Amazon Fucked Me

I check my credit card charges pretty regularly. There are times when I've thought that it was unnecessary and perhaps even paranoid, because month after month, year after year, there were no problems. And I got used to using my credit card...an Amazon affiliated card... for just about everything, so there were a lot of charges. But I still kept checking.

And then a few months ago I saw a small charge...$1.99...and I couldn't remember ordering anything that corresponded to that amount and the date noted. The description line didn't give me any useful information, either. So, feeling a bit of chagrin, I called the Amazon help number. I got bounced around a bit. Finally I was told that this was a pre-charge that had been applied because my Amazon Prime was about to renew. So that was that.

Until the next month, when a charge for $12.99 showed up. Same suspicious circumstances. I called again. Again I had to go through several different people. I finally got to a supervisor. And again I was told that this was a pre-charge thing. I told this knowledgeable-sounding fellow what had happened previously, and he assured me that everything was copacetic, that I didn't need to worry.

Until the next month, when another charge for $12.99 showed up. Same suspicious circumstances. I called yet again. Again I had to go through several different people. And again I was told that this was a pre-charge thing. I said that it was not. I had to speak to someone else. I asked everyone I talked to (at least a half-dozen people) if they could give me any further information about the charge...WHO charged this on my card and Amazon account, for instance. They told me that they couldn't. Which baffled me. I mean...it was my card and my account, for fuck's sake. Finally I talked to a guy who told me the first and last letter of the first name on the charge...which clearly showed that he had the name right in front of him. I told him I didn't know anybody whose name corresponded to those letters. But he still wouldn't give me any more information.

So I called my credit card company and cancelled the card, of course, but I continued to ask Amazon for information about the erroneous charges. They ignored my email, and when I did a Live Chat (I try not to call, as it is extremely difficult to understand what many of the phone folks are saying, either because of bad connections or heavily accented English) I was assured that I would get information about this in a few days via email. And sure enough, I did get an email a few days later. It told me that Amazon couldn't give me any information.

So...I still have an Amazon account, but I don't have a credit card associated with it anymore, and I haven't made any purchases in the past three months. I'm thinking I might be done with them. Not because of the bogus charges...which were pretty small...but because of the run around they gave me...and the lack of information on this thing. 

I've been buying books from other online sources (which allow you to use PayPal) and I haven't been buying comic books at all, I'm sorry to say. (Though I have read quite a few free from the public library.) I bought some clothing from Walmart. I bought a couple of pieces of furniture from Wayfair. (PayPal, PayPal.) All of that stuff would have come from Amazon before. I've spent thousands of dollars there over the years. Probably tens of thousands of dollars. (Hell, I'm on my sixth Kindle!) But now....

Anyway. The moral of the story is Check Your Credit Card Charges. And don't trust the people who assure you that everything is alright if you suspicion that it is not. Keep asking to speak to a manager higher up the chain. Although that didn't really work out for me, did it?

Sigh.

⺟

⺟

My mother was an odd person. As am I, as are my children...and I don't think that's a bad thing. Although it can be a painful thing, because it means that not only do you not fit in anywhere, but you don't even know why you don't fit in. If you're lucky, you bump into other odd people and you begin to feel slightly less uncomfortable about life. I don't know what happens if you're unlucky, but I suspect it involves a small house filled with lots of stuff...some of it cats.

When I was a very young kid, my mother would get out China pencils (checked...yep, they still exist) and let me and my sister go to work on the faux marble dining room table. Our mission, which we gleefully accepted, was to use the China pencils to darken the lines in the "marble" to reveal what we saw there: faces, animals, etcetera. And one time she called me upstairs to the bathroom and told me to sit on the toilet and look at the towel hanging from the rack on the wall. I did. The towel had roses printed on it. I looked and looked. "Do you see the cow?" my mom asked. And then I did. 

Today I went for a long walk...a solo one, which is rare for me in these Covid days, as six days a week I have the company of my two youngest...and when I got home I was feeling pretty good, pretty strong. In my post-"heart attack" (non-ischemic left bundle branch blockage) life, that's not all that common for me, so I thought I'd get out my chain saw and get to work on some of the outrageous growth in my backyard before it started to sprout. I worked for about an hour and was literally reeling from the exertion. When I finally decided that it wasn't a good idea to keep pushing on, I actually staggered to the back door and had to sit for twenty minutes on my top step before I felt steady again. Then I kicked off my muddy shoes, went into the kitchen and got some water, went to the living room and relaxed for a half-hour with some Winston Churchill (The Second World War Volume III: The Grand Alliance) before I went into the kitchen to see what was up for lunch. As I passed the kitchen window I glanced out, and was startled to see a pale white bear sitting in my backyard:

Do you see it? Just in case it's as elusive as the arrow in the FedEx logo can be, check this out:

I actually stared at it for a couple of seconds thinking, "How the hell did a bear get into my backyard?" before I realized it was the garbage bag that I'd been using to kneel on while I cut away at the intrusive flora. It had blown up into the branches I'd cut and perched there, waiting to give me a start.

I sent this picture to my sister and asked her what she saw. She texted back, "Is that a dog tied to a tree? Call Animal Control, that is illegal!" 

Just like the good old days.

Man, I miss my mom. 

Leaving The Amazon for a Better World

I've had some problems with Amazon lately. Nothing too awful, and nothing I want to go into here*, but bad enough for me to start looking at other places to make my purchases. Most of my purchases tend to be books. And though I've used various online bookstores for some time now**, I'd have to admit that Amazon tends to be my Go To place, even when it comes to buying Used Books. But since The Trouble*, I've started to reconsider that choice...and as of about 4 a.m. this morning I have decided that I will probably not buy any more books from Amazon, and definitely will not buy any more Used Books from them. 

I woke up from a rather dissettling dream (at fo--...you guessed it) and, knowing that I would not be going back to sleep, picked up my Kindle and read Christoffer Petersen's Camp Century. (A most excellent story, by the way. More on that elsewhere as well.) When I finished, I popped over for a look at my Facebook feed and saw a story about Better World Books. I have been a Better World Books customer for some time now. Not only do they have a large selection & good (often the best) prices, but they are also a company which attempts to do some good in the world: "...it donates books or a percentage of its profit to literacy programs around the world. As of 2013, the company had donated an estimated $14 million under this program." (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Better_World_Books) I also lived in the Mishawaka / South Bend Indiana area for a year and a half, where the company originated, so it has that pull for me as well.  So I watched the video (HERE) that had been posted on Facebook. And when it hit the frame which you see pictured above, I had to pause it, back it up, and listen again. With reference to Amazon, Dustin Holland, President and CEO of Better World Books, told the interviewer this: "They take 40% of every dollar, so if we sell a $10 book, $4 goes to Amazon. If we sell a $10 book on Better World Books that money goes back into the company and we're able to do more, support our employees, and give back and donate more books around the world. [For every book bought directly from Better World Books]...we donate a book to somebody in need." 

Mr. Holland also talked about how the company has donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to the Robinson Community Learning Center in South Bend, and says that they have donated close to 30 million books worldwide to date. (Which is more than twice the number reported on the Wikipedia page, by the way.) ***

But of course the salient point is this: Amazon is taking a huge cut of the profits away from Better World Books...a company which uses a healthy portion of its profits to make the world a better place.

Hmmm. That would be scanned.

Okay, done scanning. Fuck Amazon. Make Mine Better World Books. In fact, ahmo go buy some stuff from them right now. Speaking of which, here's another big bonus so far as I'm concerned: you can pay via PayPal. And after getting burned by Amazon with respect to my account security*, that's a big plus.

P.S. After I'd completed today's purchase ($15.98 for three books: Apache Devil by Edgar Rice Burroughs, Saints for Girls by Solveig Muus and Bart Tesoriero, and This Cold Heaven: Seven Seasons in Greenland by Gretel Ehrlich...which neatly breaks down to one for Joe, one for Jacqueline, and one for me--respectively)...I received the message that my Better World Books purchases had resulted in 23 books being donated. 

So there's that.

👣🎵

* Though I will go into it elsewhere, out of a sense of civic duty coupled with my anger at the ineptitude and disdain displayed by a half-dozen members of the Amazon team.

** Better World Books, Thrift Books, Alibris, AbeBooks, Biblio.com are my go tos, though of course ebay has been known to have its charms as well.

*** In attempting to verify the figure, I ended up on the Better World Books' Our Impact page (who'd have thunk it?) and found these (running) totals: 26,502,000 Books Donated, 28,430,000 Funds raised for literacy & libraries, & 320,019,014 Books reused or recycled. So suck on that, Wikipedia. 

WandaVision

I wasn't sure about WandaVision at first. The whole sitcom thing seemed just a bit too cutesy pie for me. But I'm strongly inclined to stick with Marvel at this point, and Joe was in for a pound, so I hung in there. It wasn't until the end of episode 5, when you-know-who appears, that I really got interested, though. For one thing...it was the wrong you-know-who. We had crossed wires between Marvel Studios and 20th Century Fox, and that intrigued me. For another thing, it was clear at this point that the whole sitcom thing was over with. So I was pretty happy watching episode 6. In fact, it was the first episode that I completely enjoyed. And then came episode 7...and oh. Oh my.

Of course, the most exciting thing about the end of episode 7 wasn't the big reveal per se...but what it could possibly imply.

The Fantastic Four have not fared well on the movie screen. I've seen all four of their movies (yes, four: 1994, 2005, 2007, and 2015), and I actually enjoyed all of them...though I was pretty unhappy with some aspects of The Rise of the Silver Surfer, for sure. But even the stunningly inept and ill-fated Roger Corman (1994) was kind of fun at times. I've seen it twice, as a matter of fact. On purpose. (I also watched the very interesting documentary Doomed: The Untold Story of Roger Corman's The Fantastic Four (2015), and give that  👍👍. But let's just say that the box office results were not impressive, and that's what makes for ongoing movie series. There have been rumors of an FF reboot...but hey, there were rumors that a 21 year-old Bob Dylan was going to star in a movie version of The Catcher in the Rye at one time, too, so who knows.

On the other hand...

According to Marvel Database (@ https://marvel.fandom.com/wiki), Agatha Harkness has made 140 appearances ("on Earth 616"), and 49 of them have been in Fantastic Four. (There were also 34 appearances in Avengers and 16 in Scarlet Witch titles, which shows how much more closely associated she is with the FF than any other Marvel title.) So when Agnes of WandaVision reveals that she is  actually Agatha Harkness....albeit a much 🔥hotter🔥 Agatha Harkness, to be sure...well. There's definitely a door opening there, and who knows who will walk through that door in the next few episodes? 

I know I'll be watching, fo show.

The Little Things

 I read this is Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex 2, and thought it was something worth thinking about. When you're in a relationship, it's easy...maybe even inevitable...that you start to take some things for granted, especially the "little" things. Maybe you stop holding the door for your SO. Maybe you stop trying to hold your flatulence until you can go to another room. Maybe you stop taking a shower before you go out together or to meet somewhere. There are a million possible little things. And when you neglect them, it's not necessarily a lack of respect or love...but I think it is always an assumption that because the person loves you, you don't have to pay so much attention to The Little Things. Which is good, in a way, as it takes the pressure off. Nobody can maintain the constant vigilance that is part of the early stages of a relationship. But Virginie suggests to me that every little thing actually counts. Every little thing has an effect upon the course of your relationship.

Again, 2

 

"They've been stripped of the self-respect it took centuries to win, there's not a moment of the day when they don't feel like they're being fleeced and they've been taught that the only thing they've got to make them feel a little less shitty is to rant about how they are white so they have a right to put down darkies. ...Meanwhile, the true culture of the French people - social heritage, the national education system, the great political theories - has been deliberately dismantled. The greatest achievement of the dictatorship of the 1% has been its ability to manipulate minds. The alliance between banks/religions and multinationals has won the battle. They have managed to get a citizen with no heritage to give up all their rights in exchange for access to a nostalgia for empire."

Vernon Subutex 2 by Virginie Despentes

To be clear, Virginie Despentes is talking about FRANCE, not the United States of America. Probably doesn't need to be said, since OBViously this kind of shit couldn't happen HERE.

2

I'm going to have a lot more to say about Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex 2 in about a minute, but right now I just have to lay down this bit:

"Her memory is a compost heap; everything was jumbled together and beginning to rot … you had to study them carefully to make out the contours they had had, before they had clotted into a vast mound of bitterness." (42-43)

Can Virginie write or what?

In two novels + 50 pages of a third (2), she has become one of my all time favorite writers.

Painting

 

Kafka

I remember my eleventh grade teacher announcing that the next thing we'd be reading in class was "The Metamorphosis," and my first thought was, "Cool, I've been meaning to read Ovid." That was how big of a nerd I was at age 16.

Well. I was in for a surprise. But it didn't take more than the first sentence of Kafka's story--

“When Gregor Samsa awoke one morning from troubled dreams, he found himself changed into a monstrous cockroach....”

--for me to forget about Ovid. I had never 

read anything like Kafka before. And when we finished that story, I had to have more of him.

And I quickly devoured everything I could find. Of course, there wasn't all that much. 8 other "long" stories. 60 some "short" stories. (If memory serves, some of them were a paragraph long.) And the three novels: The Trial, The Castle, Amerika. 

Come to think of it, he was the first writer whose complete oeuvre I possessed. 

Because he let me know that there was someone else who felt like they didn't belong in this world. Because he was able to express how absolutely alien everyday life often seemed. How inexplicable were the actions of the other beings who inhabited this world. How violent and terrifying they could be.

And that was just civilian life. When I joined the U. S. Army in 1976, I found an even more alien, inexplicable, violent, and terrifying world. And Kafka came with me.

Once I was at my permanent duty station (the 101st Military Intelligence Company, Operations Security Platoon, Ft. Campbell, Kentucky), I had a desk of my own, as in addition to my Signal Security duties, I also served as the platoon's administrative clerk. So I hung up a poster of Loni Anderson in a swimsuit, thinking that surely someone would tell me that that was inappropriate for the workplace...

...but I was not thinking clearly. This was the ARMy. They loved it. The only reaction I got was, "Nice tits!" 

So I hung up the cover of a Penthouse magazine with a girl draped in an American flag, thinking that surely that would imply a lack of respect for said flag which would prove anathematic to the Military Mind...

...but no, all that led to was the comment, "I'd fuck her for Old Glory!" Not yet willing to admit defeat, I bought a package of Preparation H, taped it to the wall with a sign beneath it which read, "In Case of Emergency, Break Tape."

Nope.

And that's when I got the idea to write out a Kafka quote from The Trial which I thought summed the U. S. Army up quite neatly:

"One must lie low, no matter how much it went against the grain, and try to understand that this great organization remained, so to speak, in a state of delicate balance, and that if someone took it upon himself to alter the disposition of things around him, he ran the risk of losing his footing and falling to destruction, while the organization would simply right itself by some compensating reaction in another part of its machinery--since everything interlocked--and remain unchanged, unless, indeed, which was very probable, it became still more rigid, more vigilant, severer, and more ruthless."

Some of my workmates...most of whom were at least ten years older than I was...stopped to read it. One of them told me that I was really weird.

That was it.

Lately I've been having a lot of heart pain, which made me think, once again, that I probably don't have a whole lot of time left on this planet. That, in turn, reminded me that I am a terrible housekeeper, and that if I die before I clean up, someone (my #1 son or my youngest sister, most likely) is going to have to hire a big dumpster for the driveway and spend a week shoveling all of my shit into it.

And some of it is really good shit, so that hurts to think about. 

But more than that, I don't want to put anyone I love to that trouble. So today I started going through my bedroom closet. It was a painful process. I found notes from five different women, all of whom declared that I was the Best Man They Had Ever Known and that they would love me forever. I found rejection slips for poems, short stories, novels, a screenplay, and a comic book mini-series. I found thousands of pages of things I'd written. (Literally thousands of pages.) I stopped to read some of those pages, and I had no memory of them at all. (I did occasionally think, "Hey, that's pretty good!" though. Which only makes it worse, really.) 

And then I found that piece of paper with the Kafka quote written on it. From 1977. 

Forty-four fucking years ago. 

And all I could think was...where the hell did it all go? 

Which was quickly followed by..."Could I have another go, then?"

I'm sure I could do a much better job of it.

Vernon Subutex: The TV Show

So of course once I found out that there was a television show based on Vernon Subutex, I wanted to have a look at it. But all I could find was a short teaser (HERE), so I went looking. Netflix? Nope. Kanopy? Nope. Amazon? Kind of. You can't buy it or rent it, but if you subscribe to Topic you can watch it. Just what I was looking for: another streaming service. This one has a pretty low price tag...$5.99 a month or $59.99 per year...and a seven day trial period. I was pretty sure I could knock out a 9 episode series (a grand total of only 315 minutes) in a week, though I'd want to time it right so as not to compete with the slate of CW shows I watch with Joe. In fact, I was pretty sure that I'd have time to watch another thing or two on this so-called Topic, so I poked around to see what else they had to offer.

Which is when the word Greenland leaped out at me. Through Greenland, to be precise. Well. I'd just finished a romp through four novels and four novellas primarily based in Greenland (by Christoffer Petersen), and they had most definitely piqued my interest in this God-forsaken place. (And yes, I did check to see what air fare and hotel accommodations would cost. But I think all of my pilgrimages are going to be in my head from here on out.) And good news: the first episode was free to watch. So I fired it up. (HERE if you'd like a look.)

The handsome fellow on the title page looked vaguely familiar, but I didn't realize that it was Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister from Game of Thrones) until the show got underway. And while I wasn't a big fan of the show (though I did watch all 73 episodes, I'm a bit sorry to say), I did like Nikolaj. And as Through Greenland unfurled, I liked him more and more. He seemed like a very regular kind of guy. He didn't seem to expect people to swoon at his feet (though they did), he didn't seem to expect any special treatment because he was a ⭐. He was just a guy exploring a country where his father had once served at an American Air Force base. (Thule.) And where his wife had been born. He even spoke a bit of Greenlandic. And when he was offered a piece of raw (in fact, newly slaughtered) Narwhal flesh, he ate it without a qualm, I was his. (Not in a gay way.*) And the show itself...wow. The incredible beauty of the landscape would be enough, but there was more. A major emphasis of the show was on the catastrophic effects of global warming.** And still there was more. There was a profoundly moving side-story about a group of native Greenlanders who were forced to move off of their territory with only a few days warning and no domicile to move into. It was a really great show. I was going to need the other four episodes of this one, to be sure, but only the first one was free. So let's see...the remaining four episodes clock in at 172 minutes, so yes, still do-able in that free week window, I'd say. But what ELSE does Topic have going for it? I forced myself not to look. But I'm sure I'll find something once my week gets underway. 

Sigh. I'm going to end up subscribing, aren't I? News as it happens.

*Not that there's anything wrong with that.

** You can read a blog entry about this aspect of the show from Nikolaj himself HERE. 

Again, I Am The Polish Army

 I Am The Polish Army's My Old Man lp has only briefly left my turntable in the two months since it arrived on these shores. (Paul McCartney's Ram hopped in there for a few spins, as did Phil Henry's Chasing Echoes...but Ram has been a favorite album for about 45 years, and my son plays fiddle on the Phil Henry album, so no shame here or there.) And? Well, obviously it holds up. In fact, even the one track which didn't really make much of an impression on me the first time around--"The Woods"--is just kicking the shit out of me now. Those drums. Those guitars. That voice! 

You really must hop over to /bandcamp and give this album a listen. Here, I'll Frampton* you:

 

Give it a few plays. Let it inhabit your soul. Then throw some money down, brahs and tahs. Times are hard for musicians. 

P.S. And if you need more Emma DeCorsey & Co.in your life, check this out. 

* That's Show You the Way (for the Frampton impaired).

Another Virginie Despentes Vernon Subutex I Coincidence

But this one was a lot more discomfiting.

It starts with my friend, S. She's the parent of a special needs daughter who's about the same age as my two special needs kids, and all three of "the kids" attend the same day center. My son and her daughter also both played on the center's Special Olympics basketball team, so we spent many an hour sitting on the bleachers for practice and games, and S. was so friendly and outgoing that I was able to overcome my extreme shyness and fear of women to talk to her. Pretty soon we were having two hour conversations just about every time we met. It didn't take long for me to start envying her husband. S. was exactly the kind of woman I should have been looking for from the get-go. She was full of life and happy and dependable. I would bet all of my worldly wealth that she will still be married to her husband when one of them dies, and that she has never, would never, and will never cheat on him. She is a woman you can trust. Of course I had a crush on her, but I never said anything even vaguely flirty out of respect for her, her husband, her family, her faith. And for myself. It was beginning to feel like a really good friendship...and one I sorely needed.

And then the pandemic came.

We kept in contact via Facebook and an occasional text. I am extremely averse to calling people on the telephone, feeling that I might interrupt someone doing something better than talking to me, so I didn't go there. But S. and I kept in touch.

And then I saw her Facebook post. It said that her son, Nicholas, had died.

I immediately sent her a private message to tell her how sorry I was and asked if there was anything that I could do. She said something about getting together with the kids for a walk in a few weeks. I told her that she should feel free to call me anytime...and assured her that I meant that literally. I don't sleep well.

And a few weeks later she called me. I didn't ask, fearing that I would hurt her, but she told me about it. She said that one night Nicholas had gotten into his car and driven to a church which was only having services every other week. In the parking lot, he took an overdose of a prescription medication. I don't know how much later they found his body, but it wasn't right away.

S. told me that she needed to talk about Nicholas. That she needed to say his name. That she needed to hear his name. She told me that she felt that if she heard his name enough times in a day, she could keep going.

We talked for over an hour, and after we hung up her words haunted me. I kept thinking about how I had at first avoided saying Nicholas' name, avoided asking about what had happened, thinking that I would hurt her by doing that. I had told her that my daughter and I prayed for her and her husband and daughter and Nicholas every night, but what I really wanted to do was call her on a regular basis just to say Nicholas' name. That thought boiled around in my head for a few days, then I got into Garage Band and opened up a piano track and looked at the keys. Playing N, I, and C did not produce any sounds, but H, O, L, A, and S did. I started to write a song based on those notes. After a few hours I'd finished, but I wanted to find a way to get the other letters of Nicholas' name into the music. So I looked for different loops with the letters I was looking for. I ended up with Neon Desert guitar, Ice Cold Beat 01, and Cali Vibes Piano. I brought each one on in that order, then the piano notes corresponding with H, O, L, A, and S. The sound of both of these pieces was pretty mournful, though, and while on the one hand that was obviously appropriate for the situation, I didn't want S. to think that I thought that that summed Nicholas up. He was more than his tragic death. I had only met him briefly a few times at basketball games, but he seemed bright and happy, full of love for his family. So I went back to work. Eventually I had seven different pieces, and I started to arrange them in an order which I thought made sense. I cut one of the pieces out, then wrote a long email to S. with a link to the music I had written.

I was worried that doing this would cause her pain, but I wanted to say Nicholas' name. A hundred times. 

She wrote back and thanked me. I thought she was being polite, and started telling myself I was a fool to think that something like this would help.

Then she wrote back to me again and told me that she was listening to the music over and over. She also told me that when she was playing the first song, her daughter had come downstairs and said, "I thought I heard Nicholas' voice." That gave both of us the chills.

I wrote to her again and asked her if she would like a CD of the music. She said she would love it, and asked if she could come over to pick it up sometime. I told her that it would only take me a few minutes to burn a CD, and she could come over anytime she wanted. A few hours later she and her daughter were in my driveway... masked and distanced. When I gave her the CD, S. told me that it was the best present she had ever been given. 

I tried not to cry, but I couldn't stop it.

Breath.

Last night I was reading Vernon Subutex I, getting close to the end of it, when I read this: 

Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex 1 Coincidence

I probably should have learned long ago that most people...including most of my friends and family...are completely unimpressed by coincidences that blow my socks into the next time zone, but I have to confess that there is a part of me that always thinks, "THIS one will amaze everybody!" And then it doesn't, and I resolve to inflict my coincidences on the uncaring ears of the universe No More...until the next one. 

So.

I've been reading Virginie Despentes' Vernon Subutex I for a few days now. Very impressed by it. Actually looking forward to reading not only the other two Vernon Subutex books, but everything else by V. Despentes that I can get my hands on...and between the library and interlibrary loan, that looks to be all 8 of the books which have been translated into English. Hell, I'd be willing to learn French so that I could read the other four, but given my age and precarious health, I don't think I'd make it to the end of that Babel course, so I'll just have to hope that somebody out there is working on those translations even as we speak. Anyway, I'm heading into the final turn on I...less than 100 pages to go...and I was in my room reading while Joe was doing a Zoom class and Jacqueline was doing whatever Jacqueline was doing, and then the aforesaid Jacqueline came into my room with her new doll and...

I mean...right?

Okay. Maybe next time, then.