CalvinAyre.com has obtained what an anonymous source claims are excerpts from the personal diaries of former Vancouver Sun business writer David Baines. CalvinAyre.com has not been able to verify this claim, but considers the text a sufficiently accurate representation of Baines’ historic obsession with Calvin Ayre to warrant its publishing.
Dear diary:
It’s another day in retirement paradise, or so everyone in my circle keeps telling me. In reality, I feel the walls of my once comfortable prison moving ever slightly inward, and the pace of their progress increased dramatically this summer.
When I retired four years ago, Calvin Ayre’s grinning mug was listed on the US Immigration and Customs Enforcement’s ‘Most Wanted’ list. I contented myself that my tireless efforts to disparage him and his Bodog online gambling operation through my newspaper columns had contributed to his being indicted in 2012.
At the time, I felt like Van Helsing driving a stake through Calvin’s heart, robbing him of his evil power forever. But now Dracula has risen from his grave and appears intent on doing some driving of his own, except it feels like this stake is being driven into a part of my body nowhere near my heart. (Note to self: pick up one of those donut pillows that women sit on after childbirth.)
Since Ayre favorably resolved his legal case this summer, he’s been gallivanting around the globe, posting social media photos of himself in exotic locales, wine glass in hand, surrounded by beautiful women.
And me? I sit here, powerless to push back, having surrendered all my media weapons when I retired, so I just impotently rage at my computer screen. (Note to self: refill Cialis prescription.)
Worse, ever since the resolution of his legal issues, my former employers at the Vancouver Sun have been taking all my Calvin articles offline. Something about those articles’ ‘facts’ no longer bearing any relation to reality, which really sticks in my craw, since that was basically Calvin’s argument the whole time I was publishing them.
Occasionally, I have these nightmares in which Calvin sues me for defamation and I wake up in a puddle of sweat – at least, I hope it’s sweat – thinking about that defamation suit I lost shortly before I retired, in which the court awarded the plaintiff $30k in damages. (Note to self: check Red Cross website, see if they still pay cash for giving blood.)
Sure, I may have unfairly gone after Bodog when I could have targeted the many other online competitors of Canada’s provincial gambling monopolies, particularly the ones that, unlike Bodog, didn’t always pay their winning customers. But dammit, there was just something about Calvin that pushed all my buttons.
If I’m being honest, my obsession with Calvin was never about his internationally licensed and regulated, perfectly legal gambling business.
Deep down, I knew that the World Trade Organization had essentially declared that the US prosecution of Antigua-licensed gambling operators was in violation of international trade law. I knew that this view was supported by legal experts and even US think tanks, yet I persisted in making out like Calvin had done something wrong.
So sure, I knew I didn’t have a legitimate case against Calvin. It’s just that everyone needs a nemesis to give them purpose. After all, where would Sherlock Holmes be without Professor Moriarty, or Harry Potter without Lord Voldemort, or Donald Trump without reality?
And now Ayre’s been named an economic envoy for Antigua on blockchain technology? For Pete’s sake… Why not just make him pope while they’re at it? He could post photos of himself wakeboarding naked except for one of those stupid pope hats.
I admit I don’t really know anything about blockchains or Bitcoins, but I read something once about some criminal getting paid in Bitcoin – something that I’m sure has never once happened with fiat currency. That, plus Ayre’s involvement, it has to be shady, right?
Seriously, if I was Batman, the bat-signal would be shining above my house as we speak. I’d fire up the computer, bang out a column knocking this Bitcoin Baron down a peg, then sit back in the soft afterglow of self-righteous vigilantism.
I’m thinking of starting a blog, calling it Baines Explains. The title could come in handy in the off-chance that I get something else wrong about Ayre or this Satoshi Nagasaki guy and have to explain that I can no longer afford to hire a fact-checker.
Then again, in this new #MeToo environment, maybe I might not be able to get away with any further unwarranted harassment of Ayre. Honestly, I don’t know what I should do here, other than write a heartfelt letter to Santa and hope to find a stiffer spine in my Christmas stocking.
So long as I’m making wishes, I hope one day that the memory-wiping process in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind becomes a reality, and I can finally start enjoying the rest of my retirement in blissful ignorance of having so dramatically lost the biggest battle of my professional life.
