The Trouble with Lana

I have a bit of a confession to make, and I feel a bit weird, almost guilty saying this: I kind of like Lana Del Rey. Kind of. I've felt this way for a while now, and despite my normal sense of comfort with my own tastes, I have made an actual effort to keep this fact hidden. I only listen to her when I'm alone, I feign ignorance when she's mentioned in conversation, the very few people I've admitted this to I've sworn to secrecy. For the first time, possibly ever, I have felt a certain amount of embarrassment for liking something. This feeling is new to me.

You can probably tell.

But the fact of the matter is, I can't help it. I like her music, whether I mean to or not, and the sooner I come to grips with this fact the better it will be in the long run. However, that doesn't mean I don't have a few problems with how she does things. After all, the reason I'm embarrassed is because I actually recognize why so many other people dislike her. With all the hate coming her way, I totally get where it's coming from. So what is the problem?

In a nutshell, it's her image. Everything wrong with her career just sort of revolves around her image, but it's not so much what that image is, it's that it's so central to her.

No, really, I just listen to her for the songs.  I swear.

Think about it; despite the fact that she's got a song about how she's on the radio now, I have not actually heard her on the radio. The first most people heard of her is what they saw at the same time in her music video to Video Games. And what they saw was exceedingly obvious hipster bait. From the get go of her career, she was attempting to attract a key demographic through means other than her music. And by the beginning of her career, I'm talking about the album she released, then rescinded, under the name Lizzy Grant. It was available briefly before she bought the rights back, and she has refused to re-release it since. While there's probably a good reason or two out there to explain a move like this, the most obvious possibility is that she was giving hipsters an opportunity to do what they do best: brag about being into something before anyone else. It's just that it's so obvious she was doing it. Throw in her (often sung about) time spent living in a trailer park (after she signed a recording contract for $10,000) and the fact that she's a little white girl from New York going by an artificially exotic name, and you've got all the markings of a singer trying to influence her way into a position of fame and adoration.

But she made a couple major mistakes. One, she estimated her intended audience wrong. She's relied on her image way, way too much, and while it's true that musicians make careers out of good looks or image alone all the time (see American Idol, seasons 1 through 11) it doesn't work quite so well when you want to be taken seriously as a musician. Lana wants to be loved and respected as an artist, and image based careers only work to this degree on pop music audiences. I mean, pop audiences adore Katy Perry and Justin Bieber enough to go to movies about them, they're not overly concerned with quality. She tried to illicit that same level of devotion starting with a core audience of underground music snobs and spread out from there, but she was so obvious about it that even hipsters recognized they were being manipulated. So they turned on her.

Her other problem is in her sexiness. Currently, audiences are completely fine with strong women who are comfortable in their own sexuality (Pink!), which can be empowering, and with women who use their sexuality in a way to attract a male audience (Katy Perry) and exert some level of control over them, which can be a kind of empowerment. Audiences are even fine with whatever Nicki Minaj counts as, and while not necessarily empowering, that certain counts as some kind of kind of self confidence. Lana Del Rey's approach to using her sex appeal consists of a creepily subservient “I exist only for your pleasure” image that I can't quite tell if it's for real or not. On the one hand, I'm not convinced it isn't just a satirical look at the image, on the other hand, she awkwardly flaunts it in ways that prevent me from being convinced that it is.

You see, this. This? This is exactly what I'm talking about.

She might be trying to show how dull and lifeless women are when seen as mere sex objects, or she might just be a sex object who's not all that into it. It's hard to tell. She makes it hard to tell.

Lastly, there's her SNL performance. Yeah, it was just really bad. There's not some greater issue with her persona or business tactics here, it's just that it really was bad. Like, probably not “worst ever” bad, but maybe within the bottom 25.

And all of this is a shame, because beneath the awkward sexuality, the fake name, the obvious manipulation, and the focus on her image and persona over her music, there is a talented musician with good music to perform. I don't care if some of her lyrics seem disingenuous; I only care if she feels the need to make us think they are genuine because then she'd be missing the point. I don't care if she wants to change names or labels; I only care if it starts to affect the availability of her music or if that music is sacrificed for (or worse, created as) a publicity stunt. I don't care if she isn't as good live; as long as what she puts to recording is listenable and good, I'll be listening and good.

Job Jitters: We Don't Need No Education

Nervously, I sat in the chair of my superior's office, waiting as he slowly read the conduct reports. Actually, I say “my superior”, but he really wasn't. My superior was the secretary (I'm sorry, administrative assistant) who worked in my same office here at the college. Her superior was the administrative assistant in the office next door, and her superior was the dean who she directly assisted. And when I say dean, he was technically just the dean of the art school, and his superior was on the school board representing the whole college, and his superior was in the Administrative Building. It was in the office of this last superior that I sat, awaiting my judgment.

“Well, Harry, I assume you know why you're here.”

“My work isn't good enough?” I ventured.

“No, no, your work is fine. You have been an excellent...” he adjusted his glasses while scanning the paper for confirmation of my title, “...administrative assistant's assistant's assistant.”

“Oh, well then have I not been getting along with my co-workers?”

“No, actually, they all seem to love you. The assistants called you a life saver, and one teacher called you brilliant.”

“Oh, then this can only be regarding... the outburst.”

“Yes, that's it. The outburst you had last Friday. You had, um, quite a lot to say, didn't you.”

“I tend to express myself creatively, sir.”

“Indeed. It says at one point you described this job as 'a huge, steaming pile of... baloney sandwiches'. Wait, why baloney sandwiches?”

“This is a pretty tame blog, sir. Families read this, children even.”

Children exclusively, I should say.

“I see. Well, what, might I ask, is the main reason for your concerns?”

“Well, this job just carries with it a whole lot of baloney sandwiches. Like, all the paperwork. I mean an insane amount of paperwork. We have books that keep saved paperwork going back as far as 2008, and that's just on the shelf. In the storage closet, we still have final grades that go back twice as far. And most of it's so useless. There was a huge stack of papers, I kid you not, 600 sheets at least, that were two days late being sent out and were suddenly useless. And I had to shred all of them, one by one, because they had private info on them. There's so much paperwork, 90% of it useless, that our file cabinet just for the empty forms that people have to fill out for any little thing looks like the closet in Zaboomafoo.”

Editor's note: Harry, I want you to make more nostalgia jokes. Internet audiences really respond to nostalgia jokes.

“Okay, well, is that all?”

“No, other problem is that nothing is ever done as it's said. So many times has someone told me to do something, explained it in length, and then when I did it, it was wrong because they expected something else. Even with my hiring, I was only here for a temp job while you looked for someone to fill the spot permanently. But now you've got her, and I'm still here. Then you said you'd reduce my hours so I'd only be coming in 3 days a week, but that never happened. Hell, first you said I'd be paid one thing, then I actually get paid less.”

“To be fair, you weren't qualified for that job title, therefore we hired you at a lower title to do the same work for less.”

“Yeah, but that's another thing that points to this job just being a frustratingly overcomplicated mess. Look at my resume. I'm qualified to do this, I've had similar enough experiences before. But when I applied, I spent an hour and a half being coached by my boss to get previous job experiences to match, word for word, to what your job posting called for. Stupid, little things, like not saying I 'checked out customers' when I was a cashier because it sounds like I was hitting on them; and saying 'experience using a mechanical adding machine' instead of saying cash register. I had to alter the minutest of details and wordings just to get this job. I spent more time carefully rewording my application, after I was already selected mind you, than I did learning what I was going to be doing, all so my bosses wouldn't get in trouble with you guys for hiring someone who wasn't qualified for the $1.00 pay difference between job titles. And the thing is, I'm not really qualified, not for this. I can input data, organize, deal with customers or technology and anything else that the job posting said, but what the posting never said, and what I've never had experience with, was this level of total BS. And because of a well meaning superior stretching my resume to fill a needlessly specific yet woefully under descriptive job requirement list, I'm suddenly in a job where I have no idea what I'm doing and am expected to do it anyway. It's like I'm living my middle school nightmares about the workforce where I ended up in a job I couldn't do and if I screwed up it would be a negative mark against future employment opportunities and also I forgot to wear pants.

The workforce, how I see it. Did I mention this blog was also created by a child?

I mean, this is supposed to be a college. Teachers are trying to actually get some stuff actually done, and students are trying to get an actual education, but it's made increasingly difficult by your ever mounting pile of pointless, stupid, inane, petty BS.”

There was silence in the office. My superior shuffled the papers, staring at them hard, and eventually let out a long sigh.

“Well, Harry, I'm sorry, but there's only so much I can do. Perhaps my... superior could address your concerns more completely.”

“Wow, that sounded... sinister...” I began, though before I could finish, he had stood from his desk, leapt to the door at the side of his office, the door I had somehow failed to notice until now, and rapped gently on its wooden frame. He was responded by a light gurgling from the other side of the door.

“Sir, I hate to disturb you, but we have another dissenter. He seems quite perturbed by the workings here. Shall we invite him in for a look at the... bigger picture?”

He must have received a nod of assent, because without further sound from the thing past the doorway, he turned and bade me enter. Against my better judgment, I slowly made my way to the door frame and peeked within, and found myself confronted with a great and colossal being that defied all reason and spat upon the notion of sanity itself. It looked upon me with ancient eyes, and all I could feel was dread; the dying warmth of the last day of summer, the bitter tears of an old friend's departure, the painful droplets of rain ruining an otherwise perfect day. There were so many details about the monstrosity that it could only truly be described as indescribable; it's face had fangs, yet also mandibles, yet also tentacles; it's limbs were hideously bulbous yet acutely lithe; its breath was sickly sweet yet nauseatingly bitter; its skin was of some tone that I was certain my eyes were not able to see and no language was able to name; it had so many countless eyes and yet when I stared deeply, uncontrollably, I could see only the one. It's craggy, eldritch visage was nothing short of Lovecraftian.

Editor's note: And internet audiences really respond to that one horror writer you don't really know much about other than that giant squid guy. Also, you don't have an editor.

It spoke with a tongue that lashed and slathered, and while its language was alien to my ears, the words echoed inside my mind with startling clarity.

“Speak, insignificant one. Voice your concerns that I may answer with mocking and laughter.”

“I... I don't understand why you make this job so difficult. It should be easy, it should just be light filing, and organizing, and occasionally answering simple questions to bewildered freshmen. Why is there so much complications to this simple job?”

“You lack the capacity to truly understand. This is a question I cannot answer in full.”

“Then answer in terms I can understand.”

“Very well. I, I and my kind, we do not subside ourselves on physical food; our forms require much more, nourishing delicacies. Frustration, panic, fear, dread. These emotions to us are the most filling bread, the sweetest wine.”

“Then, you're torturing us on purpose?”

“That is correct.”

“But why this college, why these people, why here?”

“Again you do not understand. This campus is not our only source of food. The entire world is rife with our secret presence. This college is but one of many, of thousands, of myriads of places where we exist; slowing things down, mucking things up, complicating processes and perplexing workers the whole world over, and feeding. Always feeding.”

“So here, and in other colleges?”

“Yes.”

“And in courts and legal proceedings?”

“Yes.”

“And governments?”

“And Hollywood?”

“Especially Hollywood!”

pic:

It makes so much sense!

“No!” I cried, “This can't be allowed to continue! I have the knowledge now, and that compels me to act. I can tell the others, I can make everyone see what you're truly doing to them!”

I was greeted with nothing but laughter, much of it foreign and unrecognizable, but a small part of it human. I quickly realized this part was my superior, standing in the doorway still, laughing maniacally with the beast before me.

“You foolish whelp, there is nothing you can do. No one will believe you, and even someone did, we control everything. Any investigation would be put through bureaucratic hoops until it dissolved, any party who sought to confirm this would be met with frustrations upon frustrations, until nothing was left of their curiosity except lamentations and defeat. You are powerless against us.”

“Then I'll bring them here, to look directly upon you. No bureaucracy can stand against man's resolve when it sees these horrors with its own eyes!”

“Ah,” it countered, “How can you bring others here when your clearance to these offices has been revoked!”

“Wait, what?”

“Bwa-ha ha ha ha ha!” it laughed once more, it's languished cries of mirth filling the room and beyond until the very sound of it felt as if it must shake the earth to its core.

I am fired.

The Quest for the Ultimate Something

I've been thinking a lot recently on the topic of ultimate somethings; that is the ultimate movie, book, song, video game, etc. How would one decide what parameters constituted the ultimate, how would you go about making one, and why aren't more people currently devoted to actually making any. As I devoted much of this thought into the first question, it became obvious that a clear definition of what made an ultimate anything was the first point that had to be addressed. After much deliberation, I have come to the conclusion that this concept is inextricable from what is known in many circled as the “Desert Island Dilemma”.

The “Desert Island Dilemma” is the age old hypothetical, “if you were trapped on a desert island and could only bring one _____ with you, what _____ would it be?” Now, typically the answer to this question reveals what of any ____ is the individual answerer's personal favorite, or at least the ____ they would never get sick of. But if the question is tweaked slightly, the answer becomes more revealing. If the question were changed to “if you were trapped on a desert island with 5 strangers, and could only bring one ____ for all of you, what ____ would it be?”

Now the meaning behind whatever answer is given is completely different. If it's only yourself that you are considering, then the answer could be anything. You might bring a guilty pleasure, or something that has great meaning to yourself but not to anyone else, or you might even go with a joke answer. But when taking into consideration 5 other people that you now have to live and deal with, presumably forever, your decision is going to change hugely. You have to weigh more carefully longevity, variety, and general quality in order to make the right choice, and keep that in mind, because in this situation there totally are right and wrong answers. You have to understand that if you are in charge of the single song to be played on the island iPod on repeat ad nauseum, and if you pick “Yellow Submarine” or “Who Let the Dogs Out” or just anything from the 90's, so help me God, you will be the first one we eat.

The point is, something can be considered an ultimate anything if you know in your heart that it's a safe bet to bring to the island you will be spending an eternity on with 5 other people. For instance, if you're bringing a video game, Mario Kart is a pretty safe bet, or maybe even Mario Party (and remember, if you bring Sonic Shuffle, we will eat you.) But this is only if there's multiple controllers. Say there's only one, what then? You might go with GoldenEye, but what if not everyone is into first person shooters? There's any of the Final Fantasy games, but not everyone will have the patience for an RPG. There's Ocarina of Time, but what if not everyone can make it through the Shadow Temple? The problem with trying to choose the ultimate for any group of people you don't know is the inherent variety of likes and dislikes that can't be avoided in any large enough group. This is why the ultimate can only apply within a certain level of specification.

I'll be fair with the desert island. You're still picking for yourself and 5 others, they're still strangers, but I will let you know the genre that best fits the group as a whole. Now we're in the realm where it's possible to have an ultimate of something that can truly please everyone. If we're still talking video games, say they all like 2d platformers: suddenly the choice becomes a whole lot easier. There's the Metroid games, Sonic 2, Crash Bandicoot. But stop to think here. Are any of these games really, truly, the ultimate 2d platformer? Does it take several hours to beat them, or only a few? Do the gameplay, music, and environments have very much variety, or is it the same thing over and over again? These are the kinds of questions that have to be asked, and when you go ahead and ask them, how many 2d sidescrolling platformers are there out there that qualify as ultimates? Looking at everything that has to qualify, all the variants we need to satisfy, I can really only think of Yoshi's Island, possibly the first true ultimate platformer.

What about movies? Say we boil it down to sci-fi (or don't, frankly this one covers enough territory to satisfy most people), there's the ever faithful Star Wars. Over the course of the first trilogy, it covers general tropes such as good vs. evil, love triangles, daddy issues, and redemption; on the sci-fi end, it covers aliens, robots, sci-fi machines, and interplanetary travel. Of the major science fiction areas, the only major one left untouched is time travel, but even Star Wars can't have it all. The reason it scores so well on the “ultimate test” is because it truly set out to be the greatest adventure tale ever told. They seriously studied the general genre of adventure throughout all of its forms, and across generations of storytelling, and they built a formula out of it that laid out the major events that take place within most stories and where they take place, and then it adhered to that formula in creating its own sequence of events. It set out to cover as much ground as it could, and it covered it, resulting in a cultural phenomenon that has defined multiple generations; it achieved the status of being an ultimate movie.

There are others out there, but I continue to ask, why aren't there more? Why don't more people take a look at the tropes of a genre and put them together to make the greatest example of that genre? Part of it is that it's just plain difficult, and part of it is that it's nearly impossible to cram as much is needed into one thing. With video games this isn't always a problem, but to a degree it's there. Yoshi's Island is cartoonish enough that you can have jungle levels, ice levels, and lava filled castles all within the same world. You couldn't necessarily do that within the same game if you wanted to also make it realistic. With movies, there's the length to take into consideration. Star Wars does well, but keep in mind it's three movies, not just one. On a desert island, that's inadmissable. You could have the Death Star Trench Run, the “I love you,” “I know” scene, or the ewok celebration, but not all three. Star Wars biggest flaw in being considered an ultimate movie is that none of the three movies alone are truly ultimates; they only are if taken as a whole.

This is not to say it can't be done, even if it isn't easy. Most things that are hard to do are distinctly worth it. This is why I beg, I implore all of you artists out there, please, make us some ultimates. If I get trapped on a desert island with 5 people who like time travel, the closest thing I have is Back to the Future, and that involves way more mom on son crushes than I am comfortable with watching over and over again forever. Eventually, we will all be stranded on these desert islands, and if we don't have anything good to bring with us and get stuck with watching Avatar forever because it was statistically speaking the most all pleasing movie we could think of, we'll be sorry. We'll all be sorry.

More Like a Giant Lie!

Ladies and gentlemen, I am hopping mad right now. In my wrath, I am here to call out the scientific community for an affront that has plagued me and other likeminded people for some time now. I am here to accuse the arrogant scientists the world over for a crime against humanity I like to call “false identifying”. There have been several examples of this over the years, but the straw that broke the camel’s back takes the form of the recently discovered Giant Penguin. Or, more accurately, the so-called “Giant” penguin.

Here I am, surfing the great expanse of the internet, when I see one of the most searched topics for the day is something called the “giant penguin”. You can only imagine the excitement I exuded as I giddily clicked the link, hoping to see some sort of feathered behemoth, presumably attacking Tokyo. I was immediately, and not for the first time, disappointed. The giant in question was merely the fossilized remains of a bird that was approximately 5 feet tall.

Artist's Impression

Okay, fine, I get it; that is big for a bird. The average bird is often less than a foot long, and rarely weighs more than a few ounces. Most modern day penguins are rather small, with the largest species being the Emperor Penguin, which reaches a height just around 2 feet tall. I understand that for a bird to waddle around at about my height, that’s pretty impressive. But do we have to misleadingly refer to it as a giant? I don’t consider anything at 5 feet tall “giant”, and if it is, then I get to be a giant too. Giant is not “relative”; giant is concrete. A moth cannot be called giant if it’s 2 feet wide as opposed to 2 inches, it’s giant if it’s the size of Mothra. Can we just be honest and call it a Large Penguin, or a Jumbo Penguin, or a Rather Big Penguin, or a Penguin of Unusual Size? Big Bird is roughly twice my height, and we don’t even call him giant, we just call him “big”.

Artist's Impression

All this hubbub reminds me of one of my earliest childhood obsessions, and that was with the Giant Squid. For years, my young mind was filled with the tantalizing image of this mysterious, effervescent entity, this monstrous denizen of the deep. They called it giant, that meant it had to be huge! It had to be a squid the size of the Empire State Building! It was so cool, and the very fact that no one had ever seen live one at the time (or at least seen one and lived to tell the tale) simply added to the intrigue of this oh so rare giant. I marveled at this leviathan of the frozen deep for years and years until I made the relatively recent discovery that, guess what, is only a measly 13 feet, and most of that is tentacle length. What happened to the squid so big that in one gulp it could eat James Mason’s submarine? This massive disappointment in relative size of a mythical mollusk is probably the single greatest hardship I have ever faced in my life.

I thought I had learned my lesson. I thought that cynicism had taken its hold and would prevent me from ever being hurt again by the thoughtless sensationalism rampant in the animal naming industry. And yet here, again, I was misled by a beastly imaginative name, only to be abandoned at the threshold of reality. Bitterly disappointed, I am left to rely on my imagination to fulfill the broken promises I was tricked into believing by the scientific community, the recesses of my mind being the only sanctuary where I can truly find that giant penguin I was so desperately hoping for.

Artist's Impression

How many more generations are going to have go through what I went through. How many more dreams are going to be crushed because these scientists have to fulfill their own twisted need to over emphasize? From now on, let’s just make it a rule to only name something giant if it’s truly giant, and if it’s not giant, just call it “great big” or something. C’mon. We have a giant language, with plenty of synonyms for “big”. I’m sure you can find something that won’t break my heart.

¿Qué, Qué, Qué?

I just don’t seem to have a good track record with staying one race, do I?

Ladies and gentlemen, I come before you shocked, outraged, and mortified after having learned a terrible lesson, one I have learned firsthand. Racism’s ugly (splotchy, acne laden, and prematurely gray) head has reared itself once more in this supposedly forward thinking country, and I have experienced this firsthand. Yes, I have felt the venomous sting of racism. Firsthand! The situation has become so traumatizing that the details of the… incident have grown fuzzy. I will try to relate it as best as I can recall. I was sitting at my desk, taking these accursed customer service calls. As per usual, I got one. It didn’t take long for the conversation to become heated (as customer service calls are wont to do). As the customer kept asking me to do more and more for him, and I kept insisting that (as a worthless peon) I literally could not do any of the things he was asking for, he finally snapped, “you {expletive} wetback; go back to your own country!” Then the line clicked off.

I sat there stunned. After hearing what I had, various emotions stirred within my heart. First and foremost, confusion. In case you hadn’t noticed, I am white. Really, just about as white as can be. I come from along line of Danish and Irish folks. I get sunburn from nightlights. I listen to Arcade Fire. I write a blog. On a scale of 1 to 10, 1 being Buddy Holly and 10 being Danny Trejo, I rank about a 2.5.

Although I'm pretty certain I'm more genuinely Mexican than Carlos Mencia.

And I was talking in my normal voice, which includes a verbosity unmistakable for the grammatically obsessed, language arts teacher’s pet I am. I don’t sound the vaguest bit foreign, and if I tried to do a Mexican accent, it would come off as authentic as the Frito Bandito. For me to wonder how on earth this narrow minded fellow confused my voice with that of a migrant worker is only reasonable.

On a related note, I know who I'm going as at my next costume party.

Secondly, I felt confused again. Going strictly by racial stereotypes, aren’t call center employees supposed to be Indian? If I put too many jalapeños in his pico de gallo while working the dinner rush at El Fenix, I could understand getting told to get back to my own country. If I’m calling him over the cable bill and I sound like I might not be from around here, I expect to get a complaint about outsourcing

Coming this fall to NBC!

Finally, I became righteously indignant. How dare he judge me. I braved drowning and dehydration in my quest to get here. I have taken the lowliest job on this totem pole to scrimp and save and earn a living for my impoverished family, while he sits on his butt and watches Jersey Shore until the company disconnects him for non pay. And when that happens, I’m the one who gets to take his anger, I’m his verbal punching bag, and all in the name of braving hardships and breaking my back for a better life for my family. What could be more American than that? You say to get to my own country, well I from what I see, I may not be a legal citizen but this is my country! Also, I am a legal citizen, and this is literally my country.

Although, when you look closer at all the things I think are cool…

...Wait a minute...

Okay, from now on guys, I am Mexican.

Introductions

Hello, and good evening. You don't know me, but I like to write things. I'd like to start by saying what I typically write about, but let's face it, there is no typical thing I write about. If I'm going to write about something, the basic rule is that it's odd enough to stand out from the rest of the things floating around in my head. I've written about sirens on motorcycles, I've written about Willaim Shakespeare in High School, one time I rewrote Pride and Prejudice with nanobots (and I did it before there were zombies). The inspiration for things I write about is also just as varied, and makes even less sense (although it often has some subconsious reflection on Don Quixote, which you might have noticed from my blog title if you watched as much Wishbone as I did growing up). I've gotten ideas from things like graffiti, to grocery store visits, to the prospect of training attack rats to jump off the brim of my hat. I am completely serious here.

The point is I like to write, and I like to write about lots of different, and often strange, things. I've written dramatically and comedically (between you and me, I prefer the comedic, though my best is probably somewhere in between.) Now I've been looking around for a while, and I've noticed that there are some very interesting people, with very interesting things to say, and that some of these people express these things in blogs. And a couple years now of admiring the things other people said, I suddenly thought to myself, "Hey, I think I'm interesting. And I think the things I say are interesting. So what should I do?" And after scratching out the idea of training an army of psychic apes, I decided to start a blog.

So, here we are. Blog time. I'm not always going to be entirely sure what to say here, but I generally am able to come up with something to say, albiet at last minute some times. If I can say so myself, they're usually pretty good. Like this one. This here is pretty good, although not as good as what I'm going to write. What I'm going to write is going to be so great, you won't be able to believe it. Just wait. You'll see. You'll all see.