i want you, i want you every single day and I need you

You've seen this commercial. You can't have missed it. The song is cute. The people in the commercial are all happy but every time I see this commercial, for some reason I imagine the beer like the path an STD takes. It starts with the first guy who has a three-some with the couple in the hot tub, who then have a three-some with the hot chick at the party and it goes on from there. I don't know why, but it never fails, every time I see it that way.

I don't think that's how they intended it to be seen, nor do I think anyone else on earth sees it that way.

So, in summation, Heineken beer = STD in my twisted little mind. So, use a condom if you've been drinking Heineken. Or in general if you're going to have sex. There's my PSA of the day.

mad about you, lost in your eyes, mad about love, you and i

I'm watching last night (Tuesday's) episode right now. Yay DVR. Jet Li was the guest and while I can't recall actually seeing any of his movies, he was unexpectedly ADORABLE.

The other guest is Belinda Carlisle. And the way Craig Ferguson says her name is damn sexy.

Right now she's singing "Heaven is a Place on Earth" which was one of my favorite songs growing up. Her voice is not nearly as good as it was 20 years ago, but the song is still good. Let's just say I can fill in the slightly off-key version with the one permanently etched in my brain. I can close my eyes and see the video in my mind, that's how much that song meant to me. At 11. or however old I was.

I wanted to BE Belinda Carlisle in the late 80s. A blond, thin, California chick with a perfect nose who had a sexy man in love with her with whom she could writhe around kissing and carressing. Re-watching the video on YouTube, I'm realizing that I was confusing the video for "Heaven on Earth" with the video for "Mad About You." because I kept picturing her on a beach.



Doing a Google Image Search for "Belinda Carlisle" It was odd to see results coming up from a Playboy shoot she did. The photoshop-fu on those is not strong. Seriously. And having seen the "Behind the Music" about The Gogos, and knowing that perfect nose was often coked up doesn't change my wish to have such a cute nose.

Aaah, memories.

you are eeeeeevil, a MURDERER

I had a customer accuse me of this today. Because I told them they couldn't pay their bill whenever the hell they felt like it.

We shut their phone off today.

According to this gentleman, the Constitution guarantees telephone service without requiring payment for said service.

Also, apparently the reason I am doing this to them is because I derive sexual pleasure from watching people die.

Oh, and also, I'm a bitch.

I love my job.

That was the best call EVER.

I want to make one of these

It's a ghost, made out of a tampon.

i prefer real shutters but I don't have real shutters

A friend of mine, vanillagrrl, posted in her blog about the difference between Americans and their lack of physical closeness versus other cultures where people are much more affectionate with each other. It reminded me of my trip to Europe. There it was quite common to see little girls with their arms about each other, men greeting each other with a kiss and generally a lot more non-sexual but affectionate touching than one sees normally in the U.S. Commercials on television regularly showed the naked female form to sell everything, even yogurt. Of course we Americans noticed this and were uncomfortable at first, but not really able to express WHY.

Everything is about sex in the U.S. The Puritanical repression that is so prevalent in our culture here just doesn't exist elsewhere to quite the extreme as it does here. It's why we can have no problem whatsoever with little kids watching violent films, but let them see a naked breast and it's the freaking end of the world. Why are we so uncomfortable with our bodies? It's so strange.

I know I'm not the first person to come to this conclusion. I've even touched on it before in prior blogs.

One of the cultural tips we were given before going to France was to not smile at strangers on the street, as one commonly does (particularly in the South, where my college was located) here in the U.S. In fact it's considered rude not to smile. A girl on the trip with me wrote a lovely essay about this cultural difference that has stuck with me even 10 years later. What she wrote was that in French construction, when they put shutters on a window, they have a function. In American construction, shutters are purely decorative. In the same way the French smile at those they know and love and those smiles mean something. The Americans who smile at everyone, those smiles are purely decorative and makes it so you never know exactly where you stand with Americans. Do they really like you or are they just being polite?

The apartments that we lived in as part of the program were in buildings that were relatively old. They all had traditional "French" windows meaning they opened up into the room, not opened on a sliding sash like traditional Colonial windows. They also had shutters. REAL shutters. You closed them at night to block the light and the noise from the street below or to keep your neighbors across the narrow street from being able to see into your apartment. Neighbors so close you could easily have a normal tone of voice conversation across the street. You have to get used to touching people if you live so close, there's just no way to get through life without being willing to touch other people.

It has been quite a long time since I have been touched with affection by an adult. Here, it's just not done. Personal space is held quite dear in America. This isn't always a bad thing. Once a guy at work touched my shoulders and then on another occasion my hair and it creeped me out so much I had to ask him to not do it again. A guy in my circle of friends was the touchy-feely type and as a group we all were creeped out by it, and we collectively laughed at him behind his back because of it. I'm ashamed of it now. On the other hand, the idea of him touching me right now makes the hair on the back of my neck stand up.

I don't remember the last time I hugged my mom or dad, let alone my brothers. It's just not done in my family among the adults. How sad is that?

It's almost as if we reserve touching to a purely sexual act, when it shouldn't be that way. I want to not be that way, but years and years of NOT being that way, with associating touch with sex make it nearly impossible.

If it wasn't after 1 am, I probably would edit this better and make it more coherent, but I really need to get to bed.

manny being manny

I am so glad I don't live in Boston.

I can avoid all the tempest in a teapot that is the Manny scandal du jour.

He played a pretty good game tonight so maybe people will shut up about the whole thing.

Maybe not.

I'm still glad I can avoid the talk (for the most part).

Can't we all just get along?

trying to let go

Random childhood memory: The Ground Round Bar and Grill. I've only ever visited that establishment once in my entire life. I was probably six or seven years old at the time, but I remember being so excited because for one, my family was very poor and rarely ate out so going to *any* restaurant was a big deal and two, because the restaurant was in heavy advertisement rotation on television during the regular cartoons we watched after school. (Those cartoons being the aforementioned She-ra/He-man, G.I. Joe, Transformers, et al.)

The big advertisement at the time was that parents paid whatever the kid weighed for the meal. I don't know if the place still does that, for that matter I don't even know if there are any Ground Rounds in Minnesota anymore. (Edit: according to the oficial website the answer is yes, but not anywhere in the Twin Cities.) As a fat kid, it was unbelievably humiliating to be "weighed in" at the door. My elder brother teased me mercilessly over the fact that his meal was less than mine, despite his being more than three years older than me. The deal with the weigh-in kids meal was that for dessert you got an ice cream sundae in a little plastic cup that looked like a baseball hat. I don't remember which hat I got, all I know is that it wasn't a Twins hat, because my younger brother got the Twins hat, much to the chagrin of my older brother.

They still make those caps, that's actually what made me think of the restaurant. Some guys at work have a few of those hats as decorations for their cubicles, including one for Boston. Unfortunately, I have been unable to convince the guy who has the Boston hat to give it to me. It's not like he even likes the team, I think he just likes knowing that I want it, so he's refusing to give it to me.

I don't really have a point to this post (blog?). It's just funny how I can still picture walking into that restaurant and stepping up on the scale, the red LED lights posting my weight and my older brother laughing hysterically because he had been weighed first and his weight was so much less than mine. It's memories like this that I wish I could just purge from my mind. Maybe not remembering this stuff would mean that I could get along better with my brother, maybe trust him, maybe let go of all the pain he caused me growing up. I doubt he even remembers, or if he does that his memory matches mine at all.

It's something to ponder.

more adventures in housekeeping

After the game today, I spent the rest of the evening continuing my assault on my kitchen. If anything could get me to stop eating, it would be cleaning my stove. It's not perfectly clean, but I was able to repair one of the burners ALL BY MYSELF so I'm pretty proud of that.

My stove was purchased and installed in my house while Kennedy was still in office, I swear. I will be 31 years old in a little over a month and I don't ever remember cooking on a stove like this one. It is a gas stove with pilot lights. This means that I cannot ever leave anything on top of the stove for fear of things melting/catching fire and it is always emanating heat. The plus side to this is that I have an extremely short time for preheating. On the negative, natural gas leaks are a real possibility and I am its self-cleaning feature.

I was doing a google image search for a stove like mine, and I really couldn't find one, perhaps I have the last one in existence. Anyway, the photo of the dog sliding down the bamboo or whatever that is came up in the google image search under "dirty old stove" so I thought I'd share. It was too cute to resist.

Each spring, my mom plants a gigantic garden of vegetables: tomatoes, green pepper, squash, carrots, beets, watermelon, peas, and broccolli among whatever else tickles her fancy. Her green thumb is amazing, but she never fails to complain about all the work it takes as she virtually does it alone. She has a sister who is more than happy to help her can all the tomatoes and take half the jars, but never seems to have the time to come over to help my mom plant, weed, or pick the tomatoes, much less pay for half the plants. I know that I should probably help her, but I have never been interested in gardening or the outdoors in general. I'd be happy to help her if she wouldn't plant so MUCH. I mean, spending 3 hours each Saturday and Sunday, nevermind an hour every other day of the week is just NOT worth it. I'd much rather spend my time indoors. In my opinion, she should tone it down. Not plant so much, plant enough tomatoes to can some for her own use and enough to enjoy fresh tomatoes in season. She regularly purchases 18-25 plants. I think 5 would be enough. It certainly would be easier. And she wouldn't have to lug in the excess from her garden to work day after day in August. On the other hand, she enjoys it, masochist that she apparently is.

As far as my lack of interest in the outdoors, my mom keeps threatening that she will come over and plant flowers in my yard. I tell her not to waste her time or effort as they will only die and/or be run over by weeds because I just DON'T CARE. Flowers are pretty, don't get me wrong. I'm just not the type who enjoys digging my hands in dirt. If I had the money to hire a gardener, I'd be more than happy to have plants and flowers all over the place. But if I'm the one who has to take care of them, there really is no point. This is what farmer's markets are for - someone else does the planting and weeding and you can just go and get a little bit of what you need, even fresh flowers.

Nature girl, I am not, obviously.

lesson in futility

Last night's Red Sox/Yankees game was excellent. Yes, my team lost 1-0 at the hands of their arch rivals. Yes, this means they dropped out of the top spot in the AL East (had been tied for first with the Tampa Bay Rays) and yes, this means the Yankees are that much closer to potentially overtaking the Sox. But that's OK, because it was Damn Good Baseball.

Both teams played really well, both offensively and defensively. The umpiring staff, however, was completely BLIND. Mike Lowell, the gorgeous third baseman for the Sox (formerly of the Yankees, I like him much better with facial hair, personally), had a completely insane strike called on a ball that was so far inside he had a better chance of hitting it with his penis than the bat. Lowell did NOT respond to this well as you can imagine. He was thrown out of the game (it was the bottom of the ninth) but not before jumping up and down and yelling some great epithets at the umpire. It was awesome, the unleashing of that passion. Mikey usually comes across as very cool and calm. When he throws from third base to first for the out, he makes such smooth, graceful throws that he makes it look like a simple toss of ten feet and not a rocket covering 90 feet or more in half a second. Last night, he had had ENOUGH of the crappy calls (this was not the first one of the evening. Including the near hit in the HEAD by batter Kevin Youkilis at the hands of pitcher Joba Chamberlain) and he lost control. Despite its futility, it was just great to see.

So despite the loss, especially a loss to the Yankees, I enjoyed the game immensely.

Right now I'm watching another match up of the Red Sox and the Yankees. This time nationally televised. I at least STARTED on cleaning my kitchen and I INTENDED to just listen to the game while I finished. But, I should have known better. Like Mike arguing with the umpire, my being outside the room while a game is being televised is an exercise in futility.

i reserve the right to change my mind

Upon further review of the entire first series of Spaced, I changed my mind. The show is awesome.

Too bad I'll have to buy the DVDs to see it again as they're only playing the episodes once.

I thought my kitchen was clean enough. It is not. Tomorrow I'm breaking out the big guns. Ammonia and bleach. Not together, but I'm going to SCOUR my kitchen. Maybe I'll stop feeling so tetchy, as Ron Weasley puts it (I think). Every time I feel the slightest tingle or breeze over my skin, I'm sure it's a damn ant crawling on me. A girl at work mentioned that she had read somewhere that this season is the worst on record in a while for ants. Considering I am no less clean than I was last summer, I like this explanation. I think I shall try to stick to the whole "doing my dishes every day now" thing, though.

It can't hurt.

it could be me up there in stage lights

No, not really, but I really like this song. Stop! by Against Me!

I took four hours off of work today, I was terribly grumpy and tired. And so was everyone around me at work. Hardly any talking, just working and the customers were cranky. If I didn't leave when I did, I might have become guilty of severe customer abuse. In theory I didn't really want to leave, better to take a half a day off work on a Friday afternoon, but I just couldn't take it anymore.

I was all stoked to see that BBC America was airing episodes from the British comedy Spaced this week. Then I found out the time the show was airing was 2 am! What the hell? On Sunday they showed a few episodes in the afternoon and I watched several. It's been a couple years since I had seen the show and maybe I've changed or maybe I have a terrible memory, but they are not as funny as I remembered. Still funny, but just not as good as I thought they were.

My kitchen is infested with ants. Or it was. Part of my justification for using vacation time was that I would come home and clean my kitchen. When I got home two HOURS after I left work (running errands), my house was so hot (a/c doesn't run during day), I had to sit down and rest a bit while the house cooled off. BIG mistake. I ended up taking a nap. I did manage to rouse myself by 8 pm to get started, scouring every square inch of my kitchen. It's clean, but I don't know if it will ever be clean enough. I suppose I will have to start washing my dishes daily now.

That is, when I start eating again.

The Red Sox take on the New York Yankees tomorrow night, playing at Fenway. Josh Beckett is the pitcher Friday night. I am a terribly lame person, and I will be watching this game alone (not even someone to watch it with online as my friend Amber has a life) and having the time of my life. How sad is that?

Very sad, I suppose.

Yep, that's my life. Baseball and the internet. What shall I do in the winter, football? It may come to that.

What a difference a year makes.

i try to say goodbye and i choke, try to walk away and i stumble

Yeah, this song is not new to anyone except those who were living under a rock in 1999. I don't care, it's what I'm in the mood to listen to right now. The lyrics have meaning to my feelings right now. The title of this blog refers directly to my damn iPod. As I posted earlier, I have been having issues with my iPod. Tonight I decided at 10:30 to see if the issue had magically corrected itself. You never know, stranger things have happened.

Miraculously, iTunes, instead of just freezing up whenever the iPod was plugged in, gave me a message that it couldn't read the data from my iPod and I should restore the iPod to factory settings. Stupid me did this without thinking first. I should have backed up the music. I did not. Therefore, upon "restoring" the iPod, I deleted every bit of music from the iPod. Every song, every playlist, every album cover.

I have spent HOURS on this fucking thing and POOF it was gone!

I wanted to just throw it away. Say, fuck it, I don't need it. I can live without it.

Unfortunately, I am weak under the power of the iPod. And here I sit, at 1:25 am, waiting for it to finish syncing music. A mere mortal who knows she could not possibly get through the day without her mini-Tom (yes, I've named my iPod. bite me).

On the plus side, I had been planning to delete a bunch of crap and load some other songs I have recently downloaded, but had been unable to do so due to the iPod not communicating with iTunes. So, my iPod, when it's done syncing, will have fewer crappy songs and more awesome songs.

I still would rather have done this on the weekend instead.

mommie dearest

Just got through watching a COMPLETELY FALSE ad from McSame blaming higher gas prices on the Democratic party. GOD.

Econ 101 should be REQUIRED for graduation from high school.

On the way to work this morning, I went off on my mom. She was commenting on a story on NPR about social security and retirement. I love my mom, but she can be a bit of a conspiracy theorist sometimes about the stupidest things. She goes on and on about how Social Security shouldn't be encouraging people to work beyond the age of 62.

Here's an approximation of my response to that:

OK, Mom, here's the deal. The reason they are encouraging your generation to work longer is because of several reasons, but the biggest one is that YOUR generation decided to have fewer children AND 70 some odd percent of the female population joined the work force. So, you have more people in the system, eligible for high benefits and NOTHING to support them. Plus, when the system was designed, IN THE 1930s, not only did people have on average more children, they also worked until they were 62 and were DEAD by the time they were 68. Now you have people LIVING LONGER and DRAWING ON THE SYSTEM LONGER. So, excuse me if we think that maybe since you're in SUCH BETTER HEALTH and you CHOSE NOT TO HAVE MORE BABIES that the government thinks you should WORK A BIT LONGER FOR YOUR PAY.

Her response? You sound like a Republican.

I cannot win.

take me out to the ball game

What is it about professional baseball players that I find so fascinating? It's not just their physical beauty. Some of them are not that hot, I will be honest. But even those who I may have not found particularly attractive at first, once I see them make an amazing play, they become insta-Greek gods in my eyes. The guy on the left over there is the catcher for the Seattle Mariners, Jeff Clement. The guy on the right, the captain of the Red Sox, Jason Varitek, also the catcher. I'm currently watching these two teams battle it out and I can't decide which man I find more attractive. I linked to this essay 3 reasons why smart women love baseball on my old blog, but it still rings true to me. Even more so as now I'm 100+ games into the season.

I jumped on the bandwagon last fall during the American League Championship Series between the Red Sox and the Cleveland Indians. I admit this freely. At the time I was chatting with my friend Amber who is a born-and-raised Red Sox fan since birth, being born in Massachusetts and all. She was watching the game, and was quite distracted. Since the game was being televised nationally, and there was nothing else on, I decided to tune in and have her tell me about baseball. She told me all about the Boston players, telling me about their history with the organization, explaining some of the more complex rules to me (still don't quite get balking). It was an awesome bonding experience for me with her and solidified our friendship. Then, the most random thing in the world (to me at the time) happened. The Red Sox closer, Jonathan Papelbon, DANCED IN HIS UNDERWEAR ON THE FIELD! That was it, that solidified the deal and I became a Red Sox fan. There was no going back after that. It was just so bizarre and awesome and random all at once, the expression of joy from him.

I think had things gone differently, if the Red Sox had not gone onto the world series, I would still be a fan of the team, so I don't consider myself a total bandwagoner. If that's a word.

Now that I'm more than halfway through the season, and having watched nearly every game (only about 3 have been blacked out, the rest I watch on my satellite service because I paid an exorbitant amount of money for the privelidge - don't get me started on that one), I find that the most appealing part of the game is not so much the sex appeal of the players but enjoying the physical prowress of the players. The amazing hits, the backhanded catches, the diving for balls, poring over the newspaper stats the next day, all of it is just fascinating to me.

If someone had told me a year ago that I would even regularly open the sports pages, let alone have it be the first section I open every day, I would have told them they were nuts. I have two brothers who were both sports nuts. Being the only girl and the middle child, I felt it was my duty to be as contrary to them as possible so I made quite an issue over hating all sports. Now, my brothers wonder who the hell I am when I mention that I need to get home to watch the game, or I talk to my nephew about sports. I've caught my older brother looking at me and just shaking his head when I start talking about baseball.

I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm watching SportsCenter. Yet. I'm sure by next season I'll be well-versed in baseball. And I don't mind one bit. I don't know which part scares me more, the prospect of getting MORE obsessed with baseball, or that I don't mind knowing that it is happening.

on m'appelle Zobi. oui c'est moi la mouche

One of the things I did on my old myspace blog was include a youtube video of the song of the moment for me. This song is "Zobi La Mouche" by the group Les Negresses Vertes. I can't believe this song is nearly twenty years old, to me it sounds timeless. The singer's voice reminded me so much of the lead singer of Gogol Bordello, Eugene Hütz, I was quite surprised to find no apparent connection between the two. Of course I adore the song "Start Wearing Purple" which was featured prominently in an excellent movie I saw about six months ago, "Everything is Illuminated" (also featuring Eugene, as a matter of fact). Anyway, I enjoy sharing random music with people, and maybe someone out there might find a new favorite song for my efforts.

I've also discovered here that I enjoy the ease of linking text on this blog, even if I have to go under the Html editor and make it so that links pop up a new window/tab. It makes things way too easy!

Today was an excellent day at work. I still have a grin on my face even now, three hours after leaving. Nasty customers? What nasty customers? I don't recall a single one. Nothing in particular happened, it was just a great day in general.

Another guy at work has decided that if his Twins lose, then the Red Sox must lose as well. It's the only way his grief over a Twins loss can be assuaged. Considering it's a late game tonight for the Red Sox and the Twins are currently down 12-4 to the Yankees, I don't like this plan he has.

I have become a complete facebook addict. I resisted so long, now I find myself accessing it multiple times per day on my cell phone, and it being the second site I go to when logging onto my computer at night. It's insane! At first I thought I would just connect with people I already know from college and people from the Gomez forum. I took a leap, though, and friended someone from high school, which opened up a bit of a floodgate. I don't know yet how I feel about that. I haven't been in contact with any of these people since the day I went to college, and I didn't really regret it. Now, of course, it's been so long I think that I've mellowed a bit. Maybe. Old hurts do run deep after all. So far nothing awkward has occured, so I think I need to just chill the hell out.

For the honor of Grayskull....I am She-ra!!!

OK, not really. I've been a brunette and a redhead, but never will I be a blond.

After the one billionth time of coming up the stairs at my house and seeing the dust under my bed because in the three years I have lived here I have not managed to put the dust ruffle on my bed, today was the day. I lugged the vacuum up the stairs, vacuumed under the bed, dug through two (count 'em, TWO!) closets to locate the elusive dust ruffle and then set about finagling the bed so I could move the mattress off the bed and not break anything. This was no mean feat as I am the clumsiest person I know. It's one thing to move a mattress with another person, it's another thing to move a mattress when you are in good physical shape, but as I was alone and am in terrible shape, I consider this an accomplishment.

Your mileage may vary.

I did have flashes that I would do something stupid, pull a muscle or in some way throw out my back or something and I'd be laying under a massive queen-size mattress with no one to help me and no way to get to a phone. The secret fear of all single people, that no one will realize you're missing until it's too late and you're dead and your cats have eaten your face definitely occurred to me a few times in this undertaking. Thankfully, I have no cats, so I can have an open casket at my funeral.

try not to laugh

OK, I made it 13 seconds, but maybe it's just because I'm hormonal.


Try Not To Laugh - Watch more free videos

here comes the rain again

I'm looking out my window towards my back yard, the rain is falling so hard it looks like something out of "Singing in the Rain." I'm watching the Red Sox play the Los Angeles Anaheim Narnia Scotland Angels on Fox and can say with total certainty that this is a perfect afternoon.

I type this just as the "Searching for signal on satellite" comes on the screen.

Oh well, sometimes quiet is nice.

We haven't had a lot of rain here this summer. My brown and crusty lawn can attest to that. Sure, I could water the lawn. As soon as I become a contortionist, I'll get right on that. Some completely insane person installed the spigot on my house under a part of my house that juts out, so you literally have to crawl on your hands and knees and lay on your stomach to put the hose onto the spigot in the first place, and the same to turn it on and off. It's not worth the extra money the higher water bill would involve. Someday, I'll hire a plumber to move the spigot to another, logical place and then I'll have a nice lawn. That project is #8279 on my "Things to do to fix up my house" list. It's a long list.

Just as quickly, the rain has let up and the picture comes back on the TV.

I'm getting quite annoyed with iTunes lately. For some reason I cannot sync my iPod with iTunes, which means I cannot load any music from my computer to my iPod. This has been going on for a few days with no apparent correction in sight. If any of you reading this have any solution to this problem, please let me know. I've tried reinstalling the latest version of iTunes, rebooting the computer, changing usb ports. It's annoying. I'm very much a plug and play kind of girl. I don't want to work for my music, I want it to just work when I want it to work.

I know I'm taking an insane amount of time to type this. Easily distracted by activity on the television or checking out iTunes support board for a solution (nothing), but in the span of time that I've been typing this blog, we went from bright sunshine to dark as night clouds to rain and thunder and now back to bright sunshine. What the hell?

Last night I saw a picture of a friend from college and it was jarring to see the beginnings of wrinkles on his face. I haven't seen him since he graduated 9 years ago, but in my mind he hasn't changed one iota. I know I have gray hairs, but I liked to pretend that I was the only one. I guess time marches on for all of us.

Getting old sucks.

And the Narnia Angels just took the lead over Boston. Bastards.

Witty Blog Title Here

I've been blogging on myspace since November, and I have become bored with the limits of the site. Plus, the ads are killing me. If I see one more "2 of your friends have a secret crush on you" ad one more time, I think I will scream. Several of the blogs I read daily (or whenever they are updated) are through blogspot so here I am.

I don't live an interesting life. This blog will mostly be rants on a variety of subjects including music, politics, pop culture, my non-existent social and love life. I can't promise that it will be interesting, or that you'll ever come back after you read this once. This is a public diary of some of my deepest issues. In our present economy and medical system, this is my free therapy. Every day, maybe multiple times a day, I will lay down on the couch and spew whatever junk is in my mind, mostly without censoring myself.

It won't all be angtsy, emo shit. I promise.