A bit of advice for Scott Nicholson

Well, today’s plan was to do a full bore post about Scott Nicholson, the jobless 2008 Colgate grad profiled in Wednesday’s Times.  The net of the article was that. Which he turned it down because it wasn’t on the corporate track he covets. Needless to say, this unleashed the furies.

While my intention was to do my derivative bit on Scott’s tale, what could I possibly add to this story that hasn’t been said in the 1487 comments pegged at The Article.  (There’d have been more, but they were shut off.)

I didn’t read all the comments, but comments from those who believe that Scott is a narcissistic, spoiled brat whiner seem to running about 50:1 against those who sympathize with the kid.

Then there are all the blogs that have picked up the Scott saga, including Bess Levin on Dealbreaker,  where the comments are running 100:1 (maybe 100:0) against – and where Scott’s no longer just a narcissistic, spoiled brat whiner, he’s also a DB and a tool. (Oh, and DB doesn’t stand for Dealbreaker, where the comments are briefer and more pointedly vicious than those in The Times.)

With so little to add to what the commentariat has covered – other than to say I would have been a teensie-weensie bit more sympathetic than most - I’ll just wish Scott the best of luck, in both finding a job and living down The Article . Which, naturally, will make finding a job much more difficult in this the Age of Google.

And give him a bit of advice:

At this point in time, a lot of it’s about the Damage Control.

Even if it’s a bit of a stretch, come up with a story about how you were blindsided by the reporter, taken out of context, regret the day that reporter darkened the door of your parents’ lovely home in Grafton, Mass., where you’ve been living scot-free.

Or concoct a story that acknowledges that you do come off as a narcissistic, spoiled brat whiner, but that’s not the real you. Or one about how naive you were, and how you really thought this was a way of differentiating yourself, getting the I-need-a-job word out, that you were so darned hungry that you forget everything you know (or should know) as a twenty-something about the power of online to completely and utterly haunt you.

Just make sure that, in telling your story, you don’t come off as the narcissistic, spoiled brat whiner that’s your current unmanageable Web brand – poster child for millennial cluelessness.

Make sure you rehearse your story. And make sure that you also have a line or two about why you turned the job down.

Your sense that starting out in a career hole can jeopardize earnings and opportunities moving forward is somewhat supported by ‘the facts’.  This is an okay point to make. Just make sure your can explain it clearly if you need to. (Personally, $40K for a liberal arts BA doesn’t sound terrible-terrible to me, but what do I know?)

Pay grade aside, the job you turned down did sound ghastly, by the way. Associate claims adjuster. Yuck!  But a lot of folks end up with ghastly jobs at some point in their life.

Coming from a well to do family, you may have been able to avoid the summer and part-time variety of ghastly jobs. That’s too bad, as even the most ghastly of jobs gives you an opportunity to learn something (if only about yourself). Plus they pay money that is your own, and not something that your parents tucked into your Coach wallet for you.

But it isn’t quite clear from the article exactly what it is that you want to do, other than get on the career track that will make you as financially successful as your father and grandfather have been. Nice home. Nice car. Nice life.

I read “corporate”, “management”, “big company,” “management.” But to do what?

The day of the generic, All-American, clean-cut, okay at everything/great at nothing, automatic success story, fast track to the future is going, going, gone.

You may have figured out where you want to be in 5 years, but if the where is office where you sit around in a suit making six figures, you need to come up with what, more or less, you’ll be doing in that office.  Playing with numbers? Dealing with customers? Exploring new markets?

Maybe you don’t really know quite yet, but you really do need to just light on something that sounds reasonably okay, and make a case (for yourself and the hiring manager) why you da man for it.

And, oh yeah, start doing something more than just moving out of your parents’ home and moving in with your comparatively wildly successful older brother in Boston, and taking any old job.

Now, don’t get me wrong. “Any old job” is an excellent Plan B at this point,.

Still, that plan to move in your comparatively wildly successful older brother in Boston…

The good news is that you’ll be out of the house; the bad news is that you’ll be around your comparatively wildly successful older brother and his no doubt comparatively wildly successful friends. Maybe you can turn some of these folks into nodes on your network. But every last one of them (and the hiring managers they know) will have read The Times article and a lot of the comments. Plus they’re going to be working in jobs that are likely more what you had in mind that what you end up actually doing.

Just do everything you can to avoid bitter-woe-is-me-everybody-knows-paranoid mode.

If you can, try to see the humor in the story. (I know, this will be really, really hard.)

While you’re rebuilding your reputation, taking any old job, etc., you’d do well to supplement any old job with something that will be personally enriching and absorbing in a way that any old job may not be.

Your were a political science major. It’s an election year! How about a campaign?

You seem like a Senator Scott Brown (R-Mass) kind of guy. But you apparently missed that doorbell-ringing, phone-banking, sign-holding, Scott-cheering boat. Or at least it’s not reflected in the story. (By the way, if you did do any volunteer work during the last two years, get that word out.)

Moving forward, you seem like a Charlie Baker (R running for Mass. governor)  kind of guy. Go volunteer on his gubernatorial campaign, why don’t you. (Please don’t take this as Pink Slip endorsement of Charlie Baker. Even though it is slightly – just slightly, and we’re talking infinitesimally slightly  – conceivable that I might vote for him.) If I haven’t gotten the Charlie Baker thing right, there are two other guys running: Deval Patrick - D and Tim Cahill-I.

Or just go do something, anything to get out of yourself. (Trust me, hanging around with your bro and his comparatively wildly successful posse will not be an unalloyed joy.)

Remember, Scott, you may never be able to quite plug the 2008-2010 hole in your resume, but you can do something about July 2010-on.

Also, check out these guys: Brand Yourself, a Syracuse-based company that helps repair web damage by making sure there’s things in the Google queue ahead of things that will embarrass you if the hiring manage seems them pop up first thing when the Google your name and see The Article.

Trust me. On the search engine of life, you want to put as much distance between you and The Article.

Good luck to you.

(Whew, now that this is done with, I can get back to the real blog post of interest: the one on the lady who makes Chicken Diapers. See you on Monday.)

GameCrush: oh, why not.

When I read about it in Business Week the other day, my first response was surprise that it had taken someone so long to come up with the marriage of gaming and dating. After all, love’s a game and all that.

But GameCrush – now in beta – will let gamers (a.k.a., Players) sign up to game away with PlayDates, and pay $4 for 10 minutes on Xbox Live, and $4 for 6 minutes on online version of less intensive games, such as Connect Four. (Pricing subject to change: this is beta.)  I don’t know how the former translates into $30 an hour, but I do have to remember that it’s “up to $30 an hour”.

Also, knowing absolutely nothing about gaming beyond what I know about playing TaiPei, I would have thought that playing on Xbox – where the skill level required is, presumably, higher than that required to play Solitaire -  would have cost more. But then I thought about it, and the thing is that Xbox gamers are likely serious enough about what they’re doing that there’d be little time for social niceties, like what’s-your-major, and would-you-mind-opening-that-top-button. Playing Connect Four may leave more focus, time, and energy for the getting to know you, getting to know all about you stuff.

Although any one can sign up as a PlayDate, most of them are (or claim to be) female. (Remember, on the ‘net you’re free to be anything you choose…)

GameCrush cannot and does not assume responsibility for the accuracy, completeness, safety, timeliness, legality or applicability of anything said or written by any User. There are risks of dealing with underage persons, or persons acting under false pretenses.

Personally, I’d advise gamers who want to meet girls to only play with those willing to go on webcam. The lure of making “up to $30 an hour or more” playing games may be too great for some boy gamers, who might just be tempted to check that Female box next to gender.

GameCrush is a nifty work form home – or even on your lunch break – scheme:

As a GameCrush PlayDate, you set your own schedule and hours. Work as much or as little as you want: you're the boss!

Sure  beats addressing envelopes or stringing beads. Plus the start up costs are less, since – if you’ve got what it takes to be a PlayDate -  you probably already have a webcam, Internet connection, and game console.

It will certainly help your cause if you actually know how to actually play games.

The more games you are available to play, the more GameCrush Players will want to play you!

I may be wrong, but I don’t think that there’s any competitive versions of TaiPei – although I suppose you could do a timed contest against someone else solving the same puzzle.  But I gotta warn you: I’m pretty good for an old, non-gaming lady. Not that I’m thinking of signing up as a PlayDate, mind you. And not that they would want me, mind you. The oldest year of birth on the pick list option when you go to sign up is 1960. I guess they just don’t trust anyone over 50 to be a gamer. (Sniff, sniff.) Maybe the joystick reflexes are the first to go.

Anyway, because I didn’t want to have to lie about my age, I didn’t sign up and, thus, didn’t get to see what you get to put in your profile, including any list of the types of games I’d want to play. I do know from the BW article that I’d have to check whether I wanted to play “Flirty” or “Dirty,” so perhaps it’s just as well that I didn’t get any further in.

This may not be my idea of an ideal business, but it’s contributing, if not exactly job growth, then income-producing opportunities for denizens of the new economy. Plus making it easier for boy to meet girl.

Only a matter of time before there are a few smiling I’ve got a GameCrush on you, sweetie-pie couples to rival the eHarmony brigade. (“Grand Theft Auto is the most important thing in my life, so it was important to find a girlfriend that shared my values and passion…”)

It certainly doesn’t make me want to be young again. And it certainly presents big time opportunity for big time raunch. But that be the Internet for you. GameCrush, why not?

Well, this should be a real boost for A&F sales!

Many years ago, I bought a madras dress in Filene’s Basement. The purchase was not a colossal coup – no brand-name label, no tag from Neiman Marcus or Saks dangling from the sleeve.  But it was cheap – around $10 – and the colors were right – blues and purples. I thought it would make a decent wear-to-work-on-a-summer-Friday dress.

But the first time I put it on, I realize that it had one colossal flaw that I could not overcome: someone had already worn it.

Not that I have a problem with pre-worn clothing.

I grew up in the house of hand me downs.

With a sister two years older, they were inevitable. Throw in an aunt 6 years older and a cousin 9 years older and you get the picture.

Hand me downs fell into one of three categories: items that had been directly purchased for my sister, mostly by my mother. These were generally fine. Only occasionally would she give in to the cutesie thing of dress-a-like sisters, and when she did she varied up the color mix.

Category two included items of clothing purchased by my Chicago grandmother for “her girls”, which included my Aunt Kay, my sister Kathleen, my cousin Ellen and me. And, later on, my cousin Mary Pat. The girl sister-cousins who arrived later for the most part missed this sartorial boat.

My grandmother liked to see “her girls” dress alike, which meant that – assuming that with hems let down, a dress could be worn two years running. And something too large could be easily altered, as well.  Not all the Kay hand me downs came our way – most, no doubt, went to Ellen and Mary Pat out in Chicago. But some were sent on to Worcester, probably in the same cartons that Grandma used to ship us home-made pickles. 

So I stood to wear the same dress six years running – certainly excellent training for my grammar and high school years, when I wore a green jumper and white shirt every day.

The third category of hand me downs were from my cousin Barbara. The good news was that the clothing was lovely – from Bonwit Teller and Peck & Peck, stores in Boston where we never would have shopped. The bad news was that they were a decade out of date. That smart red spring coat from 1950? Still red, still springy, but not quite so smart in 1960, I’m afraid.

And that was just the pre-worn clothing of my childhood.

In adulthood, I have been known to do my Freegan version of the dumpster dive, raiding the clothing bags my sisters give me to pass on to St. Francis House, a local shelter I’m involved with.

But for all the pre-worn apparel I’ve donned over the the years, I couldn’t recall any that weren’t clean. And whoever’d worn that madras dress had excessively foul B.O.

Hadn’t she heard of Ban or Secret?

And what nerve!

Obviously, she’d worn the dress long enough to sweat up a storm in it – too long to have buyer’s remorse and decide to return it.

Oh, why hadn’t I noticed the rank odor before I went and bought the darned thing?

But, of course, it hadn’t been purchased on a leisurely shopping outing, but in a mad, after-work dash-in/dash-out. I must buy something! I’m here! I must buy anything! Now! Sometimes I liked to “browse the B”, as we referred to forays into Filene’s Basement. Other times, I just wanted to buy something.

I washed and ironed it, but never felt the same about that dress. Within a few weeks, it ended up in a St. Francis House bag.

I hadn’t thought about it in years.

Then I read in The Journal about a possible clothing store problem in NYC that is orders of magnitude worse than buying a ten-buck dress that smells.

Two Abercrombie & Fitch stores – a Hollister and an A&F – had to close last week because of bedbug infestation.

Not that I’d be buying anything there, but I’m quite sure that getting bitten alive is not the goal of A&F’s average teen customer – not to mention their mothers.

As most people are no doubt aware, bedbugs have been on the rise over the last decade or so. (It was, in fact, a Pink Slip topic just a few months back.) But most of what I’ve been reading about them has pertained to hotels, and private homes, not to clothing stores.  Even with the increase in bedbug outbreaks, few are prepared to deal with infestation an infestation.

Most commercial spaces don’t have a formal policy on how to handle a bedbug outbreak or complaints by an employee or by the public. Bedbug lawsuits are a growing area of practice for Marc Miner, a lawyer for Zalman & Schnurman in Manhattan…

I love that “bedbug lawsuits are a growing area of practice” bit. Talk about a niche. From a professional standpoint, is this something you want to get known for?

Let me try it on for a mo: “Creating strategic positioning documents for companies with products and services that solve bedbug infestations is a growing area of my product marketing business.”  Nah! It’s just not me.

But it is, perhaps, Mr. Miner, who’s taking this pretty darned seriously:

“In my experience there are very, very few places that have a protocol for bedbugs,” he said. “Often people come to us because they have a post traumatic reaction to it. For some people, the post traumatic stress is the worst part.”

Well, yes, I’m sure that having bedbugs is no fun. In fact, having gotten bitten on a night train in Spain during my rambling youth, I know first hand that bedbug bites itch and the thought of them is, in general, grotty.

But “post traumatic stress”.

Come now. Can we all join hands and foreswear using the term “post traumatic stress” for anything other than a) war; b) violent crime; c) terrorist attack; d) horrific accident; and e) natural disaster.

Bedbugs, indeed.

Nonetheless, bedbugs are a big enough deal, and I, for one, hope that the recent A&F infestations were aberrations. I hate the idea of having to follow the guidelines (“simple tips for consumers”) laid out by Missy Henriksen, vice president of public affairs for the National Pest Management Association, on what to do in stores:

• Be aware of any stains that seem unusual on clothing. The stains could be telltale blood spots left by feeding bed bugs.

Hmmmm. Wouldn’t any stain that you found on clothing in a store seem unusual to you – as in, you probably wouldn’t buy the merchandise? And, to the already long list of life’s little hassles, do I want to add inspecting clothing for “telltale blood spots.”

• Inspect clothing carefully before purchasing.

I guess I could have used this tip 30 years back when I bought that nasty dress.

• Check behind dressing room mirrors and any other crevices where bed bugs could hide — even wall sockets — before trying on clothing.

So much for the dash-in, dash-out purchase. Plus, I would think that, if there were security cameras in the dressing room, this would likely flag you as a potential shoplifter looking for security cameras. Might be easier to just travel with a can of Raid and do a bit of fumigating for yourself.

• Hang your clothes on hooks, rather than lay them across cushioned seats in dressing rooms or on the carpeted floor as these are safe and popular havens for bed bugs.

This is sure adding to the overall pleasurable shopping experience, isn’t it?

• Always inspect your shopping bags before bringing them into the house.

Right.

• Wash all of your new clothes in hot water and tumble dry on high heat prior to wearing for the first time.

But what if the tag says “Cold Water Wash Only”? What if it says “Tumble Dry on Low”? Is there any special anti-bedbug laundry detergent we can use? Or should we go ahead with the cold water wash, then re-examine the article of clothing with a magnifying glass, checking pockets and seams – no doubt safe and popular havens for bedbugs – and removing the critters with tweezers before smashing them with a mallet?

Maybe I’ll just make life easier for myself and stop buying clothing entirely. This will eliminate the possibility of post traumatic stress brought on by the sight of telltale bedbug blood.

As for the bags of clothing from my sisters, I believe I am 100% safe in their hands. (At least I have been up until now.)

Cent anni!

If I take after my mother, I’ll live to be 81.  If I take after my father, I’m dead already. Ditto for both my grandfathers. If I take after my grandmother Wolf, I’ll make it to 78. If I take after my grandmother Rogers (nee Trainor), I’ll be within spitting distance of 97.

Nanny’s side of the family – the Trainors – are definitely the ones to take after if you want to live long. Her brother Pat and her sister Roseanne both lived until their late 90’s. Roseanne may even have hit 100.

Cent anni – or, if the auto-translator’s got it right - céad bliain. (No hundert jahren on the German side of the house, I’m afraid.)

One hundred years!

Now, I don’t wake up in the morning thinking that I want to live that long. But – if I’m still with it and still a bit spry; if I can still read at least a large-type book; if there are still books; if I’m not broke and living on cat food; if at least some of the people I care about are still around; and if (and this is a big IF) the world hasn’t completely gone to hell by then – sure, why not?

But if I had to guess at what age I’ll shuffle off this mortal coil, I’d put it between 85 and 90.  Good, but not great.  Just a few more years above par for the industrial world these days, which, frankly, I’ve awarded to myself because I am just so, so, so above average.

Presumably, as long as my death isn’t accidental, I’ll decide at the time whether enough is enough.

But I won’t be getting my DNA checked just yet to see whether I’ve got what it takes to hit the century mark.

First off, you need to have your genome “done”. And, while I wouldn’t mind finding out if I was Brian Boru’s great-great-great-granddaughter, or the first cousin of a bonobo, 50 million time removed, it’s just not worth spending a few thousand bucks to find out.

Maybe when it gets down to the point where you can buy it off the shelf at CVS for $14 bucks, or from the ladies’ room vending machine that sells tampons, mouth spray, and condoms. Until then….

So, no genetic sequence, no longevity forecast.

Not yet, anyway.

No doubt there’ll be some point in time when we’re required to actually produce our longevity forecast for some reason or another. That long-term care facility that’ll take the proceeds of your house sale and let you live there 4-EVAH. Not so fast, young old lady. We only plan on you’re living five more years, thank you.

Nonetheless, I was interested in the article in the WSJ the other day that talked about the Boston University discovery of ‘a genetic signature of longevity,’ which will soon have a free test to go along with it.

Genetic signature, writ by that good old moving finger of life.

Not that the signature guarantees anything, mind you.

One could still get run down by a texting SUV driver. Or even succumb to some pedestrian virus or bacterium. Still, the test will let you know whether you’ve got the goods, i.e., the constitution, to keep on keepin’ on.

The researchers, who studied more than 1,000 people over the age of 100, identified a set of 150 unique genetic markers that, taken together, are linked to extreme longevity. They acknowledged they didn't know all the genes involved, nor their exact function in extending old age.

Will figuring out if you have the Fab 150 be just TMI?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Sure, it could change your behavior – eat, drink, and be merry; after all, there’s no tomorrow. And your planning: can’t spend a dime, I need to make sure I have enough to last 20 years longer than everyone else.

But having this kind of information might not be an unalloyed joy.

No one knows the complete prescription for a healthy long life. But genes that help control cellular responses to famine, drought and other survival stresses may play a key role in staving off the diseases and chronic ailments of aging, research suggests.

Okay. I do know that half of my great, great grandparents survived the Irish potato famine. In fact, they survived it so well that half of my great-grandparents didn’t even bother to get on the boat as emmies until several decades later. So I may have the famine thing going for me.

By the way, there’s a cutesie new name for elderly folks who are in good health. They’re now known as the “wellderly.” And if you’re going to live a long time, that’s sure what you want to be. As opposed to lying strapped down in a hospital bed, non compos de mentis. (Although if you’re non compos, the being strapped down might not matter to you.)

In order to get to be wellderly, however, you have to follow a healthy lifestyle. That genetic signature only starts mattering once you’ve at least made it to reasonable old age.

Once thing they’ll never find– not just yet, at least; they’ll have to create it, first – is the immortality gene.

I may feel differently about this as I start to metaphorically circle the metaphorical drain, but for now I give that one a hearty old raspberry.

I wanna live forever? No way!

At this moment in time, I don’t even want to know if I stand a good chance of making it to 100.

The Glorious Fifth! (My personal day of independence)

Since the 4th of July is one of those wonderful holiday’s that’s still observed on it’s actual date, it seems a bit out of place to have it occur on a weekend. Nonetheless, it does give everyone in the 9 to 5 world a chance for a three-day-er, which is always welcome.

Anyway, I’m declaring a personal day of independence from blogging.

Here’s what I wrote about The Glorious Fourth during my first year as a blogger. It still holds.

Spies are everywhere

There is a TV show from my childhood that made a distinct impression on me. I’m not sure if it was an episode of Twilight Zone, or of something else, but the show portrayed a typical, little American white-bread town going about its wholesome, innocent, American century business.

Clean cut boys in striped tee-shirts rode their shiny Schwinn bikes around. Pigtailed girls skipped rope. Mr. Smiley, the milkman, with his pristine white cap and uniform, dropped bottles of milk on doorsteps. Mr. Friendly, the mailman, greeted Mrs. Mom – perky and aproned – at her door, and handed her a few small bills (electricity: $5/month), and her Saturday Evening Post (cover by Norman Rockwell) and Readers Digest (article on J. Edgar Hoover).  Mr. Dad, having headed off to work in his suit and fedora, is already off the day’s scene. The sun, obviously, is shining.

Yes, it’s Smallville, Little Town, Nice City.

It may not have resembled any place I lived, but it was instantly recognizable as America at mid-century.

Then – cue ominous music – the cameras pulled back to reveal that the town was surrounded by a chain link fence. The signs on the fence were written in the Cyrillic alphabet.

Was it Rod Serling on voice over who intoned that what appeared to be any town in the U.S. of A. was, in fact, a spy training center in the Soviet Union.

Commie bastards! Only I wouldn’t have thought “bastards” at that time, I’d have thought “skunks.”  Training themselves – including their evil Communist children – so that they could pass themselves off as real Americans.

Spies could be any where and everywhere.

Was the family across the street that went to the Lithuanian church instead of the regular old parish church actually a group of unrelated infiltrating spies? How about the goofy guy – the one everyone called the Blue Jay – who sat on the second floor porch of the decker just across Main Street from my grandmother’s house and stared out at the passers-by all day. What are you lookin’ at, bub?

One would have thought that the end of the Cold War would have brought a parallel end to the Russians planting spies on our shores, but apparently not.

Needless to say, I am completely fascinated by the latter-day spy ring that’s just been busted. They haven’t been accused of passing on any damaging Top Secret info, but they are being charged with failure to register as foreign agents – how do you do that? show up at the post office and ask to fill out the I spy form? – and money laundering.

Two of the accused spies lived in Cambridge, and were apparently so secure that they bought an $800K home on Trowbridge Street a few weeks ago. The wife of the couple sold real-estate. The husband - he went by Donald Heathfield, the stolen name of some dead Canadian baby of the early 1960’s –had set up some sort of half-baked consulting and software company. But one with an insidious purpose. He wanted to sell some kind of process management solution to governments to help them keep track of their strategic planning. (The company’s name was a mouthful: Future Map Strategic Advisory Services.)

Don’t know how long that website will remain up, but, if nothing else, “Donald Heathfield” sure got American no-sense, business-babble down pretty darned well:

His company is all about “Driving Strategic Anticipation”, and “Driving Strategic Proactivity”. It purports to do this by helping their clients “develop effective strategies for the future,” and “make future strategies actionable.”

Nothing wrong with making future strategies actionable, but if someone could come up with a way to make strategies actionable in the past, well, that’d be the business to beat.

FutureMap, is the one to go to when you’re interested in:

Driving preparedness process,  executing preemptive strategies, engaging stakeholders.

And who isn’t?

And what’s a company without a mission statement?

Future Map enables governments and businesses to develop comprehensive preparedness systems and build a culture of strategic proactivity and anticipatory leadership

With Future Map:

You create a transparent process of proactive re-positioning of the organization's strategy in response to anticipated changes in the environment.

The result is the capacity of your organization to re-invent itself and continuously innovate.

Talk about Buzzword BINGO!  And this is just on the Home Page

Yes, Heathfield certainly got the circum-speak of so much of modern marketing down cold (war):

Client Benefits

Future Map ensures that your organization is always prepared to deal with challenges and take advantage of opportunities, and that your people see further, act faster and execute better than your competitors.

Services

Future Map offers full consulting support and innovative software for systematically managing risks and opportunities; driving intelligence and early warning processes; mapping strategic direction; visualizing anticipated environment; building, sharing and executing proactive organizational strategies amidst uncertainty, complexity and change.

As my friend, Pink Slip reader, and and marketing expert par excellence Valerie always asks when she comes across one of these types of websites – and there are plenty of them out there – But what do it do?  To which I always add, And how do it do it?

Need to know basis, apparently.

What’s a website without a case study, and Future Map’s featured (and likely only – if it even exists) is China Green Future.

China Green Future is a collaborative project by Future Map, Beijing Academy of Soft Technologies and the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, containing China anticipated moves towards a Low Carbon Economy along with several possible scenarios.

Any accident that the one and only “customer” is from a fellow-traveler?

Frankly, even before Heathfield got busted, from a business perspective I would have taken one look at this website and said good luck to him.

But he was a Kennedy School (Public Policy) grad, and networking matters. So he may well have had the contacts that would actually purchase his product and services. Organizations waste an awful lot of money on the nebulous and do-nothing.

All of the spies nabbed in this week’s round-up– and there were several other couples with kids among them – passed themselves off for years as Joe and Joan Citizen. Working, buying houses, raising their families. All, apparently, subsidized by SMERSH.

It’s unclear whether they managed to pass anything on to their masters back in the USSR that was of any value, or whether it was all information that could have been readily gotten from newspapers, wikipedia, and blogs. 

Nonetheless, it’s extremely weird and creepy that spies are everywhere.

And what a weird and creepy way to live – kind of like being in the Witness Protection Program.

Psychologically, how can someone actually withstand it?

And you have to ask whether they also realized that, however strident, fragmented, dysfunctional and some times just plain frightening it is living in the US these days – nothing like those nice, calm, prosperous days of the fifties and sixties – life here is still pretty darned good for many (if not most) people. I would guess that most folks, if asked to compare and contrast life here vs. life in Putin’s resource rich but incredibly shrinking oligarchy would rather bring put out their shingle (not to mention raise their kids) here.

But never underestimate the power of a true believer.

Maybe Heathfield et al. really hated the Americansky way of life, and wanted to help The Motherland in any way they could.

Or maybe they loved it here, and were just milking the subsidies they received from The Motherland for all they were worth.

In one of the many articles I read about this story, I saw one that mentioned Czechoslovakia used to have some agents on ground here, too. But when that country un-Communisted itself and split, the agents here asked for asylum. They now thought of themselves as Americans, and wanted to stay home, not go home.

Wonder if this will turn out to be the same deal with this latest rash of spies.

And I wonder if “Donald Heathfield” really thinks that Future Map can take off as a company.  Pretty weak value prop, in my estimation, but I’ve been wrong before.

Anyway, we’ll never know because Future Map, at present and, no doubt, in the anticipatory, strategic future, is no longer open for business.

But, Mr. Heathfield, if this all turns out to be a big mistake, and you are cleared of all wrongdoing, I advise you to get help with positioning your company. You’ll have enough hurdles to overcome, without having prospects scratching their heads and asking, ‘but what do it do?’

Don’t bogart that joint, my friend, but certainly don’t pass it over to anyone collecting unemployment

I’m sure that there are some folks who are collecting unemployment and using some of the money on a little puff. Apply for enough on-line jobs to satisfy the weekly requirement that you’re looking for work, then lean back, relax, toke up... Don’t forget to inhale!

No, they’re not spending their whole time on UI luxuriating under the influence, mind you.  We’re not talking big stoner, here. Just someone who wants to chill a bit, forget their worries – will I ever find a decent paying job again? – and hope that unemployment benefits get extended before theirs run out.

Human nature: some folks are spending some of their unemployment check on a baggy of weed.

And I’m sure there are some folks who are collecting unemployment and using some of the money on online gambling, 8,000 calorie breakfasts at Denny’s, and porn.

But most of those collecting, I’m quite certain, are just paying their bills and trying to find work. Lush and verdant as unemployment checks are – and in Massachusetts, the max is $629/week, so it’s really not so terrible – most of the people on it wouldn’t want to spend the rest of their life relying on it as their source of income. Especially if they don’t live in lush and verdant states like Massachusetts.

So I’m a bit appalled by Senator Orrin Hatch’s mean-spirited and niggling proposal that “the unemployed and those receiving other forms of government cash assistance” undergo drug testing. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Personally, as someone who in the past has collected those lush and verdant Massachusetts unemployment checks, I would have been completely aghast and utterly pissed off if I’d had to hand in a specimen in order to get paid – even though I would have been at no risk of failing a drug test, unless I got caught up in the poppy-seed-bagel-tests-for-heroin mis-results.

Not that it would happen here, but the idea is being embraced by voters in Utah.  (One more reason I wouldn’t want to live there.)  Utah, by the way, has a far lower max unemployment payout than lush and verdant Massachusetts. Utah is, after all, the desert in many ways – although it probably does cost a lot less to live there. Thus, the $444 max undeniably goes further than it would in l&v Massachusetts.

Here’s what Mr. Hatch sayeth about his constituents feelings about drug testing the unemployed:

A lot of people are saying, 'Hey, it's about time. Why do we keep giving money to people who are going to go use it on drugs instead of their families?'" Hatch said.

Inquiring minds want to know just what proportion of those collecting use their checks “on drugs instead of their families.”

I’m a pretty good guesser, and my pretty good guess is that this figure is pretty darned low – and probably even lower in Utah than almost any place else on the planet.

In order to collect, after all, one has to have been gainfully employed for a slug of time. And it seems to me that this might be beyond the capacity of druggies drugged out enough to require treatment. Because that is what Mr. Hatch claims his aim is.

That’s right. It’s not to punish, humiliate, antagonize, demoralize, or piss of those shiftless, aimless, content to do nothing unemployed who are taking big time advantage of double-digit, long-term unemployment to get on the dole.

The goal, he [Orrin Hatch] said, is to get users into treatment.

No doubt there are some unemployed folks who say to hell with it, and start using meth/crack/heroin/oxy/whatever other addictive, destructive, terrible drugs there are out there.

And Hatch does want to help them:

“…it does get the help for them that they really need. And if they get the help, then they're right back on to the cash," he said.

Forget the feelings and concerns of the unemployed who aren’t using hard drugs, and don’t need any treatment, thank you. Actually, the help that 99.99% of the unemployed need is a) the cash; b) the job – not someone hounding them to pee in a cup.

But Hatch has it all worked out. The test will pay for itself by taking benefits away from those using drugs. Anything left over will go to work the deficit down.

Wow!

Does this type of pee-to-play drug testing work?

Apparently not.

Studies of this type of policy aimed at welfare recipients suggests that it’s a crock. According to Harold Pollack, a University of Chicago prof who’s worked in this arena:

"Absent specific indications, my own research and work conducted by others suggests that population drug screening is unwise. …[It] reflects a technological quirk: Urine tests more readily detect marijuana than they can detect other intoxicating substances."

Another study (of women on welfare in Michigan) showed that, while 8% of the population studied were using drugs, only 1% were using a drug other than grass.

Of course, Orrin Hatch may believe that marijuana is  gateway drug, and that the idle mind of the unemployed is the devil’s workshop for reefer madness.

But in my book it just looks petty and punitive.

For most of the folks suffering through it – and I actually know a couple of them – long term unemployment is bad enough without throwing this one in their face.

But if we are going to start getting priggish about what people are spending their unemployment checks on , why not forbid anyone over the age of 10 from buying an oversized, Winnie-the-Pooh sweatshirts.  Maybe we should refuse to pay unemployment to anyone who’d spend it on a Thomas Kincaid painting.  Or who’d spend their money on tickets to a Miley Cyrus (in her current incarnation)concert.

Now there are people it might be worth getting into treatment.

Meanwhile, write to your senator and tell him/her that, if this idea ever comes to a vote, let Orrin Hatch bogart it all by his lonesome.

And now, reporting for and on BP…

Hey, I’m in marketing.

True, I’m on the side of true dat, black and white, ‘what’s it do and how does it do it?’ marketing, but still…

But when you work in marketing, or PR, or corporate communications, there will be times when you have to put a little spin on the old curve ball that you’ve been handed.  (Try marketing an OS2-based product after OS2’s pictured on the cover of InfoWeek in a casket with a lily on top of it, why don’t you…)

Given a lemon, or even a bottle of ReaLemon juice, some days you just have to suck it up and make that pitcher of lemonade.

But you still want to be able to look yourself in the mirror every third day of so. Which means you need to avoid going out of your way to make a damned lemon meringue pie out of it.

Which to some extent is what BP has at its corps of in-house “journalists” doing.

There was a story on BP’s reporting (for an in-house rag called Planet BP, as well as on a blog by BP-styled “BP reporter” Tom Seslar on what’s going on down in the Gulf) in a WSJ Online post by Benoit Faucon last week.

The big howler that’s pointed out is certainly a lemon meringue pie in the face, given the environmental and economic devastation that BP’s slack standards and risky business model brought about. This from one of Seslar’s reports:

“Much of the region’s [nonfishing boat] businesses — particularly the hotels — have been prospering because so many people have come here from BP and other oil emergency response teams,” another report says. Indeed, one tourist official in a local town makes it clear that “BP has always been a very great partner of ours here…We have always valued the business that BP sent us.”

Okay. This has got to be among the Top Ten Most Ludicrous Spins placed on the disaster. (Right up with BP’s nobly  putting aside the money they make on the trace amount of oil – 20,000 – 30,000 barrels a day – they’re recovering, for the National Wildlife Foundation.)

So I was all set to join the punditry – including my MFN (most favorite newsperson) Rachel Maddow – and  heap on Tom Seslar, BP’s flack, for the nonsense spewing from his keyboard almost as rapidly as the endless crude gushing from the well. But then I read his blog, which is obviously on the spin cycle, but isn’t exactly deranged or imbecilic. (Although there is a completely corn-pone piece on his encounter with a wise old Houston cab-driver that, while it may not make the Top Ten Most Ludicrous Spins list, is definitely lame-o.) And then I read that he’s been with BP for nearly 40 years, and was a reporter for a few years before that.

Which probably puts Tom Seslar somewhere in his 60’s, so my naturally sympathetic tendencies naturally fell into place. Thus, instead of jumping on the this guy’s a bad journalist bandwagon, on which there’s no room, anyway, I decided to set up my own little bandwagon, and make up my own little story about Tom Seslar.

He’s pre-Lou Grant, but he definitely grew up wanting to be a journalist. Maybe he was inspired by Clark Kent. He was on the college newspaper, and hit his stride once he got his degree and landed a job with a paper that folks had actually heard of.

But that was tough going, and there was too much chasing ambulances for too little dough,and he wanted to settle down, make a bit more money, start a family. So he went over to corporate, where he got to work on things like the in-house print magazine (where he may have had a by-line), speeches for the VP of Whatever, and other communications pieces.

Sure, over the years he sometimes felt like the Willy Loman of the journalism world. Or like Terry Malloy, the Marlon Brando character in On the Waterfront, who “could have been a contender.” So Tom never won the Pulitzer Prize, or broke the big story, but he got to do what he likes to do, which is write. And so what if it was mostly drab and anonymous stuff on the guys who work on the new oil rig in the Hebrides; or the 10,000th BP gas station that opened in East Gum Shoe, Oklahoma; or the sweet little secretary who retired after 50 years. It was a living. He liked the company well enough to stay there for 37 years. And there’s always the novel in the desk drawer…

Tom’s not ready to retire quite yet – hey, he’s only in his 60’s. Maybe he’s got a kid still in college. Maybe he likes to work. Maybe he thinks it’s cool that after all those years on in-house stuff, he gets to write a blog. Maybe he sincerely believes that the company is trying to make good, and will make good. Hell, he’s spent his lifetime there. Does he want to even consider for a moment that he’s spent those 37 years working for the worst company in the history of mankind. Which, bad as it is, BP obviously isn’t. (It’s not like they’re producing Zyklon-B or using slave-laborers.)

Then all of a sudden, Tom Seslar gets his 15 minutes of fame. He’s the man on the scene. It’s almost like he’s an actual reporter. Then he finds himself being made fun of in the Wall Street Journal, the Huffington Post, the CJR (Columbia Journalism Review), and MSBNC.

Me, I feel for the guy.

He didn’t cause the Gulf debacle, and while BP is certainly being shown to be greedy, shoddy, and tone-deaf, it’s not as if Tom Seslar’s a good German just following orders. He’s just a guy working for a big, greedy, shoddy, tone-deaf company. (Plenty more where that came from.)

To quote from one of my favorite bards, Bill Morrissey:

He ain’t the last, he ain’t the first.
He ain’t the best, he ain’t the worst.

(Actually, I’m paraphrasing here. In Married for Money “he’s” really “she”.)

I may have this entirely wrong. Maybe Tom Seslar is a really slick, corrupt, terrible, dishonest person doing his best to cover up for BP in its hour of travesty. But I don’t think so.

He’s just a guy writing for a living. Ain’t no one reading his work who doesn’t know he’s working for BP. It’s not like his articles are appearing anywhere as neutral journalism. (At least I hope they’re not.) Sure calling himself a reporter sounds like a trope, but maybe that’s how he’s thought of himself all these years.

I’m not suggesting that we get off of  BP’s back, of course. That we have to stay on. But Tom Seslar? Why don’t we just leave the guy alone.

Making life simpler, easier, and just plain better, one Bounce at a time

I’ve only seen it a couple of times – and I couldn’t find it on YouTube for a replay – but my current favorite TV ad is the one in which a “real person” extols the virtues of the Bounce Dryer Bar.

Haven’t heard of the Bounce Dryer Bar? Well, neither had I until I saw this ad. Now, thankfully, I know what it is.  It’s something you stick on the side of your clothes dryer in lieu of using dryer sheets to eliminate static – and ensure that your clothing smells “outdoor fresh,” “fresh linen,” “spring fresh,” or “fresh lavender.” If you just want your clothing to smell like, well, clothing, you use “free.”  Which is what I use. Who wants the repeated shocks that fabric that hasn’t been softened up produce in the dead of winter? So I do admit/confess to using dryer sheets. I just don’t want the artificial, chemical additive version of life that marketers have convinced us means “fresh.”

But the Bounce Dryer Bar?

Who knew that it was so onerous to have to toss in  a dryer sheet with every load?

Well, the Bounce scientists at P&G apparently did.

So they invented the Dryer Bar.

Which, to hear the woman in the Bounce ad testify, just makes doing laundry a whole heck of a lot easier, simpler, more convenient, less time consuming, less nerve-wracking.  Your benefit goes here.

Naturally, this got me thinking about just how much of an enervating drag the dryer sheet process is that someone would belly up to the Bar so effusively.

So the other day, when I did a couple of loads of laundry, I estimated just how much time it took, and just how inconvenient it was, to throw in a dryer sheet.

I don’t have a stop watch, and my watch doesn’t have a second hand, but using the “one-mississippi” method, I estimate that it took one second to get the box off of the shelf, one second to take out two sheets, and then a combined one second per load to get them in and out of the dryer.

Total time for using dryer sheets for two loads of wash done back to back: four seconds.

Which doesn’t sound like a lot, but if I do this twice a week, over the course of a year, it all ads up: 4 x 2 x 52 = 416 seconds per year, of nearly 7 minutes.

What I couldn’t do with that seven minutes, I tell you.

Make a cup of tea. Read a couple of “Talk of the Town” pieces in the The New Yorker. Start going through my sock drawer.

And I’m just doing wash for two clean adults. For a family of four, I bet someone could tote up a good twenty or thirty minutes in time savings.

I know, I know. It’s like the one about nine women pregnant for one month each thinking they could make a baby: you don’t get the entire seven, twenty, or thirty minutes in one block. And four seconds per laundry episode is hard to take advantage of for something productive.

You could always, however, do something non-productive, like stare off into space.

I do want to make a fair comparison here, because the Bounce Dryer Bar – which lasts 2-4 months, depending on number of loads and dryer heat – does have some start up costs.

Although I bet it takes bit longer, I’ll give it two seconds to take the Bounce Dryer Bar package off the shelf and open it up. Here’s where the first snag hits: it takes 15 seconds worth of firm pressing to attach the bar’s holder to the side of the dryer. You don’t have to replace the holder every time the bar starts reading “REPLACE”, but still, it does contribute to the total cost of ownership. As does the possibility – all over the web – that the bar crumbles and you have to pick it out of your laundry, then rub the stains it causes out with a bar of soap.

If you’re lucky, however, that won’t happen, and you’ll get your return on time investment pretty darned quickly.

With the take off the shelf, press against dryer, and insert bar in holder, I’m guessing start up costs of about 20 seconds.

So, a few loads into it – based on my estimate of eight seconds per week – you’re at break-even in two and a half weeks.

Assuming the bar lasts three months, and adding a couple of seconds on to the total for sticking your head in the dryer a couple of times to see if it says REPLACE yet, over the course of that three months you’ve saved quite a tidy sum worth of seconds.

With my traditional dryer sheet approach, I’ve used up 104 seconds of precious time, while the canny Bounce Dryer Bar user has only expended 24 seconds.

Wow!

These things must be flying off the shelves!

I don’t know what the cost differential is in terms of dollars, but on time savings alone, I’ve done enough ROI exercises in my time (justifying spending big bucks on software with no clear benefits) to know a winner when I see one.

Add to that the softer benefit, which the woman in the ad brings up, of not having to worry about running out of dryer sheets.

I’d forgotten about that one!

Man, the amount of time  and energy I’ve devoted to fretting about whether that box on the shelf only has one sheet left in it or – worse yet – is actually empty…I can tell you, many the toss-and-turn night I’ve awoken in a 2 a.m. sweat, wondering whether there’s a dryer sheet for the load I want to do first thing in the morning. So, I have to get up and out of my nice, warm, comfy bed and pad on over to the hall closet where I keep the laundry stuff,to inventory my dryer sheets. No sheets? I’m not going to say no problem. What I am going to say is I’m now facing a big decision.

Do I run out in the middle of the night – does the 24/7 CVS down the street even carry dryer sheets – or do I wait until morning?

Or can I just let it go, throw caution to the winds, risk electrocution, and end up sprinkling perfectly dry clothing with water to get rid of the static in my sheets?

Thank you, P&G, for the Bounce Dryer Bar, which I only have to worry about every few months, rather than every living, breathing, laundry day.  I still haven’t decided whether I’ll try one out – I do worry about things like concentrated chemicals in a hot environment. (I also worry about those plug in air fresheners…) Still, I welcome the Bounce Dryer Bar to the market.

Some might say that this is but an infinitesimally small and marginal improvement, and I’ll concede that they may have a point.

Certainly, it’s not the advance that the wringer-washer was over the zinc tub and scrub board. Or that the automated washer was over the wringer-washer. (I know whereof I speak. I remember when we upgraded from a wringer-washer – you had to run the wash through a hand-cranked roller to wring the water out – to one with a spin cycle.)

And the dryer was certainly an improvement over hanging clothing out of doors. I remember that upgrade, too. It was one that actually had an impact on my life. I was too young to have operated the roller-washer, but I spent many hours hanging laundry out, and taking it down.

So I know up close and personal that the dryer was an improvement over hanging things out – other than in one respect (other than the big kahuna of energy savings). Clothing hung outside smells better.

It actually smells like “outdoor fresh,” “spring fresh”, and “fresh linen.” Without the chemical additives that go into the Bounce products (bar or sheet).

Smell-test aside, if the Bounce Dryer Bar is a big improvement, a major life simplifier, might it be argued that our lives are just too darned cushy to begin with?

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

What is our obsession with things smelling Madison Avenue defined “fresh”?

In addition to the Bounce Dryer Bar, Bounce is giving us new and advanced dryer sheets that come in two scents, Paradise Thrill and Renewing Rain.  Let’s have the P&G marketers tell us a bit of what these products can do for us:

Want to experience a little bit of paradise? Now you can with Bounce^® Awakenings^™ Paradise Thrill^™! Paradise Thrill^™ is infused with Renew-Refresh^™ scent beads that renew the freshness of your clothes as you move, so you can enjoy the unique blend of fresh citrus, floral, and green scents throughout your day! Awaken ordinary moments™ with the intense and long-lasting freshness of Bounce® Awakenings™ Paradise Thrill™!

And:

Awaken ordinary moments™ with the modern, fresh, watery scents of Bounce^® Awakenings^™ Renewing Rain^™! Take a moment to enjoy the fresh exhilaration of this light, yet long-lasting, scent that renews the freshness of your clothes with Renew-Refresh^™ scent beads as you move throughout your day!

Can it we healthy for our bodies or the environment to have chemmy little scent beads time-releasing on us?  One more reason not to rue the day I chose B2B tech over consumer marketing.

P-O’d about an IPO? Been there, done that.

There was a brief article in the NY Times the other day on the fortunes of this year’s IPO market. Given that a couple of folks near and dear to me have an oar in this particular water, I read the article with some interest. Nothing substantial in it: this year’s better than last, the market for IPO’s is still jumpy, good offerings will do well. It kind of reminded me of an article I saw years ago on the financial pages somewhere or other, in which some magus predicted that the market would go up, go down, or stay the same. (Wish I could get paid a pundits wages…)

The article did, however, remind me that this week Genuity alumni celebrate that tenth anniversary of the company’s spectacularly failed IPO – the greatest failure in history, up until then, or so we were told. Definitely one of the worst IPO’s of what was a dot.bombingly dismal year.

Not that I expected to get rich-rich, but, like everyone else in the company, I spun out a bit of “what if” analysis.

After all, as a director, I had quite a few options.

And certainly, in that long-ago time, before the go-go years went going, going, gone, the expectation that the options could yield a modest gain of ten bucks per was not unreasonable. Sometimes I let myself dream even bigger.

Then there was the IPO itself, and the chance to augment those options with a bit of friends and family.

At first I dithered around about investing. Surely those options would be enough…

But then I decided – little miss goody-two shoes manager – that, as a director leading a large and growing team, I really had to show faith in the company.  Over tea with a friend, we talked about what we were willing to risk, and we both came up with the not so magic number of $11,000. Which represented 1,000 shares at the favored nation, pre-IPO share price of $11.

A few days before we had to sign up, there was an article in The Boston Globe on the complexities of the Genuity offering. The company was an Internet Services Provider that had to be spun out of the parent company, Verizon, for some convoluted regulatory reason. The article warned, “This one’s for the pros.”

Well, the pros pretty much avoided it. We amateurs, on the other hand…

I can’t remember what the deal was, but I think you could purchase pre-IPO shares worth up to half of your income. An “opportunity” that a lot of my colleagues took “advantage” of.

For weeks on end, you couldn’t pass a fax machine without seeing an application for a second mortgage being sent.  I knew folks who cashed in their kids’ college funds. One friend, who had taken a pass on a friends and family opportunity at AOL a few year earlier, wasn’t going to miss out this time. He and his wife both worked for Genuity, and they went for the max – an amount well in excess of $100K in shares.

The great day neared. Whatever the IPO’s outcome, it was slated to be The First Day of the Rest of Our Life as a company. Speculation about speculation was rife. But the unsettling under currents were starting to flow. Was the smart money in or out? Time would tell – and it did, along with the realization that the Rest of Our Life as a company would be nasty, brutish, and short.

We had to sign some type of commitment letter to purchase our shares, and the night before IPO day, agents from Smith Barney called to confirm the purchase.

When I asked what the offer was going to go out at, the Smith Barnoid gave me a figure that was less than what the company had told us it was aiming for. I asked whether this meant that the book had not been sold. Oh, no, she assured me. All was lookin’ good.

I’m not 100% sure, but I believe that Genuity got to ring the bell at the opening of the market on our day.

Talk about for whom the bell tolls.

I learned a lot about non-verbal communications that day.

By noon, no one needed to say word one.

Those who had gone big were the gaunt, gray-faced, ones cradling their heads in their hands. The ones looking relieved had missed the call from Smith Barney to confirm their purchase and were, as it turned out, off the hook, even though they’d signed a commitment letter. The folks trying not to smile were the ones who had taken a pass. For them, this was a win-win. They didn’t lose a dime, plus they didn’t have to eat their hearts, livers, and spleens out while those of us who had paid to play got rich.

Which, of course, would have taken at least six months, since that was the amount of time we had to hold our shares. We might have known when to fold ‘em, but we were required by law to hold ‘em.

We all knew from the opening bell that we’d been gonged.

Trading opened at $11 and proceeded to drop from there. Six months in, I believe the price was approaching zero.

In keeping with the Genuity tradition of over-the-top spending, there was a Big IPO Party planned for late that afternoon, out on The Quad. Champagne, nice eats. And a goodie box to help us commemorate the day.

The boxes held a fleece (how fitting) blanket, an IOU for the polo shirt that was still on order, an instant camera that produced pictures on stamps, noise makers and, even more fitting than the fleece, brightly colored nylon fools caps.

We were all supposed to don our gay apparel, blow on our noisemakers, snap candids of each other celebrating (and wear them on our sleeves), and drink champagne toasts to our good fortune.

Well, that didn’t happen.

Worst, they started to run low on goodie boxes and, in a scene that recalled the Vietnamese leave-behinds grasping at the struts of the last helicopter to take off from the roof of the American Embassy in Saigon, employees – fearing they wouldn’t secure a goodie box – stormed the dwindling goodie box pile. The marketing folks – all young women who worked on events and tschotkes – tried to hold back the rabble, or at least limit the take to one per person. Good luck with that, ladies. Boxes were flying over head, and employees were scooping them up and running off, arms full.

This scene topped what was a generally – no surprise here – dispirited event. Our execs tried gamely and lamely to rally the troops. (“Turning this around is in our control…”) But soon enough we knew why our CEO looked so stricken. Alone among senior execs, I believe, he had a million dollars worth of skin in this particular game.

Which, of course, didn’t make him immune to the employee grumblings that they’d been  unconscionably, even immorally led astray by senior management’s pushing the IPO.

Back at Party Central, I sipped a bit of champagne with a colleague who’d gotten his wife’s family in on the friends and family. “My father-in-law didn’t like me to begin with,” he said ruefully.

By Day Two, I’d assessed the lay of this particular land and announced that there weren’t enough office supplies in the cabinets to make the losses up to employees. We were all just going to have to suck it up.

I can’t remember whether this was the end of the beginning, or the beginning of the end, for Genuity. It could have been both.

Fortunately, our drunken sailor on shore spree days weren’t quite over yet, so I was able to more or less recoup my $11K investment.

That happened the next spring, when I was one of 50 “iLeaders” (don’t ask) invited to join the sales winners circle on their awards trip to Hawaii. One week in paradise, no expense spared, don’t even need to take vacation days? Even the presence of the sales team wasn’t enough to negate that deal.

When I toted up what it must have cost the company to send me and my sister Trish on this jaunt, it came out to be just about $11K (tax free because we all attended one bogus, half-hour breakfast meeting at which a couple of sales winners talked work).

Given the capital loss I was able to take on the $11k stock purchase, I even came out ahead of the game. Who said this IPO was for the pros?

Anyway, all this happy anniversary stuff came to mind when I read about this year’s crop of IPOs.

I wish them all (well, maybe not Booz Allen) the best of fortune – especially the one my near and dear are involved in.

Genuity, of course, is long since gone, living on in the Genuity backpack I carry my laptop in. I use it proudly enough, especially since most people no longer remember anything about its debaclish run as a company. In fact, a couple of months back, while waiting to board my flight to Paris, I was tapped on the back by an old friend from Genu days. She was heading to Paris on business and, sure enough, she was lugging her laptop in her trusty Genuity backpack. Like me, J had been on the Hawaii winners trip. That, plus the nifty backpack? Whatever she had invested in the Genuity IPO, at least she got some of it back…

David Siegel’s Versailles

Just when we thought that the sun had set on stories about the wretched, retch-inducing excess of the go-go years, comes news that there’s a 90,000 square foot “home” for sale in Florida.

For the $75M asking price, you’d think you’d get something broom-clean and in move-in condition but, alas, David Siegel’s Versailles – which was, in fact, begun as the wretched, retch-inducing go-go years drew to a close – is a fixer-upper. (Source for this article:  Wall Street Journal. Content may require subscription. Can’t afford one? Maybe David Siegel can spot you the fee, given all the money he’s saving by not completely Versailles.)  The $75M covers the WYSIWYG. Finishing up is expected to cost another $25M.

Here’s what the pile looks like now – and what you’d be buying ‘as is.’

But here’s what it was supposed to look like.

Personally, I call U-G-L-Y either way.

But I’m not in the market or the mood for a 90,000 square foot house. (And talk about a house is not a home…)

However, just in case you’re in the mood, here’s what’s in the plans:

13 bedrooms, 23 full bathrooms, a 6,000-square-foot master suite (with plans in place for a bed on a rotating platform), a banquet kitchen plus 10 satellite kitchens, a 20-car garage, three pools, a two-story wine cellar and a grand hall with a 30-foot stained glass dome….There’s also a boat house, formal gardens, a baseball field, two tennis courts and a rock grotto with a waterfall, a fitness center, a two-lane bowling alley, a roller rink, a video arcade and a theater.

Well, maybe the Siegels have 12 kids and nobody wants to share a bedroom.  But, basically, I’m thinking what was he thinking?

The baseball field, wine cellar, and roller rink I can see. But what motivates someone to want 10 satellite kitchens? Although who wants to have to walk a quarter of a mile to get a cookie and milk in the middle of the night. (By the way, I’m betting that the bowling alley is big-ball. Siegel doesn’t sound like the candlepin type.)

The master suite is 6,000 square feet, “with plans in place for a bed on a rotating platform”.

Not that there aren’t plenty of times when I wish I had a 6,000 square foot master suite. But that makes it 5 times larger than our entire condo. What must be in that suite? Even if you say 1,000 square feet for the bedroom, and another 2,000 for the requisite his and her bathrooms, his and her walk in closets, and his and her office/sitting room, it’s still a bit hard for me to even begin to imagine the full 6,000 feet.

And don’t get me going on the rotating bed.

Poconos honeymoon/porn star tackiness of it aside, who wants to get up to pee in the middle of the night to pee and have to step out of a rotating bed?

We stayed earlier this week in a lovely old B&B in Connecticut for the night. The four-poster in our bedroom was so high it had little his and hers step stools to get in and out of it. I slept fitfully, fitfully expecting that I was going to end up forgetting I was in a mile-high bed and break an ankle on the way down. At least it wasn’t rotating. Still, who wants a weird-o bed?

Siegel’s selling because his business – Westgate Resorts – is in the doldrums. Westgate does time sharing and resorts, and has properties in all the usual places one might expect resorts run by someone who’d conceive of building a 90,000 square foot home for himself: Orlando, Las Vegas, Myrtle Beach, Branson.

“Instead of putting [his extra money] into this home, he’s putting it back into the company to save the employees,” says listing agent of Lorraine Barrett of Coldwell Banker, noting that Mr. Siegel has had to cut some of his 12,000 employees at Orlando-based Westgate Resorts.

With his Versailles on the market, the Siegels are going to have to hang out in their 26,000 square foot starter home, which must be starting to feel like living in an RV, compared to what they were dreaming about. (What, Daddy, no roller rink? I hate you, you big meany!)

No buyer yet, but there have been a few nibbles from – surprise, surprise – Russia and the Middle East.

This one does have Russian oligarch written all over it, doesn’t it?

But given the current climate with respect to immigrants, I would think that foreigners might only be able to come on a temporary visitor visa. Which would make Versailles a vacation home. Which, I guess was what Versailles-Versailles was, no? (No mention if there’s a sheep pasture on the grounds.)

The realtor, has put some deep thought into who might buy:

Ms. Barrett speculates a potential buyer would likely have several children, as well as an estate manger, nannies, a cook and extended family living with them.

Yes, certainly, several children would justify a larger house. And if you have 10 satellite kitchens, you could naturally use a cook.

By the way, if 90,000 sounds a bit too biggish for you – perhaps you’re an empty nester – there are a couple of smaller mega homes for sale: 30,000 square feet in NJ - 19 bedrooms, 12 baths, and a basketball court.  Personally, I don’t like the idea of having to share a bath, but that’s just me.

And there’s a pending on a 48,000 square footer in Bel Air, California. But you know how pendings are these days – that jumbo mortgage could fall through.

In case you’re wondering, David Siegel’s Versailles is a play-house compared to the “real” Versailles, which weighs in at 87,728,720  square feet (according to wikipedia).

But over 200 years after it was built, Versailles is still standing.

Any takers on whether Versailles of Florida will be have avoided the wrecker ball even 50 years out. Unless, of course, it doesn’t get converted to a hotel/school/nursing home or some other socially or commercially useful construct.

(Hope that don’t have any of that sulfur-ridden wallboard in there. I heard that in the Florida damp it starts to smell, plus corrodes all the wiring. Maybe for $75-100M you get plaster walls.)

(Candlepin) bowled over.

I am, to say the least, a crappy bowler.

As with any sports-y thing that requires a bit of concentration – pool, mini-golf – I am completely incapable of sustaining focus. Even when I start off okay – under par on the front nine in mini-golf – I end up blowing up on the back nine. I know the plot alright, and can always tell when someone else is lining their shot up for failure. But I just run out of concentration steam.  Getting it right – if I have to think about it – just never seems worth. It’s not all that interesting to me.

So it is with bowling.

I get, more of less, what you’re supposed to do – and am, in fact, capable of doing it. Sometimes.

Thus, my scores (with or without side bumpers) for big- ball- bowling tend to run along the lines of nine or ten for one frame, followed by a zero or one in the next.

I’m sure that averaging one game of bowling per year doesn’t help me out much, but I think the max I’ve ever scored in big ball bowling is between 110 and 120.

I don’t know what my max is for candlepins, but I clearly remember my minimum: a score of 13, the first time I went bowling, when I was in 7th grade, with the Junior Catholic Daughters of America. (Boy, is it hard to believe I was ever a member of an organization that was spawned by the Knights of Columbus, but there you have it.)

If you’re reading this and you did not grow up in New England, you may be asking yourself just what candlepin bowling is. But if you look at the picture to your right, you’ll see that the pins are straighter (tapered only at the ends) and smaller than those used in big-ball-bowling. And, from the size of the ball, you can see why us native candle-pinners call the other kind big-ball-bowling.

The ball in candlepin, well, it can almost be cradled in the palm of your hand.

Another difference is that, in candlepin, the downed pins aren’t swept away between rolls. They’re left where they are. So your follow up shots use the wood on the ground to fell the pins that are still standing. Also, in candlepin, you get three rolls per frame, not two. (All of this explains why, when I’ve been big-ball bowling, I’ve been confused. Didn’t you used to get three rolls? Didn’t there used to be deadwood pins left to play off of?)

This, of course, may make it sound easier than in big-ball-bowling.

But it’s not.

While perfect games are a dime a dozen in big-ball-bowling - (Okay. They’re not a dime a dozen when I bowl, but tens of thousands of perfect games have been recorded.)  - there’s never, ever, ever been a perfect game played in candlepin.

The record, according to the International Candlepin Bowling Association stands at 245, since the invention – or was it the discovery – of candlepin bowling in (ta-DA) Worcester, Massachusetts, late in the 19th century. (Of all the fabulosity that’s come out of the Heart of the Commonwealth – the liquid fuel rocket, the diner, the smiley face – candlepin bowling is right up there.)

Candlepin bowling alleys outnumber big-ball-bowling alleys by 3 to 1 in these parts. (Source for this an further info: Boston Globe Magazine article on candlepin bowling from a while back.)

Is it any wonder that a game in which perfection is seemingly impossible would take hold in New England?

What with the Puritan heritage and wave upon wave of Catholic immigrant groups filling our cities and our bowling alleys… Talk about the folks who not only wouldn’t think perfection is attainable here on earth, they wouldn’t want anyone to attain perfection here on earth. Certainly not the guy in the next alley, that’s for sure.

The Globe article reminisced about the good old days when we had multiple weekly candlepin bowling shows on the air, including Candlepin Bowling and it’s first-cousin, Candlepins for Cash. (They failed to mention the unsavory detail that one of the hosts –initials: BG: I don’t want to use his name -  of Candlepins for Cash  is now in federal prison for buying kiddy-porn online.  But we won’t let that take away from the glories of candlepin bowling.)

Even more lamentable, well after Candlepin Bowling went off the air in 1996, the last remnant of televised candlepin was dumped by Comcast last year. (I hadn’t heard. Perhaps if more of us had known…)

Worse yet, most dire:

At the end of last year, the pro tour folded.

Does this mean that there will be no more professional candlepin bowlers? One more buggy-whipped profession?

Maybe not quite yet:

Already, some of the best young bowlers in the game have stepped in to save the sport by reinventing it. If they have their way, the new era of candlepin begins now.

That would be guys like John Zappi who, with a couple of 20 and 30-something buds, has re-invented the tournament game, making it livelier, more exciting, and quicker than the old everybody bowl 10 strings approach. (Go read the article for the details on this livelier, more exciting, and quicker approach.)

While the bowlers themselves are out organizing a new pro tour, Bob Parrella  - of Paramount Industries, the last company that still makes candlepin bowling balls – is trying to get some TV interest going.

Unfortunately, no one will be interested unless they find a way to lower the geezer demographic of those willing to sit around at home on a Saturday afternoon and watch candlepin bowling.

In the old days, this was not much of a problem. There was less to do in general. There was certainly less on television. Everyone, at one point of another, logged some time in front of the TV – probably before or after Killer Kowalski or Bruno San Martino or Andre the Giant wrestled – watching candlepin bowling.

However, no adults in my house growing up watched it.

I just can’t conceive of either of my parents watching bowling on TV, even if one of the many rotten jobs my father had had as a kid was as a pin-setter in a candlepin bowling alley. At least I think the alley was candlepin. It was, after all, in Worcester.

So the demographic used to skew younger, that’s for sure.

But Parrella believes that, in order to woo in the younger folks, bowling alleys are gong to have to modernize a bit and get the kiddoes playing candlepin.

He’s calling for bumper lanes in candlepin alleys. (Where were they when I needed them?) Electronic scoring. Something called “glow-bowling”. (Don’t know what they is, but it sounds like fun.)

“Too many [bowling center owners] say, ‘The old is charming. The old is what customers like.’ That’s because they’re old,” Parrella barks. “How many kids want to go to a nursing home on the weekends?”

Well, old is charming. And the older I get, the more charming old gets, too, by the way.

But I’m with Parrella on the modernization.

While their interest is dying out now that they’re teenagers, I’ve been bowling many times with my nieces over the years, and it’s been big-ball-bowling.

So bring on the bumpers, the electronics, and the glow-bowling.

New England needs you if candlepin bowling is going to survive!

Girl talk: Best Buy reaches out to women shoppers

I’m not exactly what you might call a typical denizen of the big box store. But if there’s one b-b where I actually enjoy shopping, it’s Best Buy.

Okay, enjoy may be way too strong a word, given that 90% of the time when I find myself in a Best Buy, I’m on a frantic mission from hell to repair or replace a failed or failing laptop.

But, in my experience, the folks who work there are unfailingly courteous, helpful, pleasant, informative, and -  given the frothing, frenetic state I’m typically in when I’m dealing with them -  wonderfully calming and empathetic. 

This may not be the universal Best Buy experience, but it’s mine at the outlet on the corner of Newbury Street and Mass. Ave in Boston.

Given my – dare I say – affection for Best Buy, I was interested to see an article in The Wall Street Journal on their efforts to reach out to women shoppers. While Best Buy’s overall market share of consumer electronics sales in the US is 22%, their share among women is a relatively paltry 16%.

The company decided to do something about it.

It is empowering female workers and tapping teenage girls to suggest new ways to sell to women.

The first thought that came to my mind was Helen Reddy belting out, “I am woman, hear me roar, in numbers too big to ignore.” (Ugh.) Perhaps it was just the use of the word “empowering.”

Then I thought, oh-oh, I feel a decision to use pink coming on.

Fortunately, that is not the case.

Instead, Best Buy has set up mini-stores, focused on mobile devices, in the malls that women shoppers frequent – and they’re meeting with success.

Of course, one of the pleasures – and disadvantages – of city life is the dearth of malls to walk in, let alone walk to, so I don’t spend a lot of time as a mall rat. Next time I go malling, however, I’ll be on the lookout for one of the Best Buy Mobile outlets.

Another initiative that Best Buy started was building communities of women shoppers and employees, around the country, to kick around ideas. Some of which Best Buy has put into play.

One impact these groups had:

[They] helped increase appliance sales by suggesting that showrooms be redesigned to resemble kitchens.

Forget Helen Reddy, this sounds positively 1950’s hen partyish, no?

Anyway, I’m more apt to want to see my kitchen redesigned to resemble a showroom than I am to want my showroom redesigned to look like a kitchen, but that’s just me. Certainly, Best Buy wouldn’t want their show rooms to look like my kitchen, which could be used by the Smithsonian as an example of the final word in condo kitchens of the 1980’s – right down to the “almond” with oak trim cabinetry.

But at least they didn’t suggest that the kitchen be pink.

Best Buy also turned to teenage “consultants” for their advice:

"BlackBerries: those just aren't cute," said Taylor Brittian, 14, who recommended spotlighting iPhones and colorful phone cases in the front of Atlanta's Best Buy Mobile stores.

Well, Taylor, I have news for youse. My Blackberry – which doesn’t have the clunky and odious typewriter attached – is just as cute as an iPhone, thank you. But I will admit that the colorful phone cases would be a come on to me. (I promise not to shove any of the coveted teen consumers out of my way in my grab for the colorful pink phone case.)

Another teen idea: sanitizer beside the videogame test kiosks.

Not that I plan on spending all that much time test-driving video games, but great idea, this.

Speaking of videogames, the women shoppers came up with the idea of having space in the stores devoted to used videogames.  Great for the moms, I’m sure, but as for the kids… Gee, mom, thanks for giving me this videogame that all the cool kids have rejected. As if I don’t feel creepy and out of it enough already.

Initially, some folks at Best Buy had their doubts about the women’s groups, characterizing them as more or less Oprah-ish. (Actually, that’s the point, isn’t it?)

But their success, so far, speaks to the merits of the idea.

I have not – harrumph – been asked to participate in any of these country-wide women’s groups. (Perhaps they’ve seen my kitchen.)  Still, I’m happy to offer my advice to them, with nary a coupon in return:

Keep hiring the kinds of kids you have working at “my” Best Buy on Newbury.

I’ve yet to have to fight to make eye contact while two “associates” gab on about like, this guy, they, like know.

I’ve never seen their sales folks jaded, slacked jawed, with eyes glazed over with boredom. Having worked retail, I don’t get how this happens. (What, no boredom? No standing around trying to extract the square root of your Social Security number in your head while trying to look busy and engaged?  Retail sure has changed….)

Is there some special Kool-Aid in the break room?  Is it just the Recession, when any job is a good job. Are these kids working retail to pay the bills while waiting for their “real life” to begin?

Maybe they’re kind to me because I remind them of their (grand)mother.

Whatever it is, in the heart of Boston, Best Buy has managed to create a little island of Midwest nice.

The floor sales folks and the Geek Squadders I’ve met have been interested, enthusiastic, and helpful. Either that or they’re all Method Actors.

Want to keep this woman shopper happy?

Forget the showroom that looks like a kitchen. Forget the colorful smart-phone covers.

Just keep employing these Midwest nice kids. (Give ‘em all a bonus while you’re at it. You’ve certainly made enough off of me in the last couple of years to afford it.)

Self-awareness. Toreador, olé!

Many years ago, I read an excellent book, How Men Think, by Adrienne Mendell. My purchase price was more than paid back when I was able to negotiate a 20% raise by putting into action some of the suggestions I found in it.

The one point that stands out for me still – a dozen years after the fact – was one in which Mendell writes about how women are typically more willing to speak candidly and openly about their weaknesses and deficiencies. This, Mendell argues, may seem like a good idea, but, to the ears of most men, this will come across not as candor and openness, but as WEAKNESS AND DEFICIENCY.

So, I stopped ever admitting that there were things I sucked at, or had screwed up, and just did what the boys were doing: huffing and puffing about their strengths and accomplishments and ignoring their obvious (to me, anyway) screw ups and weaknesses.  (I will note that, at this stage in my career, I was the only woman on the management team of a small software company. Definitely an experience worth having.)

I thought of Mendell’s book for the first time in years when I read an article last week on HuffPo about a novice Mexican bullfighter who decided to call it quits.

Christian Hernandez apparently did the toreadoric unforgiveable when he:

… decided to bolt across the ring and leap headfirst over a wall as the bull charged forward.

Hey, I can’t blame the guy one little bit. It’s nothing that I, personally, wouldn’t do if confronted by a snorting, two-ton decidedly not Ferdinand-type of bull bearing down on me, horns aiming at my vital organs.

Talk about no way, José.

Olé? NO-lé!

Truly, the only way I’d ever be gored was in the backside, while trying to escape.

But I’ve never actually been a toreadora wannabe. Hernandez, by virtue of being in the ring in fancy costume and snappy cape, obviously was.

Needless to say, the crowd wasn’t exactly thrilled with Hernandez’ performance, and he was mightily jeered and booed. Even worse, after a quick re-appearance in the ring:

… a humiliated Hernandez was later arrested for breach of contract. According to local media reports, he was released by police after paying a fine.

(Can you imagine if folks could get arrested for doing a bad job? There wouldn’t be enough jail to hold all the criminals. I was going to say all us criminals, but then I remembered that I must never admit to any professional weakness…)

Anyway, in a later interview, in which he said he was hanging up his cape and getting out of the ring, Hernandez said:

"There are some things you must be aware of about yourself…I didn't have the ability, I didn't have the balls ... this is not my thing."

I guess Señor Hernandez is the exception that proves the Mendell how men think rule.

So I say to Señor Hernandez: bravo, bravo, bravissimo!

Buena suerte as you look for a new career.

Tally-ho, Tony Hayward

Okay, the guy’s entitled to take a day off, especially with the last couple of months he’s been through.

And, no, this is not the type of crisis where we can rightfully expect those involved should never, ever take a break from. This is not a five-hour, five-day, or even five-week kind of crisis, during which the guys in charge might be working a bleary-eyed 24/7, showing up on the news in the same damned shirt for days on end looking gaunt and unshaven, sending us the clear message that they’re doing everything they can do to set things right.

This crisis was engineered to last a while longer, I’m afraid.

Does the crisis mean that every BP executive (not to mention every elected politician) needs to cease and desist from every bit of pleasure until the hole is plugged, the waters clear, and the last Louisiana shrimp boat back in business?

I don’t think so. And I don’t think I’d feel any differently if this was all taking place in my back yard.

After all, Abraham Lincoln took in an occasional play during the Civil War, most of which – up until the last one – probably made for a nice diversion. FDR took breaks in Warm Springs, Georgia throughout the Depression and World War II, most of which – up until the last one – probably made for a nice diversion.

Somebody should probably be doing something about the Gulf Gusher at every waking hour of the day. But everybody doesn’t have to be on perpetual watch.

And I really don’t expect BP’s chief exec, Tony Hayward, to be swabbing the nostrils of pelicans with q-tips.

But is there anything more quintessentially, to the hounds, let them eat-cake-ally Brit – or is it rich exec-ally, in general -  than going off yachting while the broekn BP well keeps on bubblin’ up crude.

Talk about tin-ear wrong, wrong, wrong from a PR perspective. Hayward would have been better off if his day off had been spent punting on the Thames, or with champagne and strawberries at Wimbledon.

Come on, what were you thinking, Tony – other than poor me, and I deserve a break, and I’ve been so taking it in the neck, and (sniff, sniff) I really do rather enjoy sailing - getting on your million dollar yacht for a race in clean, ocean water, while your company’s negligence has resulted in despoiling a lot of what just a few short months ago was clean water and pristine shoreline.  Just like the type of clean and pristine that Hayward enjoyed racing around the Isle of Wight – not with Vera, Chuck, and Dave, but with the other swells taking part in the JP Morgan Asset Management Around the Island Race.

It’s not quite clear whether Hayward was sailing or spectating, but he really should have chosen a different weekend getaway – one that wouldn’t have brought up the stark comparisons between expensive pleasure boats, gloriously a-sail, and working boats, ingloriously awash in oil. Couldn’t he have just stayed home with friends and family, pounding down Hendricks and cucumbers, and railing about how greedy grubbing Americans are?

I just don’t understand how it is that accomplished executives, working for sophisticated enterprises with communications and PR experts on staff and on hire, can’t seem to figure out what you can do and what you can’t do when the old shit-er-ina hits the old fan-er-oo.

You’d think, wouldn’t you…..

But, no. (Or is it, hell, no.)

Even the Brits have raised their eyebrows on this latest:

The British press, much more sympathetic than the American media to BP's plight, has expressed disbelief at the company's strategy.

"It is hard to recall a more catastrophically mishandled public relations response to a crisis than the one we are witnessing," the Daily Telegraph's Jeremy Warner wrote Friday. (Source: AP article in the Boston Globe.)

If it’s any comfort, I went over to the race site and checked things out.  Hayward’s boat, Bob, came in fourth in its class, behind Desperado, but ahead of Baraka (phew! thank god for the difference between an “a” and a “c”), Venomous, and Oyster Catcher – the latter, indeed, a fitting name, given the devastation that the BP blowout has wrought upon the Gulf oystering business.

Anyway, I’m sure we’ll see poor Tony back on the job this week, refreshed and energized by his bracing sail and fourth place finish. Perhaps he’ll even be ready to do battle with the extra criticism that will be raining down on his head, given that he didn’t have the good sense to do something else on his precious little time off.

My World Cup, it take me hearing, that damned vuvuzela*

I’m not what you would call a colossal soccer fan.

As a general-purpose sports fan, I enjoy watching an occasional game. I’ll be keeping a semi-close eye on the progress of the U.S. team’s World Cup fortunes. And I’ll likely watch the final game – make that definitely watch the final - if by some Miracle Off Ice “we’re” in it.

But I won’t be keeping a semi-close ear on it, thank you.

No sporting event is worth going deaf for – or catching your death from rhinovirus.

Which is apparently what health officials are warning can happen to fans exposed to a match-full of blaring vuvuzelas.

For those who haven’t been paying attention, the vuvuzela is the long plastic horn - they look a lot like the blarers that folks blow on New Year’s Eve – that South African soccer fans blast away on. Apparently they do so continuously during matches – much to the annoyance of non-vuvuzela aficionados, not to mention the players who can’t hear themselves think. Here’s picture of one in use from Vivienne Mackie’s travel blog.

Viv apparently had her ear to the ground early on with respect to the vuvuzela. Historically banned from World Cup, an exception was made this year because this instrument is so much a part of South African football culture.

Now, of course, with the World Cup on, vuvuzela chatter has been all over the blogosphere, with lots of pro and con back and forthing.  I’ve seen cries of racism, countered by cries of “this will make South Africans look rude”.  Prince William, in South Africa on a royal field trip with one of the Jonas Brothers (huh?), had a vuvuzela blown full force in his heir’s ear by a kid, after he was unable to master the art of noisemaking on his own.

Fans who like the traditional soccer fan chanting, singing, and drumming have found themselves drowned out. And they’re understandably pissed.

There are even calls to FIFA to forbid use of the vuvuzelas in the final match – but FIFA has no plans to do so at this juncture.

Meanwhile, TV broadcasters have been toning the blare down so that watchers can hear the announcers. (This hasn’t been enough for some:  they find the vuvuzela noise so overwhelming, they turn the sound off entirely. There’s even an app on the market that can shut the vuvu noise down.)

Fear is spreading that, now that the vuvus have been on such a center stage, their use will sweep through the soccer universe. (All those hundreds of thousands of souvenir vuvuzelas packed home in the suitcase.)

Meanwhile, The Wall Street Journal weighed in on the matter, with an article on the dangers that too much trumpeting can bring on when vuvuzela madness is loosed upon the land:

Beyond the stadiums, the horns can be heard from early morning to late at night on South Africa's streets during the World Cup. South African newspapers have reported workplace clashes involving employees blowing the horn. They have caused conflict among bus and train passengers as well.

More important, it seems that all that noise, in addition to being an out and out, head-splitting annoyance to so many, and the cause of off-the-pitch strife:

…can cause hearing loss and possibly spread colds, the flu and other infectious diseases to spectators in stadiums.

A hearing foundation claims that, at 127 decibels, exposure for even a few minutes to vuvuzela noise can cause hearing loss, let alone for the full 90 minutes of a match. (Plus whatever, seemingly arbitrary to the casual observer, over-time gets tacked on the end of a game.)

In an indication of how loud the horns are, the nonprofit Deaf Federation of South Africa has offered sign-language training to coaches and players to help them communicate on a noisy soccer field.

I think I’d be okay with an occasional tootle from a vuvuzela, but I don’t think I’d want to go an entire match with 100,000 in my ear. I find it annoying enough with an occasionally cat-calling jerk sits behind me at a Red Sox game.  (The worst: the guy who kept shouting at the White Sox – who that season sported some goof-ball, soft-ball looking uniforms - “put on your John Wayne trick-or-treat suits.” (Say the f what?)

But the claims of the anti-vuvuzela brigade may be overstated:

The organization hasn't been approached yet by a team, according to Bruno Druchen, its national director [Deaf Federation of South Africa]. No cases of hearing loss from the vuvuzelas have been reported to his organization, he said in an email.

But the biggest problem with the vuvuzela may be those pesky germs:

Blowing hard into vuvuzelas may spray droplets of spittle onto nearby spectators, and with it the flu and other diseases. "We measured what happens when healthy people blow the vuvuzela and were astonished at the number of aerosols formed," said Ruth McNerney of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. "If someone with a chest or throat infection uses the vuvuzela in a crowded place then they could spread the infection to people around them."

If nothing else, you don’t want to wrap your mouth around a strange vuvuzela. You don’t know where it’s been, and it may well be infected.

All told, it does sound like you could go to the World Cup and come home deaf, with a bad cold, chicken pox, or even:

…more threatening diseases such as severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, tuberculosis and the H1N1 swine flu, according to Dr. McNerney."Coughs and sneezes spread diseases, and so might the vuvuzela," she said.

This and the fact that you could have purchased tickets a year ago, only to have your team knocked out in the first round.

Meanwhile, Team USA plays its second match today.

Don’t let those vuvuzelas get to you, boys!

----------------------------------------------------------------

Today’s post is dedicated to my soccer-loving brother-in-law John, who is taking the day off of work to watch the US – Slovenia match. Easy on the vuvuzela, John.

*For those of you too young to remember Harry Belafonte, this is a take off on the song, “Mathilda, she took me money, and run a-Venezuela”, which he publicized in a long ago time, when no one in America had even heard of soccer.