Osama bin Laden’s Coke-Pepsi taste test

Like most everyone else, I have been eagerly consuming reports on the death of Osama bin Laden.

Good riddance, as we used to say in Worcester, to bad rubbish.

Part of me wishes he had been taken alive; another part wishes that he had, in fact, been resisting with a gun. Still, if the world may not necessarily be in the short run a safer place without him, one would hope that in the long run it will be a better one.

Of the many articles I have grazed through, a few stand out.

First are the obituaries that ran in The NY Times, The Boston Globe, and, presumably, other newspapers.

Okay, so the man is dead, and a death notice is a death notice. And, of course, there were no “he leaves his beloved wives….” or “he is survived by dozens of children and his 54 siblings….”

Still, it was peculiar to see the word “Obituary” followed by this Boston Globe header: Osama bin Laden, 54; Al Qaeda leader and mastermind of Sept. 11 attacks.

With the same tone that might have headed the obit for the cello playing lawyer, the former president of the League of Women Voters, or the collector who’d amassed thousands of license plates, dating back to 1905.

It all seemed so bizarrely mannered – sort of like when Irish leader Eamon De Valera paid a condolence call on the German Embassy in Dublin when he learned of Hitler’s death.

But the article that really popped out at me was the one I saw on Bloomberg, in which an intrepid journalist interviewed the local Abbottabad grocers to see what the bin Laden household consumed. From this, we learned that the family’s go-fers:

…bought bulk food orders, chose major brands and equally favored Pepsi and Coke, neighbors and a local shopkeeper said.

Pepsi and Coke.

Since most people lean one way of the other – sort of like they do on Miracle Whip, albeit not as strongly – and the household was large, it’s not surprising that they brought in some of both.

But the idea that bin Laden may have partaken of a beverage that could not have been more quintessentially American – either Pepsi or Coke would do – is astounding. What better indicator of the reach and potency of American consumer brands?

Did the kids ever blindfold dad and see if he could tell the difference between Coke and Pepsi in a blind taste test?

Of course, neither brand would want to be associated with bin Laden, and I’m sure that brand managers on both sides are hoping that, as more details emerge, their beverage does not turn out to be the chosen one. Pepsi doesn’t want bin Laden taking any part of their generation. And the thought of bin Laden liking to “teach the world to sing, in perfect harmony”… Shudder, shudder.

Why, one wonders, would bin Laden allow a product that’s so representative of the Great Satan’s consumer culture, its bankrupt commercialism, its pedestrian and tawdry tastes, to take up space in his family’s fridge, when they could have been drinking something more Pakistani, like Apple Sidra, Bubble Up, or Pakola Orange? Or more pious, like water?

I wonder what other American products the family enjoyed while the head of their household decried the decadence of the West, and threatened to doom us all.

Did the bin Laden kids eat Kellogg Sugar Flakes? Fight over the plastic toys in Happy Meals? Did the wives occasionally throw a couple of Lean Cuisine’s in the microwave? Or sneak some midnight Oreos?

Maybe it’s just me, but the fact that the bin Laden household drank Coke and Pepsi gives me a bit more confidence about which side is going to win this thing.

Naked Came the Stranger

One of my deeply held beliefs is that there comes a moment in everyone’s life when they absolutely, positively, no questions asked look better with clothing on.

For myself, I estimate that I reached that point in my mid-thirties.

My Eureka moment came while walking down the beach.

I began tugging the back of my bathing suit down, muttering “The elastic in the rear of this bathing suit is starting to go.”

Alas, it was not the elastic in the rear of the bathing suit so much as it was the elastic in the rear of the bathing suit-or. (Suit-ee?)

I may, of course, be deluding myself here. I may have reached the point of no return with respect to covering up decades earlier.

Not that I was doing much cavorting around naked prior to my beach walk epiphany. (Hey, I come from a German-Irish Catholic background. Just as there’s no crying in baseball, there’s no nudity in German-Irish Catholicism – this despite the fact that it was Germans, apparently, who introduced nudism in the U.S. Must have been Lutherans…)

In any case, after my confrontation with drooping butt syndrome, I became more self-conscious about my own personal form, and how it might appear, if I were to be one of those who do like to cavort around naked.

Which I can’t imagine I’ll ever be.

I like clothing.

It protects from rain, sleet, snow, hail, and, if not from gloom of night - when, under the covers, you don’t need so much protection – from the sun, as well. It’s harder for mosquitos, wasps, and yellow jackets to pierce you if you’ve got clothing on. And clothing can be far more easily changed out than can a birthday suit. Don’t like today’s look? There’s always tomorrow.

Harder to pull that one off with the naked form, other than via tattooing, hair dye and other bodily alterations. Plastic surgery, however, does take a while, unlike a new set of duds.

Clothing also comes in a wider variety of colors than that supported by the blah and boring skin color palette. Ditto for textures. Sure there’s dry skin and oily skin, and baby-soft and sun-baked leather, and the crepe-y skin (yuck) that’s begun to manifest itself on my arms. But compared to clothing? Velvet, velveteen, polished cotton, Pima, mesh, blend, twill, chino, denim, corduroy, wool (all kinds – smooth and scratchy), rayon, nylon, tencel, acrylic, pure polyester…. The list is nearly endless. 

Plus you can try clothing on, see how it looks, and decide whether it looks good, and whether you want to buy it.

Try that with your skin.

The only circumstance, other than in the tub or shower, where I’ll award the advantage to nudity is during a warm summer downpour.

So, no, I won’t be heading to a nudist resort any time soon.

Not that they’d want me.

It seems they’ve got enough aging, sagging Baby Boomers in their ranks, already, and are looking for the young folk.

Or so I learned from the WSJ, which reported the other day on the outreach efforts being made by nudist organizations.

"The whole lifestyle will just disappear unless we attract a younger crowd," said Nicky Hoffman, head of the Naturist Society, one of the two big organizations of U.S. nudists. "The problem is, most of these resorts aren't geared to young people. They've become like retirement homes; they've sort of calcified."

Calcified. Interesting word choice. Atrophied would have been another good one.

Membership in the two big nudist umbrella groups has been flat or declining for years, prompting a youth-recruitment effort that includes reverse-strip-poker nights, volleyball tournaments, naked 5K road races and music festivals like Nudepalooza and Nudestock.

As youth-recruitment efforts go, this all sounds reasonable – other than the “naked 5K road races”. I don’t care how young, toned, and fit you are, there are certain body parts that are going to jiggle. There is, after all, a reason why warriors gird their loins.

One new group, Young Nudists and Naturists of America, this month is having a naked dinner party in a loft in New York's financial district to recruit members.

Well, this would be more fun if it were naked lunch, but it is being held in The Naked City, which counts for something.

And even if it is calcifying, nudism is a reasonably big business. The Journal reports that there are 250 nudist resorts in the country. If you factor in the nude cruise business, it’s a $440M a year industry. Of course, it could be even bigger if they could sell more gear, but how can they possibly push tee-shirts? (“My grandma went to a nude resort and all she got me was this make-believe tee-shirt.”) Maybe they go in for visors. Or the towels they tote around with them, just to be polite.

Good luck to the nudist groups and their efforts to grow their ranks.

It may be a tough sell, given the current show-of-flesh culture that leaves little to the imagination, especially when it comes to women.

And then there’s the flip side of the benefits of having a lot of the nudist action occur in Florida. At one resort:

Signs informed visitors that there were seven types of poisonous snakes in the area and that photography was forbidden.

I don’t know about nudists, but if I were going to be roaming around an area that had seven different kinds of poisonous snakes, I’d want to be wearing something other than a smile. Actually, I’d want to be wearing something designed by NASA, or at least for the Shackleton Expedition. Then, of course, I’d be too darned hot.

Fortunately, it’s not a problem that I anticipate I’ll ever have to deal with.

Gladvertisting? Sadvertising? Hand me my burqa, please.

Digital billboards are becoming a big part of the advertising business. This is no great surprise given the technology capabilities now available – not to mention that it seems an obvious element of the onward-march convergence of entertainment and advertising. The inevitable outcome does seem that they – entertainment and advertising - will become one and the same.

It’s easy to foresee the time when even high-brow culture becomes more commercially infused. (“Is this a Swarovski-crystal encrusted dagger that I see before me?”  And “My name is Blanche, Blanche Dubois. It means White Woods, and that means plug in air freshener.”) Someday soon I’m certain that even those of us who still read literary fiction will only be able to do so in digital version, which will inevitably include hyperlinks, paid placements, sponsorships and ads. "(“I’m Joyce Carol Oates, and I’m fortunate enough to be naturally slender. But if you’re not, why not call Jenny Craig today?”)

Worse, of course, all of this will be, wherever possible, personalized. (As in Joyce Carol Oates saying, “Yes, Maureen, I’m talking to you,” when she’s talking 1-800-JENNY CRAIG, while pitching an ad for Ensure to one of my svelte friends. Somehow, they’ll figure out a way to work it all out, even for those of us who swap books.)

Beyond being moderately curious when Amazon “says” others who bought this book also bought…., I find the idea of personally aimed advertising intrusive. No. Intrusive is too mild a term. I find it invasive. Soul-crushing. Privacy-sucking. Deeply and profoundly odious.

For years, I resisted getting a CVS card-swipe because I didn’t want them knowing what toothpaste I use, or that I like Good ‘n Plenty. But the bargains proved too good to be true, so I got one.

I’m sure that personal advertising  will sweeten the pot as it does when you’re a CVS card-carrier.  LL Bean will catch me walking down the street in a washed out, stretched out tee-shirt and let me know I should order a replacement today – and that I’ll get 10% off for doing so – 15% if I look the digital ad straight in the “eye” and say “Order Now.” Or give some other high sign, the way folks do at auctions.

So I wasn’t thrilled to see an article in a recent Economist on “gladvertising” and “sadvertising.”

…a rather sinister-sounding idea in which billboards with embedded cameras, linked to face-tracking software, detect the mood of each consumer who passes by, and change the advertising on display to suit it…An unhappy-looking person might be rewarded with ads for a sun-drenched beach or a luscious chocolate bar while those wearing an anxious frown might be reassured (some might way exploited) with an ad for insurance.

Okay. Maybe this wouldn’t be as terrible as something that was one-on-one personally aimed at me. It would just be aimed at how I’m feeling (happiness, anger, sadness, fear, surprise and disgust) – billboard as mood ring. Nothing personal. (Sort of.)

Still…

And who’s it going to key in on if there are a couple of folks standing in “its” line of vision?

Just think. I could be standing there, thinking deep and cosmic existential thoughts, while the guy next to me has a colossal grin on his puss because he just won fifty-bucks on a scratch ticket. Who gets the ad? Me – targeted with Ben and Jerry’s (or uppers), or “the winner”, who gets a come-on for the Fung Wa bus to Foxwoods?

Or will the face-recognition ads – no doubt combining both the in- the-moment mood info with all of the detailed click-through and CVS purchase info that’s been agglomerated over the years in some cloudbank – be beamed to our personal über-device (pod, pad, whatever)? Or, even better, more invasively, more sinisterly, directly to our brains?

You, Maureen Rogers, I can tell you’re feeling sadness. That’s because you’ve got a blister from wearing uncomfortable shoes. Blink twice and we’ll order you a pair of comfy shoes from Zappo’s – 10.5 AAA, just the way you like them.  But, since it will take five business days for them to reach you, take a right here for the nearest CVS. Pick up some of those special blister-fixin’ BandAids in Aisle 5. And why not treat yourself to a bag of dark chocolate Dove miniatures. You know you want them.

Weren’t these the sorts of things we used to decide for ourselves, back in the day when we seemed to have a modicum of free will.

Me? When the day arrives when every trip to the corner store becomes an opportunity to be bombarded by personally focused advertising, I’m going to take that old blue sheet I’ve been saving, cut a few breathing holes and and eye slits, and make myself a burqa. (I’ll figure something else out for trips to Paris, since the burqa, what with the French ban on complete cover-ups, won’t worka there.)

But I absolutely, positively don’t want advertising that’s particularized around me or my moods.

Fortunately, I’m in the demographic that most advertisers ignore, anyway.

One part of the aging process to be grateful for.

(Whoever named economics the dismal science had never heard of marketing…)

a-s-d-f-space-semi-l-k-j

For those of a certain age, the title of this post should ring a bell. Perhaps with the “ding” that manual typewriters sounded when you got to the place on the page where you’d set the right-hand margin. That “ding” alerted you that it was time to give the carriage return a whack. The carriage return was a physical lever that you had to hit to advance the paper to the next line, and move the typewriter’s carriage – the apparatus that moved the page left to right as you typed along – back to the left.

When I took typing, which I did during the summer between my freshman and sophomore years in high school, a-s-d-f-space-semi-l-k-j was one of the exercises that got you to learn to touch type on the qwerty keyboard, a skill that continues to come in handy, even after all these years. No hunt and peck for me, thank you. I know where all them there keys are!

In my family, learning how to type was gender-related, more or less a secondary sex characteristic.

Girls were the typists, expected to learn how, and to type their own damned papers. Boys were expected to caddy – or loaf – and not spend any of their precious summer hours learning to type. Mother would type those high school term papers for you…

Anyway, my sisters and I all know how to touch type.

a-s-d-f-space-semi-l-k-j…..

At home, we typed on an old manual Royal, battleship gray with green keys. The big graduation gift from high school was a Royal portable typewriter of your very own. They were portable only because they came in a hard-shell carrying case with a handle. In terms of portability, it weight a ton – but less than the older-style home-based Royal, which while also a portable, was a lot bulkier than the streamlined go-to-college Royal.

I remember when electric typewriters became more popular.

They just flew, and it was a dream to type on them.

No more whacking the carriage return lever: you just had to hit the carriage return key.

The IBM Selectric was a particular modern miracle.

Instead of having those keys that always ended up getting tangled, the Selectric had a detachable “element”, a ball with all the characters, in relief, on it. The element made a plain old electric typewriter seem completely primitive in comparison.

A Selectric came into our family in an interesting way.

My feckless Uncle Charlie had a girlfriend of long-standing (we’re talking 35+ years by the time Charlie died). Sue, unlike my ne’er do well uncle, was an accomplished professional, with a very good job as an executive secretary.  Sue also had a nephew who was on the fringes of Worcester organized crime, and Mo had occasional, if not regular, access to hot goods. Sue arranged for my mother to buy a Selectric on the cheap.

Now, not in a million years would my mother ever buy anything that had fallen off the truck.

Her presumption was that Sue had just gotten a good bargain through her work. After she had made the purchase, and we mentioned our suspicions about its provenance, she was torn between giving it back and not wanting to embarrass Sue. So she kept the Selectric. Which was mostly used to type my brothers’ term papers on.

The next technology marvel was an IBM typewriter with memory, which I first encountered as a Kelly Girl working in a bank.

It had some type of storage – I believe it was called a carrel – in which you could store 30 or so different pages. No more having to type the same damned thing in over and over. Talk about a breakthrough.

Time speeds up and blurs up, and all of a sudden we’re all typing on PC’s using word processors. (And, no doubt sooner than I hope, dictating our “written works” into The Cloud.)

I haven’t used a typewriter in years.

Which is not to say I’m not a bit nostalgic for them: those two-toned black and red ribbons; the satisfaction of getting through a document without jamming things up; the wonderful “ding” when you reached the end of the line.

Thus, I was a bit saddened to hear on the news the other evening that the last typewriter manufacturer in the world – India’s Godrej & Boyce – was closing down.

Fortunately, this turns out to be not so true.

Godrej & Boyce was, apparently, the world’s last manufacturer of manual typewriters.

Electric typewriters live on, thanks to Swintec, which I learned about from a blog on CNN.

Who buys a typewriter these days?

Luddites, it goes without saying. Which may be why I, a techno-embracing quasi-Luddite at heart, want both an old-timey manual typewriter and a gramophone.

Government agencies, who use them to fill in some forms that they want to handle manually, rather than digitally.

And prisons, which go for clear plastic typewriters that can’t be used to hide contraband and can’t be as secretly dismantled to make shivs.

Anyway, given our prison-industrial complex - one of the tried and true, made in the US of A growth industries -  there’s apparently a reasonable demand for these puppies.

Personally, I understand the clear plastic thing, but a clear plastic, electric typewriter just doesn’t do it for me (perhaps because I’m not in prison).

This Underwood, on the other had, completely does do it for me:

 

Ding! (Sigh…)

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

Nifty Underwood picture courtesy of Richard Polt’s completely quirky and completely entertaining typewriter site. Polt is a philosophy professor at Xavier University in Cincinnati. Thank you Professor Polt.

The End of the Line

Today, the marriage of Prince William and Kate Middleton is being celebrated and televised.

If a meteor, say, were to strike Westminster Abbey during the nuptials, or, perhaps more kindly and gently, and alien starship were to suck Buckingham Palace up during the breakfast reception, a number of those who are in the line of succession to the throne of England would be off the royal grid.

Fortunately, thanks to the sleuthing of Daniel Willis, who spent 18 years documenting the heirs and spares, and the late Bill Reitwiesner, there does exist a full list of the 4,973 folks who are in line if the big “what if” in the royal sky ever happens. Willis and Reitwiesner, both Americans, worked independently, and each came to the same conclusion. (Source for all info that didn’t come off the top of my head, unless otherwise indicated: WSJ.)

Last in line is Karin Vogel, a German therapist who works with the elderly in a Rostock hospital, helping them deal with chronic pain. She is a great-great-great, etc.  of Sophia of Hanover.

Somewhere in the way back, the British Parliament got in the act by passing the Act of Settlement, confirming that it’s up to Parliament to figure out who’s entitled.

The Act laid down that only Protestant descendants of Princess Sophia - the Electress of Hanover and granddaughter of James I - are eligible to succeed. Subsequent Acts have confirmed this. (Source: the Royal web site, a complete treasure trove, but one that, today, is likely to be – unlike the monarchy it showcases – overtaxed. Just think of all those gawkers trying to figure out whether The Lady Cosima Windsor comes before or after The Lady Sarah Chatto in the line up.)

Karin Vogel will not be at the wedding. They had to cut the list somewhere, what with the bride’s parents’ invites, and the groom’s parents invites, and the friends of the B&G, and some fellow Euro-royals, and a bit of headcount thrown to Granny just in case she wanted to invite the gals from her book club, or the folks she stalks grouse with at Balmoral Castle.

Karin Vogel won’t be watching the wedding either. She doesn’t own a TV. Now, if she were an American, she would definitely be what is known as unAmerican. But she’s a German, and it’s probably not unGerman at all not to worship at television’s altar. I’ve been to Germany a few times, and the TV’s pretty darned awful. Talk about desperately seeking the Armed Forces Network. Years ago, in the days when we didn’t yet have Internet to take with us, while on a trip to Berlin, I really felt like watching something on TV. In fact, what I really had a hankering for was a re-run of The Streets of San Francisco. I don’t know what the German is for mirabile dictu, but mirabile dictu, Die Strassen von San Francisco was, quite wondrously, playing. And keep in mind that this was well before the dawn of On Demand. So what if the episode was dubbed. It was the one where Ricky Nelson played the ex-rock star gone bad, and it was fairly easy to figure out the plot. (I can’t remember how you say, Buddy Boy in German. For those who were never hooked on Streets, that’s what Lt. Mike Stone/Karl Malden called his young partner Inspector Steve Keller/Michael Douglas.)

As for Karin Vogel’s role as one of destiny’s forgotten darlings:

Some 4,972 people would have to die for Ms. Vogel to win the crown.

As for Ms. Vogel, the end of the line is just fine.

"I can lean back and relax," she said in an interview, pleased at the very remote prospect of having to preside over 16 sovereign states anytime soon. "It is really very comforting that one doesn't have to worry about Great Britain."

Well, leaning back and relaxing, without having to worry or even think of Great Britain would be a colossal relief to anyone, I would venture.

For those of us who aren’t Protestant descendants of Sophia’s son George 1, we’re freed up to worry about our owned darned countries.

Worrying about the US of A apparently wasn’t what Dan Willis or Bill Reitwiesner were expending their fret-cycles on. Instead, they did something that’s, errrrrr, useful and came up with the royal succession list. Willis, in fact, has “all but memorized lists of descendants stored on a document in his computer.”

Man, I’m impressed.

I can just about get as far as the kiddos of Princess Margaret and Anthony Armstrong Jones.

Although it’s preposterously unlikely that Karin Vogel will ever be crowned and sceptered by the Archbishop of Canterbury, she may well end up moving on up through the ranks.

Parliament is considering updating the rules so that men don’t take precedence ahead of women.

Under the current procedure, if Kate Middleton and Prince William had a daughter and followed up with a son, the son, though younger, would be first in line to the throne.

Enacting this change would cause a few switcheroos, even at the top of the list, as Princess Anne and her children, who now trail not just her younger brothers, but all of their spawn. It would be down a peg for the Duke of York (a.k.a., Prince Andrew) and the Earl of Wessex (a.k.a., Prince Edward), and their offspring.

I may not have any royal blood in me, but, unlike Karin Vogel, I do have a TV.

I will not be paying that much attention to today’s wedding, however.

Too early in the morning.

Plus I don’t have a good enough hat. A Red Sox or Black Dog cap just won’t cut it.

The Doodle Bra

Last week, I went on a one-day road trip with my nieces, Molly and Caroline. They girls are early teens – 14 and 13, respectively.

While making our cold, windy, and rainy way up to Ogunquit, Maine, the girls provided entertainment by reading from Seventeen Magazine.

Now, I was never a big reader of Seventeen, my era’s teen Bible, which may explain why I didn’t figure out how to choose fashionable clothing, wear make up, or flirt until I was well into middle age (if I ever did). But I did see Seventeen on occasion, and my recall is a lot of madras, a lot of bangs, and a lot of articles on whether it’s okay to beat a boy at tennis. (Not if you want him to ask you back out.) A girl from my high school was featured in a column one month. Her claim on fame was having a brother who was made the national poster child for Down kids.

Seventeen has come a long way, baby, and it ain’t all good.

Forget “should I kiss on the first date?”

These days, it’s an article on how to avoid STD’s during summer flings. (Don’t forget the condoms.) This was accompanied by a first-person cautionary account of a 14 year old who acquired a tan and herpes on a fun-in-the-sun family vacation to Mexico. Whatever happened to mini-golf? Olé! (O-lay?)

In contrast, there was some teeny, wholesome throwback advice on how to have a fun date. Why not suggest a McCafé? Absent the product placement, this could have been found in the teen-mags of my era. So perhaps all is not lost.

My favorite article was about a young woman who had started a company with her father. Their big idea was so, well, big idea-ish, that they got friends and family to invest in it. The investors (and I’m going from recall of Caroline’s narration) included the boyfriend of Rachel Segal – the inventor, or discoverer, or whateverer of the Doodle Bra. The beau had $10,000 saved up from his Marine tours, which he sunk in Rachel’s business. In retrospect, he would have been better off financially if she’d suggested a McCafé.

Doodle Bra, you may well be asking yourself. What, pray tell, is a Doodle Bra?

Well, it’s a plain old vanilla bra that you draw on with washable pens. It’s similar to the Doodle Bear, which was why Rachel’s Daddy Dearest, Randy Segal, made the immediate connection when he saw his daughter strutting around in a bra that her friends had doodled on.

The Eureka moment, or perhaps the Billy Ray Cyrus moment, is born. Let’s call it a Doodle Bra and sell it on the Internet! We’ll be rich! We’ll be famous! Our ship has finally come in, in the form of a plain white bra and an erasable marker.

But you have to spend money to make money, and the Segals needed other people’s money to make their money. Which seems only fair, since the Segals were the brains behind the outfit.

Fast forward a while.

The Doodle Bra is making some sales, and getting quite a bit of publicity. (2009 must have been a hectic Pink Slip news year. How else to explain how I missed the Doodle Bra?)

And then the investors started making polite inquiries.

Come to find out, unbeknownst to Rachel Segal, Randy Segal and his wife (I’m guessing she’s Rachel’s step mother, because she’s only 11 years older than Rachel but, hey, you never know), have been living (and vacationing in Hawaii) off of the investors’ “investment”.

Rachel is no longer on speaking terms with her father, who’s made reimbursement and done some short time for his antics. And she hopes to keep on keeping on with the Doodlebra biz, which has this to say for itself:

The goal of DOODLE BRA™ is to provide a multipurpose product for girls and young women that inspires creativity, fun, and sharing of ideas while still being an affordable necessity…Each person can design and create their own fashions over and over again for the price of a single garment…The DOODLE BRA™ allows the customer to maximize their spending power by receiving happiness and entertainment for the value of purchasing the necessary garment alone…

Multipurpose product: bra and creativity-inspiring, happiness conferring, and entertainment producing item.

Well, wouldn’t you get the same bang for the buck – maybe even more bang – with a tee-shirt? Also a necessary garment and one on which you can show off the post-doodle results in public.

The DOODLE BRA™ is about empowering young girls to be comfortable with their sexuality while still having fun and knowing it is “GREAT” to be girls…

Ah, but a tee-shirt (unless it was a wet tee-shirt, which might end up with doodles being smeared) would not do such a good job “empowering young girls to be comfortable with their sexuality.” So it just had to be a bra (because tweener boys are so in touch – get it? in touch? hah-hah -  with their sexuality that you don’t need a Doodle Jock).

Now, I well understand that, given the sexualization/ trashification of our culture and commerce (which has become our culture), tweener girls need to hear some straight talk about sexuality in a way that the relatively chaste and relatively chador-clad girls of my era did not have to.

Case in point: My niece Molly has a parochial school classmate whose 8 year old sister did this fill in the blanks when her mother said “Sticks and stones can break my bones.”

But whips and chains excite me.

In the breathless words of Rihanna. Who was, of all things given her lyrical bent, a victim of domestic violence.

If an 8 year old Catholic school kid is exposed to this matter…

So yes, indeed, parents are going to have to have R-rated conversations with their children while they’re still little ones. Either that or home school them; make all their clothes out of homespun; don’t allow any access to TV, music, or the Internet; never set foot in a Toys ‘R Us; and, if it is ever necessary to go out of the walled and shuttered family home, blindfold the kids until they get to the next walled and shuttered safe house.

Still, to me, there’s something a bit perturbing about positioning bra-doodling as a good and healthy vehicle to making tweeners understand what’s meaningful and appropriate with respect to their nascent sexuality.

And tweeners seem to be getting younger:

DOODLE BRA™ comes in “training bra” type called a “Cami” for girls as young as 5 years old and older.

Five years old. Isn’t that the age when you’re still supposed to be worrying about peeing in your pants, writing your name in block letters, and tying your shoes?

By the way, Doodle Bras go up in size to 42 DD which – scourge of obesity aside – probably surpasses the needs of the tweener community.

Girls from today on will only know that when you start to become a young lady;

You get your first “DOODLE BRA™”.

That moment used to occur around getting your first bra-bra. And/or your first period.

In those days, the only thing we got to write on was an autograph book. Or a stuffed “autograph hound.” On which you writ in permanent, indelible ink. But in today’s ephemeral world, who wants anything permanent? I have to say, worry about the Communists aside, it was a lot easier to be a kid back then.

As for Doodle Bra, in a canny product line extension, there’s now a Doodle Pantie, which gets us even closer to that tweener – “girls as young as 5 years old” -  sexuality that the Doodle Bra folks want girls to get comfortable with.

I suppose that at a time when the top 1% of the population are on their way to controlling 50% and beyond of the nation’s wealth – at which point, Banana Republic will shift from being a consumer brand to serving as a sobriquet for the good old USA – I suppose I should be more in favor of someone from the bottom 99% taking a shot on the goal of movin’ on up.

But I can’t help but thinking that the Doodle Bra is yet one more handbasket in which we’re all heading to hell in.

Ripped from the headlines: Brain Collector Seeks Trump-Like Donors to Probe Personality

This header on Bloomberg -  a caption certainly worthy of The National Enquirer – proved irresistible to anyone with the least of click through urges. Let alone mine.

The article was on a University of California -San Diego scientist doing research on that most fascinating of subjects, the human brain.

Since, even at my advanced age, I haven’t yet given up on the notion of doing something meaningful with my life, I’m hoping that neurologist Jacopo Annese will consider my brain for collection, my personality for probe.

Thus, I’m putting this out there: take my brain, please.

I am no Donald Trump. I never played a flying monkey in the “Wizard of Oz”.  And I'm not like the woman in Iowa who can’t experience fear. I get (well, mostly) why those are brains you’re after.

Still, I do have a reasonably good brain and a reasonably good personality. Plus a completely excellent memory – both on the concrete, physical detail side of things, and the emotional level. Just ask me what I wore for the first day of kindergarten (a not especially fetching gold and brown number). And how I felt on that first day when I realized that the patrol line left by a different door than the one I came in on (panicked that my mother and brother, who were walking down to meet me, wouldn’t know where I was; relieved when, as I attempted to scoot back into Gates Lane School, I was taken in hand by Yvonne LaChappelle, an eighth grader who lived on our street. She made sure I found my mother and Tom.).

Anyway, Annese is doing interesting work out at UCal-San Diego, running the brain bank. Which is actually called the Brain Observatory, a far more interesting moniker, in my book.

Not that I have a book, exactly. I mean, I do and I don’t.

Anyway, the Brain Observatory:

… begun six years ago, is creating novel technologies and strategies to help researchers study how personality, memories, emotions and other traits are reflected within the brain’s chemical and electrical signaling systems. Success, Annese said, depends largely on the depth of information shared by the bank’s donors. (Source this section and the one below: Bloomberg)

Annese wants The Donald because he’s had a colorful and interesting life.

The ideal is “someone with an interesting life, a politician or businessman whose biography has already been written,” he said in a telephone interview. “We want to write the last few chapters of their biography in neurological terms.”

Having someone who’s already got stuff written down by and about them apparently saves a lot of up front work. Then there’s The Apprentice, and the playing footsie with a run for president material.

My video trail is non-existent, but I do have a (digital) paper trail:  nearly five years worth of blog posts, and many of them do contain autobiographical threads. (C.f., first day of kindergarten.)

(As an aside, I’m not some ultra-feminist looking for affronts. But looking for a “businessman whose biography has already been written.”? Jacopo? Jacopo, Jacopo. I’m not going to say it was interesting  - in truth, I couldn’t make it through my free copy. But that’s pretty much been true of most business puffographies. Just think about Jack. But Carly Fiorina has had an interesting career, and did put a memoir out a few years back.  And now that I think of it, she’s a two-fer: person of business and politico wannabe. She may not be as flamboyant or household word-y as Trump, but I do imagine she’s got a fairly XL ego. And her hair’s better than his. Ditto Meg Whitman, another two-fer. So lose that businessman thang, why don’t you.)

Anyway, I was hopeful when I saw the donate tab on the Brain Observatory web site. But “donate” is just looking for money – the chrome piggy bank should have been a giveaway there.

But I did find out a bit more about what they’re looking for – information, that I found somewhat encouraging:

The library will also include cases of ordinary, healthy people, because it is not feasible to characterize brain disease without a clear understanding of how the brain matures normally during life. We strive to preserve and examine as many cases as possible. This is an extremely labor-intensive and expensive process, but we believe this work is both timely and necessary to provide the knowledge to support current neuroscientific research. (Source: Brain Observatory.)

Well, I’m ordinary. Especially compared to someone who played a winged monkey in W of O, another person who’s fearless, and then, of course, Donald Trump. Yup, I am more or less ordinary.

Maybe less ordinary, rather than more ordinary. While I didn’t play a winged monkey, I did have the lead (Christmas Fairy) in the fourth grade Christmas Play, “Carol of the Bells.” And, as for work, I did spend one summer in a combat boot factory, so all my jobs weren’t perfectly B-school prosaic.

No, I’m not fearless. There are heights, bed bugs, clowns, and being trapped somewhere without anything to read. But I’m not a complete scaredy cat.

And my hair, frankly, trumps Trump’s. What is with these rich folks – not just Trump, think Kelly Ripa – who can’t afford decent dye jobs.

“With a growing group of living, willing donors, we can really catalog many aspects of behavior and personality,” Annese said. “You never know what’s going to be important.”

Well, being able to remember what you wore the first day of kindergarten could end up being pretty darned important.

But I’ll just quickly and simply summarize my case: good memory, good personality, good health, lots of biographical material floating around in digital format (and a lot more in neurological format).

Dr. Annese: take my brain, please.

Project Propec (and you think your job is crappy)

I dog-sat Jack, my dog-nephew, for a bit last week.

During our time together, Jack pooped three times.

Fortunately, my sister and her family live quite near the Salem Common, an exceedingly good dog-walking place, well endowed with ample trash receptacles in which to drop a plastic bag o’ poop.

What the City of Salem does with their poop round up, I have no idea.

I suppose that the solid wastes collected on The Common end up making an already odiferous landfill and even more odiferous landfill.

Last week’s dog walking weather was relatively pleasant. While not exactly warm, it was not windy, snowy, sleety, or wind-chilly. And the ground was not covered with treacherous frozen snow that makes finding just the right spot more difficult for Jack (not to mention whoever is walking him) to identify and partake of during the dead of winter.

Thus, I was quite interested in a recent Bloomberg/Business Week article on a French “boutique fertilizer company” that my brother-in-law Rick pointed out to me last week.

Agronutrition – quite the name for a place that trades in crap, which I personally don’t think of as all that nutritious (dogs, of course, may disagree here) – is not just trying to do the same old make lemonade out of lemons (metaphorically speaking) trick that’s been tried before. (Last year there was some group in either Cambridge or Somerville doing something with converting dog crap into energy in local parks.)

No, what’s interesting about Project Propec is what they’re doing behind the mercifully closed doors of their lab:

“What we have here is endomycorrhiza, the molecular detoxifying mechanism for a diffusive airborne substance with a 100 meter radius that provokes an immediate intestinal ejection at a precise position,” microbiologist Hicham Ferhout says, thumping shut the steel door. “In layman terms, we’ve finally discovered how to make a dog sh*t in a specific spot, disinfect the deposit and convert it into environmentally friendly energy  or fertilizer. I have to think like a dog.”

Dogs crap an average of 22 pounds a year – I’m guessing Jack, who is a black lab, does a bit more than that – and, with nearly 9 million dogs in France, there’s a lot of waste going to waste.

Project Propec is a joint venture between Agronutrition and the City of Toulouse, which has been spending over $50 M Euros each year shoveling shit. (And that’s not metaphorical shit shoveling, either. It’s the real deal.)

Toulouse was prompted to get down to the business of dog business when they established an Office of Tranquility to handle citizen complaints.

Forget liberté, egalité, fraternité.

These days, les enfants de la Patrie are being called aux armes to bitch about la merde de chiens. 

Toulouse deputy mayor,Jean-Michel Fabre, could point to seven dog parks, “but the dogs refused to use them.”

Fabre, quite handily, a veterinarian,  noted a key problem:

“It’s not the dog owner who chooses the place his dog will poop. It’s the dog who makes the decision and it required a lot of deep thought and analysis to get the dog owners of Toulouse to realize it.”

But once Project Propec has its breakthrough, dogs will  no longer go where they wanna go, doo what they wanna doo. They will be irresistibly drawn to an X Marks the Spot and make their deposits.

Which will be productized, and monetized, as fertilizer.

Things look (or smell) promising:

Ferhout says the initial tests getting 34 female beagles to  poop as directed were 100 percent successful and that field
experiments at seven sites throughout Toulouse are scheduled to begin this fall.

The formula for the merdish G-spot is a secret, but it is a “mélange of dog feces, urine and sex pheromones.” God knows that should have plenty of curb your dog appeal to the canine set, who like nothing better than a good old smell fest.

Agronutrition’s CEO, Cedric Cabanes had this to say:

“I can’t right now say that it will work with 100 percent certainty…But if it does, Toulouse will become the center of a miracle industry.”

I, for one, absolutely believe that getting a dog to crap in a designated spot, and to do it fast, if not a miracle, will certainly be a tremendous feat.

On the other hand, do we want to deprive our doggy friends of the great fun they have when on a leisurely, olfactory rich, nose to the ground (or groin) walk. Other than in inclement weather conditions, when I’m all for depriving them.

I’m less interested in the fertilizer aspect of Project Propec, although anything that’s sustainable and eco-friendly is all to the good. And as Cabanes has said.

“Once we’ve done it with dogs, we can do it with humans.”

That would be the fertilizer half of the equation. We (most of us, anyway, at least after the toddler stage) have already figured out where to go when we have to go.

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

Tip of my Black Dog cap to Ricky T.  This was a thank you gift from my sister for taking care of Jack.

Becoming a Europhile

Today is the 38th anniversary of my leaving on my first trip abroad. With the exception of the flight home from my grandfather’s funeral, when I was not quite two years old, it’s also the 38th anniversary of my first plane ride. And, no, I did not know how to unbuckle the seat belt until someone showed me how.

For those of a certain age, the $206 flight to Europe was something of a rite of passage.

Planes, boats, trains (ah, the EuRail pass!) were thronged with back-packed American kids with well-thumbed, bright blue copies of the Harvard Student Agencies’ Let’s Go Europe, the less stuffy, student alternative to Arthur Frommer’s Europe of $5 a Day.  Everyone carried American Express Travelers Checks, and the American Express offices in big cities were the places where you could pick up the occasional letter from home. (I still remember that the Am Ex in Paris was on Rue Scribe.)

The delicious freedom of being nearly incommunicado with your family for months on end will, alas, be a pleasure unknown to today’s student travelers. They will be armed with smartphones with universal coverage or, at worst, be able to Skype mom and dad from any old Internet café.

Not the intrepid travelers of my day!

My college roommate, Joyce, and I, out of college and waitressing to support our travel jones, had spent the previous summer-into-fall camping our way back and forth across the US in her Karmann Ghia. But that jaunt “only” lasted about six weeks. Mere prelude for our European Adventure.

We boarded our flight with $1,000 in Travelers Checks each, and the following (each, except for the tent), including what we were wearing:

• Kelty back pack (with rain cover)
• Sleeping bag
• LL Bean backpackers tent
• Mess kit (aluminum pan, plate, collapsible cup, fork, knife, spoon)
• Water proof jacket with hood
• Sturdy shoes
• Bandana
• Sweater
• Two pairs of jeans
• One long sleeve shirt
• Two short sleeve shirts
• One bra
• Four pairs of under pants
• Four pairs of socks
• Pair of gloves
• Pair of flip-flops
• Nylon roll-up mini-dress
• Nylon roll-up nightgown
• Notebook
• Pen
• Wallet
• Map of Europe

We landed at Heathrow, with nothing whatsoever planned, other than the address of a dump in Earl’s Court, which we no doubt found in Let’s Go, where we planned on spending a couple of nights.

We figured that we’d figure things out. Which we did.

Figuring things out included acquiring: A Gaz, one burner “stove” so we didn’t have to eat cold food when we were camping. Youth Hostel cards (we joined in Ireland, becoming members of An Oige), so we didn’t always have to camp. Sac couchettes, muslin sleep sacks used in Youth Hostels.

We also figured out that hitchhiking was going to be cheaper than a Eurail Pass, so we figured we tried it. Which we did, sticking our thumbs out on the outskirts of London and snagging a ride to Bath.

Other than a train in Spain, and a couple of trains in Italy, our land transportation was exclusively the Rule of Thumb.

Even at the time – let alone in retrospect, oy! – we recognized that we were putting ourselves in some harrowing situations: The doctor in the Mercedes swilling vermouth as he careened through the Tyrolean mountainside. The two French guys in Yugoslavia who, in the roadside café we’d stopped at leaned over and whispered “Nous avons hashish.” Which might have been an okay thing to say if we weren’t sitting next to a table full of Yugoslav police. The middle-aged guy in Belgium – the one with a kiddie car seat in the back of his car – who grabbed my breast while we were tootling down the highway. To list but a few of the times we were at risk…

Mostly, however, hitching was great fun. People bought us meals. They put us up. They drove out of their way to drop us off where we wanted to go.

And where we wanted to go was: England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France, Spain, Italy, Greece, Belgium, Holland, Luxembourg, Lichtenstein, Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Germany, Austria, Yugoslavia, Greece, and Turkey.

This was no “if it’s Tuesday, this must be Belgium” bus tour.

If we liked a place, we stayed, including a couple of weeks spent camping on the beach in one of the lesser Greek islands.

This you could do back in the day, when you got out of college with little or no debt, and when it was generally accepted (although by no means the norm) if you wanted to fart around for a few years before embarking on a career.

Which both Joyce and I eventually did, mine in technology marketing, hers (quite successful) in the fashion biz.

Now changed utterly, of course.

People don’t hitchhike, here or there. Taking off four months to do nothing except see the sights, eat like the locals, and experience a peculiar form of transient, responsibility-less life has completely gone out of style. Even a twenty-something unencumbered by college debt would be reluctant to hit the pause button on their career path to kickback for any appreciable while. If they were going to head out, it would be with a posse of Facebook and Twitter followers lined up to read their every utterance. (OMG! Creep just grabbed my boob. What’s Belgian for douche! LOL.) And with plans to turn it into a book (self-published, probably), or make sure that the trip had some grand purpose, beyond Grand Tour, that would benefit their résumé. (I traveled through Europe to raise awareness for the Hangnail Foundation. Make that Mongolia: Europe is just so darned yesterday.) And whose parents would “allow” them to be out of reach – other than those letters to the American Express office – for four long months.

Thanks to advice we got from fellow Americans at those American Express offices, Joyce and I ended up playing one currency off against the other. A guy would tell us, “Change to Swiss francs.” And we would. Another guy would say, “You should buy Deutsch marks.” And we would. And damned if we didn’t make a profit on our “currency swaps” at every turn. (Thank God for those econ majors we met.)

Thus, after nearly four months buzzing around Europe, we each came home with $600 in our pocket. Which turned out to be Europe on even less than Frommer’s $5 a day.

I can’t say that every moment was pure joy. Some of it was spent in the pouring rain waiting for someone to stop and pick us up. (Leading me to develop Rogers’ Rule: No matter how terrible the spot is, no matter how rancid the weather, someone will eventually stop for two young female hitchhikers. Even if it is the Belgian lech who’s going to fondle your breast.) There were bedbugs on that train in Spain. I got an eye infection in Ireland.

But I pretty much loved every place I went: look, feel, tourist traps, non-tourist “stuff,” cities, countryside, food, language, “the people.”That first trip abroad was pretty much when I became a Europhile.

Now, I might not want to trade my U.S. citizenship in to live there – not yet, at any rate – but when it comes to figuring out where I want to go on vacation, there’s still no place I’d rather turn than due East.

Peeps on Earth, Good Will To Men, Women, and Children

Spring has not yet sprung in New England.

By this time of year, we’ve generally had a string of sunny, sweater-weather days. Maybe even a couple of days when you can tie that sweater around your waist.

This year, alas, we seem to have traded a long, dreary and miserable winter for what is shaping up to be a long, dreary and miserable spring.

Baby, it’s cold outside. And wet.

Not that I was expecting the leaves to be out quite yet, but we should be seeing more of a nimbus of green on the trees than we are at this point. Sure, a couple of the hearty magnolias are out on Beacon Hill, and a couple of daffodils have shot their heads up in our front garden. But I have yet to see one damned red red robin come bob-bob-bobbin’ a long.

But I have, of course, seen my first Peeps, peep-peep-peepin’ along the shelves of CVS. Not to mention on Friendly’s menu topping off some special Peep sundae. I took a pass, choosing to expend my occasional Friendly’s calories on the small Happy Ending hot fudge with coffee ice cream.

I will say this for the peeps at Just Born: they are colossally brilliant marketers.

Sure, it helps to have a product that is well-known, well-loved, associated with childhood, squishy, sugary, bright colored, both fun and silly, and has a generally goofy-weird aura about it. I can honestly say that I have never marketed a product that had any of these attributes, let alone all of them.

That said, the Just Born marketers are extremely good at what they do in terms of working with the Peep sub-culture that has grown up over the years. They could have just treated all of their products as equals, focusing equal time on Hot Tamales and Ike & Mike. But they have recognized and embraced the special character, charisma and genius of Peeps.

If you’re feeling especially crafty this weekend, you might want to craft up a Peeps Topiary. I’m betting you won’t even need to directions, since this appears to be the craft degree-of-difficulty equivalent to making Pudding-in-a-Cloud for dessert. (“Gee, Sarah, how do you make it?…Oh, you mean I just have to plop a dollop of pudding in a somewhat larger dollop of Cool Whip?”) But, thanks to Just Born marketing savvy, you can find the instructions here.

And I don’t want to force my ideas on anyone, but a certain someone in our family has a birthday coming up, and this Peeps Pool Cake looks right up her alley. I will do my part to help turn this into a reality, if anyone’s interested. Thank goodness for blue jello!

Me? I can’t wait to bite the head off my first fresh Peep this Sunday at my sister Trish’s. Nothing says spring like that first chomp down on that fresh, sugar-dimpled Peep. Yum!

Especially at this time of year, we all need to keep this in mind: it’s a Peep’s world. We just live in it.

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

Can’t get enough about this topic? See my earlier Peep-inspired Easter-ish posts:

Product Innovation in the Peep-able Kingdom, Not a Peep Out of You and The Harley Davidson of the Candy World.

And, of course, you should check out this year’s entries to the Washington Post’s Peep Diorama contest.

Rule, Britannia wedding souvenirs

What with the Royal W just a bit over a week away, and it being Queen Elizabeth’s birthday today, I was feeling in a bit of a take-a-royal-gander mood. So it was interesting to check out the Kate and William souvenirs that are on offer. (Source: Boston.com.)

This just might be the major boost that can get Recession-deadened consumers spending again.

I sure hope so.

Not that I’ll be buying much of anything.

Still, it’s nice to know that if I do decide to commemorate this event, there are plenty of options.

At first glance, the Pez dispensers look like  a cheap and easy way in. But these are one-offs, being auctioned on eBay, with the proceeds to go to the charity of the couple’s choice. Which is flat-out no fun for those who collect Pez dispensers, as eBay should damned well know if anybody does. Harrumph.

I’ll take a pass on the commemorative condoms. Was it just 30 short years ago that her sisters were kidding Lady Di about her face being on the tea-towels? Now we have Crown Jewels. Not what I would call an uptick in taste, that’s for sure. (“Well, Kate, you can’t back out now. Your face is on the condom pack.”)

Beer lovers can get a bottle of “Kiss Me Kate” or “Prince William Porter.” Tea lovers can buy Kate and William tea-bags. Car lovers can get a windshield sticker.  And the Franklin Mint has a couple of Kate dolls, available in “limited” edition. If $195 per doll is above your personal limit, there’s also a Barbie-style fashion doll.

What else is out there?

Creepy playing cards. Creepy chair cushions. Creepy cardboard cutouts.

If you’re seized with the entrepreneurially spirit, and are feeling flushed with royal zeal, you’ve still got another week to come up with a souvenir. So have a go. But do be mindful that the Royals, like any other corporation, celebrity, or celebrity corporation, want to control the use of its brand. Just keep calm, carry on, and follow the guidelines that royal.gov.uk has so kindly put together for us.  There has been a “Temporary Relaxation” approved by Prince William that lets you use Royal Photographs and Insignia on souvenirs, including the full-coat of arts of the prince.

To qualify for the privileges detailed in the circular such souvenirs must be:

(a) In good taste.
(b) Free from any form of advertisement.
(c) Carry no implication of Royal custom or approval.

I suspect that the condom-makers didn’t exactly follow the guidelines. Nor the sick-bag maker. (“Throne up.” Get it. Thrown up. Har-dee-har.)

I don’t blame them for wanting to steer clear of condoms and air sickness bags, but those Royals sure are picky about textiles:

With the exception of carpets, cushions, wall hangings and head scarves, Royal Devices MAY NOT be used on textiles (which includes articles of clothing, including T-shirts, drying up cloths and aprons).

Note that a Royal Photograph is not a Royal Device, so Kate’s face can go on a tea towel. Not to mention “metalware, ceramic or other semiindestructible” container or receptacle for, say, biscuits, or tea. As with textiles, photos only: no use of the Prince’s coat of arms or cypher.

There is still time to whip up some net bags with Jordan almonds in them.

I do caution that this event will all mostly be good for British business – and right-io-ly so. It’ll also be good, of course, for the Asian factories spewing this stuff out. (Honestly, don’t you ever wonder what’s going through the mind of some Chinese peasant working in some sweatshop churning out William and Kate tea-towels, Pez dispensers, and biscuit tins. What’s Chinese for WTF?)

If an explanation or guidance is required in respect of the rules please write to the Lord Chamberlain’s Office, Buckingham Palace, London, SW1A 1AA.

Hurry, do.

The Winklevoss Identity: never too rich

Before I begin, I should probably get a couple of things out there:

1. I have yet to see The Social Network.
2. I’m not much of a Facebook user.  I pretty much “friend” friends and family who ask, but that’s about it. (However, I am planning on asking my teenaged nieces to triage my FB presence.)
3. I would not be quite as interested in this topic if the Winklevoss twins did not have such a great last name.
4. And/or if the actor who portrayed the Winklevi in The Social Network was none other than Armie Hammer, scion of the Armand Hammer family, of Occidental Petroleum fame and fortune.

For those unfamiliar with the threads of the Winklevoss story, Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, who were at Fair Harvard with FB founder Mark Zuckerberg, reached a settlement with FB, Inc. a couple of years ago. Implicit in the settlement was the admission that theirs had been the original idea that spawned Zuckerberg’s vision of an online student-to-student social network.

At the time of the settlement – in 2008 – the twins agreed to accept $65M in cash and stock, and amount now worth about $170M, thanks to FB’s success.

That amount, unfortunately, is not enough for the Winklevoss twins, especially in light of how much their former classmate – i.e., the person who exploited the idea commercially – is worth.

Rich, as we know, if all relative to what the next guy has.

Thus, the $1M condo on Beacon Hill may look swank to someone living in wattle and daub hut, but to the condo dwellers, it’s a wattle and daub hut compared to the single-family mansion next door.

Thus, the Winklevoss twins are aggrieved.

It’s not enough that they came from a privileged background, graduated from Harvard, rowed in the Olympics. It’s not enough that each of them has the education, pedigree and social network that provides entry into the sorts of jobs that earn folks multi-million dollars a year.  It’s not enough that each of them must have cleared about $40-$50M each on the settlement, post-lawyers and give-backs to side parties who had a role. It’s not enough that most people would be overjoyed to have a net worth of one-tenth this magnitude, enabling them to live modestly but amply for the rest of their lives.

As long as – whine, whine, sniff, sniff – that meanie Mark Zuckerberg has a kazillion, $40M is petty cash, chump change, and insult. (I saw that idea first…)

So the Winklevoss twins went to court to see if they could have a do-over on their agreement to settle for that paltry $65M, even though it’s now grown to a somewhat less paltry $170M (or, as I’ve seen in one place, $200M). They claim that they were swindled, screwed, done-in by the original settlement, and that they’re entitled to four times the number of shares. Which, of course, everyone now knows are worth a boatload more.

Alas for the Winklevoss boys, an appellate court “rejected the Winklevoss brothers’ claims that the 2008 settlement should be voided because it was procured with fraud.”

In his decision, Judge Alex Kozinski wrote that the "Winklevosses are not the first parties bested by a competitor who then seek to gain through litigation what they were unable to achieve in the marketplace. … At some point, litigation must come to an end. That point has now been reached." (Source: Slate.)

Not to be denied, the Winklesvosses are now looking for a review of last week’s court ruling.

I sure hope that, if they lose again, they’re on the hook for court costs.

Anyway, it does appear as if, in 2008, the deal the Winklevoss twins agreed to was a good enough one.

Sure, if they knew then what they know now…

But how many times does that happen in life, and to how many people does it happen to? Note to the Winklevosses: the answer to both of these rhetorical questions is A LOT.

Who among us doesn’t want do overs?

The salary we accepted when we could have negotiated for more. The lowball project fee that you took thinking you could knock the work out quickly, only to find out you were making something only a few cents north of minimum wage.

And let’s not even get into the realm of personal do overs? Talk about carry me back to old Wor-ces-ter.

The Winklevoss twins turn 30 this year.

My advice to them is, as Ann Landers use to say, kwitcherbitchin.

Take the millions, count them – and your many blessings, and stop obsessing about Mark Zuckerberg’s billions.

Frankly, I don’t need to see the movie to appreciate what a bunch of a-holes all of these guys are.

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

Source for info, unless otherwise indicated: Huffington Post.

The Poor Farm

There was an article in The Boston Globe a couple of weeks back the town of Milton’s (a close-in suburb) trying to figure out what to do with the poor farm that was left to it over 300 years ago.

The person doing the leaving was Governor William Stoughton, who was both a judge and prosecutor during the Salem Witch Trials. Hmmmm. Pretty convenient to be both judge and prosecutor, don’t you think? Would you even have to jump up and say, “Objection, Your Honor,” or just cut to the chase and say “Objection sustained.” Which may not have been necessary, since Stoughton refused to allow the accused to have any defense counsel. Stoughton did, however, allow “spectral evidence” – dreams and visions – to be used in court. (Info on Stoughton: from Wikipedia.)

But, unless you were Sarah Good or Rebecca Glover or one of the other “witches” who were hanged, Stoughton wasn’t a completely bad fellow. He did, after all, leave Milton some land “for the use and benefit of the poor.” (Not stated but I suspect strongly implied: we’re talking the deserving poor. And not the kind inclined toward wearing black pointy hats and cruising around on broomsticks.)

Anyway, throughout the 18th century, the poor could cut wood on the 34-acre plot, and in the 1800’s a poor house went up.

The original Poor House, or almshouse, was built around 1805, and included cages to punish residents who disturbed the peace, according to a history compiled by the town. Paupers lived and farmed there, and the able-bodied men worked on the town’s roads.

That building was sold for $102 in 1854. A new Poor House was built for $2,675 on the spot where it still stands today. Also remaining are the 1871 Men’s Almshouse and 1888 Pest House, built to quarantine people with smallpox.

But poor houses went out of fashion in the mid-twentieth century and, since the 1940's, Milton has been out of the poor house biz:

… instead renting out three buildings on the site and using the income to help needy individuals with emergencies — in small grants totaling about $20,000 annually in recent years.

The buildings have now fallen into disrepair. But while the buildings may be down, “requests for emergency aid are up.”

The town selectman are looking into selling or leasing the land, which abuts the Blue Hills Reservation (hiking, swimming, skiing…), which is quite a pretty area.  Selling all or part of the land could bring in as much as $8.5M, which would nicely augment the $400K that has accrued in the Governor Stoughton fund over the years.

As with everything else these days:

“It’s all about the Benjamins,’’ said town planner William Clark. He said whatever the selectmen decide must be approved, however, by the state attorney general and Massachusetts Probate and Family Court, to be sure Stoughton’s will is honored.

I.e., that the poor get the benefit of the proceeds.

If I were the Town of Milton, I wouldn’t be getting rid of this property quite so fast.

At least in my life-time, I don’t think we’ll be going back to the point where we cage folks for disturbing the peace. But other than that…

For the sake of argument, let’s just say that we do get rid of all those irksome hand-out programs like Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid. After all, the social safety net is for effete, Euro-style dandies, not for hearty, don’t-look-down Americans. (I bet old Governor Stoughton would agree with this point.)

But, as there always is in checkered game of life, there will be winners and losers under the grand new “you’re on your own, bub” scheme.

So, Milton, hang on to that poor farm.

You may need it for those who neglected to save anything for their dotage. (Note to self: design new tee-shirt: Old geezer slapping himself on the forehead. Caption: “Damn, I forgot to save for retirement.”)  Or for those who really and truly did try to put things away, but who didn’t have much luck as part-time money managers; or who got caught up in the next Bernie Madoff scheme; or who thought they were saving enough, but that was before the fund-managers got through extracting their small-print fees. (Hey, what’s this heads-I-win-tales-you-lose thing?)

If you have a poor farm and an alms house, once again, paupers can farm and able-bodied men work on the roads.

Ninety’s the new sixty, don’t you know? Start hoeing, Gramps.

Sure, you might want to rename the Pest House.  Something like Pleasant Manor would work. Or House of Health.

Maybe the paupers can farm herbs that can be used for palliative care for those who can’t afford to even get their case considered by a Death Panel.

And while I do hope smallpox won’t be making a comeback, you never know. Inoculations are sort of nanny-state, aren’t they? And if you don’t inoculate, it’s survival of the fittest. Thus the ninety year old pauper, having survived smallpox, should be fit as a fiddle and ready to farm for his remaining years.

Anyway, my advice to Milton is hang on to this property. You never know when a poor farm is going to come in handy. Could be any day now.

Patriots’ Day 2011

I hope that the United States never becomes so blandly homogenized that all fifty-states worth of nifty little regionalisms disappear.

Bad enough that most regional department stores are gone, all replaced by the ubiquitous Macy’s. (Remember when we used to think that Boston without Filene’s and Chicago without Marshall Field were unthinkable?) Thank the lord of retail that we still have furniture stores like Bernie and Phyl’s, now employing B&P’s three adult children in their TV ads. (Quality, comfort, and price: that’s nice.)

Then there’s the chain restaurant. In many parts of the country, Olive Garden is what passes for Italian. Personally, I’d rather eat at the worst Italian restaurant in Boston’s North End – and, trust me, there are some pretty terrible restaurants there – than sup at an OG.

Regional accents still seem to manage to survive, even in the face of threats like late-last-century’s Valley Girl incursion, which seems to live on primarily in the Interactive Voice Recording system used by Fidelity, AmEx and a bunch of others. (You know the one: the chick chirping “Sorry, but I don’t understand what you just said” with that annoying up-lilt at the end of the sentence. IVR systems apparently can’t interpret voices yelling “I just want to talk to a #**&*(&$**@(&^ human being.”)

Thanks to the persistence of regional accents, we have the persistence of bad accents in movies placed in New England (special points to those set in Boston). Fortunately, there are some actors who come by their accents naturally. Thus, I never have to cringe when Mark (or Donny) Wahlberg, Matt Damon, Ben (or Casey) Affleck, or Worcester-boy Denis Leary is on the screen (at least with respect to their accent). I will say that I thought Leo DiCaprio’s version in The Departed was wicked pissah. Jack Nicholson’s o,n the other hand. Honey, you’re so not home-boy. Same goes for Tom Hanks as the FBI agent in Catch Me if You Can. Love ya, Tommy, but no can do.

While regional accents manage to survive, I’ve noticed that some local words have fallen out of use. It’s been years since I’ve heard anyone refer to soda as “tonic.” I do believe that “bubbler” fell off the truck in favor of “water fountain,” followed by the actual bubbler/water fountain itself falling off the truck in favor of bottled Poland Springs. (Nothing tasted better on a hot summer day that slurping some icy cold water from the pebble-stoned bubbler in a public park.) “Rubber band” has pretty much replaced “elastic.” Let’s dig our heels in on frappe and not let McDonald’s get away with perverting the definition!

Anyway, one bit of regional differentiation that has stood the test of time is Patriots’ Day as a Massachusetts state holiday.

It used to be celebrated on April 19th, but that was before Columbus discovered the three-day weekend, so now it’s the third Monday in April. This year, the celebration is off by a day, but that’s okay because April 18th is Paul Revere’s Ride, which is the kick-off event to the Battles of Lexington and Concord, which we mark on April 19th.

Patriots’ Day!

Now that the so-called “hacks’ holidays” – city workers and state workers who worked in Boston/Suffolk County got off Evacuation Day (which handily coincides with St. Patrick’s Day) and Bunker Hill Day – are being done away with, Patriots’ Day remains our one odd-ball holiday. It’s school vacation week. It’s a state wide holiday that, while not universally observed by business, is a day off for a lot of folks. The Boston Marathon is run today. The Red Sox, a major league baseball team that people in these parts used to care about and follow passionately, play a rare weekday morning-start day game, timed so that fans can spill out into Kenmore and watch the runners pass. And, occasionally,we actually get nice weather.

Patriots’ Day!

Forever in peace may she wave!

An altogether splendid holiday celebrating an event nicely commemorated by Emerson, in one of the poems that, fifty years on, I can still recite. (Drat! I missed the chance to show off O Captain! My Captain! on the anniversary of Lincoln’s assassination.)

                                   Concord Hymn

By the rude bridge that arched the flood,
Their flag to April’s breeze unfurled,
Here once the embattled farmers stood,
And fired the shot heard round the world.

The foe long since in silence slept;
Alike the conqueror silent sleeps;
And Time the ruined bridge has swept
Down the dark stream which seaward creeps.

On this green bank, by this soft stream,
We set to-day a votive stone;
That memory may their deed redeem,
When, like our sires, our sons are gone.

Spirit, that made those spirits dare,
To die, and leave their children free,
Bid Time and Nature gently spare
The shaft we raise to them and thee.

                                             Ralph Waldo Emerson

Rest assured, Ralph Waldo, that, at least here in the Commonwealth,  or at least here at Pink Slip, memory does their deed redeem.

Happy Patriots’ Day!

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

Source of picture and cut and paste of the poem: Wikipedia.

Iceland’s Phallological Museum gets its man. (Not much else to do in there in the cold and dark.)

Although I don’t go there very often, one of my favorite museums is the Harvard Museum of Natural History (HMNH). Its exhibits include the fascinating (boringly so), 4,000-strong (or fragile) collection of glass flowers. And a whole lot of stuffed animals. Not Steiff-cutesy stuffed animals. Actual animals, taxidermed. Many of which breathed their last well over a hundred years ago. So they’re a bit long in the metaphorical tooth, showing signs of age and appearing, well, moth-eaten. That some of cases contain moth balls contributes to the moth-eaten atmosphere. Although the museum has been reno’d over the years, the last time I was there, it still had many of the its original creaking wooden floors and old display cases. An altogether wonderful little museum, with the entire experience enhanced by the occasional whiff of moth ball.

Precisely because of the moth ball smell, the HMNH is not quite as pompous, smug, and bogus-ly underplayed (nothing says Harvard quite like a good strong does of insincere self-deprecation), as so much else Harvard that we non-H locals have come to expect from the little college that could.

I mention HMNH because it is fun, entertaining, and quirky, and absolutely worth an occasional look-see, especially if you have a kid in tow.

And to position myself (without resorting to pompous, smug, self-deprecation – I am, after all, non-H) as the sort who, if not exactly jolly, does enjoy an occasional fun, entertaining, and quirky little museum.

That said, even with the newest addition to its sizable and growing collection, I can’t imagine beating a path (or anything else) to the Phallological Museum of Iceland.

First, let’s clear one of the obvious comments out of the way: this must be the first, last, and only time that the words “phallus” and “logical” are combined. Personally, something like the Phallo-non-logical Museum might be a better choice. Or is it just me?

That aside, the Museum is, I suppose, to be congratulated on its acquisition of its first human phallus.

Long promised to the Museum, its 95 year old possessor died a few months back, leaving his posthumously pickled specimen to join the bottled-in-formaldehyde (or dried and framed) ranks of walrus, whale, seal, and bear penises.

This is pretty much a members-only museum, but in also houses penis art and artifacts (lampshades, anyone?).

There was no indication of the size Pall Arason’s unit, but size assuredly does not matter, especially after death. Besides, whatever it is, Arason’s would be just a shrinking violet next to the 67 inch sperm whale penis. (No Moby Dick jokes, please.)

The Museum’s founder and curator is Sigurdur Hjartarson, a retired high school headmaster, author, and scholar who, nearly forty years ago, was given a bull’s pizzle as a joke. This aroused Hjararson’s latent interest in phallus collecting.

This begat the Museum, which:

…is probably the only museum in the world to contain a collection of phallic specimens belonging to all the various types of mammal found in a single country.

I’d say that “only museum” claim is a safe bet.

Phallology is an ancient science which, until recent years, has received very little attention in Iceland, except as a borderline field of study in other academic disciplines such as history, art, psychology, literature and other artistic fields like music and ballet.

Speaking of little attention and borderline field, the Museum’s website is available in Esperanto. (Faluslogio estas antikva scienco…Hey, Esperanto looks fun and easy! Maybe I’ll take it up. Too bad so few people speak it, even though it looks like most Westerners would be able to read it.)

The Museum collection contains a couple of hundred penises and “penile parts” (quick: which has a bigger yuck factor?). Plus, it:

…has also been fortunate enough to receive  legally-certified gift tokens for four specimens belonging to Homo Sapiens.

I do believe that the web-site needs to be updated, as one of those “legally-certified gift tokens” has been turned in.

Gives new meaning to the words “organ donor,” doesn’t it?

Anyway, the Museum, which is located in Húsavík, “the whale watching capital of Europe”, draws over 10,000 visitors each summer.

Iceland is on my bucket list, and I suppose if I’m there…

Still, I’d rather go watch a full-blown whale than look at what’s left of him floating in a vat of formaldehyde. 

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
If I had a bull pizzle in hand, I would use it to tip my cap to my brother-in-law Rick who spotted the Phallo Museum article (from AP) and sent it my way.

High in the sky. (Aer Lingus gives new meaning to the mile-high club.)

Five weeks from tonight, my husband and I will be flying to Shannon for a long-awaited vacation to Ireland. We’ll be on Aer Lingus, which -  if history is any guide - will be packed cheek to jowl with tourists of a certain age heading “home”on a once in a lifetime roots tour, largely focused on shopping for Aran sweaters and tweed scally caps, and finding her last name on a shop (or grave) in a town where their great-grandmother was born. Not that I haven’t done all of the above me-self, mind yez. Just sayin’. (And, yes, it was a bit of a thrill to be standing in the cemetery in Ballintubber, Co. Mayo, and see all those Joyce graves. A family reunion of a sort. Plus my husband looks pretty darned cute in a tweed scally cap.)

So our Aer Lingus flight will no doubt be crammed, stuffy, and noisy. In that, it will be not unlike the coffin ships that many of the Irish immigrants came to Amerikay on. Full circle: only flying is quicker, and you’re not as likely to die mid-voyage.

Whatever else the flight has, it is unlikely to have one Miguel Saez Sanchez onboard as a flight attendant, manning the drink carts with all those Rosaleens and Geraldines.

That’s not only because Sanchez worked the San Francisco to Dublin route, and I’m flying Boston to Shannon, but because his appeal to overturn his dismissal will likely not be adjudicated for a couple of months.

Sanchez was fired because he went a bit out of control on a flight. The result, he claims, of having unwittingly eaten a marijuana-laced brownie the night before, washed down with a few vodkas, with a diet-pill chaser.  Wheee…..

Post take-off, Sanchez thought he was being photographed by the plane's passengers who he believed were "plants" by the airline. He then told a crew member that he could feel fleas and lice on his body. (Source: Huffington Post.)

Back in the day, I do not believe that a marijuana brownie would have caused paranoia and hallucinogenic flea-flicking. It would, I do believe, have caused a mild, goofy-grin, mellowed-out little buzz. Just what are they putting in grass these days? (And with respect to fleas, note to self: just to be on the safe side, check for bedbugs in airplane seat.)

Anyway, Sanchez claims he didn’t know that OTC diet pills were verboten by Aer Lingus. Nor was he aware that the brownie was laced.

Both strike me as plausible denials, more or less.

It’s not as if the consistency of a marijuana brownie is all that different from that of a plain old Joy of Cooking brownie. It’s not like the difference between a Marlboro and a “funny cigarette.” (When I was in high school, we were actually warned never to accept a cigarette at a party, because it might be a “funny cigarette” that could make you high.  There was nothing high about my high school tenure, and, although I didn’t frequent parties where someone might have offered me a cigarette, funny or otherwise, I did at the time believe that it was possible that you could get slipped a cigarette mickey. This belief was dispelled, of course, the first time I actually came across a real “funny cigarette” and realized that only someone who was a complete idiot, had no sense of smell, or, well,  was on drugs, couldn’t tell the difference between a Winston and a joint.)

Anyway, The Irish Independent was the ur-source for this article, so I thought I’d jet over there to see if there were any more details.

Indeed, there were.

Sanchez, apparently, got sick shortly after eating the brownie (referred to in The Independent as “a cookie,” but which Huff-Po more plausibly translated). He then learned that the brownie was laced. Sanchez says that he had smoked grass one time only, years before, in Amsterdam (where else?), and never touched the stuff because of his violent reaction to it. Anyway, Sanchez was advised to take a shower, but had a paranoia attack in the shower. Nonetheless, he felt well enough to fly the next day.

And then “it” kicked in. (See above: Just what are they putting in grass these days?)

Sanchez told his supervisor that he wasn’t well enough to work his shift, but they were in flight by that point. Nowhere else for him to go. It did, however, appear to some of the passengers that, with his jacket on and briefcase in hand, Sanchez was preparing to exit the plane.

Which must have raised some passenger concern about exactly how Sanchez was going to accomplish this feat.

Anyway, Aer Lingus is not having any of Sanchez’ reasonable doubt:

Tom Mallon, for Aer Lingus, said that for a member of cabin crew to consume marijuana, slimming pills and alcohol "is nothing short of folly in the highest". He said Mr. Sanchez had cut himself off from travelling in a plane in any role other than as a passenger.

Not that I would want to witness a flight attendant freak out, and I am on his side with respect to the diet pills, but I am also inclined to tell Tom Mallon to lighten up, or, even, light one up – if he could find some grass as mellow as that or yore.

This is not quite as colorful or dramatic, of course, as the recent story of the Jet Blue steward who jumped (air)ship beer in hand, sliding down the emergency chute, which he had activated. (Fortunately, the plane was on the tarmac at the time.) Wheee….. Talk about a grand gesture that had ‘I quit’ written all over it.

Still, this story is a good one.

I’ll be on high alert for some cabin fever among the stews on my upcoming flight.

Just stay away from the emergency exit, please.

I don’t think that slide will get you all the way from a couple of miles up down to the Atlantic. Plus, when you get there, it’d be cold, dark, and wet in the middle of the night. (Probably a lot like a coffin ship.)

Ashes to ashes for Messrs. Kluger, Bauer & Robinson

Gambling’s so much easier when you cheat, that’s for sure.

But doesn’t it ever cross the minds of gamblers who cheat that they’re going to get caught?

Or is that what being a cheating gambler’s all about?

Anyhow, the latest episode of Busted: Inside Trading to have piqued my interest is the one that involves attorney Matthew Kluger, trader Garrett Bauer, and middleman Kenneth Robinson, whose greed, apparently brought the entire operation down.

The trio’s Tinkers to Evers to Chance went like this:

Kluger, who worked at Wilson, Sonsini, and who years earlier had worked at both Cravath and Skadden, firms so widely known that we all feel we’re on a first last name basis with them would relay confidential info to Bauer via way of Robinson. Bauer would make the trade, hand part of his “winnings” off to Robinson, who would take his cut and give the rest to Kluger.

Over seventeen years, the crew reputedly amassed over $32M in profits – and that’s with taking six years off when they felt that the heat was on. They’re time off of bad behavior occurred when Bauer was under investigation by the SEC for a suspicious trade involving Clorox’ acquisition of First Brands. (Nothing came of this investigation.” The trio laid low, but, hey, the lure of easy money was too great for them, so they stepped back in.

All good things must come to an end, however, and the end came when Robinson decided on a little side action, exploiting his status as middle-man to clear $200K on the HP acquisition of 3-Com.

Tsk, tsk.

I knew Gordon Gekko and you, Mr. Robinson, are no Gordon Gekko. Some greed is just no damned good.

When Bauer learned that Robinson’s house had been tossed by the Feds, his heart went pitter pat.

"I felt like I was in shock. My heart was beating 10,000 miles an hour," Mr. Bauer said, according to the criminal complaint. "I went right up to my apartment, and I broke the phone in half and went to McDonald's and put it in two different garbage cans. And someone was watching me. I thought it was an FBI agent. And I asked him, 'Do you know me? You look familiar.' And, like, I was so panicked. I literally didn't sleep that entire night." (Source: NY Times.)

Bauer no doubt has a few more sleepless nights ahead of him, including that first night in Federal lock-up where he ends up doing his time.

Bauer offered to take care of Robinson, claiming that he had over $20M squirreled away for just such an occasion. He also advised Robinson to burn $175K that he was holding from a recent deal. It is so not easy being the bag man.

It may be easier being the guy in the know.

Mr. Kluger, of Oakton, Va., allegedly stole information regarding 11 deals while at Wilson, Sonsini, which he left last month. Mr. Kluger circumvented Wilson Sonsini's computerized document-management system by looking at the titles of documents related to deals he wasn't working on but not opening the documents, prosecutors said.

Looks like Wilson, Sonsini will need to come up with a better document naming scheme than acquirer-target. (HP-3Com Acquisition.)

By mid-March, Kluger realized, in his own words, that “things could get ugly.”

Which they have: both civil and criminal charges have been filed against Kluger and Bauer.

Robinson – who was described by one of his neighbors as
“the nicest guy”, and, curiously, as “American pie”, under the mistaken assumption that American pie is the equivalent of “American as apple pie”, and not the name of a raunchy gross-out movie -  has taken the deal and has pled guilty.

Meanwhile, it was NY Times Deal Book column that had Robinson by name. The earlier NYT story had him as a ““Co-Conspirator 1.” Deal Book also had the skinny on the hiatus that the group had taken, and the info on Robinson’s greed having been the event the resulted in the trio’s downfall.

Once Robinson took the deal and started stealth recording, they got Kluger talking about how careful they’d been, and how the Feds probably didn’t have enough to overcome “reasonable doubt.”  The taped conversations will help with that problem.

Kluger, by the way, is the son of Richard Kluger, a social historian who won the Pulitzer for his book, Ashes to Ashes, a history of the tobacco industry. This has to be the best connect-the-dots since Pulitzer-winning poet Mark Van Doren’s son Charles was swept up in the infamous quiz show scandal of the 1950’s. Of course, that was only about tricking the television audience, not about screwing shareholders who didn’t have inside info on what Clorox or HP was up to.

Interesting that Bauer had suggested that Robinson turn some of the ill-gotten gain to ashes, isn’t it?

You just can not make this stuff up.