Ain’t We Got Fun?

My, my, my.  Isn’t this just a pickle? I like being right, but there is a limit.I’m here to tell you, I’ve never had this much fun, and I’ve been to two world fairs and a goat fucking.  Politics, finance, world order itself hang in the balance, and it gets no better than that.

In just the last month as I reckon it the federal government has injected or is on the verge of injecting over TWO Trillion (that’s trillion with a T) bucks into the financial market.  What comes after trillion? it’s million,billion, trillion….but what comes next?  Whatever it is, we’ve sunk a quarter of one of them into this mess.  In fact, I’m not even counting the fannie and freddie buyout, so probably more like 3 trillion.

Yet, amazingly, no one is to blame.   I keep stopping as I write this.  Laughter overcomes me.  A complete and utter dearth of leadership has created the situation, and suddenly we find that the two candidates aren’t really capable of leading either.  Given an incredibly devastating economic crisis just 2 months prior to the election, and McCain panics whilst Obama cowers.  The cowering isn’t exactly a surprise.  It conforms to both the voting record, and the lack of forthrightness on the part of Barack.  The panic was a little surprising.  I take it that’s what a bonafide hero does when faced with a situation beyond his understanding.  Lacking the tools to capture the essence of the crisis it is better to do be doing something useless than nothing at all.  I remember the mindset clearly from my time in the military.  I believe they teach it at The Basic Officers Course.

So what we have is a candidate willing to trounce longtime friendships as if they mean nothing, and a candidate incapable of dealing with those issues not related to beans, bullets, and bandages.  Let’s look back:

We could’ve had Hillary.  Mitt.  Guiliani.  A host of others.  All uniquely unqualifed, but gifted with the egocentricity needed to believe one capable of performing that job.   Bill probably would be nice to have around right now.  Would be nice if he hadn’t used up his term limits before he achieved wisdom.  Oh well.  What we have are these two knuckleheads.  Both of whom, coincidently, have less executive experience, and less personal appeal than the vice presidential candidate.  The hockey mom.  Not the inveterate liar and longtime defender of current social policy that has us where we are today.  Of course, I’m partial to a well turned calve.  Beats worn out political bullshit everytime.

Anyway.  I just came by to chuckle.  Spending what you don’t have got us here.  Blame whoever you want, but that’s what did it.  Your friends, neighbors, coworkers…maybe you, maybe a little me.  that’s who got us here.  Bad spending, atrocious voting.  Accepting that in a free and democratic society the government should be bailing out private enterprise.  We suck folks, and we just keep sucking.  Come the first Tuesday in November we’re going to suck again.  We chose these two to lead us to the promised land?  We’re we drinking?  Hopped up on speedballs and Latte’?  Whatever the case.  This is frigging hilarious.

awkward conciliatory and encouraging afterward:

If your job is sound, and you aren’t in hock up to your genitalia; if you spend little and conserve copiously you should come through this mess ok.  If not, well, tough shit.  You were warned.

Two monkeys, a rabbit, and an idiot preserve

    If you’ve been here before you may have already heard the expression “like 2 monkeys fucking a football.”  What it means is there’s a whole lot of activity, and not much accomplishment.  Well, it has defintely been that kind of week.  This may turn into scatalogical drivel in a minute, so you can stop here if you’d like.  You’ve probably learned something already, and the value of that should never be underestimated.

    I missed all but Monday at work.  My daughter’s been running a fever, and gasping, and wheezing, and on our third trip…yep, third, the little shitheel looks up from his stethoscope and proclaims “I think she has pneumonia.”  Now I’m not a physician, but I’m thinking from day one it’s bronchitis or pneumonia, and told him so on the first visit.  This of course has caused a bit of an epiphany.

    I don’t use doctors much.  I find their cost generally outweighs their value, especially since pharmaceuticals are generally readily available on the sidewalk out front.    Having learned over the course of the last couple of months that the system is incredibly rife with profiteering and outright fraud I question the intelligence of getting the government anymore involved.  The hand specialist that has been treating me is raking in (this is an estimate based on actual time spent working on my hand) 18k an hour.  I don’t mind this so much, but had i not had insurance I would’ve stitched the frankenstein finger and let the other bones set on their own.  I doubt I’d be any worse off, though the scarirng may have scared small children; an undervalued gift that.

   Then the pharmacy was the original clusterfuck from hell.  My bad.  I went to walmart.  Generally I find walmart to be sufficient to the need for supplying things like paper, flour, and shampoo.  My experience has been that while semiliterate cretins would serve the rest of us best by being expunged from the gene pool, a decent alternative is putting them to work, and walmart serves this function admirably.  You do not, however, want them filling your prescriptions for you.  I spent an hour trying to assist them in getting it right as they ran hither and yon to no little effect.  I finally just took my prescriptions back, complimented them on their exemplary display of ineptitude, and contemplated as I exited the premises how much I would rather eat shit from the dispenser than go through that again.  I then went to the Walgreens, and for 1.05 more was out the door in 12 minutes.  Another thoroughly satisfied customer.

    The pace de resistance to my week was when I arrived home to find general tso wrapped in the embrace of an entirely to dead Roscoe.  I knew that sooner or later his lechery would be the death of him, but always assumed he would die of a heart attack while pulling his 3 pound furry jackhammer routine on my ankle.  I was a bit put out by it all.  Does this mean that that fucking cat is a better lay than me, or was it a simple case of his number was up?  Whatever the case, I suppose I should be thankful that he gave me something to contemplate other than how deeply I despise the human race at this particular juncture.  I left out politics here, as it would get me back to full roar on the whole despise thing, but I’ll break it out after I chase a couple of rum and cokes with a couple vicodin….kind of a Heath Ledger cocktail.

update

I’m writing this for Con because he worries.

It’s been a busy couple of weeks.  I was contemplating my existence the other day over at O’malleys.  I was nursing a rum and coke because it beats slamming shots when you’re in a rut.  Slamming shots when you are in a rut almost always results in a felony or two, and getting them miraculously turned into misdemeanors isn’t cheap.

O’malleys is not Cheers.  O’malleys is Cheers amped up on reality and testosterone, and then inebriated beyond the point of reason.  Nobody yells “Hey Norm” when Norm walks in.  Half of them have kicked Norm’s ass, and the other half had theirs kicked by him.  It doesn’t mean they won’t buy Norm a drink, but they are neither happy nor sad to see him. O’malley’s Ambivalent Bar and Eatery. Except they don’t serve food. 

So I’m sitting there when Smiley Joe walks in.  Since creativity and drunkenness do not comingle, he is called Smiley Joe because he smiles all the time.  A tourist mistook this affability for weakness once, and was literally slapped silly for it.  Smiley was smiling the whole time.  He smiles a lot, but he’s nobodies punk.  I bought him a Jaegerbomb ( a strange concoction that mixes booze that tastes like castor oil with an energy drink that tastes like shit), and we talked about the mundane for awhile.

I’ll finish it later…i need sleep.  I work tomorrow and then head for Michigan.  My latest scheme to enable me to quit working is turning into an awful lot of work.

the book report

The assignment:  Give a two minute presentation on The Giver by Louis Lowry.

The instructions:  Explain why you liked the book, and reasons others your age would like the book.

The questions my daughter asked:  What if I didn’t like the book?  What if the book has no redeeming social value?

The directive:  Well then just make something up.   (Allegedly with a threatening tone).

The decision (as it was put to me):   I’m going to say what I really thought of the book.

My response:   Take something good to read in in school suspension. (smiling, and with just a hint of defeatism).

the book report:  a scathing 2:00 rebuke of a book that ended “but others might like it.”

The question:  Was there anything about the book that you liked?  (Allegedly with a hint of malice.)

The response:  It was short.

   good kid

author’s note:  all errors in this communication related to punctuation, grammar and sentence structure are mine.  The content is as close to exact as I can make it, having had the story related to me by my daughter.

You should stop and taste the flowers

   Carmine had a bad day.  Not horrific, but not good.  What he needed was to go for a walk.

As he strolled along the canal at twilight, he noticed a young lady bending over on the path ahead.

He asked her what she was doing.  She replied that she was smelling the flowers.  It’s always good to stop and smell the flowers.

Amused, Carmine smiled at the woman , and then with a cavalier bow bent and…

woke, laying in a mulch bed.  His wallet missing, his head throbbing, and the taste of rose petals in his teeth.

Carmine was having a bad day

More road rage stories

    There was a great road rage incident today out by the airport.  I wasn’t in it, but had the good fortune of being right behind it.  It’s kind of a funny road.  It’s a T with a split in it, and it carries 3 lanes of traffic that split again about 1/2 a block north.  The cars come together there all the time, but I’ve yet to be stopped by an accident.  On the way to work two cars did the swerve thing, and came close enough together that they both ended stalled right in the middle of the road.  This incredibly stout woman in the passenger seat of the one car screams out the window “you should learn how to drive.”  In the other car is a runtish man of about 90 that can probably see just a  little between the top of the steering wheel and the dashboard.  The litte guy had moxie though, and he yelled back ” you should learn to shut your coc&$ucker.”

   Well I was just tickled as shit.  The mornings have been rough lately, and entertainment on the way to work is a good thing.  I’ve been scowling a lot lately, and a nice little altercation between inept motorists was just what the doctor ordered.

It gets better.   This woman gets beet red, and lumbers out of her car.  She struggles to achieve a totally erect position, but I have to tell you she was as imposing as a grizzly when she did.   So I’m thinking “this is to good to be true…I’m going to get to watch a little old man get the supreme crap kicked out of him by a semiambulatory behemoth of a woman.”  So,  I shut the car off, and I pull a Dew out of the cooler.  Then this crazy wench does the strangest thing…

   She reaches in between the two largest breasts  I’ve ever seen.  I’m almost sure they had their own gravity and were orbiting around her.  She pulls out this gargantuan crucifix and starts praying for the dude.

  If she prayed for him to start his car up and drive away while calling her a “loony B1tch” her prayers were answered.  I’m not so much for the praying, but if divine intervention placed me right there, right then, I’ll happily kiss gods ass for at least a month of sundays.

Why I’m ok with Hate Speech

    I know, I know, now you don’t like me.  If you don’t, you’re not the sort of person I wish to know anyway, so, “darn it.”

     I am ok with it.  Hate speech I mean.  The first amendment grants the right, and I’m afraid that when we start limiting hate speech we set an awful precendent.  Also, hate crimes being punished more severely than other crimes is absolutely unamerican.

     Part of growing older is hopefully becoming wiser.  I haven’t hated anyone or anything in a long time, and I’ve had some run of the mill heinous shit happen to me in my lifetime.  Nothing others haven’t gone through and survived.  No being dipped into a vat of sulphuric acid by Columbian Drug lords high on crack and bored out of their skulls or anything.

     This absence of malice does not however keep me from picking on hillbillies, republicans, liberals, and almost every other socially defineable group at one time or another.  For delivery purposes sometimes it sounds absolutely hateful.  I could be punished I suppose, and if you happen to know a leggy blonde about so tall with legs up to here let her know I’ve been a bad boy if you would please.

   I’m rambling.  Surprised?  Not if you’ve been here before you aren’t.  What I’m working my way around to is hate speech is a good thing.  It’s honest, heartfelt, emotion, vociferously delivered in a manner that allows the rest of us to know just what a sorry assed human the speaker is.  

     An example of this would be poor old George.  The hate speech directed at him is as voluminous and colorful as that directed at any president since Truman.  It’s not only vitriolic, but as often as not totally untrue, but fortunately protected by the first Amendment.  Same goes for the trash falling out of Baracks mouth lately.  This is obviously a man in search of a crusade that can make him seem like the rest of the big kids.  All it’s shown is that he is bigoted against mass quantities of the human race, and probably is justified in his feelings.  To deny him the right to express it would be as wrong as shutting down Daily Kos or White Noise Insanity.  They have almost nothing of value to impart to the conversation, but at least they allow us to know who they are.

   Just so you don’t think I’m picking on liberals,  I read Ann Coulters column today, and while clever, informative, and well written as always, it was just more hate speech spewing from the mouth of an overpublicized pundit.  Same goes for the nonsense coming out of O’reilly, Hannity, and the list continues almost forever.

   The reason we need hate speech should be obvious.  Our nation would stop communicating altogether if we were not allowed charachter assassination and verbal evisceration.  Republicans bashing gays, and gays bashing neo-cons.  Liberals screaming vitriolic antiwar rhetoric into microphones and besmirching the military, and the military vilifying the lefties.  Capitol hill would be the quietest place on the planet.  Quieter than an integrated prison, which would be silent as a church mouse.

   You see, the truth is we’re not all that gifted individually.  Check out the blogworld.  How often do you find a post you are really consumed by?   Almost never.  Hateful is usually more interesting than the sycophantic bullshit, but both forms of insidous stupidity are easy to remove from your daily reading.  I for one wish to hell I had a blogroll for work.  Just put on the people worth listening to, and be able to not even notice the braindead trogs that are so common.  I don’t, so what I do is not converse with those I find repugnant, and that’s the option we all have.

What we do, is hate…either publically or in little private enclaves, we hate each other, and its a beautiful thing.  Because that notwithstanding, as a society we remain incredibly successful.  All the things that make human beings better than shit tossing monkeys (now the animal lovers hate me) continue to flourish in the midst of all this ire.  As we age, for the most part, the hate will go away for most of us.  What will be left is maybe a little guilt, and a lot of wisdom about how the rest of society thinks.  So if you have it to say, say it.  You can start with me.  I’d prefer you do it intelligently, but if all you can come up with is honkie, or cracker, or whitey, or whatever the hell…run with it.  i don’t mind at all.

oh, quit sucking up

  I made the mistake of hitting the love tag.  Yeah, I don’t know what the hell I was thinking either.  I thought maybe a good article on tennis or some such.  What I got was an article about the beauty of women…well…i think that’s what it was about.  Aw hell, no I don’t.  This geek was trying to get chicksies to pay attention to him.  It worked to.  I now know exactly which line of bullshit to present when I wish to fake the babes out of their knickers.

Enough about asswind.  I’ve found through trial and error…and error…and error…that the only way I can deal with the female of the species is to treat them like anyone else.  Sure, they have breasts, but if you take away that one overriding and significant benefit they aren’t much different than any other human.   Don’t get me wrong.  Romance and all the fluffy shit that goes with it is alright, but you should never underestimate them.  i have some simple rules to live by when it comes to women.

1.  Get it yourself.  For whatever reason they assume that being your servant isn’t what they signed on for, and that gooey thing you just swallowed with your first sip of that beer could be anything.

2.  Don’t mistake kindness for weakness.  In fact, if you are getting kindness, and the situation does not merit it, find an exit, and evacuate as quickly as humanly possible.

3.  Never go to sleep before a mad woman.  I could regale you with oodles of good stories on how I came to live by this rule, but I’m going to let John Wayne Bobbitt do a guest blog to explain it.

4.  Don’t touch their diet coke…ever…i mean…EVER.  I don’t know.  I have it on good authority that it’s a no no.

5.  Expect the unexpected.  If their is one thing that you can be sure of it’s that your dumbass has no idea what she is thinking until she tells you.  Never say “what are you thinking.”  You will either be told if she wanted you to know she would be talking, or you will spend the next several hours wishing you had heeded my advice.

6.   Never talk about the relationship.  Take that in.  Ruminate on it.  now take several deep breaths, and take it in again.  This one is incredibly important.  Talking about your relationship is the death knell of it.  Fine, think you’re one of them enlightened guys like numbnuts I just read.  What you know about your relationship with her is as a tea cup next to an ocean by comparison to what she knows about her relationship with you. 

7. Allow her to pass through the kitchen, but otherwise make that your space.  If you do not you will end up eating all kinds of shit she found in a recipe book, and its bad for you.  Food is meant to be tossed together, spiced all to hell, and eaten.  If your plate has more than four colors on it you let her in the kitchen.

8.  Never ask her if it was good for her.  You might just have an honest woman laying there, and the answer could trouble you for years.  In this one instance, be introspective.  Figure out if it was good for you as you drift off to sleep.  No Talking.  It only leads to bad things.

9.  She is tougher, meaner, and smarter.  I don’t know why.  You’ve been reading this, you think I suddenly became Dr. Ruth since number 8?  All I know is that in matters of your relationship she is, and you might as well accept it.  Go golfing.  Arm wrestle over beers at O’malley’s.  I know your ego just took a hit but you’ll survive it.  Underestimate her once and your friends will be luaghing at you or pitying you for months.

10.  Don’t listen to me.  I don’t.  I can fuck up a relationship just by showing up.  Still, all ten of these will keep you from ending up like shit for brains.

the day in pictures

ha ha sucker, you got as much chance of viewing a picture here as you do of finding a winning lotto ticket in your pocket while you’re getting a blowjob from she-ra the warrior princess.  You can, however, should you choose to waste the next several moments of your life enjoy what I like to think of as the least common denominator in faux literature.

   The day began with a Roscoe.  It always does.  You know the old saw about teaching kids to walk and talk and then telling them to sit down and shut up?  That’s what my rescue of Roscoe is beginning to be.   He went from being the rabbit version of being a clam, to being the bruce willis in die hard version of being a rabbit.  Tile no longer limits his range, but for whatever reason makes him crap.  I mean all over.  Little bunny balls needing to be swept up every three to five minutes so the kitchen table doesn’t disappear.  He’s like a never ending bag of rabbit poo.  I now sleep with a shovel so I can navigate the hallway when I awaken without smelling like an excerpt from mutual of omaha’s wild kingdom.

   He has also taken to bullying Mollie.  I mean bullying in the Ole’ sense.  He will build up a full head of bull rabbit steam and slam into her.  Mollie is mostly fur,  but roscoe is a midget, and the affect of his new ramming technique on Mollie is to make her aware that he is present.  Roscoe on the other hand spends three to four minutes roaming around the living room like  Dean Martin after a weekend in vegas.  When the concussion subsides, he proves that bunny memories are short by slamming into her again.  This goes on for as long as it takes mollie to decide she is tired of the game. 

   So that’s how the morning starts.  This morning also included a beautiful sunrise, the picture of which you can find here.  It made hateful hard until I remembered we were dismantling the slag caster today.  We didn’t though.  It was delayed a day I know not why.  The sum total of my involvement in this project is going to be cutting the molds off the chain, stacking them on pallets, and then returning them to be mounted on the new chain. 

    Instead me and Forrest Gump (I know it’s supposed to be Forrest Gump and I, so lick ass) painted the baghouse.  Thats the new nickname of my forgetful young protege.  He doesn’t seem to like it much which makes it all the better.  Due to safety concerns I am required to be with him anytime he’s on plant property (to head off some dumbass, no, not in the bathroom), and he keeps forgetting things.  Which means I have to walk extra steps, which vexes the hell out of me.  Maybe the new moniker will encourage him.   The problem is it may encourage him to throw me off the baghouse.  I’ll chance it…tormenting the young is fun as hell.

So as I’m driving home my daughter calls and informs me that after I give her some money her and her friend are going to the movies and she’ll be home sometime next tuesday.  That’s how she does me.  I figured what the hell, I’ll stop and get some food at the deli.  Cooking for one is just stupid.  I order my victuals (thats vittles spelled right you chitlin eating rednecks), and the young lady behind the counter says “you don’t remember me do you?”  All the alarms start sounding in my head, and I’m scrambling like hell trying to figure out what the hell I had done to this one.  She appeared to young for me to have taken carnal liberties with her, so I assumed she was pissed at me for dumping her shrew mother or some such.  I couldn’t place her so I said, “well, you’re obviously not one of the hateful old fat heifers that normally gaurd the fried chicken.”  She said “oh, you know my coworkers.” I’m still searching my brain.  I never forget anything, and I can not place this woman for shit.   It turns out that she used to hang out with this gal that used to live next door to me.   I even babysat her kids once.  I remember her as a typical hotter than hell party girl, and not much else.   She no longer looks like she did.  In fact, she is no longer recognizeable, and I said so.  Tact and diplomacy are not a dish that I partake of.  It occurred to me after I said it that she probably took this harsher than it was meant.  She is not an unattractive woman, but her hot chick party days are behind her.  To me she is more attractive now, but I’d be willing to bet based on what I’ve been reading about women and mirrors she looks in hers with a bit of angst.  Maybe I’m wrong.  It seems 6 years changes the young more than the middle aged.  She recognized me instantly.  Then again, when you look like a cross between quasimodo and homer simpson, you’re a little hard to forget.

that was mostly the day.  Rotten kids, rotten pets, rotten coworkers.  A nice good morning, and a chance meeting of an old acquaintance.  I’ve had worse days.

it’s ok…lets talk hookers, religion, politics, and abstinence

so many theories, so little time.  So many options to choose from.  Is this right, is that wrong, and if this IS right, then will someone please explain to me why THAT is wrong?  When I was younger I thought there was an outside possibility that I was out of my mind, because what had everyone else in such a quandrary made no difference to me whatsoever.  As I passed through middleage and started working on senility I realized it wasn’t me….it was all of you other folks that had lost your minds.  What led me to this conclusion?  Shoot, it was a simple preponderance of the evidence.

   Right now a big web thing is the whole last supper fresco.   You have to go check it out yourself because I make it a hard and fast rule not to argue myth and misconception unless I’m aroused, and I am decidedly not this morning. My aim this morning is to clarify some things, and the christian religion seems to me a good place to start.  All the myth, legend, and misinformation can not possibly lead us away from the inevitable conclusion that the bible and other religious dogma has laid before us.  I’ll try to explain this in three sentences or less so there is no misconceptions as to my premise.  Jesus was gay.  Anyone that spent all their time with matthew mark luke and john, when a hooker named mary was making herself available defies definition in any other manner.  Jesus the homo, and god save the queen, I believe we have found a logical explanation here.  I do think hanging someone from an old rugged cross on golgotha was a bit of an extreme reaction, especially since homophobia was not something the roman pervo masses were known for,  but then jewish pansies were not all that commmon, and maybe it was more about his beliefs than his proclivities.

  Lets stick to whores, trollops, hookers, and strumpets for a little longer, shall we? Several years ago Bill Clinton got his weasel popped in the oval office by Monica Lewinsky.  The rightwingers went berserk.  apparently they figured it was the first heterosexual act in said locale, and that it somehow defiled the office of the presidency. Interestingly enough, amongst the populace the most common reactions I heard we’re;

from the women:  “I’d blow his hillbilly ass in the mens room at the Shell station” (I paraphrased)

from the men:  “oh cool, blow jobs aren’t cheating, the president said so”

from Monica:  “thats how to get rich sucking a dick girls.  Sure beats 10 bucks a throw down at the truck stop”

from Hillary: “Damn Bill, I said I didn’t care if you got a blow job, but I meant within the species, you asshole”

from Ron Paul:  ” That would get my vote, but it’s not in the constitution”

from Billy Graham:  “when you’re done sucking on that, could you get ORAL Roberts on the phone?  I want his opinion on this one.”

   So now Larry Flynt is offering millions for you to bust out anyone in the D.C. madam book.  He claims to have thirty solid leads.  He is willing to pay millions because in our puritanical society nothing tars a man like paying for some sex.  The beauty of this is that those who came out staunchly in favor of extramarital sexual activity, a known sin to the christian religion (see the ten commandments), are now waiting on the edge of their over tittilated seats for the names to come out.  Which proves what we do well in America is hypocrisy.  I personally am all for sex.  Don’t care who you do or how much you pay them.  As long as its consenting adults if you like being slathered in whipped cream and then being beaten with briars by a herd of rampaging eunuchs you have more than my blessing, you have my wholehearted approval.  If you have a problem with our leaders having sex with hookers, please explain to me how else they are going to get laid?  Would you bang any of them for free? I thought not.  Do you really want leaders who are sexually frustrated?  If you do you’ve never been beaten by a nun.  Christ, if Ted Kennedy isn’t getting his shorty stiffened now and again he’s going to start advocating nuking Kennebunkport.  Which probably isn’t a bad thing if you don’t live in Kennnebunkport.

   About the whole abstinence thing.  My parents we’re protestants.  Lutheran to be exact, then somewhere along the trail decided to become members of the pentecostal cult.  Abstinence was sex education in my home growing up.  Outside of my home sex education was whichever fetching young lass I could talk out of her britches, or talked me out of mine. I do remember the principal in sixth grade taking all the boys into one class, and the female teacher that had never had sex taking the girls to the other and discussing sex with us.  If I recall right it involved Grey’s anatomy diagrams.  Whats funny, is the boys were only shown the boy diagram, and the girls only the female diagram.  Do you think our little public school was trying to dictate homosexual behavior to us?  My point is, abstinence and same sex diagrams do not trump raging hormones and curiosity.  Never have, never will.  Arm your children with knowledge, not with your fears.  Also, don’t dump this responsibility on the public school system.  Those nitwits can’t teach the three R’s,(reading riting, and rithmetic…see what i mean) do you really want them explaining sex to your children?

   Ok, thats enough of this.  I haven’t had sex in like forever, and I’m starting to feel irrational.  i think I’ll go beat up my neighbor.