Thursday, January 02, 2003
First Draft (title?)
-Winter Love Poem #2-
Our love made sense when I saw it as a succession of houses on either side of Winslow Street,
returning with the pizza and antipasto take-out for dinner,
because consider the postmodern parade of architecture and life:
sandstone appartment building, a winter-dressed man
crossing the abruptly short driveway, the effect of 10 degrees F
on the filthy windows nextdoor,
a frost to dance with the slanted shafts of shovels and ski poles
under the chipped royal blue paintjob already eyelashed by snow,
giving the house a grandfatherly look,
gazing across to the
swept deck of a two-storey modern
and the tails of the pair of cats like children fed and laughing
running three up to the bad kids' home, a home not a house
a roof not a tuck-in, a place to do things mom doesn't allow
because she knows best and we are the stupid windblown puppies
leaking gutter, bleeding ulcer, unrepaired appliances, bills, Busch cardboard
naked maple trees, white lattice, a worn rug that smells of company
blushing backyards, peed-in corners, the elbow in the road like a yanked-out staple
brick chimneys, emphysema, chores done with muttering breath, black ice
salt of the plow-truck, stained Ford bodies, proud SUVs,
ten-year-olds sharing a drugstore snowboard
stuble, diapers, a pair of borrowed pliers rusting
Without different living our long, long trailer would be claustrophobic and empty
What we've had to sell, what we've sunk into each other
Where we've driven long hours to live in a different set of skins and responsibilities:
The sum of these choices is a valence so beautiful, it stops the rain from sadness.
-Winter Love Poem #2-
Our love made sense when I saw it as a succession of houses on either side of Winslow Street,
returning with the pizza and antipasto take-out for dinner,
because consider the postmodern parade of architecture and life:
sandstone appartment building, a winter-dressed man
crossing the abruptly short driveway, the effect of 10 degrees F
on the filthy windows nextdoor,
a frost to dance with the slanted shafts of shovels and ski poles
under the chipped royal blue paintjob already eyelashed by snow,
giving the house a grandfatherly look,
gazing across to the
swept deck of a two-storey modern
and the tails of the pair of cats like children fed and laughing
running three up to the bad kids' home, a home not a house
a roof not a tuck-in, a place to do things mom doesn't allow
because she knows best and we are the stupid windblown puppies
leaking gutter, bleeding ulcer, unrepaired appliances, bills, Busch cardboard
naked maple trees, white lattice, a worn rug that smells of company
blushing backyards, peed-in corners, the elbow in the road like a yanked-out staple
brick chimneys, emphysema, chores done with muttering breath, black ice
salt of the plow-truck, stained Ford bodies, proud SUVs,
ten-year-olds sharing a drugstore snowboard
stuble, diapers, a pair of borrowed pliers rusting
Without different living our long, long trailer would be claustrophobic and empty
What we've had to sell, what we've sunk into each other
Where we've driven long hours to live in a different set of skins and responsibilities:
The sum of these choices is a valence so beautiful, it stops the rain from sadness.
Filmography:
Finally recieved my Amazon x-mas shipment, filled with goodstuff. I dragged my family's new TV up to my room and propped it up on a chair so Laura and I could enjoy Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors in bed and comfort. I wish I had been into Allen earlier, because he really makes funny sense. This is a particularly dark movie about eyesight, guilt, and philosophy; it also contains the brilliant one-liner The last time I was inside a woman, it was the Statue of Liberty.
Allen's wit and mastery with creating real dramatic characters who can also carry the weight of philosophical symbolism is yet astounding. It's something rare, perhaps utterly unique, in cinema. He makes so many damn good points, but without overstating. He allows me to gawk at the ego-drenched Alan Alda character (a character not far from his true self, if I may venture a completely uninformed opinion based on interviews), but dares me to supply the disapprobation (while cracking me up). It's a bit easier to fill in the moral blanks for Landau's character, but Allen balances him out with gracefully applied sympathy. Both Landau and Alda's characters play skeptic realists against Waterston's idealist rabbi and other more "spiritual" minor characters.
Great film for a philosophy class.
Finally recieved my Amazon x-mas shipment, filled with goodstuff. I dragged my family's new TV up to my room and propped it up on a chair so Laura and I could enjoy Woody Allen's Crimes and Misdemeanors in bed and comfort. I wish I had been into Allen earlier, because he really makes funny sense. This is a particularly dark movie about eyesight, guilt, and philosophy; it also contains the brilliant one-liner The last time I was inside a woman, it was the Statue of Liberty.
Allen's wit and mastery with creating real dramatic characters who can also carry the weight of philosophical symbolism is yet astounding. It's something rare, perhaps utterly unique, in cinema. He makes so many damn good points, but without overstating. He allows me to gawk at the ego-drenched Alan Alda character (a character not far from his true self, if I may venture a completely uninformed opinion based on interviews), but dares me to supply the disapprobation (while cracking me up). It's a bit easier to fill in the moral blanks for Landau's character, but Allen balances him out with gracefully applied sympathy. Both Landau and Alda's characters play skeptic realists against Waterston's idealist rabbi and other more "spiritual" minor characters.
Great film for a philosophy class.
Tuesday, December 31, 2002
FAREWELLS:
Because life is cruel, I must say "goodbye forever" to two close companions:
1. Colgate University Webmail: For more than four years, now, my primary email address has been mnorthrop@mail.colgate.edu. How thrilled I was when I first obtained it, first started telling people of the "new address." A thrill always accompanied a trip to the Keck Center, where I religiously checked the account in the first weeks of Freshman year before Source came and configured my personal computer. I grow depressed thinking about the even greater thrill when Webmail was my only consistent link to friends and loved ones in "the States" while I was in London (usually waiting in a queue for an open computer in the FSU Study Center Computer Lab (which followed typically English hours of availability). Goodbye, Webmail.
2. The Far Side Off the Wall Calendar: For more than a decade, my mother has faithfully presented me (pun intended) with the new Far Side calendar on Christmas morning. Any book selected at random from my personal library is bound (pun intended) to contain at least one Far Side cartoon leaf from a calendar between two of its pages: they are the handiest bookmarks. I've recently employed them as fodder for discussion in my English IV classes, where we've been deconstructing humor. While composing any given research paper, these funny little paper squares served obsequiously as note-receivers, bookmarks, and quick-reference tabs; they were especially invaluable during the drafting of Sex, Guns, and Pasta, the Coyle seminar paper "Pulp Friction" and my senior thesis. Let me not forget that The Far Side/Gary Larson is consistently brilliant. Well, last year, they decided that 2002 was "it" and they have discontinued the "Off the Wall" series. You will be missed.
Au revoir, mes amis!
Because life is cruel, I must say "goodbye forever" to two close companions:
1. Colgate University Webmail: For more than four years, now, my primary email address has been mnorthrop@mail.colgate.edu. How thrilled I was when I first obtained it, first started telling people of the "new address." A thrill always accompanied a trip to the Keck Center, where I religiously checked the account in the first weeks of Freshman year before Source came and configured my personal computer. I grow depressed thinking about the even greater thrill when Webmail was my only consistent link to friends and loved ones in "the States" while I was in London (usually waiting in a queue for an open computer in the FSU Study Center Computer Lab (which followed typically English hours of availability). Goodbye, Webmail.
2. The Far Side Off the Wall Calendar: For more than a decade, my mother has faithfully presented me (pun intended) with the new Far Side calendar on Christmas morning. Any book selected at random from my personal library is bound (pun intended) to contain at least one Far Side cartoon leaf from a calendar between two of its pages: they are the handiest bookmarks. I've recently employed them as fodder for discussion in my English IV classes, where we've been deconstructing humor. While composing any given research paper, these funny little paper squares served obsequiously as note-receivers, bookmarks, and quick-reference tabs; they were especially invaluable during the drafting of Sex, Guns, and Pasta, the Coyle seminar paper "Pulp Friction" and my senior thesis. Let me not forget that The Far Side/Gary Larson is consistently brilliant. Well, last year, they decided that 2002 was "it" and they have discontinued the "Off the Wall" series. You will be missed.
Au revoir, mes amis!
Sunday, December 29, 2002
Perhaps Insipid, At Least Well-written:
I followed a link from The Cocktail Sermons to a site called
Bad Subjects, an e-zine populated by contributors who are either graduate students or Ph.Ds in various fields. The zine's tagline is "Political Education for Everyday Life," and seems to be, after an hour-long surf, a wide-ranging project. The unifying religion of the latest online issue seems to be post-structuralism/critical theory, as various writers apply it to violence: in film and film's audience, in video games, in history. There is a leftist bent to most of the pieces, and sound writing all around.
I'd like to take on some of the points made in the article about violence and gaming, titled "Meditations on Brutality and Digital. Imagery"
First of all, I'd like to state that my position on video games re: violence yet wavers. Extreme cases like GTA 3 are hard to ignore, and after working as a House Parent to 13/14 year-old boys for a few months, censorship is seemingly less and less the monster.
That said, the article has some serious weaknesses, noteably the choice of bookending the writing with sections of a poem called "Digichant" by Ursula Rucker. Blogger's cookie cutter code (since I haven't a clue) won't let me easily cutnpaste while retaining the poet's own form and spacing, so I'll leave it to you to read the snippet. BUT, a line like "our capability to grasp the concept of humanity" is, and excuse what might sound egotistical or superior, unsightly.
The passage the concerns me most is the authors' (Cheryl Greene and Zachary Waggoner) attempt to concentrate the growing power of several small but well-argued points into one wider-reaching conclusion:
Today's games play into our never-ending desire to buy our way to" happiness." For it's the ideology of consumerism that allows individuals to pursue their every pleasure no matter what the actual cost. In a consumer economy where money gives us the power to achieve anything and everything we desire, these digital realms fulfill the gamer by allowing them to pursue their killing desires.
I'm not going to ignore that truth that video game writers, in many cases, do set-up the possibility of senseless violence without punishment (or in GTA 3's case, with reward). Will this have a deleterious effect on some of the more immature gamers in the world? Yes. On some of the more mature gamers? Yes, as well. Did public executions in France and England affect each's citizens in a similar way? I dunno, I'm not a socio-historian, but possibly.
BUT, what is with this link to CONSUMERISM? Again, GTA 3 seems purposefully built to gall those already opposed to the recent trends in video game violence (first person gorefests, supposed increasing identification with the avatar): in the game, if you don't get MONEY, you can't proceed/win, and although you can obtain some green by fulfilling missions (killing with a somewhat legit purpose), random violence on peds and whores will get you to your goal more quickly. Hence, the authors' connection to "evil uncle consumerism."
Here's where I come in. What is wrong, my friends, with the concept of Responsibility. This could be the new School Core Value system rubbing off on me (less picky rules and regs, more reliance on the kids to follow the 6 values), but what is so wrong with entrusting the gaming public (even after assuming that many players are not abiding by the rating system) with some level of trust/ benificence of the doubt. There will always be developing minds who waste their energy too often, who are distracted by the loudness of popular sway, who fall into complacency, who do not challenge themselves no matter what level they occupy. Video games are the least of areas in which they will hinder their future. Is it not possible that the routine playing of games that challenge the mind and reflex may stimulate and enrich a gamer? What if I were to posit the existence of gaming-morality, what if I suggested (absent of any empirical proof) that some gamers might eschew unnecessary violence (when made available to them) for any number of reasons: it wastes time and energy, it is ugly and against their own pre-defined code, it is common and "childish," etc. While the authors astutely point out the rapid rise in popularity of more violent games over more traditional "for Everyone" games, there remain plenty of challenging, enlightening games that involve no "graphic violence" at all (The Sims), or at least no more graphic than the real life the gamers try to emulate.
While I can totally understand most of their argument, what Greene and Waggoner pose next is a stretch:
Furthermore, the power we achieve through controlling others in the game allows us to renew our dwindling sense of freedom in a world where we feel constantly surveyed by our own technological underpinnings.
WHAT?! So if I solve a particularly difficult level of AFTERLIFE late one night, in my celabratory glee I will run out to the network hub in the Knox library fully prepared to fix all of our server/virus issues? No. I know the difference. The writers' logic has been skewed by watching too many of those Holiday Inn TV ads where customers, confident after having saved money by choosing HInn, attempt to perform surgery, nuclear reactor maintanence, or some such complicated job. AND what is so wrong with a little self-confidence booster? If I can't control traffic, sometimes it's nice to be able to solve a game challenge. Personally, I've always preferred the less-violent, more cartoonishly slapstick challenges found in the MARIO BROS. or CRASH BANDICOOT franchaises. In fact, the latent-violence catalyzed by a particularly frustrating session of Mario 3 has ALWAYS been more apt to drive me to commit violent acts (usually against my game controller of console) than marathon sessions of shoot-em-ups or first-person slayers. Road rage is not sparked by GTA 3, it's sparked by traffic jams, bad days at the office, and being cut-off. (okay that last point is probably a little off, but it's late and I've been interrupted several times).
What ires me is the authors' insistence that all gamers are irresponsible drones who are conditioned like animals to salivate when exposed to "violence." Maybe it's already part of us, anyway? Maybe those of us who are naturally disgusted by beatings will be turned off by digital renderings of beatings, or else we'll be post-modern/ironically-current enough to establish the seperation. I think most kids can. Responisibility: let's let more of it out there and not increase the pressure of more rules and regs and guilt on young America. Let's allow those who choose to proceed with their own defined code do so without feeling they have to; it'll yield them so much more pride when it pays off.
I followed a link from The Cocktail Sermons to a site called
Bad Subjects, an e-zine populated by contributors who are either graduate students or Ph.Ds in various fields. The zine's tagline is "Political Education for Everyday Life," and seems to be, after an hour-long surf, a wide-ranging project. The unifying religion of the latest online issue seems to be post-structuralism/critical theory, as various writers apply it to violence: in film and film's audience, in video games, in history. There is a leftist bent to most of the pieces, and sound writing all around.
I'd like to take on some of the points made in the article about violence and gaming, titled "Meditations on Brutality and Digital. Imagery"
First of all, I'd like to state that my position on video games re: violence yet wavers. Extreme cases like GTA 3 are hard to ignore, and after working as a House Parent to 13/14 year-old boys for a few months, censorship is seemingly less and less the monster.
That said, the article has some serious weaknesses, noteably the choice of bookending the writing with sections of a poem called "Digichant" by Ursula Rucker. Blogger's cookie cutter code (since I haven't a clue) won't let me easily cutnpaste while retaining the poet's own form and spacing, so I'll leave it to you to read the snippet. BUT, a line like "our capability to grasp the concept of humanity" is, and excuse what might sound egotistical or superior, unsightly.
The passage the concerns me most is the authors' (Cheryl Greene and Zachary Waggoner) attempt to concentrate the growing power of several small but well-argued points into one wider-reaching conclusion:
Today's games play into our never-ending desire to buy our way to" happiness." For it's the ideology of consumerism that allows individuals to pursue their every pleasure no matter what the actual cost. In a consumer economy where money gives us the power to achieve anything and everything we desire, these digital realms fulfill the gamer by allowing them to pursue their killing desires.
I'm not going to ignore that truth that video game writers, in many cases, do set-up the possibility of senseless violence without punishment (or in GTA 3's case, with reward). Will this have a deleterious effect on some of the more immature gamers in the world? Yes. On some of the more mature gamers? Yes, as well. Did public executions in France and England affect each's citizens in a similar way? I dunno, I'm not a socio-historian, but possibly.
BUT, what is with this link to CONSUMERISM? Again, GTA 3 seems purposefully built to gall those already opposed to the recent trends in video game violence (first person gorefests, supposed increasing identification with the avatar): in the game, if you don't get MONEY, you can't proceed/win, and although you can obtain some green by fulfilling missions (killing with a somewhat legit purpose), random violence on peds and whores will get you to your goal more quickly. Hence, the authors' connection to "evil uncle consumerism."
Here's where I come in. What is wrong, my friends, with the concept of Responsibility. This could be the new School Core Value system rubbing off on me (less picky rules and regs, more reliance on the kids to follow the 6 values), but what is so wrong with entrusting the gaming public (even after assuming that many players are not abiding by the rating system) with some level of trust/ benificence of the doubt. There will always be developing minds who waste their energy too often, who are distracted by the loudness of popular sway, who fall into complacency, who do not challenge themselves no matter what level they occupy. Video games are the least of areas in which they will hinder their future. Is it not possible that the routine playing of games that challenge the mind and reflex may stimulate and enrich a gamer? What if I were to posit the existence of gaming-morality, what if I suggested (absent of any empirical proof) that some gamers might eschew unnecessary violence (when made available to them) for any number of reasons: it wastes time and energy, it is ugly and against their own pre-defined code, it is common and "childish," etc. While the authors astutely point out the rapid rise in popularity of more violent games over more traditional "for Everyone" games, there remain plenty of challenging, enlightening games that involve no "graphic violence" at all (The Sims), or at least no more graphic than the real life the gamers try to emulate.
While I can totally understand most of their argument, what Greene and Waggoner pose next is a stretch:
Furthermore, the power we achieve through controlling others in the game allows us to renew our dwindling sense of freedom in a world where we feel constantly surveyed by our own technological underpinnings.
WHAT?! So if I solve a particularly difficult level of AFTERLIFE late one night, in my celabratory glee I will run out to the network hub in the Knox library fully prepared to fix all of our server/virus issues? No. I know the difference. The writers' logic has been skewed by watching too many of those Holiday Inn TV ads where customers, confident after having saved money by choosing HInn, attempt to perform surgery, nuclear reactor maintanence, or some such complicated job. AND what is so wrong with a little self-confidence booster? If I can't control traffic, sometimes it's nice to be able to solve a game challenge. Personally, I've always preferred the less-violent, more cartoonishly slapstick challenges found in the MARIO BROS. or CRASH BANDICOOT franchaises. In fact, the latent-violence catalyzed by a particularly frustrating session of Mario 3 has ALWAYS been more apt to drive me to commit violent acts (usually against my game controller of console) than marathon sessions of shoot-em-ups or first-person slayers. Road rage is not sparked by GTA 3, it's sparked by traffic jams, bad days at the office, and being cut-off. (okay that last point is probably a little off, but it's late and I've been interrupted several times).
What ires me is the authors' insistence that all gamers are irresponsible drones who are conditioned like animals to salivate when exposed to "violence." Maybe it's already part of us, anyway? Maybe those of us who are naturally disgusted by beatings will be turned off by digital renderings of beatings, or else we'll be post-modern/ironically-current enough to establish the seperation. I think most kids can. Responisibility: let's let more of it out there and not increase the pressure of more rules and regs and guilt on young America. Let's allow those who choose to proceed with their own defined code do so without feeling they have to; it'll yield them so much more pride when it pays off.
Last Nights Par-Tay (as referenced below):
Laura's friend/Watertown proto-legend Spicer Matthews (related, believe it or not, to a fellow Class of '98er Graeme Spicer) threw a "rager" last night in a decaying, historic, yet-to-be-condemed department store in traditional downtown Watertown. Back in "the day," The Square, Watertown's former downtown commercial hub, was home to a fat, burgeoning economy. Loads of small hat botiques and bookstores, J.R. Miller's Mens Clothing, The Waldorf Hotel (burned down many decades ago), and sundry other M and P stores flourished, and from the earliest days of Watertown (est. 1804). The current confusing-to-16-year-olds-and-any-stranger-to-the-city traffic pattern around the Square still mimics, I believe, the pattern once taken by horses and carriages. The first (ever) Woolworth's Five and Dime store is located just off the top of the Square, headed down Arsenal Street, and tucked just behind the edge of the Square that faces the Black River is the large and lately-ominous Empsall's Plaza (a company that was actually still in business when I was a kid), now crumbling, and subdivided into small offices, mostly for local non-profit community organizations. Anyway, THIS is where we had the party. Spicer's had been doing some sort of computer network installation with some friends/employees, and managed to wheel-in two kegs, a foosball table, and sound system yesterday (with the help of one Dylan Burns, fellow Class of '98er, and mythic Watertonian 'accomplice to petty crime') with which a good time was had by all. I'm sure I inhaled enough asbestos to at least make up for all the cigarettes I've never smoked all these years, and my Christmas gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lyman, a voluminous Colgate beer stein, was further put to good beer-drinking use. Upwards of 75 people came and went in the course of 5 hours, I'm guessing, spanning the gamut of the party-willing and party-able in town (as young as too young and as old as...well, Dylan and I). I foosed and played songs with Dylan and fellow Flynn Pool Lifeguard alums/dear friends Boozin' Susan, Andrew Schwerzmann, and Evan Wormwood (the latter two being younger brothers of good high school friends from C.O. '98, as well). A posse of toughguys breezed in searching for a rumble that did not happen, I almost left behind the stein forever, the beer pong throng perpetually resembled a frenzied game of casino craps, and I believe both kegs were emptied. I did not become nearly drunk, having to drive Laura and I home, but I did enjoy myself. And in two weeks, I return to my job of teaching students the age of most of the people in attendence last night. Woo hoo!
Had Flynn been there to document and commentate, entirely new dimensions and annexations might have been made to the e-parochially infamous poem "The Cocktail Sermons," a hairline-cracked LP that sings the aftermath of party culture, the failure of regeneration the morning after, and the scents of late adolescent intoxicants still wavering on dissipation among the rank and wasted architecture of New England (or Watertown, I'm arguing).
Laura's friend/Watertown proto-legend Spicer Matthews (related, believe it or not, to a fellow Class of '98er Graeme Spicer) threw a "rager" last night in a decaying, historic, yet-to-be-condemed department store in traditional downtown Watertown. Back in "the day," The Square, Watertown's former downtown commercial hub, was home to a fat, burgeoning economy. Loads of small hat botiques and bookstores, J.R. Miller's Mens Clothing, The Waldorf Hotel (burned down many decades ago), and sundry other M and P stores flourished, and from the earliest days of Watertown (est. 1804). The current confusing-to-16-year-olds-and-any-stranger-to-the-city traffic pattern around the Square still mimics, I believe, the pattern once taken by horses and carriages. The first (ever) Woolworth's Five and Dime store is located just off the top of the Square, headed down Arsenal Street, and tucked just behind the edge of the Square that faces the Black River is the large and lately-ominous Empsall's Plaza (a company that was actually still in business when I was a kid), now crumbling, and subdivided into small offices, mostly for local non-profit community organizations. Anyway, THIS is where we had the party. Spicer's had been doing some sort of computer network installation with some friends/employees, and managed to wheel-in two kegs, a foosball table, and sound system yesterday (with the help of one Dylan Burns, fellow Class of '98er, and mythic Watertonian 'accomplice to petty crime') with which a good time was had by all. I'm sure I inhaled enough asbestos to at least make up for all the cigarettes I've never smoked all these years, and my Christmas gift from Mr. and Mrs. Lyman, a voluminous Colgate beer stein, was further put to good beer-drinking use. Upwards of 75 people came and went in the course of 5 hours, I'm guessing, spanning the gamut of the party-willing and party-able in town (as young as too young and as old as...well, Dylan and I). I foosed and played songs with Dylan and fellow Flynn Pool Lifeguard alums/dear friends Boozin' Susan, Andrew Schwerzmann, and Evan Wormwood (the latter two being younger brothers of good high school friends from C.O. '98, as well). A posse of toughguys breezed in searching for a rumble that did not happen, I almost left behind the stein forever, the beer pong throng perpetually resembled a frenzied game of casino craps, and I believe both kegs were emptied. I did not become nearly drunk, having to drive Laura and I home, but I did enjoy myself. And in two weeks, I return to my job of teaching students the age of most of the people in attendence last night. Woo hoo!
Had Flynn been there to document and commentate, entirely new dimensions and annexations might have been made to the e-parochially infamous poem "The Cocktail Sermons," a hairline-cracked LP that sings the aftermath of party culture, the failure of regeneration the morning after, and the scents of late adolescent intoxicants still wavering on dissipation among the rank and wasted architecture of New England (or Watertown, I'm arguing).
Immune System:
Last mornings three have found me, almost immediately after waking up, making my way to the bathroom to do battle with a gooey, beige abomination hiding high in my nasal passages. Armed only with pure white Kleenex and the force of my own exhaling breath, I succeed, after a few minutes of exertion, to blow out a revolting yet oddly fascinating chunk of concentrated, sinus-packed snot. It really is a biological quandry.
Otherwise, my days have been mostly free from any hampering symptoms. The sickness refuses to pack up in toto, however, and last night's par-taying did not help the effort, I'd imagine.
Last mornings three have found me, almost immediately after waking up, making my way to the bathroom to do battle with a gooey, beige abomination hiding high in my nasal passages. Armed only with pure white Kleenex and the force of my own exhaling breath, I succeed, after a few minutes of exertion, to blow out a revolting yet oddly fascinating chunk of concentrated, sinus-packed snot. It really is a biological quandry.
Otherwise, my days have been mostly free from any hampering symptoms. The sickness refuses to pack up in toto, however, and last night's par-taying did not help the effort, I'd imagine.
