Comments: The Last Word
A fellow weblogger who shall remain anonymous writes:
Don't do it, baby. Keep that divide solid. Comments = obsessive sweaty = not your site anymore. Comments allow others to take over.
Don't do it.
He's absolutely right. It ain't happenin'. Screw you guys. I'm goin' home.
And then there's this stupid strumpet, stealing my bad noir photo as the background to her awful, awful, awful weblog. And she has the sack to link to the image on my server.
I got violently ill just reading the "Music" section of her entries: Dashboard Confessional, New Found Glory, Unwritten Law. ... Basically, all that's wrong with rock 'n' roll (and I use that term very loosely). I say we all AIM her and mock her mercilessly. Just a thought.
I'm also going to rename the image so it breaks her site. I'm feeling spiteful today, so watch it.
Top 10 Ways I Don't Want to Die
Live fast, die faster. That's my new motto. ßßß
The Comment Conundrum
So it seems a majority of you freaks would like to see me add comments to this site, and a large proportion — nearly a quarter — are wondering why your pants are unbuttoned. Well, while I can't help you with your pants-related problems, let me take a moment to describe my trepidation about adding commenting functionality to this site.
I may not meet all the criteria for obsessive-compulsive disorder, but I do meet a majority of 'em. (I also qualify for a surprising number of other diagnoses, best left for future entries.) I check my email 47 times a day. I pore over my site-traffic stats, not just once a day (even though the report only updates once a day), but several times a day, trying to draw conclusions from a raft of data that really makes no sense to anyone. I'm a recovering message-board addict (not to mention a recovering addict of just about anything else one can become addicted to).
So I know that if I were to install comments on blawg, I would become preoccupied with checking said comments to the exclusion of everything else in my life. I can see it now: finger poised over the F5 button, watching the second-hand of the office clock sweep around almost imperceptibly slowly toward the 12, because I said I wouldn't refresh the page more than once a minute. Of course I give up, somehow justifying my insane behavior. And there are no new comments!
Cue the self-loathing. Serotonin production ceases. I fall into a morass of despair. Nobody loves me. I can't write my way out of a wet paper sack. Woe the fuck is me.
Also, lots of times comments are really stupid and bring the already self-indulgent weblog medium to new levels of self-absorption. Plus, honestly, I really don't care that much what you have to say. I mean, if it's really important, send me an email. Actually, it doesn't need to be important at all. Write me anyway.
Oh, and I still haven't decided if I'll do the comment thing or not. If you feel strongly one way or the other, sell me on it. And for those of you whose pants are unbuttoned, you should write me too. I'm really bored. ßßß
Subtext Is Everything.
George Bush to the Palestinians
What he said: "I call on the Palestinian people to elect new leaders, leaders not compromised by terror. I call upon them to build a practicing democracy, based on tolerance and liberty. If the Palestinian people actively pursue these goals, America and the world will actively support their efforts."
What he meant: "We want you to elect a new leader in free and fair elections and embrace democracy. As long as you install the puppet leader of our choice, we won't add you to the Axis of Evil and bomb your infidel asses back to the Stone Age."
Martha Stewart to some talking head on TV
What she said: "I think this will all be resolved in the very near future and I will be exonerated of any ridiculousness."
What she meant: "I'm guilty as hell, but my lawyers, spin doctors, and image consultants are so good that they'll never be able to hang anything on me. Now let's talk about my fucking salad.
Barry Bonds, Jeff Kent, and Dusty Baker
What they said:
Bonds, to Kent: "Shut the fuck up."
Kent, to Bonds "You shut the fuck up."
Bonds shoves Kent against the wall. Baker tries to break it up.
Kent, to Baker: "It's his fucking team, anyway! Of course you'll take his side! I want off this team!"
Baker, to Kent: "You don't ever say that!"
Baker shoves Kent against the wall.
What they meant: Well, pretty much exactly what they said. ßßß
Out of the Clear Blue
So I come to work on Monday and log on to my webmail account. I start to go through the usual anti-spam drill: click Select All, then unselect the emails that are actually real and not offers for penis enlargement, get-rich-quick schemes, and porn. As I'm doing so, I almost delete an email from a good friend and former bandmate with whom I have not spoken in more than a dozen years. At the last second I see his name in the Sender line, and I thankfully don't delete it.
Now so you understand the unlikelihood of where we both are today, you must understand from whence we came. And that is a scary, scary place.
He and I grew up across town from one another in lovely Stratford, CT, a predominantly blue-collar town in which, after you graduated high school, you went to work in either the Avco-Lycoming tank-engine plant or the Raybestos brake-shoe factory, lived a life of quiet desperation, drank yourself into a stupor every night, etc., and so on.
Neither he nor I was down with the quiet desperation thing, but we did very much enjoy the ingesting every conceivable chemical, synthetic, organic, or otherwise, to get into as profound a stupor as we could muster thing. We also perpetrated all manner of senseless destruction, vandalism, breaking, entering, narcotics trafficking, witness badgering, perjury, and various moving violations. Basically, we were no good, and would never be any good.
Which makes it all the weirder that we've both, more or less, made good. He became a video editor, and apparently has quite a heavy rep (I'd link to his website — www.shot4shot.com — but it locks up my computer every time I try and go there). He married a Frenchwoman, moved to Paris, and had a kid. Uhhh ... huh? This is the guy I played in Multiple Stab Wounds with, who sang songs entitled "Slam to Kill," "Nightmare War," and "Thrash Every Day." I mean, I'm just sayin'. It's weird.
My feeble brain can't even conceive of the person he must be now; all I have as a frame of reference is the picture in my head from 12 or 15 years ago, and I can't fathom how he went from there to here. But I guess that must be how it is for him as well. Or something.
All I know is that there's no freakin' way I'm missing my next big high school reunion. I can't wait to fuck with all those people's heads. ßßß
I Wanna Rock 'n' Roll All Night (And Party Ev-a-ry Day)
Yeah, come on down to the rock show on Friday. The Hills Have Eyes are playing at the Stork Club with Lift to Experience and Devics this Friday. There will be someting for everyone: dreamy twee pop, spacey space rock, and rocky rock rock. The show's at 9. We'll see ya there.
Oh, and don't forget to vote in the poll down there. Thanks. ßßß
Random Poll
Please Kill Me
So Supercast is desperately seeking singers, and having little to no success. Here's why: Musicians are idiots, present company included. Post an ad for a singer on craigslist, and here are some of the responses you get (all emails reprinted in their entirety, grammar and spelling intact):
Hello-
Honesty is my best policy so I'll tell you what you need to know before you decide. I'm a recovering addict that has played guitar for years and sing to songs I've written, though not many. So I have to stay clean. I've never actually been in a band but It's a goal of mine before I leave the city.I've been here for a year and I very interest.
I'm unemployed right now and have been for 9 months. I have allot of time on my hands that could be spent learning music. I realize this is a long shot but the crowd will love me. Thanks for your consideration. By the way I'm a 28 year old male, single, ambitious, Have a full head of hair, and the name of a should be porn star!
to bad im so fat cause i love the queens and i am a killer singer song writer who plays guitar with plenty of shows under my belt. oh well.its the image thats really important.
yours truly, a big fat bearded ass
p.s. dave grohl has a beard so does nick olivari
ok- so i don't know any of the bands you mentioned... but i will look them up. i don't know a lot of bands actually... i'm horrible with names. i just know what i like. a bit of a lot of different styles. mostly old stuff. i've been a singer for a long time. in the structured sense for about 15+ years.in bands for about 4.. somewhat of a newbie. i just got out of a goth doom metal band and am looking to play again. i'll understand if you don't want to give me a shot, but i can assure you that i'm a pretty nice guy with a good ear for music. i love to rock and i don't come with a lot of drama. very independant and can certainly bring something unique to the situation. let me know what you think.
My names [______]. I have alot of song that I wrote that are awesome...My style is more like system of a down, korn and nirvana.....if ya wanna practice write me back....
Hello, my name is [_________]. I've been interested in getting involved with a band. I've sang in a couple bands before and have been writing and recording my own songs lately. I don't wear a beard. Pac man is like life. I live in Oakland. I don't want to go off explaining my influences because they generally aren't musical and I don't know you well enough to explain the ones that are. But at any rate, I think you may dig my vocals. In all honesty, I am only slightly familiar with one of the bands you listed. But it doesn't bother me to not know who I don't sound like if it doesn't bother you.
[After trading a half-dozen or so emails with our drummer re. an ad that was placed on CRAIGSLIST SAN FRANCISCO, one cold-fusion expert wrote the following.]
Todd, do you live in San Fran? I'm in NY DUDE!
Kill me now. ßßß
Hard work. Well, that’s all right for people who don’t know how to do anything else. *
Here are some more observations on my employment in this brand-new byzantine work environment.
There are two very interesting interesting denizens of the 9th floor men's room: the Weeper and the Flosser. You can expect to see one or the other of these characters on just about every trip to the can. The Flosser, as his sobriquet suggests, can be found vigorously flossing his grill for at least 10 minutes at a time. Now I value dental health as much as the next slob, but this guy is taking it to another level. Several times a day, several minutes at a time. No one here seems to know who he is or what he does. Apart from floss, I mean.
Now I have never actually heard the Weeper weep, but he's been pointed out to me, and the mind reels with possibilities as to the nature of his sadness. Could it be his hairstyle, which is a bowl cut reminiscent of wigs rocked by the indigenous peoples of the Amazon Basin? Or is it his profound case of dermatitis, which looks as painful as it is ugly? In any case, he's been known to sit in one of the two stalls and cry his little heart out, complete with heaving, etc. Sad shit, I tell you.
One of my coworkers sounds exactly like Jiminy Glick.
No one is buying your "Oh my stars, I can't seem to find the Open Doors button here on the elevator panel to hold the elevator for you," pantomime, you selfish fuck. I'm on to you.
I wore sneakers all day yesterday and did not get fired.
If you picture California as an enchanted land populated only by fit and beautiful people, you've obviously never been to downtown Oakland. The city fathers seriously need to consider widening the sidewalks down here to accommodate some of the fat bastards who clog our fair city's thoroughfares. Walking to lunch is like running a goddamn obstacle course sometimes. If you two grossly obese people insist on walking two abreast and taking up the whole damn sidewalk, one of you is getting a shoulder in the bread basket. And not a pork shoulder, either, tubby.
Did you know that France has a 35-hour workweek?!?
Pack up the house and put the kids in storage, punkin. We're movin' to France. ßßß
Where Does the Time Go?
I know exactly where it goes.
8:50 Arrive at work.
8:50–9:50: Do work stuff, personal stuff, other stuff.
9:50: Suffer brain-numbing boredom. Begin to surf Web.
9:51–10:04: Read weblogs in my sidebar. Get pissed off that no one's updating. Consider sending hate-filled missives, commanding people to update. Think better of it and begin running down the sites in the edutainment column.
10:04–10:20: Remove a couple of sites that haven't updated in, like, months. Shows you how much stock I put in my own advice.
10:20– Go to UpcomingMovies.com only to find that Greg has been subsumed by the conglomerate that is Yahoo.
10:21: Learn that there's a sequel to Coyote Ugly in the works.
10:22: Don't know whether to laugh or cry.
10:23: Discover Yahoo's Coyote Ugly message board.
10:23–4:50 PM: Read every last post on Yahoo's Coyote Ugly message board. Sample posts:
SUBJECT: More to it than booty shaken. AUTHOR: baby_butterfly_gurl_2000
The wrong hype is given to this movie. People think it's just about a bunch of beautiful girls pouring beer on each other in a bar and shaken it. Those of you who only watch it for that reason are shallow and narrowminded and are missing the whole message of the movie. It is about having a dream and over coming your fears and going out and doing that dream.
RE.: More to it than booty shaken. AUTHOR: charmedimsure22
THE GURL WHO WROTE THIS MESSAGE IS TOTALLY RIGHT! YOU ARE SICK LOSERS IF U THINK THATZ ALL ITZ ABOUT!
SUBJECT: I dont need a critic to tell me if a movie is bad. AUTHOR: xtra_special_agent_fox_mulder
I watch any if they meet these 3 criteria.
1. Not a cartoon
2. No animals as semi-main char.
3. No kids as main char.
PS: All the negative reviews are not going to make a difference this weekend... Hollow Man and C Unly [sic] is coming 1st and 2nd and the 4 retards in space maybe 5th. [Huh?!?!? – ed.]
I could go on, but I won't. You should really see for yourself. Or, just read THE FINAL REBUTTLE!
And that, my friends, is where the time goes. ßßß
Win Some, Lose Some
God starts a weblog, but Kevin gives up the ghost.
Alien Ant Farm's bus crashes, but all the band members survive.
The U.S. advances to the round of 8 in World Cup play, but the Reggae Boys didn't even make the field of 64.
Such is life, I guess. Ebb, flow. Lather, rinse, repeat.
The Freaks Come Out at Night
Monday, June 17, 2002, shall forever be known as the Night of the Lunatic Foreigners.
Last night the wife and I went to meet a friend for dinner at Great Wall (which is a story unto itself, best saved for another day when I have nothing at all to write about). So we're waiting for said friend, who's late, and we hear this bullhorn behind us. Only it's not a bullhorn. It's a high-talking 80-something-year-old Australian woman who must have been a stage actress at one point, because her voice, from two tables away, is more clearly audible than Tracy's, who's sitting two feet away. She also enunciates every word like a Shakespearean actress. Her companion, another octogenarian, on the other hand, is a low talker, and we can't make out anything she's saying. So there are periods of deafening monologue punctuated by shorter periods of silence, then the silence is shattered by bullhorn lady again, and Tracy and I practically jump out of our seats. The "conversation" seemed to go something like this:
"Have you heard of this dog, the shih tzu, or shiatsu?"
" ... "
"Well, I haven't." [wtf? – ed.] "I just think of SHIT, and the rest comes to me."
Oh, but it gets better.
She went on to talk about how she looks stuff up on the Internet, about how her children are "dissing" her (swear ta Christ she said "dis"), and even said the "f" word (that's "fuck," in case you were wondering).
"They don't come to visit me, and it's awful."
" ... "
"Well, I say FUCK YOU, and I don't make an effort."
Remember to read these in a super-posh if-Katherine-Hepburn-were-Australian-by-way-of-the-Royal-Shakespeare-Company-type accent for full comedic effect.
After dinner we move the party down the street to a cafe, where the three of us are sitting outside, enjoying one another's company, and generally minding our own damn business, when a heavyset, coffee-complected woman with a shock of white troll-doll hair sidles up to us. Conversation ceases, as we try and figure out exactly what she's doing.
"I like your tattoos," she says in an unmistakable Brazilian accent.
"Ummm, thanks," I say.
"This is the only table in the place that is talking," she continues. "Everyone else is [mimes reading a book] or [mimes typing on a laptop]."
"Right," we all kind of respond, not really wanting to encourage her.
"You two are brother and sister?" she asks Tracy and I.
"No," Tracy responds. "We're married."
"You have children?"
"No. No children."
"I think you should have children."
"I plan on having children," our dining companion says.
"How?" the crazy Brazilian broad asks. "Don't worry, I'm gay too."
I'm crappin' ya negative. She goes on to tell us that her name is Maria Luisa, but that her spiritual name is Kali, and that she's some kind of poet/healer/shaman/spiritualist person. She invites us to some freaky performance/seance/reading of hers, and finally sidles away to annoy the other patrons.
God bless the Bay Area, and all its poet/healer/shaman/spiritualist denizens. It beats the fuck outta Fresno. ßßß
Best Overheard Conversation of the Week
The Place: The ghetto Walgreens Pharmacy by my house.
The Players: Man, in his late 30s, accompanied by his son, age 6 or thereabouts. Girl, no more than 15, admittedly overdeveloped.
Man is leaving the store, his son in tow. He spots the Girl.
Man: Aww, hey baby. How you doin'?
Girl: Ummmm ... fine.
Man: Howbout giving me your number so I can call you sometime?
Girl: Uhhhh ... maybe later.
Man: Like when?
Girl: Like in some years!
And ... scene.
So Far, So Bad
My morning thus far:
It can only get better from here, right? Right?? ßßß
A Coupla-Three More Things
1. I'm craving sushi like a mu'fucka.
b. Le Placard (The Closet) is the worst movie I've seen since Dude, Where's My Car?.
iii. I can't believe they're making a sequel to that. The world's going to hell in a handbasket.
4. We just got the latest Wong Kar-Wai movie from Netflix, so hopefully it will erase the memory of shitty French farces and lousy American stoner movies featuring characters who don't actually get stoned.
E. That was more than a couple or three things.
Naked Dudes, Marsupials, and Marriage. Not Necessarily in That Order.
Today was one of those days at the gym.
Early in the morning — or at any time of day, actually — I do not want to see the shriveled, deformed, mummified private parts of old naked dudes. Nor do I want to be splashed by dudes showering with the shower curtains open. How hard is it to draw the fucking curtain, hoss? Do you really think I want to see you washing yourself, or be splashed by your foetid shower water as I walk by?!? That would be a big negative, brother. Close the curtain. You suck, and I hate you.
On the plus side, last night Tracy and I hung out with our friend Mary and our new friend Lina, which is always good times. We consumed our weight in fried potatoes at Barney's, then shoved off and went to Lina's where we met her sugar gliders.
As former rat owners (R.I.P., Drucilla and Persephone), Tracy and I were immmediately taken with the little bastards. They are totally bad ass. At one point I had all three of the creatures on me, crawling around my shirt, eating yogurt off my fingers, and gliding around the room. When they're scared they make the most unholy mechanical-sounding noise, and Lina says they bark, too, but they didn't bark for us. They were still adorable, though.
P.S.: Whatever you do, don't click on the fanatics link in Lina's sidebar. Don't say I didn't warn you. ...
In even better news, on Sunday, my bride and I will celebrate 12 years of wedded bliss. You heard me right, people: twelve years. And they said it couldn't be done. Well, in your face, Doubting Thomases and Tamaras. In your face.
Happy anniversary, darling. I love you. ßßß
What is it ya say ... ya do here?
Just got back from my first office birthday lunch. I'll put a gun in my mouth before I attend another one.
Some days I feel like I'm living Office Space.
I added some snazzy comment funtionality to Tracy's blog today. Maybe I should get with the times and add comments to this site.
Nah.
Honestly?
I would have written a lot more today, but I spent all my free time here. ßßß
The Ultimate Timesuck (IM Geeks Only)
Goddamn you, memepool. I may never get any work done again onaccounta this. Fucking priceless.
Take My Wife ... for Example.
Everyone, it seems, dorks and nondorks alike, is getting into this weblog thing. Take my wife ... for example. Her? Couldn't be any less Internerdy. Former cheerleader, current young professional and red-hott mama of epic proportions. No need at all to find love, acceptance, et al., online, but yesterday she joined the Nerd Club with her VERY OWN WEBLOG. And she didn't even need an instruction manual to do it — just some help from her exceedingly dorky (and HTML-proficient) husband.
I have long lamented the lack of good weblogs out there, but I have recently discovered several that are worth the paper they're printed on. Former semi-celebrities need not apply.
I take my role as weblogger very seriously. I try to update every weekday, strive to make your day a little brighter, and endeavor to prove that the life of a rock star of some repute residing in the most beautiful place on earth can be just as boring and insipid and tedious as your life is, thereby flattening out the bell curve of perceived satisfaction with one's life, in turn increasing your joy in opposite proportion to mine. See how that works? Me neither. But trust me, sometimes that's the only reason I get outta bed in the morning. So buy me somethin', you cheap bastard. It's the least you can do. ßßß
Things I Know to Be True
The End of the Century
That Ain't No Job for No Man My proclivity toward tattoos notwithstanding, those who know me know me to be a tremendous pussy. My tolerance for pain, especially of the emotional kidney, is extraordinarily low.
I'm in Your Band. Supercast, the band I'm in that is not The Hills Have Eyes, has parted ways with its vocalist, Ricardo. Sad, but true. Sad for many reasons, not the least of which is that we are now back to Square Three (not quite Square One, but considering we were at Square 17, a considerable setback nonetheless), and exceedingly sad because it's back to the Gong Show of posting ads, fielding responses from lunatics, and enduring gruelling two-hour auditions with guys you knew were awful within the first two minutes.
What Do You Want to Do with Your Life? I fear for the future of rock.
The Information You Requested Jesus, it's June. Month 6. The month of my wedding anniversary. Two months and change before I begin my 35th year on the planet. The older I get, the faster it all seems to go by.
Don't miss last month's brilliant insight.
R.I.P., Dee Dee. Long live your Poison Heart.
6 june 02
Which makes it both logical and incomprehensible that I was a teenage dopefiend. Logical because I was such a delicate flower that booze and pills et al. were a godsend. No way could I have navigated through adolescence without being heavily medicated. Incomprehensible because being a drug addict of any order is a lot of fucking work, and is no fun and really, really, really painful. (Cue the world's tiniest violin.)
Seriously, though. Not fun at all. Well, fun sometimes, but in short order, the fun is outweighed by the grief and the consequences and the backbreaking, tedious work of being a drug addict. One thing most civilians, or non-dopefiends, don't realize is how much fucking work is involved in maintaining a healthy drug habit. It's not fun work, either; there's very little job satisfaction involved. It's scary, boring, dangerous, dirty work.
So the solution (the drugs) quickly becomes the problem (the drugs). That's the ouroborean snake of the matter. Cure becomes affliction. Snake eats tail. Water circles bowl.
I woke up this morning thinking about how great it was not to have to go across the hall and take a jolt of something just to get straight. Most times I think about drinking/using/getting high, I'm thinking about how sad it is that I can't join those other people in the glossy magazines, drinking Zima or Bacardi Silver or Mike's Hard Lemonade, casting off the stress of a long work week, seducing my compatriots with my rapier wit and devilishly good looks.
I almost never remember how pathetic I was there at the end, crawling around on my hands and knees looking for stray drug detritus, stealing money from friends and family to get high, and spending every waking minute that I wasn't high figuring out how I was gonna get high. That's a full-time job I don't ever want back, and certainly no way to live. No way at all. ßßß5 june 02
Are you a singer residing in the Greater San Francisco Bay Area? Do you know anyone who sings? Can you make noise with your larynx? Do you know a cuss word from Shinola? Do you have an armadillo in your trousers? The law of averages determines that even if you are certifiably insane, you will be far more high-functioning than the average respondee from craiglist or sf musician.
If you answered yes to one or more of these questions, for the love of God, please email me. If you're sitting at your desk at work, bored, going quietly insane, email me. I'm dyin' here. ... ßßß4 june 02
For every band that rules, there are hundreds and hundreds more that suck. This is not news in and of itself: The suckers have always vastly outnumbered the nonsuckers. It has always been this way, and shall continue to be this way until the postfeminist, postcapitalist, postmusic revolution occurs or until the Rapture comes down. Whichever comes first.
But what really, really concerns me is the apparent lack of discriminating musical taste among my fellow music consumers. Take the Trans Am, !!!, Pine of Nowhere show at Great American last night. Please.
Pines of Nowhere, despite having what very well may be the worst band name of all time, were OK. Weird, spastic, protopunk a la Pere Ubu, Devo, and other fat dudes from the Midwest.
!!! (Chik Chik Chik), on the other hand, were so godawful that I wanted to tear out my own eyes, pierce my eardrums, and castrate myself just to put an end to the sham of a mockery of a travesty of funk music they were attempting to perpetrate. There were altogether too many beards, short guys, horns, rat tails, and band members on stage.
The spookiest part is that the pod-people punters in the crowd were lapping up all they could get, doing their spastic Grateful Dead interpretive dance routines and clapping along to rhythms known only to them. It was quite the scene, I'll tell you. We finally had to go outside to escape the stench. If this is the future of music, I want nothing at all to do with it.
Yeah, Trans Am were fine, whatever, but watching two guys play keyboards and another guy play drums while they project Hi-8 footage of someone's cat on a bedsheet? Not so stellar. Also, referring to yourself as "post-rock"?? Ninja, please. Since when did making boring new wave jams c. 1984 become avant-garde? Post-rock? More like post-Flock of Seagulls.
Anyway, you people piss me off. Demand better. Stand up for what's right, and throw ice and empty beer bottles at what's wrong. Don't settle. Power to the people.
(That would be you.) ßßß3 june 02
The weekend report: two words, gentle reader: retail therapy. OK, so maybe it wasn't therapy, so much, but being employed again makes it oh-so-much easier to justify buying stuff I don't need. We bought another guitar, this one (ostensibly) for Tracy and her tiny girl hands, but I've been playing it nonstop. It totally rocks.
We also came up at the Alameda Antiques Faire or, as my friend Chris calls it, "Ye Olde Junque Swappe." We scored a beautiful beveled and etched '40s mirror for our mantelpiece, a coupla shirts (including a 1983 Rick Springfield tour shirt for Tracy), and the world's most hideous lamp for the rehearsal space. Pictures TK.
Tonight is Trans Am at Great American, so we will be up too late, so tomorrow I will be overtired and cranky. You've been forewarned. ßßß
