January 31, 2007

Moonites Paralyze Boston A marketing stunt for cable channel TBS's Aqua Teen Hunger Force backfired hideously because the geniuses behind the stunt forgot to notify the Boston Police Department. They are very sorry, however. Bugmenot login/pass for boston.com
posted by es el Queso 17 years ago
  • And now, the masses will know what Aqua Teen Hunger Force is. Advertising gold. Though, it may come with a price...
  • So for those responsible, is this a huge embarrassment? Or a huge success? An interesting question... though the question of whether anybody's going to do time for it is probably more interesting to the involved parties at the moment.
  • Question: wouldn't this be considered vandalism in any case?
  • Cripes. I'm not sure which is most alarming. That anyone would confuse those signs with a bomb; or the passive acceptance by the general public of law-enforcement's massive over-reaction toward such harmless gimmicks. When children can't play a harmless April Fools' s joke or play in a tree, then the terrorists have truly won. The bottom line is, terrorism doesn't kill many people. Even in Israel, you're four times more likely to die in a car wreck than as a result of a terrorist attack. In the USA, you need to be more worried about lightning strikes than terrorism. The point of terrorism is to create terror, and by cynically convincing us that our very countries are at risk from terrorism, our politicians have delivered utter victory to the terrorists: we are terrified.
  • This is gonna have them rolling in the Pakistani caves!
  • Definitely not gettin' too much pleasin'.
  • regarding lightning strikes, between 1995 and 2004 (most recent numbers I could find), 489 people lost their lives in the us, 50 per year or so. So...given the deaths on 9/11 (not even including the over 3,000 servicemen/women deaths in iraq due to the terrorism inflicted on us by bushco) we've still got lighting beat by a long margin. so... pareidoliaticboy, where exactly did you get YOUR numbers from?
  • THE WOLFEN WILL COME FOR YOU WITH HIS RAZOR!!!
  • we've still got lighting beat by a long margin. Bush will be announcing his new War On Lightning policy in a nationally-televised address next Tuesday.
  • Got that number from some PDF, I found somewhere. I'll try digging it up. That said, an important caveat was missed in my lousy cut'n'paste job, and due to my poor wording. According to the NOAA, the average number of lightning-related deaths is about 90 persons per year . Given that no civilian deaths have occurred in the U.S. due to terrorism since Sept 11th. 2001, over that period, terrorism has posed less of a threat to the average American than did lightning. The number of civilian deaths due to car accidents is , of course, a much greater threat to most Americans, many of whom still refuse to wear seat belts. Now this is not to argue that a catastrophic attack at, say,the Super Bowl,wouldn't throw these numbers out of whack, but the fear of terrorism is being blown out of all proportion by the "authorities".
  • Not sure what happened to that link. My HTML sucks. Anywaze, the definitive study runs from 1959 to 1994. The death rate from lightning strikes has dropped dramatically over the last two decades, with more public awareness about the dangers of lightning, so the lower rate of 50 per year over the last two decades seems about right. http://www.nssl.noaa.gov/papers/techmemos/NWS-SR-193/techmemo-sr193.html
  • crap, i just noticed my typo in the title- it's Mooninites, not Moonites.
  • If someone wants to blow something up, they'll do it. They'll cover themselves in dynamite and walk right up to it. They'll put it in a discarded cardboard box and leave it alone. They just drive a damn Ford Pinto into it. This is the same retarded mentality that forces us to leave our toothpaste at the airport while sophisticated electronic and mechanical devices are let through with only a cursory x-ray glance. We can't shut down a fucking city for every 'potential threat' someone calls in. If something is going to happen, it's going to happen. And what 'terrorist' in his (even warped and twisted) mind make a tiny, doubtlessly ineffective bomb stick out like a sore thumb!? This is nothing but the bloated byproduct of the media-culled sheep we call a 'general population' in combination with the bloated, disgusting system thats been developing since WWII that I'm ashamed to call our government.
  • so bloated I had to say it twice in one sentence.
  • Well, you can't buy that kind of publicity. But this will surely sour the attitude of law enforcement towards street art, the LED throwies crowd and such. Today, those things stood in a dozen cities for weeks unnoticed and teh overreaction was to blow em up. Tomorrow, perhaps they will charge some teenager putting stickers or defacing some sign with 'terrahrizm'. Yes, the terrorists have won; they made people fear a gimmicky ad for an insipid show.
  • I can think of only a single case of a "suspicious object" proving to be an actual bomb and that one, the Atlanta Olympic knapsack bomb, was so unusual that the authorities immediately arrested the bomb's discoverer on the assumption that Richard Jewell must have place it there in order to discover it. The hoax is the claim that the tax dollars and freedoms we give up are protecting us from anything.
  • Well, now they've arrested a culprit. Preventing terrorism is haaarrrd. Finding whipping boys is easy.
  • And all over the joint, at the Cynical-C Blog
  • HAH ... CHAPTER 266. CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY: Section 102A1/2. Possession, transportation, use or placement of hoax devices; penalty; b) For the purposes of this section, the term “hoax device” shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine.
  • HAH ... CHAPTER 266. CRIMES AGAINST PROPERTY: Section 102A1/2. Possession, transportation, use or placement of hoax devices; penalty; b) For the purposes of this section, the term “hoax device” shall mean any device that would cause a person reasonably to believe that such device is an infernal machine.
  • IANAT but man I'd be investing in some smiley face stickers if I was. It is seriously a sad deal that they're talking about five years for the guy they've arrested. Though he'll probably get off. "And in a post 9-11 world, there's absolutely no place for hoaxes." Anyone who uses the phrase post 9/11 needs to be forcibly remved from office. Also, isn't shutting down a major city for artwork essentially letting the terrorists win? (LTTW)
  • This reminds me of the story in late 2001 about a load of children running screaming from school because they heard someone called Ben Larden was coming to talk to them. Or the hate mob that attacked a pediatrician in his surgery, because they thought the brass plaque on the door said 'paedophile'. Fear and loathing is an infectious meme. I'm more scared of the Moomins. Especially the Hattifatteners!
  • I saw this story last night and it really pissed me off. Who in their right mind would think that the terrorists would put anything harmful on something with bright LEDs? Garbage bag, check, suitcase, check, duffelbag, check, abandoned car, check. but a brightly lit sign?! c'mon. Anyone who called 911 on this is a fucktard and should be shipped off to Iraq. Simply put these shmucks on point on convoys through Baghdad. Let them really experience what terrorists do when placing IEDs alongside the road. I'm sure our GI's will rest much easier knowing that these wastes of sperm are on the lookout for "suspicious" objects. Spare me.
  • "Guerilla marketers" get what's coming to them. Like 2-5 years. Sam Ewen, a Bernays admirer, is CEO of Interference, Incorporated, an alternative marketing firm in New York City. He says that the new interest in so-called viral marketing is partly due to Generation Y. According to a study by the marketing research group ESOMAR, Generation Y is an ad man's paradox. While they're increasingly resistant to traditional TV ads, ironically they don't mind being commercials themselves. These irritating fuXnaRd twits can bite me. I hope the Mayor paddles the crap outta them. It's not "art". And "guerilla marketers" are on the wrong side of Jesus, tell you whut. and fwiw, ATHF went downhill when they embraced teh gross-out jokes
  • From the current article at cnn.com: Assistant Attorney General John Grossman called the light boards "bomblike" devices and said that if they had been explosive they could have damaged infrastructure and transportation in the city. If something had been an explosive, then there could have been damage. Okay. I agree with that. I would go so far as to say that if anything is an explosive, then it could cause damage. That's what explosives do. Thing is, these were not explosives. The analogies are too numerous and easy, but here goes: If the apples handed out by Mrs. Jones had contained explosives, then children would have died. If IPods contained small explosive devices, then countless people would have been killed.
  • Obviously, printed ciruit boards and electronic assemblies are all potential bombs and must never again be allowed on aircraft, tall buildings, bridges, highways, or near large crowds.
  • Jerkholes Plead Not Guilty, Fart Into Microphones. Whatever. They'll get fined the equivalent of what it cost the city to send out the cops, etc., viral advertising scores big again, and it turns out Iraq has already been invaded. Darn. 9/11.
  • "It had a very sinister appearance, (Massachusetts Attorney General Martha) Coakley told reporters. "It had a battery behind it, and wires."
  • Whether or not the things looked like bombs, whether or not the officials overreacted, and whether or not these jokers called in the "bomb scare" themselves is all irrelevant, IMMO. If they had done it for art's sake, that's one thing. The fact that they did it for marketing makes me want to punch them. You know what else would make a big splash? Well, don't do that to push your crappy product on me either. "Fire!" in a movie house, for money. The whole point of this advertising company is to hire people who look like you to stand next to you in line and talk up some product without your being aware. To paint "graffiti" pushing chickenburgers or whatever. The concept is wrong in so many ways I don't know where to vomit first.
  • The whole point of this advertising company is to hire people who look like you to stand next to you in line and talk up some product without your being aware. Not to derail, but I saw an ad in the local university's student newspaper a few months back looking for hip-looking students to basically hang around campus with Apple's latest iPod or iBook or iWhatever, and flash it around so other kids will ask about it, and of course be in for the big iSpiel about how great it is and where they can buy it...all subtle and non-obvious-marketing-like. I lost all respect for Apple when I saw that. (not that I had much to begin with, but that was for purely technical reasons)
  • Wait a minute. Apple is paying ME to hang around the local university talking about Microsoft products. What could this mean....?
  • If they had done it for art's sake, that's one thing. The fact that they did it for marketing makes me want to punch them. I'm having trouble with your reasoning here. If it had been a non-commercial art project, then the officials are jackbooted thugs crushing free speech. But because these guys were doing a goofy promo for a TV show, they...deserve to have their free speech crushed by jackbooted thugs? I know you really, really hate marketing and advertising, but come on, whether or not the officials overreacted is irrelevant? How does any sensible person view a Lite Brite cartoon character as a bomb, seriously? How is this okay but the treatment of Steve Kurtz, who actually possessed questionable materials that would make anyone look twice, is a travesty of justice?
  • I lost all respect for Apple when I saw that. They all do it. MS just recently got busted paying people to edit Wikipedia pages. I work for a subsidiary of one of the world's largest financial services corporations, and I'll be outsourced in 9 months to a year so that they can go on an older, less efficient platform -- but hey, it'll look to the stockholders like they're saving money. Corporate America, for better or worse.
  • Whoever was ultimately behind this (Turner Broadcasting?) should definitely be strung up by the balls, and the concept of guerilla marketing should die forever; but making them pay for the cost of the massive overreaction just ain't fair. The city is to blame, there.
  • > the concept of guerilla marketing should die forever Is this an example of what's good for the little guy (your local concert promoter, indie skate store, small entrepreneur trying to get some attention), becoming crappy and dangerous when there's lots of money behind it? I've little problem with companies who have close to zero to spend on marcoms/ads using guerilla tactics to get their message out. I think it gets messed up when the pockets get deeper.
  • The issue there, I think, is all about authenticity. An indie record store owner wanting to make a splash with only a few hundred bucks in his checking account is praised for his creativity when he uses guerilla marketing. When an ad man for Sony with a few million in his budget starts paying kids to tag walls in Brooklyn, the whole thing seems a wee bit staged. Of course, all guerilla marketing is staged, but when a rich fat white guy does it, it seems like a lie. It's just not as credible when you're not poor, frankly. Like musicians who license their songs for ads -- it's slightly more acceptable to most people if they're starving when they do it.
  • At a news conference after the hearing, Stevens and Berdovsky stepped to the microphones and said they were taking questions only about 1970s hairstyles. At a news conference after the hearing, Stevens and Berdovsky stepped to the microphones, andsaid they were taking questions only about 1970s hairstyles. When a reporter accused them of not taking the situation seriously, Stevens responded, "We're taking it very seriously." Asked another question about the case, Stevens reiterated they were answering questions only about hair, and accused the reporter of not taking him and Berdovsky seriously. Reporters did not relent, and as they continued, Berdovsky disregarded their queries, saying, "That's not a hair question. I'm sorry."
  • Great. That's what you get when you THINK yer seein' double.
  • Monkeyfilter: That's not a hair question. I'm sorry. Is Homeland Security going after the Mooninite conspirators for putting the devices up in the other major cities? Or are they just going to let the Boston PD carry the ball for now?
  • Peter Berdovsky, 27, a freelance video artist from Arlington, Massachusetts, and Sean Stevens, 28, were facing charges of placing a hoax device in a way that results in panic What kills me is that this law can be evidently triggered by anyone who decides to panic, now matter how innocuous the "threat" and thus holding us hostage to the most paranoid element of the populace and law enforcement. "America the Brave"- yeah, right. Like other bullies, the US acts more from fear than courage.
  • If it had been a non-commercial art project, then the officials are jackbooted thugs crushing free speech. But because these guys were doing a goofy promo for a TV show, they...deserve to have their free speech crushed by jackbooted thugs? Well, advertising is not protected by free speech, I don't think. IANAEoFS I Am Not An Expert on Free Speech, but something like 'truth in advertising' laws make it different, although I'm not going to plow through something like this (although it's a good resource). And although crushing guerilla marketers via jackbooted thugs is a recurring playtime fantasy of mine, I'm not specifically advocating it in this particular case. I see a necessity in artists being able to express themselves, although putting fake bombs or signs around isn't likely a useful or well-considered avenue for such expression. I do not see a necessity to allow advertising the same leeway. Product promotion deserves no such license. . . . come on, whether or not the officials overreacted is irrelevant? How does any sensible person view a Lite Brite cartoon character as a bomb, seriously? Suspicious placement of a circuit board . . wires . . batteries. If these brilliant excretions were on billboards, or in another place where advertising is supposed to be, I don't think we'd have a problem. The officials' reaction is irrelevant because they responded to a "bomb threat". It wasn't a bomb, and sooper-geniuses like me wouldn't think it was, but their response is irrelevant because they were following protocol for such events. How is this okay but the treatment of Steve Kurtz . . . is a travesty of justice? I don't know the Kurtz case very well, but just via a quick skim of that FPP I'd say Advertising vs. art, would be my main argument. Another argument might be that in the Kurtz case authorities came in to his studio and found materials that they then overreacted to as opposed to his intentionally causing a commotion which triggered an overreaction. You can't joke about bombs at the airport. Boston has some history of domestic terrorism, some recent, very famous history. Hair clowns pushing chickenburgers get no breaks, and that's okay with me in this case. Would I have liked the Boston authorities to have realized there was no bomb threat immediately? Of course. But they don't have all the answers, that's part of the drill, so they shut down traffic and went by the book. To the people over at boingboing going apeshit about this, I would say IT'S NOT ABOUT ART, or freedom of expression, or government oppression or any legitimate free speech argument, and they need to get over it. That said, you're all under arrest.
  • *looks forward to jail time as an opportunity to work through his reading pile*
  • You can't joke about bombs at the airport. And they weren't. They didn't, in fact, do anything remotely like that. These signs were not designed to look like bombs or joke about bombs. They were LED cartoon characters flipping people the bird. I'll grant you that they chose some very bad locations to hang these signs, but it doesn't take a goddamn genius to tell the difference between a less-than-an-inch-thick circuit board with some LEDs soldered to it and a block of C4 or container of some liquid explosive. Not to mention that terrorists aren't generally big cartoon fans. The officials' reaction is irrelevant because they responded to a "bomb threat". No, there was no bomb threat made. They weren't reacting to a bomb threat. They were reacting to Lite Brite cartoon characters in a world where guerilla marketing and Banksy-style art (which, btw, are pretty much identical in form and differ only in purpose) are commonplace by immediately going OH NOES ITS TEH BIN LADEN. That's why some in this thread (including me) are saying that the terrorists are in fact winning. They want us to freak out whenever unusual stuff like this happens, because it disrupts our lives. That's a far more important effect of terrorism than killing. Being able to bring a city to a screeching halt with maybe three hundred bucks worth of blinking middle finger means we very much need to reassess how we react to terrorism. I don't know the Kurtz case very well, but just via a quick skim of that FPP I'd say Advertising vs. art, would be my main argument. So if Kurtz had been using that technology for part of an ad campaign, rather than just the art, then he would have deserved everything he got? I still don't see the reasoning there. I see a double standard that appears to be based on A Thing I Like (Art) vs. A Thing I Don't Like (Commerce), regardless of whether the expression takes exactly the same form or not. That doesn't seem legally or morally supportable to me.
  • In a post 9/11 world, you just can't ship THAT!
  • I give up . http://putative.typepad.com/putative/2007/01/fedex_refuses_s.html
  • Good grief.
  • OK, call me stupid or hopped up on Comtrex, but why again does this guy make these labels and ship empty cans with them on? /foggy head
  • It's a fundraising effort for 826 Seattle, a literacy program for disadvantaged youth. These items are just some props for their ersatz business, Greenwood's Space Travel Supply, essentially using creative licence to create humourous goods to "sell", with little actual cost.
  • No, there was no bomb threat made. They weren't reacting to a bomb threat. From the first CNN article: Authorities have arrested two men in connection with electronic light boards depicting a middle-finger-waving moon man that triggered repeated bomb scares around Boston So the authorities were reacting as if a bomb threat had been made. That no literal bomb threat was phoned in is irrelevant because once a suspicion is called in, confirmed, and repeated in a short span of time, that brings us to: Being able to bring a city to a screeching halt with maybe three hundred bucks worth of blinking middle finger means we very much need to reassess how we react to terrorism. . . . Or guerilla marketing. It's a good point, but a discussion about the challenges of responding to terrorism should be in another thread (where is such a thread, anyway?), and this one for this particular criminal trespass. Er, as it were. . . .it doesn't take a goddamn genius to tell the difference between a less-than-an-inch-thick circuit board with some LEDs soldered to it and a block of C4 or container of some liquid explosive While admitting that my own intelligence is far below that of genius, I'm not sure I could tell the difference between C4 and silly putty. Or clear-liquid (water) from clear-liquid (blowup juice), y'know, at a distance. I do know the moonians and probably would like one of those light-up-perty boards for my NASCAR room, but when Aunt Clara sees a circuit board under an overpass and a big "FY" gesture on it, I can see where she'd be callin' Officer Friendly to report a suspicion. Add a couple more of those in quick succession, the discovery of circuit boards, wires and batteries, and the fact that Boston is taking no chances on terrorists these days and - maybe the marketing plan wasn't solid. So if Kurtz had been using that technology for part of an ad campaign, rather than just the art, then he would have deserved everything he got? No, good point that it's ridiculous either way. But again I don't think this is about our reaction to terrorism as much as it is about a media environment that allows advertising-without-limits. That's what I get from the story, although I see how the "terrorism reaction" POV is valid. I'm also uppity about the "Government are morans" / "they're stifling free speech" spin on the story, because I don't see that at all. They mistook it for a bomb and they scrambled the jets (so to speak). That'll happen when weird circuit-board-wiry-blinking creations are left under an overpass. Officials believe there are 38 throughout the Boston area, and 14 had been recovered as of 9 p.m. I had a discussion about this story with one o' them law-talkin' people and they made the point that while civil charges to recoup the costs associated with responding to a bomb threat may be reasonable against "Interference Incorporated", it would not make sense to take away the freedoms of the two fartknockers who thought up the brilliant scheme. To which I readily agreed, and only in part because the law-talkin' guy was buyin'.
  • I'm not sure I could tell the difference between C4 and silly putty. Or clear-liquid (water) from clear-liquid (blowup juice)... Right, but my point there is that there wasn't anything resembling silly putty or liquid on those devices. Circuit board, LEDs, batteries, that's it. No blocks of anything, no vials of anything. No photo or video I've seen of these devices made them look remotely like a bomb. One of the men criminally charged after placing blinking cartoon advertisements around the city and causing a terrorism scare videotaped a police bomb squad removing one of the devices, but did not tell the officers the object was harmless. This, however, changes my opinion considerably, even if Turner did tell them to let the company handle it. I still believe the city could have handled it better, and that we as a country do need to get over our collective Terrorism Freakout Syndrome(tm), but if they just stood by and watched the fun without offering anything up, then they can pretty much go fuck themselves.
  • Circuit board, LEDs, batteries, that's it. No blocks of anything, no vials of anything. No photo or video I've seen of these devices made them look remotely like a bomb. But I think that might be a high standard to hold the people of to. Just a box with the word "bomb" on it would cause a bomb scare. Heck, at the airport an unattended bag gets blown up by security before you get back with your BK Fish meal deal. And fwiw, I think the guy didn't tell the cops because he knew he was in deep doo-doo. Which is bad, but I don't think he was intentionally fostering panic . . err . .well I mean I don't think that was part of his plan . to . . He wasn't trying to create a panicky situation by not telling the cops he was responsible . . though he did . . dammit where's the preview button??!
  • Whatta loada crap. Official and local media reactions constitute a classic case of what psychologists call "hostile attributional syndrome." In this syndrome, subjects inappropriately react to neutral stimuli as if such stimuli were signals of real hostility. ... This (or something like it) is neutral? It's making a well-recognized gesture of F**K YOU. The gesture is hostile. What part of hostile is neutral? First, we can see the historical and hysterical echoes of the 17th Century Salem witch trials. The two artists, the long-haired, bearded Belorussian immigrant Berdovsky and his sidekick, Stevens, stand publicly accused . . . Who? Nobody even saw those fartknockers before the incident. How can it matter if there are two-or-twenty "artists" with beards or petticoats when the public hasn't seen them? Bee-You-Double-El horsepuckey. I like boingboing but they really fell up their own @$% on this whole story. And this "analysis" is utter shite. Grr.
  • Fascist.
  • I keed!
  • Cheif Cartoon Fartknocker Fires His Own Misinterpreted Self He was immediately placed on the "no-fly" list just to make everything everything. All the publicity over the marketing stunt didn't translate into much of a marketing boost for the show the network was trying to promote. The cartoon averaged 386,000 viewers last week among its targeted demographic of 18-to-24-year-olds, according to Nielsen Media Research. The previous week, the show averaged a virtually identical 380,000 among young viewers.
  • Hey, 6000 more people tuned in. That's only $333 each for marketing!
  • Chances for an individual American being killed by terrorism.
  • ...and, what the guvmint is doing about it. U.S. Department Of Homeland Security advice.
  • Bruce Schneier: Why Smart Cops Do Dumb Things
  • Bah!
  • Mysterious phone numbers. Cryptic messages that, when decoded, lead to hidden Web sites. Spectrogram analysis. USB drives found in cities across Europe. Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to the marketing for the new Nine Inch Nails album. "The term 'marketing' sure is a frustrating one for me at the moment," wrote Reznor on his blog. "What you are now starting to experience IS 'year zero.' It's not some kind of gimmick to get you to buy a record -- it IS the art form."
  • It's been a while since we've talked about the Mooninites: those foul-mouthed pixel aliens with their dead-pan voices, extended middle fingers and Lite-Brites that spurred the entire city of Boston into a stupidity induced frenzy of bowel-evacuating terror. It had nothing to do with the cartoon characters depicted, f*@#nuts. After the Mooninite Hoax in February, Internet opinion on the matter was pretty unanimous: Boston's authorities were idiots. 50,000 Elvis fans can't be wrong! The gyst of the revised bill is that "Terrorist hoax devices" should be illegal even if they aren't intended to be interpreted by idiot officials as terrorist hoax devices. "GYST is not available in the general English dictionary and thesaurus." Spell much? Under this rationale, a box of Crayons left on the sidewalk would be illegal, provided a major city mayor threw enough of a hissy fit about it. So judges would be left to, what, interpret the law or something? Dude, that's f**ked up right there. Sheesh.
  • Very good, very good. And what product was the fax trying to sell? "It was not a communication that was ever meant to be distributed to customers or anyone externally, and the fax machine malfunctioned, so when it came out of the fax machine, it looked suspicious," Bank of America spokesman Ernesto Anguilla said. Ah, so it's not really trying to sell anything. I see. What's the fax about? Bank security personnel later determined that a fax machine at the corporate office left off the text alerting employees to Small Business Commitment Week in June, including the words, "The Countdown Begins," above [a picture of a] bomb. Ah, so we have a smudgy fax with a picture of a old "bowling-ball" style bomb and a hand lighting a match to the bomb's fuse. Random, to be sure. Possibly menacing, depending. Were there any other factors involved in the decision to evacuate the building? "In Ashland, the situation was compounded by the fact that we had a suspicious package on the scene, as well," Anguilla said. Ah ha. A suspicious package and a smudgy fax without words picturing a bomb being lit. Mmm-hmm. Mmmm-hmm. And this is in Ashland, which is just outside Boston, the ah . . the home of the 9/11 attacks, as it were. Mm-hm. Mmmmm. I can see it. The motion to mock the Boston Police is denied. *twhack*
  • I've said it before, oh how many times I've said it: Clip Art is DANGEROUS in the WRONG HANDS! EVIL! *is helped into nice comfy long-sleeved coat, gets dragged away*