Odds & Ends

It has been almost a month since I last posted something but the world hasn't come to an end, has it? Maybe a few more cracks are exposed, for sure, but it hasn't ended.

Call it writer's block, call it being a little bit busy, call it Ishmael but I haven't had a lot to say lately. Nonetheless, here are some random thoughts on some recent events that you should be just as glad I didn't spend more time on.

Octomom
God forgive me but I just want to beat this woman senseless. Of course, I'll have to conserve my strength so that I have something left for the fertility doctor. My favorite part of her interviews is when they ask her - and they always ask her - how she is going to pay for all of this and she says, "It'll be okay after I get my degree." Oh yeah, I forgot. The usual sequence for these things goes something like this: Day One, Master's Degree; Day Two, earning enough money to support 14 kids. Phew! As Butch said to Sundance just before they were gunned down by the entire Bolivian army, "For a moment there I thought we were in trouble."

11-Year Old charged with Murder
So it's Christmas time out in Wampum, Pennsylvania and this guy buys his 11-year old son a "youth model" .20-gauge shotgun. (Whatever happened to an Official Red Ryder Carbine-Action 200-Shot Range Model Air Rifle?) Anyway, the boy - let's call him Jordan Brown - is living with his dad, his dad's girlfriend, Kenzie and her two daughters. Kenzie is 8 months pregnant with dad's child. Jordan is feeling jealous of Kenzie and the girls (He's not too happy about becoming an uncle either) and reportedly told friends he was going to "pop her." So one morning last week he took his Christmas present and shot Kenzie in the back of the head from about a foot away, while she was in bed, then got on the bus and went to school. Kenzie died. The baby died. Jordan has been in jail but was moved to a youth detention center charged with two counts of homicide. Now, how many things are wrong with this story? The boy? Well, sure... there's definitely something wrong there that was apparently out in the open but no one did anything about it. Dad buying a .20-gauge shotgun for a fifth grader? Oh yeah. THAT'S a big wrong (of course, let's not lose sight of the fact that he thought it through enough to buy a "youth model"). But let's leave a little bit of justifiable wrath for a company that sells "youth model" shotguns in the first place, shall we?

Look out for the cheater
I heard an interesting albeit bizarre story recently about an old 60s group called Bob Kuban & The In-Men. Back in 1966, these guys had a one-hit wonder called, "The Cheater." The chorus went like this: "Look out for the cheater/Make way for the fool-hearted clown/Look out for the cheater/He's gonna build you up just to let you down." Can't you just hear those horns? Well, the lead singer of the group was a guy named Walter Scott and years later - a couple days after Christmas, 1983 - he disappeared without a trace. After a year, his wife JoAnn petitioned to have him declared dead. She was dating a neighbor named James Williams who had been recently widowed. Well, they found Walter's body in April, 1987, floating in a cistern in James' back yard. Did I mention that he had been tied up and shot in the back? It turns out that JoAnn and James had been having an affair for more than a year before they killed Walter. JoAnn pled guilty to hindering the investigation and got 5 years. James? Well, once they found Walter they exhumed his wife's body and, you guessed it... James is serving two life sentences. As Walter sang at the end of his song, "Tough luck for the cheater/Too bad for the fool-hearted clown." Indeed. File under, "Life imitates art."

Villanova
As many of you know, I occasionally teach a course in marketing research at VU, my alma mater. I joke that it is my ultimate revenge on the university but, truth be told, I consider it a privilege. Anyway, last night I attended a networking reception at the Villanova School of Business mainly to hear the keynote speaker, Bill McDermott, president of Global Field Operations for SAP AG. There were also two marketing presentations by VSB students. One was done by two young ladies and, as it turns out, one of them was a former student of mine. She was a first semester junior at the time but she's a senior now and will graduate in May. Not that I had any input whatsoever into their presentation but I felt a twinge of pride nonetheless. I realized again my big regret in life (no, not that) - that I didn't go into education as a career.