Stay away from bad influencers

Of all the jobs that the Internet revolution has spawned, for sheer uselessness, few can compare - at least IMHO - with "influencer." And here I'm talking about someone who's a pure, standalone influencer, devoid of any other talent or profession. I mean Ariana Grande's an influencer, but she's also an entertainer. But an influencer who's an influencer with nothing else going for them, well, all I can do is ask the eternal questions: Why? and WTF?

Anyway, every once in a while a story about an influencer drops in over my personal, virtual transom that confirms my feelings about influencers as ridiculous. Make that redonkulous.

The latest? Influencer Nikki Phillippi.

I'm not sure exactly what (or whom) Ms. Phillippi influences - my niece says she used to do makeup videos - but she has well over a million followers on YouTube and Insta who follow her lifestyle and family videos and postings. 

I do know that over the past week or so she's dropped at least a few of those subscribers. That's in the wake of their revelation that she and her husband Dan put down one of the dogs they'd been posting about so lovingly over the years. 

Phillippi and her husband Dan broke the news of their bull terrier Bowser McTrowsen's sudden death to fans on Monday in an Instagram post where they said they were forced to make the tough decision after Bower's "aggressive side reared its ugly head." (Source: Newsweek)

That "aggressive side [that] reared its ugly head" was understandably not something that a family with a baby felt they could live with, even though Bowser was understandably aggravated when little Logan was taking food away from Bowser. Not Bowser's fault, of course, that he reacted by giving little Logan a little nip that left a "little mark" on Logan's face. And not Logan's fault either. He's a baby. What does he know about taking food away from a dog? 

That leaves the parents, of course. Even them, you have to cut some slack when it comes to responsibility to "the incident." I know plenty of parents who turned their back on their kiddo for a nanosecond only to have something awful happen. And I can't think of many parents who'd be 100% comfortable having a dog that bit their kid, even if it's just a little nip, continue to be around their baby. 

But you can blame the parents for their decision to put their doggo down, as well as for the way they went about it, which was - but of course - to use their social media platforms to tell their followers all about the dire deed. (Their YouTube video was titled "We have some really sad news.")

In their long - too long: I only watched a few minutes - Nikki and Dan explained that they had tried to "rehome" Bowser through the local humane society but had been told that a nine-year-old aggressive dog was not going to ever get rehomed. And that, if he were, and did attack someone, the Phillippis would be liable. (This doesn't seem right on either account. The dog had had a few other incidents, but doesn't sound like an incorrigible. And how can the dog, once it's out of your hands - as long as you hadn't lied about its behavior - be your responsibility? But what do I know? I'm not a lawyer, and maybe it's a Tennessee thing.)

But what had seemed like a mild-ish, isolated incident obviously wasn't enough to justify putting Bowser to sleep, so Nikke and Dan  also talked about how many times in the past the dog had been aggressive, the times they'd almost put him down. Now, come to find out, Bowser has been and "extremely dangerous animal" all along. He's a bull terrier, better suited to hunt down wild boars than serve a family pet. He's "special needs dog" who can't be let out of the house. Ever. (We also learn that, at one point, Logan had pulled Bowser's ear so hard that he gave him a cauliflower ear. Bowser didn't react. Fortunately.)

Two years ago, a close friend was running in her quiet, residential neighborhood - on the street - when, out of nowhere, she was attacked by two dogs that burst out of a house when a woman opened the door. This was a savage attack, with extensive damage done to one of her legs. She was hauled away in an ambulance, covered in blood. She has had several surgeries, but there's permanent damage that includes a lot of pain. 

These dogs were kept in cages in a garage - nice, eh? - but somehow were loose when the woman opened her door and the dogs made their escape.

One of the dogs, which had been involved in a prior attack on someone in the family, was put down. The other, who knows?

My friend's lawsuit is moving along slowly, thanks to covid, but we're hopeful there'll be a hefty settlement. She's no longer able to run, and she's has PTSD when she sees dogs. (She's had many dogs in her life, by the way.)

So, yes, I know that there are some dogs that can't be around people.

And maybe Bowser was one of them.

But if the dog was so terrible, why wait around waiting for him to do something like, I don't know, attack their baby and do him harm well beyond a little mark on his face?

The couple also informs us that they're planning a move, which would have been really awful for Bowser, being that he's "special needs" and all. Convenient timing. 

In the video, the couple comes across - especially Nikki Phillippi - as narcissistic and self-justifying. This is "so awkward", she tells her audience, "so emotional." 

In addition to their YouTube video, the couple posted pictures on their now gated Instagram account showing them hanging out with Bowser in the final minutes of his life. Their baby, Logan, is right there with him. Weren't they worried about this "extremely dangerous" animal attacking him? What if Logan had reached out and tried to give Bowser one final cauliflower ear? Maybe they had already given the dog a sedative, but, seriously, who would take this risk? 

Who would take this risk? Someone who wanted to milk the situation and portray themselves as a dog-loving, Bowser-loving family up until the very end, with some Instagrammable pictures. 

My takeaway is that, if Nikki and Dan weren't caught up in this influencer thing, they could have just as easily have kept their announcement simple: Bowser had to be put down. Maybe mention that their baby was bitten. End of story.

Not this endless wallowing in their own goodness, their own grief, their own own-i-ness.

But, for Nikki Phillippi, Influencers 'R' Us. As she says in her video, "Sharing is my passion and my job." So, onward!

It could, of course, be worse.

Some of the commenters mentioned one Myka Stauffer, a "parenting influencer" who last year "rehomed" a special needs child she and her husband had adopted from China. Adopting this child had given her an important - and lucrative - story line: she'd monetized the adoption process by asking her fans to make donations in exchange for special content. Because, of course, adopting a special needs child from China is more interesting than just bringing up four bio kids. Yawn! But "Huxley" - as the couple had just unbelievably named their little one - had needs that were more special than the family could handle, so they "hand-selected" - their words - a new home for him. At least poor Huxley didn't suffer the fate of Bowser.

Ah, influencers. I can't imagine wanting to be, or allowing myself to be influenced by, any of them.

Remember when you were a kid and your folks warned you about staying away from kids they thought were a "bad influence." The message needs to be updated: stay away from bad influencers. 

The stock market is a crazy place indeed

If I close my eyes and chillax for a couple of seconds, I can bring forth the divine smell of Maury's Delicatessen in Worcester's Webster Square. 

Sundays growing up meant Mass in the morning, my father buying the Boston papers from the newsstand my cousin Jimmy ran in front of our church, a trip to Dunkin Donuts, and a stop in at Maury's Delicatessen.

We always had a big mid-day Sunday dinner: roast something or other meaty, mashed potatoes, a couple of different veggies. But Sunday evening meant sandwiches made from the cold cuts and French bread we'd picked up at Maury's earlier in the day. (It was also the one night in the week when we ate in front of the TV, watching College Bowl and Rocky & Bullwinkle.)

There's still a Maury's in Webster Square, but this one's in a new location - an ugly modern building, unlike the cool stone building our Maury's was in. And I'm pretty sure that Maury and wife are long gone. Wonder if the business is still in the family, or whether they sold it. And wonder, if they sold it, just what it was worth.

Probably a lot less than Your Hometown Deli of Paulsboro, NJ. Despite revenues of about eighty bucks a day, Your Hometown Deli went public a few years ago. It's market cap is now $100 million. (The New Yorker, where I first read about Hometown places the value at $2 billion, but I'm going with what the financial press is reporting, even if their estimates are also somewhat flaky.)

There is no way that a dinky NJ deli, founded by a high school principal who also moonlight's as the school's wrestling coach, and which has annual revenues of less than $40K is worth a million bucks (unless the property it's sitting on is owned by the operator and is in prime development territory), let alone $100 million (let alone $2 billion).

NPR's Jacob Goldstein got wind of the story and did a bit of asking around. 

Why would a little deli in New Jersey need to be traded on the stock market at all? I asked Aswath Damodaran, a finance professor at New York University. And he pointed to another detail in the company's public filings. Many of the largest shareholders are based not in New Jersey, but in China. And he said one thing to note about many companies in China...

ASWATH DAMODARAN: The Chinese value a U.S. corporate structure.

GOLDSTEIN: Many companies in China want to be traded on the U.S. stock market. But it can be hard for those companies to go public the traditional way in the U.S. So the deli, Hometown International Inc., could provide a side door for a foreign company that wants to join the U.S. stock market. A foreign company could just merge with Hometown and avoid the scrutiny of a normal public offering.

DAMODARAN: So what it then creates is a structure you can use to bring almost any business in any other part of the world into a U.S. publicly traded company. (Source: NPR)

What with the New Jersey connection, I was thinking the Hometown was some sort of Soprano-like Satriale's Pork. Or the Bada-Bing. But this explanation makes sense.

CNBC also went after the story, which started gaining attention when a legit hedge fund manager noted in his newsletter that there was a weird little deli stock floating around in the OTC markets. (CNBC found all sorts of interesting, suspicious, mysterious things. They even went to Macao!  The article is definitely worth the read.)

With all the attention focused on Hometown International, business (in terms of selling hoagies) was probably up. But in terms of their stock:

Hometown International has seen had its stock demoted from a midtier over-the-counter trading platform because of irregularities in its public disclosures. OTC Markets Group at the same time slapped a “buyer beware” warning on Hometown International’s stock.

...Last Friday, Hometown International, in an extraordinary SEC filing, disavowed its market capitalization, saying that neither its revenues nor assets warranted such a high stock price. (Source: CNBC)

The New Yorker, meanwhile,  arranged for "a private valuation." They bought a few hoagies to the manager of Benvenutis, another Italian food shop, up the New Jersey Turnpike a bit. 

Ron Ferreira judged the sandwiches to be Wawa*-level quality—pretty good. But there were red flags. “Those pickles are cheap pickles, first of all,” he said. “If you’re a deli, get a fuckin’ pickle guy.”

There were also "supply-chain issues" that Ferreira commented on. (The New Yorker's visit to Hometown had found that the store was out of chicken - i.e., no chicken parm! - and that the roast beef wasn't cooked yet.)

“For them not to have chicken on a weekend? I don’t know, it doesn’t equate,” he said. “And they’re cooking the roast beef, and it’ll be ready tomorrow?” He went on, “It doesn’t sound kosher to me.” Asked for a target valuation for investors, Ferreira did some mental calculation and declared, “You’ve gotta look at the numbers. But it could be a fifty-thousand-dollar business.” (Source: The New Yorker)

Fifty-thousand? $100 million? $2 billion?

The stock market sure can be a crazy place, no?

Meanwhile, on my next trip to Worcester, I'm thinking of stopping in at Maury's for an Italian grinder. Wonder if it still smells as wonderful as it did when I was a kid?

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*Wawa's is a convenience store chain in the mid-Atlantic states.

As PPP scams go, this one's at least a bit interesting

Scammers gonna scam, and when there's "free money" around, scammers really gonna scam. And the Paycheck Protection Program (PPP) that the Feds created to help businesses stay afloat during the pandemic had lots of "free money" floating around. 

Scammers are deploying their "free money" in any number of ways: flash cars, new duds, gambling sprees. And for one local fellow, Dana McIntyre - most recently of  Vermont; prior to that of Massachusetts - the thing to do with the $661,000 loan he was able to secure was a bit more interesting than the run of the millers.

According to the complaint, McIntyre sold the Rasta Pasta Pizzeria in Beverly, Massachusetts, after receiving the loan. McIntyre then used the money to buy the farm, several alpacas, at least two vehicles and airtime for a radio show focused on cryptocurrency, authorities allege. (Source: VT Diggers. That's their alpaca pic, too.)

McIntyre got the loan by lying about the number of employees he had at Rasta Pasta. He claimed that he had about 50 people working for him. Turns out, it was fewer than 10.

While we're on the subject of Rasta Pasta: Rasta Pasta??? Jamaican, mon, combined with good old Italian-American Italian, run by a jerk named McIntyre in the tony North Shore town of Beverly. Every time I find myself judging the genius of the American experience, something like this pops up. 

Rasta Pasta, which McIntyre sold after he closed the PPP Deal, is closed at the moment. So no plain slice, no cannoli, no reggae bowl for you, my friend. You may have better luck enjoying the PPP-purchased farm ("the best little alpaca farm in Vermont"):

On its website, Houghtonville Farm advertises packages such as "The Alpaca Experience," the "Family Alpaca Picnic" and "Wine, Cheese and Alpaca!" at rates starting at $99 an hour. The farm's website also offers alpaca products and listed an "Opening Day" event for nearby residents last Saturday. (Source: Salem News)

They also advertise breeding with a "proven" chocolate-colored male. $950, if you've got a female alpaca and wouldn't mind having a few baby alpacas (they're called crias, by the way; and, yes, I had to look this up) frolicking around your back forty. And who wouldn't. If only I had a back forty...

I wonder where this leaves the folks who, (presumably) in good faith, sold their alpaca farm to McIntyre? Do they get to keep the money? Do the Feds now buy the farm, as it were?

Anyway, McIntyre seems to have been up to plenty of no good:

Investigators also allege that McIntyre set up fictitious companies in his children's names in an attempt to obtain disaster loans.

Because of course McIntyre wanted lots of PPP. After all, his needs - make that desires - went beyond the mere alpaca farm. In February, he spent over $2K at a cosmetic spa, and:

McIntyre also allegedly used PPP funds to pay for a classic 1950 Hudson, a GMC Sierra truck and $6,500 to pay for airtime on WBOQ, a North Shore radio station, to host a paid program called "The Dana Crypto Show" where he talked about cryptocurrency.

He won't be needed any money for airtime for his cryptocurrency show. The radio station has taken it off the air. 

Anyhow, it sure isn't surprising that this would-be alpaca farmer is also into cryptocurrency, is it? (McIntyre also had a company that ran bitcoin ATMs, whatever they are.)

In McIntyre's defense, some of the money he allegedly scammed went to Rasta Pasta employees. So there is that. 

But the whole megillah looks like Dana McIntyre saw his chance to pack in just about everything his little heart has ever desired. Alpaca farm! 1950 Hudson! Fancy spa treatments! And all that money just sitting out there, waiting to do some mighty wish fulfillment for him.

McIntyre also has some charitable activities in his past.

In the early 2000s, when he owned a landscaping business in Salem, McIntyre served as president of the Salem Rotary Club. He helped lead a team of members who went to Bolivia to assist in a program to help children born with cleft lip and cleft palate. He also organized an annual holiday party for children in the state's foster care system and led efforts to raise funds for a community center in Salem's Point neighborhood.

I guess there really is honor among thieves.

If he's found guilty, McIntyre is facing a ton of prison time, plus fines. He probably should have stuck with Rasta Pasta and crypto.

And I'm not saying that it means anything, but on his LinkedIn page, McIntyre has an endorsement from someone with the last name of Crook. 

You. Just. Can't. Make. This. Stuff. Up.

Delayed reaction to Laura Italiano's delayed reaction

It's been over a week now since the news hit the news that NY Post reporter Laura Italiano resigned because she'd been "ordered" to create some fake news. That fake news was an article making the claim that undocumented children arriving in the US were being given a goody bag that included Kamala Harris' 2019 kids' book, Superheroes Are Everywhere. 

Superheroes everywhere? Ah, would that it were true. 

Anyway, here's some of how the real news on the fake news came out:

“The Kamala Harris story — an incorrect story I was ordered to write and which I failed to push back hard enough against — was my breaking point,” Laura Italiano tweeted Tuesday [April 27th] afternoon, several hours after her viral article about the books had been deleted from the Post’s website and replaced with corrected versions. (Source: Washington Post)

The real news behind the fake news was that some folks in Long Beach, California, had run a drive to collect items - clothing, toys, books - to be stuffed into 'welcome kits' for these poor kiddos, and someone donated a copy of the VP's book. 

By the time Italiano spilled the tea, her story had been out for a few days and the right-wing rage factory -  including Fox "News", ultra-righties like Sen. Tom Cotton and Rep Jim Jordan, and the amazingly awful Ronna Romney McDaniel of the amazingly awful RNC - had been in the highest of dudgeon-y dudgeons. The braying was predictable. Can you imagine if a Republican had squandered taxpayer money to buy a book like this? Is Harris personally profiting from Joe Biden's border crisis?

Also by the time Italiano spilled the tea: the Washington Post Fact Checker had debunked her story.

So her reaction was just a tad bit delayed. 

It goes without saying that I can, of course, imagine a Republican squandering taxpayer money on all sorts of pocket-lining grifts. It pretty much also goes without saying that The New York Post, a right-wing rag that used to be NYC's ultra-liberal tabloid, is owned by none other than Rupert Murdoch.

And, of course, there is something so delish about McDaniel moaning and huffing about whether or not Harris was making bank if not illicitly, then sneakily.

McDaniel’s tweet is somewhat ironic. The Washington Post reported this month that the RNC used more than $400,000 in donated funds last year to buy copies of books written by Republican authors, potentially generating royalty payments.

Laura Italiano has been at The Post for over 20 years. Given that, it can't have been easy to up and leave. And especially given that newspaper jobs are drying up. Still, one would have wished that, rather than her delayed reaction to this issue, she'd spoken up right away. 

Easier said than done, of course. Giving up a paycheck? Outing the colleague who would have been forced to write the false story in her stead if she refused to do the deed? Exposing an organization that you presumably liked, if not loved. Even if it is The Post. Which does have its moments. It's not all tawdry BS. 

Twenty year is a long time. In stay-in-one-job terms, it's an eternity. Infinity and beyond. 

And Laura Italiano is no kid, either. (Her Linkedin profile is pretty sparse, but if she's been at The Post for 20+ years, she's at least in her mid-forties.) So, harder to look for and find a new gig, when newspaper employment is contracting.

So if quitting isn't exactly a profile in courage - or what passes for such these days - it ain't nothing. 

She does have at least one iron in the work fire: a musical.

PERP! is the brainchild of New York Post editor, writer and crime reporter Laura Italiano, who, in true Tabloid fashion, has been living a secret double life as a Thespian.

PERP! is a full-length book musical for six actors, and is currently under development, with Laura writing the book, music and lyrics and longtime arranger-collaborator Dewey Fleszar valiantly turning her cryptic pencil scrawlings into sheet music.

PERP! has had three developmental readings in NYC, including an Equity Cast Reading for the New Works Series of Emerging Artists Theatre. (Source: PERP!)

Not that this is likely to turn into anything, or at least anything that makes any money. (Plot: sweet Midwestern young naif finds herself in court, accused of being a serial puppy killer.) But it's still something.  

So good luck, Laura Italiano. However delayed your reaction, you broke whatever code of silence keeps journalists from speaking out/freaking out when they're required to write fake news. Now you've got time to focus on PERP! Why don't you go out and break a leg! 

Move over, Mayflower descendants

I read somewhere that there are 30 million folks who can trace their roots back to the Mayflower. Even after 400 years, this still sounds pretty wild, given that there were only 102 passengers and 30 crew members. Whether it's true or not, I'm 100% certain that I'm not one of the 30 million (or whatever the actual number is) descendants of the Mayflower.

My Irish antecedents - four paternal great-grandparents - emigrated in the 1870's. My German antecedents are a lot more recent. My grandparents, my toddler mother in tow, came over in the 1920's. Not much ante in that cedent! 

Years ago, I took my young nieces on a tour of a replica of the Mayflower, which is tied up in Plymouth Harbor, a stone's throw from Plymouth Rock, where the Pilgrims most likely didn't step their first toe in the New World in 1620. Make that most likely impossible that their first land onto new world land, given that the Pilgrims had first come ashore in Provincetown. 

What I remember most about the Mayflower was how compact the ship was. (Sorry: couldn't resist; Mayflower Compact? Get it now?) This tiny primitive boat, crammed full of people, heading into the unknown.

In comparison, my Irish great-grandparents, and my German grandparents and mother, came over in relative luxury. Comparatively speaking, their experiences, while not exactly luxe, was probably closer to what one might experience on the Queen Mary than to what was suffered by the Mayflower-ees.

While on their way, the Pilgrims had to contend with rough waters. Cold. (The Mayflower left England in early September 1620, and arrived on these shores in mid-December - just in time for a good old fashioned New England winter. During which nearly half of the new arrivals perished.) Spoiled water. Ghastly food. Scurvy all round. Sea sickness galore. Boredom. Rats. 

And I can't begin to imagine what the Mayflower smelled like. I suspect that, back in the day, folks went nose-blind pretty quickly.

And yet enough of them survived to spawn, over the centuries, 30 million descendants. Alright, alright, alright.

They'll be getting more company from a different branch. Only these descendants won't exactly be human. They'll be more advanced technologies that are spawned by all the sensors, analytical tools, and AI that's manning the Mayflower Autonomous Ship (AS). The Mayflower 400 is heading this way soon, coming across the Atlantic with nary a captain nor crew member on board. 

As the good ship next-gen Mayflower makes it from Plymouth, England, to Plymouth, Massachusetts, it will be "the first unmanned vessel to navigate its own way across the Atlantic Ocean." (The ship is also referred to as the  Mayflower 400 because its voyage was supposed to coincide with the 400th anniversary of the original Mayflower
journey.)

The vessel has artificial intelligence technology and in-built computer systems to measure sea levels, the chemical content of the ocean, and record audio to track whale populations.

The goal is that autonomous ships like the Mayflower 400 will allow the collection of much more data than manned vessels alone - and be far less expensive...

The ship will be monitored from land using the cameras and sensors aboard and can be remotely controlled in an emergency. The AI-trained "captain" - the vessel's onboard computer - has been trained using thousands of images and collision avoidance rules that it gradually learns from.(Source: EuroNews)

This is all completely cool and interesting. Sure, Mayflower AS might run into terrible weather and rough seas. But there'll be no rats, seasickness, or scurvy. The place won't stink. 

No Plymouth Rock to disembark onto, but that's no great loss. I hope the landlubbers monitoring the trip will at least break out into an occasional sea chanties.

Meanwhile, I wish the good ship Mayflower AS fair winds and following seas. 

How much is that doggy up for lease now? The one with the waggly tail?

Honestly. I really do want to get a dog. I just haven't gotten around to it. Yet. Which is not surprising, given that there are plenty of other things I haven't gotten around to. Yet. And that medium-long list includes filing my taxes for 2020. (I've got until May 17th. What's the hurry?)

But I do have dog hunger, and am happy to live in a doggy building, where there are four doggos to pet.

The one I know best is Frankie, some sort of yellow lab mix mutt who was rescued from South Carolina last year. He's still a pup - maybe a year old - and until my friend and neighbor, Brian, acquired him, he'd never been indoors. 

I usually see Frankie every day, at least for a quick hello and scratch under the chin (his, not mine). He is most definitely a cutenik. 

Frankie is a funny bunny. For one thing, for a dog who started out on Tobacco Road, Frankie is pretty fussy when it comes to snacks. When Brian told me that the Frank-ster preferred soft chicken snacks, I got the best ones that CVS had to offer. Frankie turned his snout up at them. (I don't blame him: they smelled pretty nasty.)

So I went to the South End Polka Dog, part of a small Boston pet store chain that specializes in handcrafted, artisanal dog treats. There, I bought two types of handcrafted, artisanal dog treats. Frankie doesn't like either. 

Fortunately, Frito, an ancient, roly-poly chihuahua who doesn't live here but visits frequently, is fine with anything. So I get to unload some of the handcrafted, artisanal dog treats when he blows in. 

Still, it amazes me that Frankie is such a snack snob.

Nonetheless, I'm quite fond of him and enjoy my daily mini-visits with him.

The other day, headed out for a walk, I ran into Brian and Frank and volunteered to take Franko out for a spin. Brian a) warned me that Frank's a tugger, and b) couldn't find the harness leash. So out I went with a regular old leash, and quickly found out that Frank is, indeed, a tugger. At one point, I thought he was going to pull my shoulder out of its socket. Not to mention that he's not yet fixed, so he feels the need to squirt on every street light, trash bin, bush, wrought iron fence, and bush that he comes across. 

Other than that, it was a very pleasant walk: a beautiful day, out with a cute dog. 

What's not to like?

When I do get around to getting my dog, I'll be happy with a rescue like Frank or a breeder-bought dog (in which case: Lab). My only rules are no pit bulls and no little yappers. And although I'm not going to deny that cuteness doesn't matter,  the dog in my future doesn't have to be as cute as Frankie.

What I will not be doing is going to a pet store to purchase the doggy in the window, the one with the waggly tail. 

And the last thing I'd ever do was lease a dog, a practice that I had never heard of until I saw an article the other day about a couple of (where-else) Nevada-based companies that:

...waived dog-lease balances totaling more than $126,000 after they allegedly illegally leased dogs in Massachusetts, Attorney General Maura Healey’s office announced Thursday...Dog leases function similarly to those of cars where the consumer is required to make monthly payments for the duration of the lease before making a final payment and taking ownership of the dog. If a dog owner misses a payment, the dog could be repossessed by the pet store, Healey’s office said. (Source: Boston Globe)

These outfits were violating Massachusetts law, which forbids dog leases in our fair commonwealth, in part because the interest rates charged our pretty hefty - in some cases more than doubling the cost of the pet. Not to mention that it's just plain awful, all the way around, if a leased dog - as opposed to a leashed dog - is repossessed. 

The good news for anyone who bought their pup through a retailer and took out one of these leases is that any balances owed are now wiped out. Plus any payments made since January 1st are being refunded. And everyone gets to keep their dog. 

I understand why someone would want to get a dog. This year especially, there's been a huge demand for them. When I checked last fall with the area's largest rescue shelter (the place where my sister had gotten her late, beloved rescue Jack) they'd closed their waiting list. That list had 14,000 names on it. 

So you want a dog. There are no rescues. Going to a breeder for a healthy pure-bred dog is a costly proposition. But you want a dog. And that leaves dog-napping or the pet store in the mall. (Not that pet store dogs are cheap; they're just likely to be less expensive than a dog raised by an AKC breeder - as long as you don't factor in the finances charges)

When it comes to acquiring a dog, pet stores do have some advantages (however dubious those advantages might be). They're more convenient that seeking out a good breeder. There's no background checking. And you can make an impulse buy. 

While I would never go the pet shop route, I get why someone looking for a dog might walk by some pet shop and fall in love with the doggy in the window. Even if that doggy in the window is likely to be a poorly bred puppy mill pupper with health and temperament issues just around the corner. And if you can't afford the upfront costs and someone offers you a lease, and you really want that dog, I'm sure it's pretty easy to take on a lease.  

And leasing fits with the overall leasing/renting vs. owning trend. People rent clothing for fancy occasions, rent hats for British weddings. I know a ton of people who lease their cars rather than purchase them outright. 

But that's a hat. That's a car. 

Not a love-bug doggo who becomes part of the family. Sure, it's not as bad as leasing a kid. But it's right up there.

There's a common meme on Twitter that goes "we don't deserve dogs."

And dogs sure don't deserve to get accustomed to a home and then get ripped out of it when their owners can't make the rent payments. 

A big arf and a woof of tail-wagging approval to our AG Maura Healey. 

Bwana Wayne LaPierre, failed big game hunter

IMHO, there's not much to like about Wayne LaPierre. On the contrary, there's plenty to despise about the fellow who heads the odious and malign National Rifle Association. This is, after all, the man who, in the wake of the Sandy Hook massacre of so many sweet little ones, told those of us clamoring for some gun regulations (we were all thinking if not now, when?) that "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun." Even, I guess, if that good guy with a gun would need to have been a first grader. 

Wayne LaPierre. What's not to despise?

As I've said many times - in fact, just a week or so ago - I am not anti-gun. If people want to go deer hunting, fine. I eat meat, too. If people want a handgun for "protection", have at it: just make sure your kids can't get at it. But our rabid gun culture is beyond belief. And I really hate those hunts where "hunters" kill nearly-penned in animals. Where they use assault rifles to do their dirty deed. And when they murder non-game animals - like elephants - for the hell of it.

In any case, I wasn't surprised to learn that it's just come out that, a year after Sandy Hook, LaPierre went to Botswana to bag an African bush elephant, "the largest land mammal on Earth."

The trip was filmed by a crew from “Under Wild Skies,” an N.R.A.-sponsored television series that was meant to boost the organization’s profile among hunters—a key element of its donor base. But the program never aired, according to sources and records, because of concerns that it could turn into a public-relations fiasco. (Source: The New Yorker)

That fiasco would have come about because it turns out that Bwana Wayne is not much of a shot: 

After LaPierre’s first shot wounded the elephant, guides brought him a short distance from the animal, which was lying on its side, immobilized. Firing from point-blank range, LaPierre shot the animal three times in the wrong place. Finally, a guide had the host of “Under Wild Skies” fire the shot that killed the elephant. Later that day, Susan LaPierre showed herself to be a better shot than her husband. After guides tracked down an elephant for her, Susan killed it, cut off its tail, and held it in the air. “Victory!” she shouted, laughing. “That’s my elephant tail. Way cool.”

"Way cool," huh? Have I already used the words odious and malign?

I have long suspected that Wayne LaPierre isn't exactly a gun nut. He was born in Schenectady. His father worked for GE as an accountant. He went to Siena College, then Boston College. Not that you can't have a conversion experience, but none of this suggests someone primed and ready to become a big time gun aficionado. More the cynical executive type, who knows a good thing when he sees it. And he saw a good (ka-ching) thing in the NRA. 

As we learned during the NRA bankruptcy trial (oh, boo-hoo), and from other legal findings, Wayne likes living in the lap of luxury. It has been revealed, among other things, that the NRA dressed Wayne in $300K worth of Ermenegildo Zegna over the course of 14 years.

All the while, the NRA was running ads saying that:

...the group’s coalition includes “steelworkers,” “cowboys,” “hard-rock miners,” “swamp folks in Cajun country who can wrestle a full-grown gator out of the water,” “the mountain men who live off the land,” and “the brave cops who fight the good fight in the urban war zones.”

Do hard-rock miners and swamp folks wear $4,000 suits? Asking for a friend. 

Wayne didn't wear Zegna on his safari:

The footage of LaPierre in Botswana first shows him walking through the bush dressed in loose-fitting safari attire and an NRA Sports baseball cap. 

The everyman's gear didn't improve his hunting skills much. 

He got off a shot, but it was ill timed and wasn't a shoot to kill. The animal was still alive. The guide brings him over to finish things off, but Wayne shoots the poor creature in the wrong place. He shoots again and misses. Despite the fact that the guides are guiding him every step of the way. Then there's another misguided miss. A friend accompanying the expedition finishes the elephant off.

“That’s it,” the guide declares, before turning to the N.R.A. chief to congratulate him.

Congratulate him for what, exactly? Maybe you had to be there.

The friend who actually killed the elephant has nothing but praise for his buddy: 

“You dropped him like no tomorrow.”

Well, no tomorrow for the elephant, anyway. 

As noted, his wife Susan was a better shot:

“That was amazing,” Susan says, patting her chest. “Wow. My heart is racing. I feel great.” She walks over to the elephant. “That was awesome. Awesome. Awesome. Awesome.” She inspects the elephant, bends at the waist, and seems to think the elephant is still alive. “Aww, he’s still there. Look at his eyes.” She places her hand on her chest, laughs, walks around the elephant, and pats one of its tusks. “Beautiful animal,” she says, and then, speaking to the elephant, “You’re a good old guy. A real good old guy.”

She grows emotional and appears to choke up, then asks a guide about the elephant’s age.“Must be close to fifty years old, I would say,” the guide says. “You think so?” she asks. “That’s exactly what I wanted. An old bull. Near the end of his age.”

Wayne LaPierre is 71, so Susan has another old bull on her hands. Or maybe he's just an old bullshitter.

I hope he's good and embarrassed that this video has finally come out. It would be too much to hope that he'd be good and ashamed. 

Anyway, this whole scene is another elephant on the table of the NRA: their big dog, Bwana Wayne LaPierre, can't hunt.

Unmasking Day

This is me. Out for a walk early last April. When masks were recommended but not yet fully mandated. That came in early May of 2020.

I am wearing a primitive mask, fashioned - following instructions found on YouTube - out of a linen table napkin and rubber bands. None of the masks I'd ordered (in a frenzy) from Etsy had arrived yet, and my friend Joe hadn't yet dropped off a box of the blue "hospital style" masks for me.

Each day, I tracked the many Etsy vendors I'd ordered from. Everything was back-ordered. Shipping dates were vague - or well in the future.

I made another DIY mask, this time using a bandana and rubber bands.

My sister Trish got out her sewing machine and made me a couple: a nice red plaid and another using a remnant of the blue-butterfly-on-cream-background material my mother had used to make me a cute little cotton jumper when I was in college. Fifty years ago.

Trish drove the masks into Boston, and I had a masked, curb-side meeting with her and my niece Molly. I gave them a packet of off-brand Walgreen's toilet paper I'd managed to scrounge.

I kept checking on Etsy for the whereabouts of all the masks I'd ordered. For the black cotton knits with the ear loops. For the black cotton knits with the grey stripe down the middle. The white cotton ones with the double elastics that reminded me of the scratching bras I'd worn in high school. (My family didn't yet have a dryer. Those bras came off the line stiff. It was painful to put one on, until your body warmed it up.) Everything was backordered. Everything was delayed. I pictured Etsy-ers around the country frantically running their sewing machines to take advantage of the bonanza demand for masks.

On Amazon, I ordered a couple of gaiters for my brother, figuring they would be easier to get on, given that he wears a hearing aid. They weren't. I ordered boxes of the "hospital blues" for myself, my brother, my cousin. Some latex gloves while I was at it.

The Etsy masks began to arrive. And I now had some of the disposables. 

Even in the worst, early days of the pandemic, I took a walk every day. Most of the days, I recall as overcast and gloomy. 

No one was out. Just me and my homemade - and later Etsy - mask.

Other than on weekends, if it were nice out, there was no one on the Esplanade. It was a bit scary. I stopped walking there. No one was in the Public Garden, either. It wasn't as scary, but I mostly stopped walking there, too. Other than on weekends.

When I walked downtown on my infrequent trips to the grocery store, there was no one about, other than menacing men approaching me for money. I took to carrying a supply of five-dollar bills. I couldn't blame any of these guys for not wanting to go into a shelter. They had deathtrap written all over them.

On the sidewalk near Government Center, I didn't step out of the way fast enough, or in the right direction, for the hefty, late middle-aged man barreling towards me on a bicycle. We both swerved, avoiding a collision. He called me a "fucking ho." (He was a white guy, by the way.) Me? A "fucking ho?" Right.

I took to walking only on streets where there was a bit of activity. I paced up and down Charles Street, and when I was feeling more adventurous, I walked on Boylston.

There weren't many people out walking. Everyone had on a mask. When I made a rare sighting of a mask-less person, I thought to myself: out-of-stater, Trumpist.

I bought a nice mask at a gift shop on Charles Street: a scene of the Boston Public Garden. Almost too nice to wear.

I ordered a couple of Red Sox masks. One barely fits. They must have sent me kiddo-size by mistake. The other is high end - made by the same folks (47 Brand) who make all the ball caps.

As fall approached, I ordered a bunch more masks from Etsy: Halloween themed (jack-o'lantern, candy corn). Christmas/winter themed (snowflakes, holly, a fun scene of Christmas shoppers). One with a tri-color shamrock for St. Patrick's Day. 

On Zazzle, I "designed" and ordered some masks with the Christmas in the City logo and mailed them out to some fellow volunteers. (Christmas in the City is a Boston-charity that is primarily focused on holiday events for families living in shelters or otherwise in need.) I made a few more up, which one of my fellow volunteers "sold" in exchange for a donation to CITC, so we raised a bit of money for the cause.

Wearing a mask was a drag. I could breathe just fine, but no matter what trick I tried - a small wad of kleenex, a foam press-on nose strip -  half the time my glasses fogged up and I ended up taking them off. 

I yearned for the day when the mask requirement would be lifted.

Monday evening, I headed out for a little spin around the 'hood to top off my mileage for the day. I was halfway down the block when I realized I'd gone out without wearing a mask. I bolted back home for it. I didn't want anyone to think I was an out of towner, an anti-vaxxer, a Trumpist.

Boston, at least where I am, has been about 99.9999% mask compliant. It has been rare and startling to see anyone without a mask on. But things were starting to crack. I'd occasionally - but still rarely - see people, usually couples, about my age, going mask less on their walks. And they didn't look like out of towners, anti-vaxxers, Trumpists. 

Still, I remained cautious. Compliant. 

On Tuesday, the CDC announced that it was okay (if you were vaxxed, and I am!) to be outside without a mask on. Masks off! Immediately!

For some reason - power move? - our governor, Charlie Baker, decreed that the mask requirement wouldn't be lifted until Friday, April 30th. No reason given. No why it was medically important to wait until Friday. Just because.

But there really didn't seem to be any compelling reason to wait. So on Wednesday, I decided to venture out mask-less. 

It felt liberating. It felt good. It also felt a bit edgy, deviant. That also felt good.

It was rainy and gloomy when I began my walk. I barely passed a soul. Other than for a fellow about my age who walked by mask-free, his mask dangling from his wrist. "Feels pretty good, doesn't it?" I said. "Sure does," he replied, smiling. Later on during my walk, the sun was burning through. On the Esplanade I passed more folks without masks. Most were like me: old geezers who I assume were fully vaxxed. We all smiled and nodded as we passed each other. 

Some of the runners out were going mask-free, as well.

Who cares?

When I got back to Charles Street, where it's more crowded, I did put my mask back on.

Everyone was wearing one, other than this one 50-ish guy - beefy, florid-faced, sockless loafers: looked like a classic aging DB - who was swaggering down the street without a mask on. Trumpist, for sure.

The pandemic isn't over-over. We're still a long way, especially if the know-nothing anti-vaxxers persist in their stupidity and the covid variants take off.  And I'm going to be wearing a mask when I'm in a store for the foreseeable future. Maybe even beyond that. 

But it's starting to look like the beginning of the end. 

So happy to be able to celebrate Unmasking Day, even though I jumped the gun on it a bit. 

Robots? Human-ape hybrids? What do you want replacing you?

On the one hand, we have to worry about robots, chock full of AI, taking over and replacing us. Now, I guess, we'll also have to contend with the fear - that, admittedly, has been lurking there at the back of our minds for a good long while - that scientists, milling around their labs in their little white lab coats, have been up to no Petri dish good. And we were right to have that lurking little fear.

As I recently saw in the news, those wily scientists "have created embryos that are a mix of human and monkey cells." Well I'll be a monkey's uncle. Or aunt. Or something.

The embryos, described...in the journal Cell, were created in part to try to find new ways to produce organs for people who need transplants, said the international team of scientists who collaborated in the work. But the research raises a variety of concerns.

"My first question is: Why?" said Kirstin Matthews, a fellow for science and technology at Rice University's Baker Institute. "I think the public is going to be concerned, and I am as well, that we're just kind of pushing forward with science without having a proper conversation about what we should or should not do." (Source: NPR)

When it comes to that first question, I'm with Kristin Matthews. And not that I want to take part in a proper conversation, but I sure hope the scientists and ethicists, and the scientific ethicists, and the ethical scientists, are having that convo. 

I understand the importance of organ transplant. I have a cousin whose husband got about twenty bonus years out of life thanks to his heart transplant. A close friend's cousin was kept alive for about the same number of years with a double lung transplant.  My father died in his fifties of kidney disease. Perhaps if kidney transplants were more of the norm back then, and there'd been a kidney out there with his name on it, he'd have gotten a few decades more, too.

Demand for organs outstrips supply, and plenty of people die while on lists, waiting for some unlucky person to get killed in a car crash and have their organs harvested. So, yep, there's definitely a need for more organs. 

And I realize that just mucking around with a few cells suspended in agar (or whatever they suspend cells in nowadays) isn't necessarily going to end us up with Zira and Cornelius from Planet of the Apes. Nobody's  - at least nobody that we know of - is trying to create a hybrid human. Yet.

Such mixed-species embryos are known as chimeras, named for the fire-breathing creature from Greek mythology that is part lion, part goat and part snake.

Sure, there's part of me - a fully human part, I must say - that wouldn't mind seeing something that was part lion, part goat and part snake. But part human, part monkey. Not so much. That little DNA mix is a tad bit too close for comfort. Then there's another crazy killer virus to worry about if, say, the monkey had been in touch with a carrier pangolin or a bat.

Nonetheless, I'm sure that, from a scientific perspective, this fiddling around could produce something valuable. Still...

But this type of scientific work and the possibilities it opens up raises serious questions for some ethicists. The biggest concern, they said, is that someone could try to take this work further and attempt to make a baby out of an embryo made this way. Specifically, the critics worry that human cells could become part of the developing brain of such an embryo — and of the brain of the resulting animal...Another concern is that using human cells in this way could produce animals that have human sperm or eggs.

And if one of those boy monkeys with human sperm ends up meeting up with a girl monkey with a human egg, say by swiping right on Tinder, the rest could be a mighty gruesome history. 

Of course, we all know it's going to happen. Not in the well-run, supervised labs at universities or the NIH or the CDC. But in some crazy rogue lab somewhere, staffed by crazy rogue scientists.

Maybe it's just me, but I'd rather be replaced by a robot than by something that's half human/half ape. (Now that I think of it, when I look around at some of the folks out there, maybe half ape wouldn't be half bad.)

So much to worry about, so little time.

Tis the season for the swag bag

On Sunday night, the Oscars ceremony was held. 

In keeping with tradition, I didn't watch it.

Even when I was in my film-going prime, the Academy Awards have never been all that interesting to me. The one year I remember watching was the year "Spotlight" won, which made me happy. But not so happy that I'd turn the Oscars on again. Even before we had the word 'meh' in our vocabulary, I was pretty much 'meh' on the Oscars. Too long. Too self-indulgent. Too self-congratulatory. Meh. And it's even meh-ier because I see so few movies. 

I just looked at the list. Most of them, I'll get around to seeing. Eventually. But a couple I've never even heard of.

What I do like looking at, however, is what's in the annual swag bag - the rich-get-richer goodies given to the nominees for the primo awards (best actor, actress, and director).   

The bag is stuffed - by marketing firm Distinctive Assets - with gifts valued at $205K (down by $20K from last year; talk about austerity). Stuffed with stuff that nobody actually needs (and that plenty of people just plain don't want), but it's a pretty good way to get some publicity for your products and services. (One year "Amy Adams was photographed wearing the “Strong is the New Skinny” T-shirt the day after her bag was delivered." ) And if you ask the company that puts them together, the swag bags serve a higher purpose.

“We did want the bags to feel like they had a bigger purpose than just, ‘Here's a bag full of free stuff,’” said Distinctive Assets 49-year-old founder Lash Fary, whose marketing company takes pains to make it clear the Academy has no association with the freebies. “So all of the bags that we've been doing have been from female-owned businesses, black-owned businesses, disabled entrepreneurs and companies who give back — even ones that you wouldn't necessarily think give back.” (Source: Forbes)

Side note: who names their kid Lash? Especially if your last name is Fary. 

What's in there?

• Little munchies like cookies and nuts
• Workout sessions with a celebrity trainer I've never heard of, unless you count my having heard of him in a previous post of a swag bag of yore
• A liposuction treatment
• Project management for the giftee's next home reno project
• High end covid masks
• An intravenous, immunity-bolstering vitamin infusion
• Antioxidants
• Breast health supplements 
• Candles made using essential oils (but of course: they don't call them oils essential for nothing)
• An acupuncture disc "which uses soundwaves instead of needles to promote healing" (and which I might actually look up; too bad I'm not nominated for anything. Wait until next year!)
• 24-karat gold vape cartridges 
• CBD sleep capsules
• Hemp salve (might be good in combo with that acupuncture disc!)
• A coffee table book called the "Don't Cookbook", which includes a QR code you can scan to find out which nearby restaurants can deliver avocado toast to your door. (Higher purpose alert: "A portion of the proceeds from each sale benefits restaurant workers affected by the pandemic.")
• Fancy tequila, bourbon, and vodka infused with "23-karat edible gold flakes." (What? No 24-karat edible gold flakes available?)
• For non-imbibers: tea
• Three pairs of sneakers selected by a personal shopper (selections chosen on the basis of a "style quiz" you've taken).
• A sweatshirt. Socks.

Most of the things in the bag are hang-around-the-house stuff. But there are two getaways in there: a four-night stay at a fancy SoCal spa, and a three-night stay in a lightkeeper's cottage (converted into a boutique hotel) on an island off the coast of Sweden - nicely socially distanced, this one!

Among the more eclectic gifts: A PETA emergency hammer to save dogs trapped in hot cars; the Poetry for Neanderthals game from Exploding Kittens (which comes with its own 2-foot inflatable club for bashing opponents); Tractive, a GPS location and activity tracker for pets; and the Muse S: The Brain Sensing Headband sleep tracker. And, in a nod to one of the media's latest fascinations, a non-fungible token. AdVenture Media and Taillard Capital will drop an NFT into each nominee’s gift bag that authenticates a piece of digital artwork to be auctioned off with proceeds benefiting a charity of the nominee’s choice. Funds raised from the sale of a Chadwick Boseman tribute NFT will benefit colon cancer foundations. The actor, who died in August at the age of 43, is nominated posthumously for a lead actor.

I'm not sure whether the Oscars are in-person or virtual this year, but the swag bags are being delivered via Postmates. 

I've got to say that some of the goodies look pretty good. But spare me the NFT and the "Brain Sensing Headband sleep tracker." I'll sense my own brain, thank you.

And in case you're wondering: giftees have to pay taxes on any gift they accept. 

Hurray for Hollywood!

Software quality assurance, anyone?

By now, most of us are familiar with convictions being overturned and innocent people being released from prison. The stories are often quite dramatic, and the ones I've seen generally involve those who've been incarcerated for a good long time for violent crimes. They're sprung because the real perpetrator makes a deathbed confession; a key witness admits they lied; it turns out that the police and/or the DA's office fudged evidence (i.e., lied) to close a case or because in their gut they were sure someone was guilty and made the evidence fit their theory; or, increasingly, because DNA evidence proves their innocence. 

We see on the news a video of release day: the joyous family meeting their loved one at the prison gates. The newly freed person learning how to use a smart phone, an ATM, a keyless car. There's often some compensation for wrongful conviction - but never enough to make up for a decade, or two, or three, or four away from family and friends. Away from life.

There must be some instances, but I can't recall any convictions being overturned in a white collar/financial crime situation. 

But a big one has just taken place in the UK. 

For the past 20 years UK Post Office employees have been dealing with a piece of software called Horizon, which had a fatal flaw: bugs that made it look like employees stole tens of thousands of British pounds.

This led to some local postmasters being convicted of crimes, even being sent to prison, because the Post Office doggedly insisted the software could be trusted. After fighting for decades, 39 people are finally having their convictions overturned, after what is reportedly the largest miscarriage of justice that the UK has ever seen. (Source: The Verge)

In total, over the period between 2000 and 2014, more than 700 Post Office employees were prosecuted. Dozens went to prison. Many lost their jobs, their marriages, time with their kids, and money, as they scrabbled around, remortgaging their homes to repay the losses that were not their fault. One man accused of stealing £100,000 committed suicide. (And damned if his replacement wasn't also found to have had is hand in the till, too.)

All caused by bugs in the system, which the PO had purchased from Fujitsu.

Finally, those who were caught up in this nightmare are having their convictions over turned, having their good names restored, and being paid damages. 

It's amazing to me that, during this period when the Horizon system was playing "J'accuse!", no one bothered to take a good, close look at the software to see whether the reported discrepancies were actual. 

There's also something called "software quality assurance" that doesn't seem to have been used here. 

These days, I don't spend a lot of time thinking about software quality assurance, but years ago - make that decades - I worked for a software company which had an automated test tool as its main product. So I did have to spend a lot of time thinking, writing, and talking about software testing. Boring, but necessary.

So I can state with some authority - because some authorities just never expire - that Fujitsu should have done a better job testing their systems. And the UK Post Office should have done rigorous acceptance testing to begin with, and have torn this software apart looking for bugs once all these faux discrepancies began showing up. 

Anyway, rather than check on whether the software was working, the Post Office dug in, arguing that "the errors couldn’t have been be the fault of the computer system."

And get this: that was "despite knowing that wasn’t true."

There is evidence that the Post Office’s legal department was aware that the software could produce inaccurate results, even before some of the convictions were made.

Wow. I don't know how litigious the UK is, but can you imagine the law suits that would be flying in The States if this happened here? 

And we thought Louis DeJoy was bad news. 

Teddy Ballgame got some NFT ballgame going. Or not.

In 1999, the baseball All Star Game was played at Fenway Park. The highlight of the game was Ted Williams, not quite -  but almost  - metaphorically rounding third and heading for home base on his last legs, coming onto the field, driven in a golf cart. It was quite a scene, especially when all of the current players spontaneously swarmed around Teddy Ballgame to say a few words. Or just to get close to such an iconic and legendary baseball player.

The moment was somewhat clouded by the fact that Ted wasn't wearing a Red Sox cap. (His entire career was with the Sox.) Instead of navy blue with the big red B, Ted was wearing a cap bearing the logo of his son John Henry's business, an internet services provider that went belly up a couple of years later.

Ted went belly up a couple of years later, as well, but not before John Henry had his father spending his final years autographing baseballs for John Henry to sell.

(Then there was the weirdo thing where John Henry and his sister Claudia had their father's dead body sent to a cryogenics facility in Arizona to be put on ice while awaiting science and technology to reach the moment when the bodies in deep freeze could be thawed back to life. Ted's situation was made even weirdo-ier in that his dead body was decapitated, and head and body are being stored separately.)

Sadly, young Williams only outlived his father by a couple of years, and died of leukemia at the age of 35.

And now John Henry's sister has taken up the mantle of making a profit off of their late, great father's memory. Claudia Williams has gotten an artist to create a series of nine (Ted's player number) non-fungible tokens (NFT's - digital representations of a work of art, video, etc.). She's using the same artist, Andre Maciel, that football star Rob Gronkowski employed to create his NFT's, which last month sold for a cool $1.6M.

What's up for auction over on TedWilliams.com are those NFT's the different Ted-related art works. 

"My life's goal is to keep my dad as relevant and inspirational as ever," Claudia Williams said last week in a telephone interview from her Florida home. "I want to leave his legacy behind when his last surviving child is gone." (Source: ESPN)

I may not have much by way of a life's goal - if it finally shows up, it'll be too little, too late - but I can hear my father laughing his arse off if he thought that any of his kids had a life goal of keeping him "relevant and inspirational." That is, of course, largely because my father wasn't Ted Williams, and he only had to be relevant and inspirational to his children. And as long as we're alive, he will be - even if it's not exactly anyone's life goal. 

It's probably also worth mentioning that, as long as baseball is played, Ted Williams will always be "relevant and inspirational" even if Claudia Williams sits back and does nothing.

As I noted, there are nine NFT's - they look like baseball cards - and, for eight of them, there are nine copies. The other is a one-off which comes with additional goodies, including an autographed bat and a 3-night stay at a house in Vermont where Ted once lived. 

"It's all about inspiration and honoring my dad," she said. "I am very much my father's daughter: I do not do squat if I don't feel passionate about it."

Without sounding too cynical, I'm guessing that Claudia thought it might not be a bad idea to cash in on NFT mania. Maybe she found inspiration from Rob Gronkowski's NFT success. Perhaps the thought of making a lot money without having to actually do squat other than lining up the artist evoked a bit of passion in Ms. Williams. 

She may well find herself a tad bit disappointed. 

The auction started on April 19th and ended on the 24th. When I looked at the auction website on Friday, it struck me that, when it comes to NFT's, Ted Williams is apparently no Rob Gronkowski. Some of the NFT's had zero bids, or bids as low as $2.31. The big prize - the one that included the stay Chez Ted - had been bid up to $1,115: a far cry from the estimated value of $8K.

I grew up a Ted Williams' fan. In my first game at Fenway, in July 1960, I saw Ted - in his final year - hit a homerun. It was a complete and utter thrill. (For a short while, I even kept a Ted Williams scrapbook of articles I clipped out of the sports pages. I was, of course, too lazy to keep up with anything, and quickly grew tired of this "effort.")

Anyway, as a fan of Teddy Ballgame - and as a Worcester girl - if I were to place a bid in this auction, it would be on a limited edition NFT of Williams' debut in a Red Sox uniform, which occurred in April 1939 at an exhibition game played at Holy Cross College's Fitton Field. 

My father was both a baseball fan and an excellent (semi-pro level) baseball player. He took in a lot of games at Fitton Field (and also at Fenway Park; he and one of his uncles would regularly drive into Boston for night games when they were something of a rarity). So I wouldn't be surprised if he was at this game. (Alas, there's no way to find out.)

"Daddy was so about cutting edge," [Claudia Williams] said. "When he learned about something new, he embraced it. He might say, '... I don't know the first thing about this NFT, but I think it's great.' But he would learn about it, and he would love it."

Well, I know the first thing about NFT's, and that's about as far as it goes. So I know that, unless I bid using bitcoin, I can't participate in the auction. Alas! I certainly have $2.31 to spare on one of these new-fangled EFTs. Unlike "Daddy", I am not, however, cutting edge. 

And I'm guessing that most of those who are enamored of Ted Williams aren't either. I suspect most of those who are collectors with an interest in Ted Williams memorabilia are old school. They'd like a physical baseball card signed by Ted. A shirt he wore in a game. Etc.

With luck, Claudia Williams will at least earn back what she paid the artist. But I'm thinking that she ain't going to get rich quick on this one. Maybe an NFT of Ted's cryogenic head? Maybe the cryogenic head itself?

At some point, I'll check back and see how the auction shook out. But I'm guessing this auction ain't got much game. 

A head-turning urn

Terrible picture, but that tiny green Connemara marble urn, flanked by that pretty little pinecone lidded vase and the Russian nesting doll I've had since college (50+ years!) holds a bit of my husband's ashes - the bit that went on a flight into space, which was one of his final wishes.

Most of Jim's ashes are resting in an ash plot in Mt. Auburn Cemetery, where my ashes will be joining his at some point - I'm hoping in the more-or-less distant-y future. Although I visit my parents' grave a couple of times a year, I've only visited Jim's ash plot a couple of times in seven years. That's because a bit of him is with me, in my living room, on the mantel, where I see him/them every day.

In addition to his space shot on my mantel, Jim's ashes have been around, scattered, teaspoon at a time, in a bunch of places that were on his request list. These include the graves of his parents and his aunt and uncle, Central Park, Galway Bay, and Sky Road in Connemara. I have a small amount in my credenza in a plastic container that I want to scatter in the remaining places on Jim's bucket-y list. As it involves a trip to Paris, I really do hope to get around to it at some point.

Anyway, I'm not averse to talking about/dealing with the death of loved ones. It does not creep me out to have Jim's ashes nearby. On the contrary...

Still, I was weirded - if not creeped - out by an article I recently came across on Cremation Solutions, a company that sells all sorts of, well, cremation solutions (i.e., things to do with those ashes). The company's product portfolio includes all sorts of urns - marble, stone, ceramic, glass, wood - many of them quite lovely. Some which look a look like my Connemara mini. 

I am not, of course, weirded, let alone creeped, out by any of this. But I was by one of their offerings:

...commemorative urns shaped like the severed heads of deceased loved ones.

The Vermont-based company, which specialises in memorial events and cremation products, has made the containers using 3D imaging techniques that combine a number of different photographs. The full-sized urn is around 28cm high, and can hold the ashes of an adult. There is also a smaller 15cm “keepsake” option that fits just a portion of the ashes.

The Vermont-based company informs customers on its website that the urn does not come with hair although it can be digitally added or wigs can be used. It writes: “Personal urns can be designed to look like anyone. We just need good pictures. We prefer one picture from the front and one from the side. Complexions can be adjusted in the final stages and customers get a chance to proof the results.” (The ur source for this is a vintage - 2012 - article from UK Wired, but I saw first saw the mention on Print Media Centr)

Don't know how I missed this one back in the day, other than to say that in 2012 I was not yet in the market for an urn.

Anyway, the urn doesn't actually have to be personal-personal. "You just need good pictures" of anyone: Barack Obama. Meryl Streep (with or without a wig). 

Ah, no thanks. But to each his/her/their own. And I laud this company for all they do to help folks out in what's always an awful time. 

Jeff Staab is the owner of Cremation Solutions. He told UK Wired:

"I came up with the idea because as a whole products and services are becoming more personalised and if you look through history, the Romans and Greeks had memorials made out of brass and they were popular for hundreds of years."

But the businessman said that the urns looked almost too real, adding: "I don't sell a lot of them, they look so real. They are also very expensive but I cannot help that, I would like to sell more."

He said that he didn't find the urns creepy but admitted that he doesn't have a loved one made as an urn, and maybe if he did and had to walk by it, he would. He described them as "really good sculptures" saying one customer -- although still alive -- was currently designing his own urn. "He wants it to be black and white and he is having glasses put on it. He also wants his hand out holding his chin like Rodin's sculpture The Thinker. This man's wife and family have had input into it and they are looking at send copies digitally for them before it is made because once it is done we cannot change it."

Somewhere around here - unless I finally gave it a toss - I have a plaster dental mold of my husband's uppers and lowers. If I still have it, that's plenty weird and creepy enough for me. Much as I loved my husband, I would most decidedly not want a full-sized bust of his head staring me down. Plenty of photos of Jim in my living room. That and my tiny urn that holds his space shot ashes will do me just fine.