter.

Forget three on a match. It’ll be three on a flamethrower. You could lose your eyebrows that way.

This all seems slightly dangerous to me, especially living as I do in a densely occupied urban environment where there are no fields to de-weed. A cap would always come in handy, but I missed the window of opportunity there. As for the flamethrower, I’m a bit sorry I missed this chance to get me one.

I’ll have to keep my eye on the next merchandise offering their planning for this winter: an ice blaster. Now there’s something that a downtown Bostonian can absolutely use. Wonder how it will work on bricks.

Here’s a job I’d be willing to take on–on one condition

The other day, I heard that when the FBI takes into their possession your paper files, they include the contents of your shredder in their grab. And they have a process for reconstructing those documents. If you’re envisioning straight-arrow guys in suits sitting their piecing together shreds of paper, you’re likely imagining a scenario that’s so yesterday. Having googled ‘how to recover shredded paper files’, I learned that there’s software that can help with the job. You scan in all those pieces and, thanks to AI, you may be able to get them into some semblance of readability

Anyway, I’m guessing that the FBI has access to this software.

Not so the White House, it appears.

When it comes to putting together documents that are in bits and pieces, they have it done the old fashioned way: by hand.

They’re not, however, dealing with files that were shredded in an actual shredding machine. No, they’re piecing together documents that were shredded into bits and pieces the old fashioned way: by hand. And these documents were shredded into bits and pieces by the tiny HUGE hands of the man who currently occupies the Oval Office.

Seems that there’s been more to the president’s day-to-day than just tweeting and “Executive Time.” He’s spending some of his valuable time tearing up “documents he is legally required to preserve has concerned White House aides.”

Two of the fellows charged with reconstructing - records management analysts making over $60K a piece – were Solomon Lartey and Reginald Young. They used to do more high-level archiving work. But once Trump blew into town, Lartey and Young, along with a number of colleagues, were tasked with taping the president’s papers back together again. That is, until they were laid off this spring – no notice, just frog marched out the door with no explanation, other than that they “serve at the president’s pleasure.” And his nibs was no longer pleased. Or maybe they just needed to make room for some lower-end members of the kakistocracy and found all these career record managers in their way.

Or maybe it’s that the records management group decided to purchase the AI software and no longer needed actual record management analysts who are good a figuring out puzzles.

It’s not because Lartey and Young were leaking, by the way. Their story came out after the fact of their dismissals, and came about when they were being interviewed about what they felt to be their wrongful pink slips. When they were asked what their jobs entailed, they noted that their work had been somewhat downgraded from what it had been under previous administrations.

Armed with rolls of clear Scotch tape, Lartey and his colleagues would sift through large piles of shredded paper and put them back together, he said, “like a jigsaw puzzle.” Sometimes the papers would just be split down the middle, but other times they would be torn into pieces so small they looked like confetti.

It was a painstaking process that was the result of a clash between legal requirements to preserve White House records and President Donald Trump’s odd and enduring habit of ripping up papers when he’s done with them — what some people described as his unofficial “filing system.”

Under the Presidential Records Act, the White House must preserve all memos, letters, emails and papers that the president touches, sending them to the National Archives for safekeeping as historical records.

But White House aides realized early on that they were unable to stop Trump from ripping up paper after he was done with it and throwing it in the trash or on the floor, according to people familiar with the practice. Instead, they chose to clean it up for him, in order to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law. (Source: Politico)

Well, all thanks and praise to those White House aides who wanted “to make sure that the president wasn’t violating the law” in this case, but where are they when we really need them?

All this said – plus it being said that I would not want to touch anything that DJT had touched - I would probably be pretty good at the task of piecing together ripped up documents. As would my sisters.

We come by our logical minds and puzzle solving abilities naturally, as our mother was a big one for complex jigsaw puzzles and any sort of word puzzle – from regular old crossword puzzles to the tricky diagramless. My sisters and I are all crossworders, with Kath taking the cake for being able to do those British punning puzzles that I’m clueless with. My allegiance has mostly switched to Sudoku, but I still do an occasional crossword puzzle.

We also do jigsaw puzzles when we’re at Kath’s on the Cape. Here I believe Trish gets the “mother’s daughter” award. She’s both good and persistent.

So all three of us could be called upon, in case of a national emergency, to piece together the Trump confetti letters. But I think I speak for all three when I say that we’d only be willing to do so if the document in question were a confession or a resignation letter.

Suicide is painless? Not really…

Before reading about her last week, I didn’t know all that much about Kate Spade. I knew, of course, about the pocketbooks – my niece Molly is among the brand’s fans – and her other design work. For myself, I’m the possessor of a Kate Spade phone case. (White with big black polka dots.) I knew that she was David Spade’s sister-in-law. And I knew that she’d built a pretty good business for herself. Other than that, I don’t know much and can’t recall ever having seen a picture of her.

Reading about Kate Spade after her death, I learned that she grew up in an Irish-Catholic family in Kansas City, and that her maiden name was Kate Brosnahan – a fact that I suspect really struck my cousin Ellen, as this is the maiden name of her daughter. I learned that Kate Spade went to parochial grammar school and a Catholic girls high school. And she looked like pretty much everyone I went to parochial grammar school and Catholic girls high school with. After going to an average, nothing-special university, she landed an entry-level job at Mademoiselle. And the rest is history: design a signature bag, build (with her husband) a major brand/business, sell the business for $$$ to spend time with her only child, a daughter, now 13 years old. Kate Spade was only 55, a couple of years younger than my younger sister. She could have been the kid sister of anyone I went to parochial grammar school or Catholic girls high school with.

Reading about her background, I found myself oddly proud of her and what she had achieved, and so very sorry about her death, with special sorrow reserved for her family, especially her daughter.

I was going to post about her, but what did I have to say?

On Friday morning, I went through my usual a.m. routine, which always starts with my looking through my Twitter feed, There I read the shocking news that Anthony Bourdain had killed himself.

I “knew” Anthony Bourdain a lot better than I “knew” Kate Spade.

Years ago, I had enjoyed his original essay on the restaurant world in The New Yorker, and his follow-on book Kitchen Confidential, which I round hilarious and hilariously snarky. As a veteran of the restaurant biz, there was so much in there that I could completely appreciate.

I pretty regularly watched his show No Reservations, and occasionally watched his later show, Parts Unknown.

I mostly thoroughly enjoyed watching him eat (and drink) his way around the world, his exuberance, his wit, his seeming zest for living, his raunchiness – and the fact that the shows always included a side of culture, history, politics. There was room on the plate in those shows for an awful lot besides food and bev.

I say I “mostly” enjoyed the shows, it’s because of all those times I turned away, my stomach churning even though I was thousands of miles away and months of production time removed from the supper at which something truly ghastly was consumed. One in particular I remember was an egg that contained a nearly–hatched chick, feathers and all. Talk about having control over his gag reflex: I give you Anthony Bourdain. (Fortunately, I missed the show in which he ate warthog rectum, “flavored” with sand and fecal residue.)

My favorite shows included the one in which he ate noodles and drank beer, in a hole-in-the-wall spot in Hanoi, with Barack Obama. who on Friday morning tweeted this tribute:

“Low plastic stool, cheap but delicious noodles, cold Hanoi beer.” This is how I’ll remember Tony. He taught us about food — but more importantly, about its ability to bring us together. To make us a little less afraid of the unknown. We’ll miss him.

What a good time those two guys seemed to have had…

My other favorite was the one in which he dined at a maple sugar shack in Quebec where everything on the menu features maple syrup/maple sugar and, if I recall correctly, some form of pork. It was so ridiculous, so joyous, I just laughed out loud as a I watched.

Anthony Bourdain’s exuberance, his generosity of spirit, his curiosity, his acceptance of the other, his larger-than-big, bigger-than-large personality, his humor and intelligence. He will be so missed, even by those of us who are complete strangers.

And for all his loud-mouthed, bad-boy-ness, there was always a kindness and compassion about Anthony Bourdain. Here’s a link to a Buzzfeed article recounting his standing up for an 88-year-old North Dakota restaurant reviewer whose review of The Olive Garden was being wildly mocked across the Internet. (Bourdain ended up helping publish a collection of Marilyn Hagerty’s reviews. I just ordered it and am much looking forward to reading it.)

Six degrees of separation, by the way, is alive and well. My friend Pat’s sister is married to Anthony Bourdain’s brother, and Pat knew Tony – his name among family and friends – pretty well. I wrote to her on Friday and she wrote back that “it is devastating on so many levels and complicated by the public glare.”

Devastating on so many levels, especially for his daughter – only eleven years old, even younger than Kate Spade’s.

Most people of a certain age recognize the theme song to M*A*S*H. But you may not recall the lyrics, which include in its refrain the words “suicide is painless.”

No it’s not.

Until it’s over, I suspect that suicide and the thoughts and feelings that lead up to it are plenty painful for the person who takes his or her own life. And it’s plenty painful for those left behind, too.

In the case of Kate Spade and Anthony Bourdain, the pain is, as my friend Pat says, so “complicated by the public glare.”

Kate Spade. Anthony Bourdain. All those thousands of folks unknown in parts unknown who are grappling with depression. So very, very sad.

Here’s hoping that the deaths of two celebrities will bring about some good.