About Kindness

Is the world really a safe place made dangerous by a few lunatics?

My parents taught us opposing tactics to address the issue.

My father taught me all manner of self-defense, including the importance of never leaving home without a dangerously-sharpened pencil in my pocket. He impressed on me the need to walk with my head held high, and take in all my surroundings, from the street name to how many people are standing on the other side of it and what they're wearing, in case I should need to identify them at a later time. He taught me how to recognize drunks, addicts, and general signs that a person is in an altered mental state or intends to do me harm, and given me sufficient guidance to minimize my risk of being assaulted.

He's a cop.

My mother, a special education teacher, taught me to be kind to everyone. Whenever we went into a store, my siblings and I were supposed to smile at at least five strangers. Whenever we got a smile back, we tended to go above and beyond our "smile quota." We had picnics in the park when we were younger, and on more than one occasion shared an extra sandwich and bottle of water with a hungry person who asked for change. We've made a fair amount of friends this way.

I live in a rough area far away from both my parents, but I still walk with my head held high, a pencil in my pocket, and a smile for anyone who catches my eye. The smiles have gotten me a mild reputation as a kind person with a sympathetic ear, particularly at the light rail/bus depot by my work, and I've listened to a fair few people cry their eyes out because sometimes you just need to get a weight off your shoulders, and an anonymous ear can do wonders for that. I've been accosted by people intending me harm a few times, and been able for the most part to disarm them pretty effectively, and defend myself when that didn't work. Kindness, I've been taught, is and should be my first line of defense and offense against the world. But on the occasions it fails, you should still be able to defend yourself.

On the whole, though, I've helped out far more people than I've had to defend myself from, and even last weekend, I've been the victim of some random acts of kindness. I was buying dinner food, and my card was declined. The lady behind me at the checkout paid for my food. That's only the most recent example. I could go back further and share more, but they're all spontaneous, awesome, and happen in an hour of dire need.

It's so easy to say the world is a crazy, awful place, but, to butcher a quote from my favorite book series:

How many mortals did it take to write all these books? How many hands shelved them, and cared for them, and repaired them, and read them? And it takes just one stupid mortal monkey with a torch to destroy it all, but after so many of them spent so much incalculable time writing the books, wouldn't you say that the behavior of the librarian is more typical of the mortals than the behavior of the arsonist?

So I'm Getting Married

Still talking with Poffle.

Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking. "But he's bad for you, Fantasticness!" "But you wrote him that letter, Fantasticness!" "Didn't we JUST talk about how much better off you'd be without him?"

Call me a masochist, but I just can't stay away from this particular brand of trouble.

Story time:

Anyway, I killed my phone this week. I was walking from my work to my bank (approximately one and a half miles, on a low- to no-traffic pedestrian/bike path with benches on the side every couple hundred feet) and back again because sometimes you just need cash, amiright?!

After my bank run, I go hit up my favorite shop: the used book store! I spend far too much time and money in there, and one of these day's I'll probably just move into the stockroom so I can read everything without going completely broke. An hour and some change later, I head back to the hiker-biker trail to walk back to work, where I owe someone forty bucks for a carton of cigarettes and hopefully can catch a ride home with my bro before we head out to a concert. (My FIRST concert, by the way, excluding Jesus-y stuff, school stuff, and classical music.) I take my phone out of my pocket to check the time, respond to the notifications in my Facebook app, and stick the phone back in my pocket as I cross the street, book in hand, to begin the trek back to work.

A quarter mile down the road, I realize I hadn't actually checked the time, because Facebook. I reach into my pocket and . . .

No phone.

I spent the next half hour looking for it up and down the street between my bank, the trail, and the used book store. I eventually find it with the help of a kind lady in an SUV, who asked me to "Hey! Pick that phone up!"

Out of the puddle.

In the crosswalk.

In the middle of a busy intersection.

On a rainy, spring's eve, East Coast day.

BUT! No one had run it over, and it turned on when I pressed the button, though the screen wasn't cooperating, and I stuck it firmly in the bottom of my pocket and continued on my merry way back to work, book in hand, reading as I walked.

The first thing I did when I got home was update the Facebook, letting everybody know what had happened in perhaps a little too much detail, but the short version was at the top of the post, so there was no reason for anyone not to get the gist of what had happened. "My phone was in a puddle and now it isn't working. I shall be out of contact for the most part for the next few days." Simple, easy to understand, idiot-proof, right?

The SECOND thing I did was log on to Skype, send Poffle a message to the same effect, and hope his stupid butt would forget about me for a couple days so I didn't have to explain that I don't answer to him when I got back in contact with the world.

So there's a Skype message, and a Facebook post, to the effect of "Fantasticness doesn't have a phone right now so don't expect her to answer your calls and texts, k, thnks, bai."

I got a replacement phone today. I checked the messages first thing, because all the texts that were sent to me while the puddle phone was in a bag of rice were simply waiting in the aether for my technology to be powered up again. The same as the voicemail I got.

You know. The one from Poffle?

Received Wed at 7:57 pm:

"Hi *Fantasticness.* It's me *Poffle.* Just got off work and though that I'd call you again and tell you I missed you again; the problem is you're busy again so I'll continue to call you and eventually I'll get through to you. Ok. Love you, have a good night."

Right after that Facebook PSA and the personalized Skype message.

*headdesk!*

ANYwho, apparently, he's been harassing the Bestie lately about Bestie's relocation to my side of the country (I can not WAIT to have someone to book-rant and shop with! That stuff is so much better in person!) and has been saying he and I are still dating.

Um, hello? Did the break end? When? Why wasn't I informed of my own relationship status? Or are you just concerned that someone else will treat me how I deserve to be treated while you continue to be a bass-ackwards chauvanistic mysogynist over in the corner?

So Poffle called tonight, and after I asked him if he normally avoided Facebook and Skype during the week, because he obviously hadn't got my message, he goes "Oh, I just figured you were busy or sleeping because you go to work super early."

Well, that makes sense, but I MESSAGED you. To INFORM you. Because, for some god-awful reason, I feel like that's the courteous thing to do. And you didn't even bother to respond. And you obviously don't care that much or you would have checked it out.

With that out of the way, conversation changes to other topics. Like, the books I'm reading that he's not interested in but, guess what, they're my life. So there.

Side story: We were talking a couple days ago, and I was book-ranting about my series, which I was almost finished with at that point, and he was all "Maybe I'll read them after we get married."

"Excuse me?" When did we say we were getting married? EVER? I mean, we talked about it a year ago, in a really vague "Do you think, maybe, in a few years perhaps, you would consider" kind of way. You know, before you went all psycho co-dependent vengeance-silent-treatment on me and lied to me about when and for how long you were coming to visit me and were rude to my family and awful to my friends, inviting yourself places you weren't supposed to go and really weren't welcome at. And that was A WHOLE GODDAMN MOTHERFUCKING YEAR AGO!!!

Last I checked, we were broken up. On a break. Doing some serious self-reflection time. When did we agree to get hitched, because I don't remember. You must have drugged me or something. And, also, why is Bestie telling me you're still referring to me as your girlfriend? We are ON a BREAK. 

Or so I thought.

I end up causing a huge fight because I tell him I flatly refuse to marry anyone who hasn't read this series because they're wonderful books and have been influential in shaping myself as a person, and in inspiring me to question myself and my beliefs and my perspectives on the big things in life.

And he tells me I'm being stupid and childish.

I'm sorry, but I don't think it's childish to want to share the things which are important to you with the people in your life, and if someone wants to spend the rest of their life with you, they should want to at least try and take an interest in the things that are important to you.

It's not like I'm asking him to join a religious cult or anything. Just read a couple books. And I'm being childish.

Probably about as childish as someone who spontaneously alters their relationship status with anther sentient creatures from "definitely a couple" to "not talking" to "on a break" to "boyfriend/girlfriend for sure" to "yeah, we're getting married but she doesn't know yet."

So as we're talking tonight and the conversation is winding down, I ask: "So when did the break end?"

"When we worked out all our shit."

" . . . Uh, my shit is not worked out yet. And yours doesn't seem to be either. And you should probably tell me when you change our relationship status, because I'm kind of involved with us, and I'd like to know what I'm supposed to be up to."

"Yeah, well, we're dating, so . . . You should totally send me some pictures."

"Uhmmm . . . No."

"Aww, But please?"

"No. I don't like the way I look in pictures."

"Well, I disagree. You look great in picutres."

"I don't think so. I hate the way I look in pictures. All flat and papery and two-dimensional. I think the best parts of me are things you can only experience in person. They don't show up in pictures."

"Well, that's stupid. You should send me pictures."

Dude. Seriously? I just told you MY opinion on something. Not anything big, but something I feel strongly about. Did you seriously just invalidate my opinion? Really? I should put my beliefs and thoughts and feelings in a little jar and stick it on a shelf somewhere out of your way so you can have what you want. I don't think so.

"No. I'm going to sleep. Be safe. Goodnight."

"Okay, dear. Goodnight. I lo---"

"Yeah, goodnight." Click!

What. The fuck. Am I supposed to do with this? Can I just castrate him and then he won't find a girl who wants him for anything other than sex, and that won't be a possibility, and then I can bully him and push him around and see how he likes being treated like dirt for not having a penis or whatever? Can I just kick him in the nads and be done with it? Can someone geographically closer to him than 3000 miles smack him across the face and tell him to man the fuck up and start acting like a grown-up?

Can someone show him this blog so he knows how pathetic I think he is when he's not mind controlling me with his sexy voice and stuff?

Actually, please don't. This is still my journal. I don't want him to ruin this for me.

I'm really not sure what I'm most upset about. That I'm not being kept up to date on my own supposed relationship status. That I apparently don't have a choice in the matter. That of all the things I could have asked him to do, I asked him to read a book which changed my life and he called me childish for it. The fact that he didn't bother to check his messages to see what I was really up to . . .

There's just so much injustice to choose from!

Anyway, someone wanna help me pick out my dress? I'm thinking skanky patent leather with sharp spikes all the fuck over it so if he so much as tries to hold my hand and drag me down the aisle, he's getting stabbed at least twelve times.

Also, his parents are former ministers, and they would be scandalized!

Damned if I Do, Damned if I Don't

Damn the whole damned thing.

Dear Poffle,

I can't please you, so I'll just go ahead and do what I have to do to survive. You can kiss my ass if you think I give a shit about what makes you happy. You want a doll? Fine. I'll refer you to a couple websites; you can commission a custom cock-sucking, house-cleaning, dress-wearing robot to have dinner hot on the table for you when you get home and your slippers ready for your nasty hobbit-feet by your chair.

That's not me.

It's truly unfortunate that you refuse to accept that I'm doing what I'm doing for my own survival and benefit, and not simply to hurt you.

I have never made any even remotely pseudo-major decisions simply to irritate the crap or of someone who irritates the crap out of me. It may appear to be so, but I'm smarter than that. Rash decisions have long-lasting consequences, a lesson I learned in your bed.

I will not, however, deny that your unmitigated outrage is amusing at the present moment, nor can I claim it as anything other than a silver lining on this storm cloud that is the shit you continue to put me through.

You don't get to decide what I do and don't do. You don't get to decide who my friends are, with whom I can pool resources, what I wear, where I live, when and how I can pursue my dreams, and not tell me why I'm deemed incapable of figuring those things out for myself.

Fuck you.

I can do better.

With infinitely more love and patience than you deserve, and wishing you all the best with that egomaniacal codependency of yours,

Me.

Yes I am Legos and No I am not Really an Inanimate Object

So, waaaay the fuck back in September my best friend (who has previously and shall henceforth be referred to here as Bestie) flew alllll the way the fuck from our hometown of Tattooine to my current city of residence to visit me. He stayed with my brother and I for a week and went home. My brother spent basically the entire visit trying to convince Bestie to stay here but, for reasons the internet has no business knowing, that didn't happen.

My Home Planet

Well, guys.

It's happening.

XD XD XD XD XD XD XD XD

<3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3 <3

Party Time: Woot Woot!

So when my brother dips out on me in June when our current lease runs out, I shall either already or very shortly thereafter have a person there to have my back and I'll have theirs.

Like, actually have my back. In a "keep an eye out for each other and keep each other safe without trying to control every aspect of each others lives because I understand and recognize that you're an adult and don't need to be coddled like an infant here" sort of way.

I'm STOKED!!!

In other news, Poffle called me tonight. Just general "hey, how ya been, what's up with you, got any exciting plans" sort of stuff.

I told him.

He's PISSED the fuck off.

Poffle, twenty minutes ago

And it's funny as HELL.

Like, okay, so I told you since it started in fucking SEPTEMBER that my brother has been angling for this to happen for a while now, and you knew, and you treated me like shit and kicked me to the curb (not for the first time in our lengthy and less-than-illustrious relationship) and now you're upset that someone else wants to spend that much time with me. You're upset that I'm going to take advantage of the fact that I'll be living with a (reasonably) sane person with whom I get along very nicely even when we have disagreements and am plotting to use our combined resources to move out of my ghetto, hood-rat-infested neighborhood and move to a decent area. You're upset that I'm comfortable enough in my friendship with someone else to do something wild and crazy together, for more reasons than you have a right to know, and you don't even want to walk around a fucking renaissance faire together because that'd be weird or something?

Seriously

Dude, I'm sorry.

Specifically, I'm sorry you're upset by this, because I know being upset by things sucks but this is happening. I'm also sorry you don't know how to process this (I know that can be overwhelming) but I'm here if you need to talk it out. I'm sorry you think this is a step back for "us" but I'd appreciate if you kept in mind that there is no more "us" since you called time out.

And no, my life really isn't any of your business anymore (thanks for recognizing that, by the way, though I realize you were trying to be petty when you said it) but even though you literally put me through all kinds of hell (and I won't deny I've been just as awful to you at times; you should be aware that that's what happens when you date teenagers) I still care about you and will give you the update on my life since you asked what I was up to, and here's how and why this is happening, and you don't have to like it but please try and understand it.

Also, this isn't about you, Poffle.

Although, maybe it should be.

You see, you're like a little kid. You have this awesome tower of Legos that you had a heck of a good time building, but then you finished with it and went to play on the computer instead. But what's this? Someone ELSE wants to play with the toy you're not even looking at anymore because the computer is so much more interesting? Damn, well, too bad. You're on the computer now, so those blocks are officially none of your damn business.

Better get some ice for that burn.

In the meantime, I'm just going to sit over here and laugh at your ridiculousness.

Pictured: (from left) Poffle, Fantasticness

Excerpt of Awesome: Chocolate Wasted and Candlelight

     There are a lot of strange people in San Francisco, and if you work there, you soon grow used to occasional peculiarities in your customers; but the girl behind the cash register at Ghirardelli's decided that this took weirdness to new heights. Two executives in tailored business suits were sitting at one of the little white tables in the soda fountain area, glaring hungrily at the fountain worker who was preparing their eighth round of hot chocolate. They had marched in, put down a hundred-dollar bill, and told her to keep the drinks coming. On the floor between their respective briefcases was a souvenir bag stuffed with boxes of chocolate cable cars, and the table was littered with foil wrappers from the chocolate they had already consumed.

     To make matters stranger, they had the appearance of junior delegates from opposing sides of a celestial peace conference: the dark one with his diabolic beard and the fair-haired one with his fragile good looks. As she watched, the devil jumped up the second his order number was called and went swiftly, if unsteadily, to take his tray. He grabbed the cocoa-powder canister on his return. Sitting down across from the angel, he added a generous helping of cocoa to his hot chocolate. Then, apparently seized by an afterthought, he opened the canister and shook out a couple of spoonfuls onto the marble tabletop. Giggling guiltily, he pulled out an American Express card and began scraping the cocoa powder into neat little lines.

     "Danny!" She stopped the busboy as he came through the turnstile. "Look at him! Is he really going to-?" 

     He was. He did. The angel went into gales of high-pitched laughter and fell off his chair. The devil sighed in bliss and leaned down for a pass with the other nostril.

     "I don't know what's wrong with them," said the girl in bewilderment. "I swear to God they were both sober when they came in here, and all they've ordered is hot chocolate."

     "Maybe they just really like hot chocolate?" said the busboy.

-The Graveyard Game
Kage Baker 

~~

This excerpt, from book four in my favorite book series ever, is about 24 pages into a massive clusterfuck of intriguing plot.

Clarification: The immortal cyborgs were made immune and highly resistant to any and all know poisons and narcotics, to the point that they could drink straight vodka all night and never get any more drunk than a mild buzz. However, their creators failed to take into account the mild narcotic effect that theobroma cacao has on the human psyche. You know, all those endorphins, the giddy warm fuzzies . . .

So when you're immune to the effects of drugs and alcohol and need to get really baked, chocolate is the way to go.

Seriously, though, apart from the fantastically shameless display of public intoxication, this scene has always been one of my favorites in the series (right up there with the Elizabethan martyr, Victorian espionage agent, and post-modern Surfer/Sailor boy all sharing a body with a holographic pirate). It makes me think, makes me wonder, . . .

What wouldn't you do to escape from the horrors of life?

The Angel and Devil characters above are actually 2000 and 20,000 years old, respectively. I'm in my early 20's. I have to wonder (other than the fact that Ghirardelli's didn't exist until the 20th century) how much it actually took to get these two to go completely off their rockers in public, when they're supposed to be super sly, super sneaky, covert guys and never leave the region of "below the radar."

How much can a normal human being endure before they get to that point?

I was accosted by a young homeless gentleman yesterday. He's only a few years older than I am, but (claims that) he is two years sober following a five-year addiction to hard drugs. His wife has multiple prostitution charges. He's been homeless since he was 18, and his wife is in the same boat. They don't have their kids anymore (well, duh, on that one). He was an English and Philosophy major in a past life, back before everything went to hell.

Really, it was frightening to listen to his story and see how similar our paths are, how easily I could go the same way.

BUT!

He didn't have the shadowy, skeletal pallor of the addicts I pass on my way to and from the bus stop by my house. He didn't have a cloud of bottomless doom following him around like many of the transients who camp out behind the gas station by my work. He actually had kind of a flame in his eyes.

Not like a bonfire flame, you understand. Not some hellish, hopeless inferno.

More of a candle.

It was a really powerful thing to see, in someone who, by all rights, could have easily given up on himself and have society write him off as some other poor sap the system failed.

But he didn't. He has that look, that power, that motivation to get himself out of where he is, to pull himself up by the bootstraps, and his wife, too, and get them to a better place.

I bought the guy a sandwich.

He's so infinitely more inspiring than two lousy immortals getting drunk on chocolate in San Francisco. Really, as amusing as that little scene is, as hard as I laugh every time I read it, it's such a cold, heartless piece of literature. It's horrifying, to look at someone and see them wasting their life and soul away on drugs and alcohol and lack of direction. What does it really take to get to that point? It took these characters two- and twenty-thousand years, respectively. I now know firsthand that we mere mortals can reach that wasteland in less than twenty.

I think that we all have to hit some sort of bottom, so that we can get that direction. So that the direction we can go in is "Up."

Also, please send some good vibes to this guy. I really think he'll recover himself. I think he can get out of the mess he's in. I like to think that, one day, I'll see him on the street, in work clothes, buying some other lost kid a meal because he made it.

He can pass it on.

Fishy Deliciousness

So, I haven't posted anything in a couple of days. I think it's because I've been, if not happy lately, then at least busy and my relatively-normal level of content with life.

Or, in any case, not miserable.

My bestie and I were on Skype last night talking about it, and he informed me that J.R.R. Tolkien used to keep extensive journals, but he would only write in them when depressed. You can read these journals and use them to paint an image of the author, and end up with this picture of a tormented artist in all sorts of emotional pain and spiritual damage, but you would miss the parts where he didn't write anything, long periods of time when everything was going well enough that he felt the need to just bask in the glory of his life and not have to put pen to paper to get his feelings out.

I just finished the second book in my series, which is called Sky Coyote, and it features the Immortal Facilitator Joseph posing as the Native American trickster figure Sky Coyote, a coyote god who happens to be the only friend humanity has among the pantheon of this particular faith. He has to lift an entire village up and out of the annals of history, to rescue them from the coming invasion of white men and small pox. Of course, the natives really have no idea how to cope with their only friend among the gods coming to them, in the flesh, and telling them to get ready to pack up their lives and leave their homes forever. The struggle, and Joseph's response to it, are poignant and insightful.

"Well, I thought-it's just that before You came, I had my own ideas about the way things worked. All that about Father Sun drinking blood and devouring corpses, like the priests told us-I mean, that couldn't be true. He's no more than a monster if He does things like that. I had Him pictures more like a kind of grandfather, loving but stern. Terrible to the wicked, yes, that I could believe. And . . . I thought some kind of higher order prevailed in the Upper World. But from what You say, things are just as bad up there as they are down here. Even God cheats." He gave a shaken little laugh that caught on a sob.
I sighed and shrugged. "Nephew. What did you think, when the priests and shamans told you about us Sky People? When you hear a story, do you believe only the nice parts? Truth isn't like a baked fish, where you can eat the flesh and leave the bones and skin. You have to eat it all."

I don't disagree with any of this. Yes, it's a fictional struggle of a fictional character's actual worldview needing an immediate shift, but that baked fish analogy, in addition to spiking an immediate craving for seafood, makes an uncomfortable amount of sense.

The Truth of anything is what is is, and it cannot be anything else without ceasing to be the truth. That's what truth means. Truth is all true things in their entirety. All of it. Completely accurate. And in order for it to be Truth and not just true, you need all of it.

Thus, the human struggle with Faith.

Anyway, Tolkien.

Were his personal journals really true, then, if he left out all the good bits?

Do we really know the man from his journals if he left out so much of his life? Can we really say we have any idea who this author really was when we don't know his character at the best of times?

If I only post here when I'm feeling down, do you really know me?

I feel like when things are going pretty decent for me, I have less energy and inclination to write on here. No one likes a story that starts "Once upon a time, there live a happy little elf in a happy little forest and he had a happy little life." (<--incredibly vague reference to A Series of Unfortunate Events, which I have neither read nor seen in quite some time.) Does anyone like to read stories with no arcs?

No. Fuck that shit, that's boring.

But, I'm still not writing this for you guys.

I think the reason I don't write when I'm in a good place mentally is because I treat my life like the baked fish. The goodness is the flesh, and it's delicious, and I want to just savor it in all its fishy deliciousness. The bad stuff, the bones and skin, I just want to leave on the plate (my mind) but it'll rot there, so I have to throw it out.

And by throw it out, I mean vent about it.

On the internet.

To strangers.

It's cool, though. I mean, you don't have to go through my psychological garbage if you don't want to, but if dumpster diving is your thing, who am I to stop you.

And occasionally, you find some useful treasures.

Comforting Things

I just finished reread the first book in my favorite series for about the twenty-seventh time. In the Garden of Iden, by Kage Baker, is the flagship novel of a beautiful series (The Company) about time travel, immortality, politics, religion, corruption, ethics, and, of course, contains more than a healthy smattering of romance.

I'm a total fangirl.

I first read the first book some six, seven years ago, or thereabouts, and it doesn't matter how many times I've read it (about twenty-seven) or how much of it I have memorized (I once recited the whole first chapter for a project in my freshman English class), every time I go back through it is like the first time.

I laugh. I cry. I fall in love. My heart gets broken. I sit on the edge of my seat, begging the love interest, "No! Don't do it! Don't be a dumbass, Nicholas Harpole, you glorious douchebag!" and he does it anyway and I cringe every single time.

The "father" character makes me roll my eyes as only a chronically-sarcastic absentee-father-who-legitimately-cares-but-can't-for-the-eternal-life-of-him-figure-it-out-to-express-it can.

The "older-sister/single-minded-matron" character has me sighing in exasperation every time she goes off on a tangent.

When Mendoza, the protagonist, falls in love for the first time in her life, my heart aches with happiness for her, and breaks in grief as does hers at the end.

I get so drawn into the story, I forget that I need to eat, that I need to sleep until I pass out holding the pages open. I forget that I have a job to go to and a family to talk to and a house to keep and friends to be there for. I forget everything except the words on the page, the immortal characters immortalized further by the ink in which they were printed. I forget everything except that the words are beautiful and the wisdom therein has yet to fail me. "Arrows you may dodge and fever you may antibody for, but mortal grief is a misfortune you cannot escape." (pg 253)

And I will gladly grieve for these characters again as I embark on yet another quest through the pages of this universe.

There are twelve books in this series, and every single one of them can get me this riled up.

Every.

Single.

One.

There's just something so comforting, so natural about rereading a good book. A really good story, in my opinion, is one that can draw you in time and again and still have you riveted like it's your first time reading anything ever.

It's magical.

So I spent yesterday reading my beloved book, and finished it today after work when I should have been washing the dishes or cleaning my room, and I slept a glorious thirteen hours last night and woke up feeling refreshed and alive for the first time in a week and a half, and maybe longer.

I don't know. It's been a while since I read this series last. I go a little crazy without it.