Just recently, I took a look into the blog site www.deadlykatrina.com. While this blog was written as the events related to the hurricane were occurring, it was probably not written by somebody who had a home near the affected area. It might have been, though very little information is present about the author of this blog. It is a very impersonal project, apparently trying to keep the perspective as objective as possible, though clearly sympathizing with those who had been affected. The evident purpose of this blog is to keep everybody with an interest in the hurricane informed about the major developing events in New Orleans, the government, or the country as a whole.

   While this blog does keep a constant record of events as they unfold in the Katrina situation, the record is not very thorough regarding the more recent events in the news. In fact, the blog had only been kept from the dates of August 29th, 2005, when the hurricane had first hit, to only a few days later on September 10th of the same year. Although the events outlined in the blog span a very short time, especially considering how long the hurricane had been in the news, the blog goes into great detail. There are many entries posted every day, as well as links to news sites, portions of full articles, and additional commentary on what actually is posted.

   The obvious goal of this blog was to create a place to collect and organize all of the significant news stories of the hurricane. For the short period of time that it was in operation, the blog site was very effective in accomplishing such a goal. It would have been an excellent news source had it continued into later months of the disaster and the relief effort. With the author taking a strictly impersonal and neutral stance on most every story posted, it would most likely be better than any given news site for those who want information specifically on the hurricane. On the other hand, since this blog was not written from the point of view of any particular person, but rather from the point of view of what they had been given from the news sites, the blog does not delve any deeper into the subject matter than the news sites from which it draws its information. While a news site may say "Arriving national guardsmen met with cheering and swearing," indicating that some people were happy for the arrival of the national guard to the city while others were displeased, there is little to no personal commentary on how these events affect the victims' lives. Additionally, there is little following up on stories such as these. While the news states that the national guard has begun to move into the city, a blog set on a more personal level would be able to inform all of the readers about how life has changed since the national guard arrived.

   So while this blog had been both well-written and well-managed, it just suffered from a few simple flaws. Most notable is the premature, unanticipated cutoff date of the blog's entries. This blog has no entries beyond September 10, though this disaster had been in the news for many months later. This is probably due to another flaw of the blog: Its impersonal, purely objective level. Since it apparently is not written by somebody directly influenced by the events of the hurricane, but rather is a person taking an interest in the news, they might have simply lost interest in maintaining the blog, just hoping to let it drift into obscurity.

   I was hoping that today I'd be able to just move into my new apartment in this new city, and continue my average life like usual. Seems like things are going a bit differently though. The moving truck was late, and I saw some cars outside driving pretty crazily, so I went on outside. I saw some people running around going wild for some unknown reason. Across the street at the pizza place, there was some guy who looked really sick and had sauce all over his face and shirt... At least, that's what I THOUGHT it was. In reality, I'm now being told this guy is actually a zombie! It's a good thing somebody else knew, because I was just about to ask him what was going on. A worker in the pizza place threw a chair through the window at him, and we had to fight off a couple others. We tried to call the police and tell them about it, but for some reason, they didn't believe that zombies were actually loose in the city. They think we just killed some people!

   Anyhow, we're in my landlord's apartment right now. It was also all zombie-infested, but we took care of that and found the landlord locked in the bathroom. Well, the pizzeria worker found him in there. I was sitting here on the computer playing his sweet Oregon Trail game. I think they're taking him to the hospital or something right now. I ought to go along with them, though honestly, I could just sit here and blog all day if left to it. :D That might be a bad idea though, since I think the police are after me for murder.

http://trooth.midnightcheese.com/Avg.htm

   Boy, life has certainly been hard since I left my kung-fu monk academy. I'm still not too sure why they kicked me out, but the outside world isn't all that nice. The first guy I met up there in the mountains was some old man who yelled at me, and soon after that, there was a bear on the mountain trail! It seemed harmless enough, so I jumped up on its back and tried to ride it down the mountain. For some reason, it didn't seem to like the plan too much, and soon made me get off. I started to walk on down on foot, but the bear chased after me! I saw it flying through the air straight at me, so I used my amazing monk hugging technique to grab it, and... Well, we both plummeted off a cliff. It took snappy monk reflexes for me to be able to remove my headband and loop it around a branch sticking out of the cliff face. Soon after, I ended up on a ledge where there was this weird kind of nest built, even with an egg inside. It hatched after a little while, and that's when I met my friend the jelly monster. Yeah, he's weird. I thought there was just a purple yolk in there or something, but it's actually some kind of gelatinous little animal. Right after the hatching though, one of its parents returned to the nest, and seeing me with its baby, pushed me off the cliff... Even though I was still holding the baby.

   Due to some quick thinking by that little jelly monster, we were able to slow our fall and end up safe on the ground. We got a drink from the nearby river, and I really wanted to check out a cave on the other side of it, but the current was so strong, I just got picked up and sent away! The jelly monster and I managed to land on a big rock, where we actually caught a little fish and spent the night. In the morning, a guy named Clyde on a raft met us and picked us up to go along with him. I think he said he was on some kind of a quest to slay a monster, or mapping the river or something. I'm not sure.

   So now I'm just going on along the river with Clyde and the jelly monster, waiting for whatever comes our way. We met some kind of a weird salesman in a cave who sold me a weird capsule (not sure what it does, but it was pretty), and Clyde got ambushed by bandits while I was off buying it. They tried to steal the jelly monster and all of Clyde's stuff, but we were able to fight the two of them off. We lost the raft not too long ago because I went swimming while Clyde took a nap, and found a treasure chest underwater. There wasn't much in it except a balloon, but I took it anyway. I didn't have a chance to get back to the raft in time, so I just ran along the shore and woke Clyde up in time for him to jump off. Right now we're actually on the edge of bandit country, according to Clyde, so we're preparing swords and stuff (I just have a sharp stick, but I think I can be convinced to take one of Clyde's swords). Here's hoping we make it through!

http://trooth.midnightcheese.com/Monk.htm

   Man, this has been one crazy day. It all started this morning when the captain woke me up WAY too early. He said I had to get out and swab the deck, even though we were going to reach shore in like, five minutes. Honestly, who's going to care how clean the deck is when we're all off exploring this island? Anyway, I went out and did a half-assed job at it, mostly just pretending to work... Now, don't tell anybody, but I think I sort of accidentally killed the captain at this point. I mean, he was walking by the edge of the ship where I had just been mopping, and he slipped over the railing into the really shallow water by the shore... I think the rest of the crew believed me when I told them he was going for a swim though, so I'm gonna stick to that story. So while the rest of the crew went off into some scary tropical jungle, I thought I'd, uh... Relieve the captain of some of his worldly possessions. That is, I would have, but this crazy man kept a crate of bees right inside his door! Do you believe that? But that's not even the worst part! In the chest at the end of the bed, there was this wild toxic gas that ended up pretty much corroding the crow's nest and part of the mast. Our captain was one paranoid guy.

   So I figured it'd be a good time to get off the ship and follow some other crewmates into the jungle. I ended up in a cave soon enough (it was hella dark in there, and I had to use my bandana to scare off some bats), but I fell into a pit in the ground. At least in this lower part of the cave, I met Larsen, another member of the crew. Now lemme tell ya... Underground caves are apparently real madhouses. We had to cross this crazy pool of toxic liquid, met a weird talking frog, saw a geyser shoot up to the surface, found some cool crystals and apparently some ancient artifacts... And I kid you not, there was a monster in that cave. A MONSTER! Not like, an animal or something. A genuine monster! Bastard kicked me in the chest and probably left a scar because of his claws. So yeah, further into the cave we found these three crystal balls. I tried to grab a pink one sitting there, and it became all elasticky and stuck to my arm. That'll freak you out, lemme tell ya, but now I think it's actually pretty cool having a crystal-coated arm. Larsen grabbed a green one which glowed pretty bright and was also magnetic. Then there was the crazy blue one, which rocketed off as soon as we touched it, and bounced all over the cave, and now I don't know WHERE it is. Oh, and one more thing you can't tell anybody... I sorta, kinda smacked Larsen in the head with my crystal-ball arm and stole his machete. Nobody tell Larsen, because I don't think he remembers.

   Larsen and I got separated when we left the cave though, and I lost the machete among other things, but I did find my bandana that had been carried off by the bats earlier. Soon after, a pygmy guy stole the pouch I'd been wearing around my belt. It had my two hard-earned gold coins in it, so I chased the little bugger down. I didn't really have to though, because a second later I found him stuck headfirst in this wild man-eating jungle plant. That dude owes me his life though, because I totally picked up his spear and slayed the vicious plant. He passed out right after popping out of the plant, so I just tied a vine around his foot and pulled him along with me. Anyway, I've found my way back to the ship now, and I'm just hanging out on the beach. I figured it'd be a cool idea to wear the captain's eye patch and jacket, since he's not using them, and I chopped up a palm tree for some firewood, and now I'm mostly just hanging around. The little pygmy guy is still with me, and I think he's waking up now, so I better wrap up this blog entry! Talk to you all later!

http://trooth.midnightcheese.com/Pirate.htm

Urbandictionary.com. April 3, 2008. Urban Dictionary. <http://www.urbandictionary.com/>

 

            Urban Dictionary is a comprehensive resource for nearly all contemporary additions to the common English language. It is up to users to submit definitions for whatever words or phrases they know and wish to explain to everyone else. Other visitors to the site are able to give definitions either a "thumbs-up" or "thumbs-down" depending on whether or not they believe a definition is meritable. The site is a huge repository for slang words of all sorts, and those generated by the internet are probably all present. Since 1999, the site has grown to great popularity, so odds are that no matter how new a slang term might be, somebody has though to submit it to Urban Dictionary. The community is very reliable, and an accurate definition can probably always be found. They are sorted by which definitions of the word get the greatest number of thumbs-ups, and since any person can vote on a definition's validity, there's very little chance of mass fake-votes just for the sake of stirring up confusion.

 

Memes on the internet. 2000. Thinkquest. <http://library.thinkquest.org/C004367/ce7.shtml>

 

            This site links to an article explaining a great deal about memes on the internet. The obscure memes of the internet are very frequently referenced by internet users who are familiar with them, and in such a way as this, references to the popular memes of the internet become integrated into common online speech as new words or phrases. A reference to a video on youtube that lots of people find funny may evolve into something used in other contexts until it becomes something seemingly independent from its origin, which may end up forgotten over time. By examining from where the internet's beloved fads come, we can see the original inspiration behind the invention of a new installment of our language. A wide variety of origins may be observed for the internet users' new words, and they are most often associated with, or even synonymous with memes.

 

Encyclopedia Dramatica. April 3, 2008. <http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com/>

 

            Encyclopedia Dramatica is an unusual and enigmatic site. Many of the things written in it are done in a joking and highly offensive way, but it can be informative in a strange roundabout way. Beyond thick layers of sarcasm and mockery in pretty much every article, one may actually find useful information on a number of subjects. It takes a fair degree of interpretation and an immunity to being offended in most cases, if the online community finds something interesting or funny, it is bound to have an article on this site. According to the site's description, it was created by people who were upset with Wikipedia's moderating and banning policies, so they made a site with very lenient policies. The only thing people at ED don't like to see is article deletion. Since the site is written in such an offensive way, there will be from time to time people who will try to delete an article that offends them, but they are promptly restored.

Today I was browsing the emails stored on this site:
http://911digitalarchive.org/galleries.php?collection_id=29

It's looking like a large portion of this is email to people who live around New York or who have family in New York, or things like that. The great bulk are mostly "Are you still alive" and "Don't worry, I'm okay." There are also people apparently not directly involved, sending out profound things to point out about the event, or just spreading the news around... And of course, there have to be the people who get the viral emails going around, either involving conspiracy theories due to corresponding numbers in the flight number, the date, and number of letters in people's names. Also the emails that evidently show religious imagery like Satan's face in the smoke of the towers. Some people are just weird like that I guess, but viewing the emails from right after the event, like these, show people at a time where they strive for a bit more normalcy.

My friends and I have known this one for a while:

www.isitnormal.com

I think this is in a similar group to what we've talked about in class. I have to admit though, I doubt that a lot of this stuff is serious. The basic premise is that people post weird things about themselves and the other users are supposed to rate how "normal" it is.  Things like this pretty much beg to be pranked, so there are lots of obvious jokes. If they're not jokes, then... Well, some people have severe problems.

You'll find some pretty shocking stories on there, and some that are just obviously hilarious. A few of my favorites are here, here, (maybe the most racist argument you could ever see) and here. 99% of the time, the comments are even funnier than the posts themselves. I think the site owners realized people were going to the site for comedic reasons, because you can mark posts as funny in addition to helpful or abusive.

As a bonus, these are faces you might make when viewing isitnormal.com:

You've probably been in this situation (and you MIGHT have even done it). Somebody in the room is looking at a magazine or a computer or something, and they just start saying things clearly audible to you like "Holy crap!" or "No way!" or they'll laugh, but they won't follow it up with anything until you say "What is it?"

It's SO annoying. If people want to talk to me, just talk to me, don't act all like "Oh, you overheard me exclaiming in this otherwise silent room that the person in this video is a moron? I honestly am not at all aware of my surroundings, but am pleasantly surprised that you are interested in the same things as me." Even worse is when you actually bite and they act like they were not at all expecting you to respond, doing a double-take or something.

A much better conversation-starter is "Holy crap, watch this video!" or "Listen to this, it's hilarious!" or "Read this, you won't believe it!" I'd be much more willing to get into a conversation if people ask for my attention rather than trying to catch it with bait.

Basically my roommate does this several times a day with Youtube videos and he's started watching Lost on his computer this week, and makes an attempt every five seconds to passively get me interested in the show. It's becoming painfully obvious that he's trying to indirectly reel me in.

I don't want to be lured into a planned-out conversation. I'd rather just talk like a normal person to others.

Sometimes I can practically HEAR people turning to check and see if I've looked at them after an outburst like that.

   The internet has lately become the world's town square. Though extracted from any tangible location on earth, it's the place in which every person can meet. Letters can be sent faster than they are written, and we can communicate either textually or vocally with any person or group of people on earth through this medium. For those who would like their soapbox though, the blog allows one person to address many (or just a small group) from the comfort and calm of home.

   The thing to know about trying to speak out to the whole internet through one's blog is that the rest of the world does not have to listen. Even if they would like to, it is difficult to make others hear your voice. Over time though, practice at blogging can increase the writer's efficiency at catching ears (or rather, eyes) and eventually forge a distinct voice.

   For many, the blog may start out as a personal endeavor. Beginning bloggers may write for nobody but themselves. Keeping a personal log such as this is a fine thing to do, but those who write for no audience have little room to improve. So in learning what the people want to hear, a blogger can mold their writing to suit the global audience rather than the author. The primary goal is giving the people what they want. Unless the author has an exceedingly intriguing or thrilling life, purely personal stories will attract few people. It is important to write not just what you want to say, but what others want to hear. Something that interests or affects a large demographic will be read more often.

   Finding the interesting topics is not all that is needed though. The other half of a successful blog is presentation.  It helps to be able to catch a reader's eye, but even more useful is reeling them in. A revolutionary, groundbreaking article may be skipped over if written in an unpleasant way. Web surfers appreciate pieces of writing that are witty, colorful, courteous, and that employ a proficient level of speling and grammar. Wittiness helps to break the monotony of an article, and to keep people amused when ordinarily their attention span would draw them away. A unique brand to the writing is helpful to distinct the author from thousands of others who may have written about the same thing. Politeness helps because an interested reader may be repelled if the writer seems too crass. The English skills are helpful, if nothing else, to give the author an air of intelligence.

   On a personal level, the most significant effect that my recent blogging has had on me is letting me know what people like to talk about. From my end I can see how engaging my interests are to others and I can observe the writing of others to know what another person might like to discuss. Since I've been conversing with denizens of the online world for years now, and maintaining a blog-like site for nearly a year, it is difficult for me to determine what, if any, significant change has taken place over the few weeks since this blog began. I've been developing my English skills earnestly for many years to the point where any improvement I make in "following the rules" is easily noticed. I believe there is always room for my wit, color, and courtesy to improve though, as these are much more dynamic traits of one's personality, and are less easily noticed when a change is made. I'll just keep writing and see where it takes me. Some good things are definitely bound to arise.

   My friends and I wish more classes could be conducted over AIM like this interview was. It was really relaxing sitting at home on my computer and still talking to the whole class. The interview itself was all laid-back and entertaining, except for the awkward silence when Joe first entered the chat room. I thought it was funny how the conversation just seemed to come to a dead halt at that point, followed by a burst of comments and questions from almost everyone. Everybody pretty much covered everything that I would have asked, so in an effort to not seem dead, I felt I had to stir it up with questions like "Pirates or ninjas?" and "Pepsi or coke?" Of course, as we all know, these are some of the most important significant conundrums of life. It was a really energetic chat I'd say, and one of the most interesting I've been in (also really informative). It was also something really hilarious at some points for me, but that could possibly have been catalyzed by the fact that during nearly the whole interview, I was watching a ridiculous looping Flash with a song about crabs.

P.S. King of the chat. =D

Link to Metacritic

   I've been aware of this Metacritic site for a while now, but I never actually bothered to look at it until recently. I just wanted to look up the movie Meet the Spartans to see just how awful everybody thinks it is, and I ended up spending almost an hour on the site checking out the scores of every movie I could think of.

   It basically checks reviews from various reputable sources and averages them together to produce a score out of 100. Additionally, users can give the movies their own vote for an x.x out of 10 score, which is basically the same thing as a score out of 100 only with a different decimal placement (kinda stupid, I think). The downside to this site is that a lot of movies aren't on the site due to their age, probably because the people running the site couldn't find records of reviews from too far back. Anything older than the 90s probably isn't present. I say they could at least let users give their votes though.

   I think it's good to have the critics' reviews compiled in one place, though 9 out of 10 times on that site, the user rating is more accurate. Probably because 9 out of 10 users know what they're talking about. Based on some comments though, you can tell that some people miss the point entirely. A user commented on one of my favorite movies (Pleasantville) that they hated it because Reese Witherspoon's character was a brat... Something that was meant to be a part of the story. Or for Pan's Labyrinth, I've heard people condemn the whole movie just because it made them sad. It's meant to be sad, and I think that if it's effective enough to stir up emotions like that in people, then it accomplished its goal.

   It's good to see some of these movies really get what they have coming. I couldn't believe that Roger Ebert actually liked BOTH Garfield movies, and I hoped that this wasn't a universal sentiment, and was relieved to see that they have no higher than 37 on Metacritic. It was also a relief to see that Alone in the Dark, Meet the Spartans, and Epic Movie got 9, 9, and 17 respectively. Another nice little justice for me was Kung Pow. The average critic score was 14/100, but the user votes give it 8.9 out of 10. It's obviously really goofy and unprofessional and sometimes amateur-looking, but I just can't help but like that movie.

   Some of these seemed absolutely ridiculous to me though. National Treasure only got a 39, and the second one got a 48. The user scores aren't much higher, but I say these movies deserve a lot more. They're far better than the Saw movies which range from 36 to 48 and definitely deserve less in my opinion.

   I haven't even looked at the sections of the site outside of movies, but they're sure to offer many more hours of manic random browsing.

   This whole weekend has been one of those "I don't feel like doing anything" times. Usually those periods last a day, but it's been a bit longer this time. A situation like this calls for me to laze about doing things that take little effort but can hopefully inspire me to get out of whatever rut I'm in.

   Part of this state has been caused by me playing volleyball with a ball that was entirely too flat when it's entirely too cold. Though they don't look like it, my arms feel like 100% bruise, and my legs aren't much better from all the running around I've been doing. On top of that, I was woken up early this morning by something that may be the stomach virus making its rounds. It's enough to make anyone feel sluggish and inactive.

   So how do we fight funk such as this when it makes its crippling strike? First of all, getting dressed is out of the question. Comfort is a high priority, and cannot be achieved in thick, stiff jeans. Loose sweat pants are the way to go. That and a lightweight though warm shirt. So we need food as well, right? One might think that delicious treats such as microwave s'mores and hot chocolate are the way to go here. But no, both of those require too much effort and preparation for someone in such a slump. I had vanilla coke today, which was even a bit more effort than I'd like to put forth. Alas though, no drinks were within arm's reach. The ideal cuisine here consists of no more steps than

1. Open package
2. Eat food contained within.

Sunflower seeds, donuts, popcorn, cookies, munchies, and fruit roll-ups have been the menu today. Tonight I may cook ramen as my last big meal.

   Unfortunately for one stricken with Motivational Deficiency Disorder (MoDeD), these foods do very little to ease the condition. One needs stimulation. Television? Nah, the remote's too far away, and that requires turning the head or moving the chair. Very counter-vegetative. So we browse Youtube, delve Wikipedia, listen to inspiring music, play games, and generally pursue other hedonistic endeavors.

   The main attraction for me was movie-watching. Or rather, television-watching. Though as I said, my television didn't come on once. I took some time to reunite with shows too old for TV of which I have no more than the slightest memory, but the greatest fondness. Shows like The Mysterious Cities of Gold (to be made into a movie after more than 20 years' existence and maybe 15 years' cancellation) and Speed Racer (this one to be made into a movie after more than 40 years). My absolute favorite though, and one with no plans of a movie release, is The Littl' Bits. This one I like so much that I decided I'd have to be the one to make its web site. Maybe I have abnormal memory retention, but nobody else my age seems to know about any of these shows (except Speed Racer, since it was more popular and stayed on TV longer).

   So for about a year and a half (since I rediscovered The Littl' Bits) I've been scouring the world (mainly via internet) for any video copies that may have survived over the years. It's an arduous search, though not entirely fruitless. I'm up to 14 of 26 episodes, and the full Spanish series. I don't just watch all that I can as soon as I get it though... On a day like I've been having all weekend, one brand-new episode of this artifactual (new word for the dictionary) show is just what the doctor ordered to get one inspired and energetic again. Three unwatched episodes still wait for me, and tonight I'll dip into the reserves and watch one of these.

Cheers!

   You might call me weird, but through my extensive use of the English language, I've come to find that sometimes I just don't have the right word for a certain situation. Sometimes an effective word exists, but just doesn't smoothly roll off the tongue, or has some kind of weird connotation. Sometimes it just seems like a word should have a similar opposite. When such an occasion arrives, I invent a new word!

   My favorite invented word is awesomosity. The "proper" word for this situation is awesomeness, but that's just a clunky boring word that nobody really wants to say. Awesomosity means, of course, the quality or condition of being awesome, and is in itself an awesome word to say.

   A couple of words that go together are descalate and delevate. These two are counterparts to the words escalate and elevate. Escalators and elevators do more than escalate and elevate. They can also go down. But there is no word to describe such an act, other than "to go down." You might say descend, but that one's implied to be paired with ascend, so I don't think it really works as well as descalate and delevate.

   Going with the -osity ending trend, (trending?) there is also adventurosity, which is basically just a substitute for adventurousness. That's another word that doesn't roll off the tongue too smoothly, so it needs a more awesome alternative.

   This one made me realize that on occasion I see two words that look like they should be smashed together into one shorter word. The problem with these creations is that they're esoteric, and generally only apply to the situation where they started. I couldn't see "trending" becoming a useful word in the dictionary, unlike all of these others. One word that came up on my site was "pondle" which refers to a thing that is not quite a pond and not quite a puddle.

   One more that doesn't exist but should is classicality. If something has a classic quality about it, then you'd say that it has classicality. Or you might just be able to say that it has class........ Perhaps I didn't thoroughly think this word through when adding it to my dictionary.

   A nice interjection for folks to use is kickawesome! This one was my pride and joy next to awesomosity, but I later came to find out that other people thought this up before me, and I can't really claim credit for it. I can at least say that I didn't steal it from anywhere, but to claim I invented it when it has already existed makes it look like I stole it.

   When you start using fancy words such as these, people might say that you're vocabularious. This of course means that you have or you show a wide vocabulary. From this one, I might like to derive the noun vocabulariosity, and while that's kind of a mouthful, I believe it's fun to say. =D

    Well, let's go ahead and get this thing started. First of all, I go by the name Trooth usually, since that's a mash-up of my names. That username was already taken though, so... Here we are.

   I've had a wealth of experience with computers, as well as internets. When I was three years old I was teaching myself to read with the computer game Reader Rabbit, and that's been the launching point for my life excelling with computers and English.


   Speaking of computers and English, I use both of these things to run my web site, which I'll be shamelessly advertising continuously through the course of this... course, so get used to it! The link is surely somewhere on my page, but I'm such a persistent salesman that I'm going to put another link right here!


   So anyway... I should also bring up artwork I've done. I'm a horrendous artist, but I'm so good with computers that I can actually make half-decent artwork on them. Ask me to recreate anything on paper though, and it'll be a terrifying mess. The profile pic I have up in the corner there was actually painstakingly made in MS Paint along with a few snazzy added effects in Photoshop. I can do a few neat things in Photoshop, and I'm one of the few people in the world who can say they ever seriously used MS Paint. It's not an appealing prospect.


   So, uh... Here's hoping everything goes as planned!