Driving around in the car the other day listening to KXT (like I typically do) I heard a string of tracks I hadn’t heard in years. What struck me first was the fact that I’ve been listening to some pretty damn good music for a very long time (insert self-indulgent pat on the back here) and that my brain is packed chock full of old lyrics.

I know I’m not anymore special than other hardcore music fans, but it was quite striking that I could still sing along with a song I hadn’t heard in a least a decade.

What is it about our brains that allow a person to forget where they put their keys minutes after placing them “someplace safe,” driving away from the house to be stuck with the fear that they didn’t close the garage door, or to even forget a birthday or anniversary; but to remember all the words to a random song?

It’s almost uncanny.

A goodly chunk of us has also experienced the spontaneity of sitting in a bar when an overly familiar song comes on the jukebox just to look around and see other patrons mouthing the words over their beverage. It’s almost a horrible cliche. I am a firm believer that given the right amount of social lubrication, any given dive could burst into a Glee-esque karaoke bar with the right set of tracks. Maybe that’s just a secret wish of mine.

Moreover, what is it about some songs that bring back specific memories? Whenever I hear certain Echo & the Bunnymen or Love and Rockets songs, I am immediately taken back to one particular summer in my youth where I spent my days reading Tom Swift books and eating State Fair Brand Corn Dogs.

In that same regard, I seem to learn the words to songs I hear on the radio or live pretty damn fast. I wonder all the time what “important” information is being pushed out of my head as I learn the words to the newest Iron & Wine or Dawes song I hear on the radio. I know for a fact that records from Catherine Wheel and NOFX are responsible for me losing most of my German grammar and vocabulary. One would think that committing the last couple of KMFDM records to memory would have jogged some of that back into the ol’ gourd, but I think all those oat sodas and brown liquor helped keep that fine learning at bay.

The one terrible thing, though, is that I have a terrible time with song titles and, in some cases, artist.

Recently I was on a cross-country flight where I whiled my time away catching up with season three of Being Human (the UK version, not that wretched version they have tried to put out on SyFy, but that is a topic for another post). In episode six a song was playing that I knew all the words to, but had no idea what the song was or who might have originally done it. I racked my brain for several hours, singing the words to myself over and over, trying to figure out how the hell I knew the song. Almost a day later, in the middle of a meeting when my mind was wandering far and wide, it struck me that what I had heard was an odd cover of Johnny Cash’s “God’s Gonna Cut You Down.” That’s the kind of crap that occupies my brain when I’m staring off into space and/or sitting in meetings.

The other day I became engaged in a conversation with a close friend as to the nature of immaturity. As a fastly-approaching-middle-age male, I pride myself on my personal qualities that have allowed me to stay rather immature while, at the same time, remaining very responsible.

That seems like a incongruous dichotomy (hell’s yeah with the big damn words!), but it’s really not that hard. In becoming the adult that I developed into, I came to the realization that one of the only ways I was going to survive the day-to-day drag of going to work, earning a livable wage, paying bills, lather, rinse, repeat, et al. was by reverting in some other aspect.

Sure, I went whole hog with a bunch of aspects of my life/personality, but I have really been working over the past few months to re-figure out who I am and how I should act/be to keep myself sane while also not compromising the things that make me happy.

Basically, I’m twelve years old. I still get excited about cartoon movies, love a good fart joke and would probably eat cereal for every meal if I wasn’t on the verge of pushing forty. I love the fact that my close group of friends is basically the same way and this really helps perpetuate my “lifestyle.”

At the same time, I am a fastidious worker and take deadlines and responsibility incredibly serious.

This balance, over the past several years, has caused me much turmoil. I have a tendency to push both sides of my personality to unhealthy extremes, so I have had to work very hard recently to reign both sides in and find some sort of balance.  I’ve screwed up personal relationships, lost perspective on a lot of the good things I had in life and spent a good amount of time in self-destructive cycles.

I’d like to say that I’m “fixed” now, but I liken my newish balance to a junkie cleaning up: the pressures and pitfalls are always around me, I just have to choose what I need to do to maintain without falling into familiar traps.

Yeah, that’s a huge downer.

That being said, I’m in a really really good place right now. I’m still not really what I would consider “grown up,” but I have more together in my life than I did a year ago.

This, I have found, seems to be the key to “growing up.” Much like everything else in life, “growing up” does not come with an instruction manual and many people, myself included, half-ass it. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, it just is what it is. It pains me that it took some extreme situations for me to come to this realization, but I’m a better person for that. Yeah, more downer stuff.

What it all boils down to, I have recently discovered, is truly being happy with yourself. I really wasn’t good at that and lied to myself for a very long time to the contrary. People are really really good at lying to themselves.

Whatever. I now like to think that all that is behind me now. I’m sure certain aspects will rear their ugly heads here and there, but I feel I have earned the right to pat myself on the back for the progress I have made so far. At the end of the day I now go to bed thinking I have done right by myself during the previous day. That’s all that I can ask for. I’m going to continue to work my ass off everyday and make my bosses proud of the decisions they made in giving me their trust, and I’m going to go home at the end of the day and play with my friends as hard as I can and repeat that cycle every day.

“Growing up” is harder than hell: don’t let anyone ever tell you otherwise. To make matters harder, everyone does it differently and with different results. We do what we can to successfully navigate our lives and hope for the best. Now excuse me while I pay my bills and watch Voltron.

I came to the realization a few days ago that I have a serious Emergen-C habit. Sure, it started as just an electrolyte replacement regimin due to the fact that I sweat like a stuck pig during yoga (and apparently sleep), but it’s gone beyond that.

Here is some background on my “plight.” I am one of the few Americans on this planet who doesn’t drink soda. Every so often I get a craving for one, but I have, effectively, been soda-free for just about fifteen years. Considering my proclivities towards vices, I’m throwing out a big “yay me” for this one.

As a result of my nonsodaness, I drink a lot of water. I pretty much cut caffiene out of my diet a couple of months ago, so my options for constant beverage were effectively reduced down to water.

Don’t get me wrong, I love drinking water. In a typical day, I drink almost ten liters of the stuff. What I discovered when I started yoga, however, was that I was sending my body chemistry way out of whack. I’m all in favor of lethargy, but having it forced on you is no picnic.

Enter the Emergen-C: chock full of vitamin C and a mess of other stuff that the packaging tells me is good for me. No sugar and awesome flavors like tangerine (an apparent Whole Foods exclusive) make me a pretty happy camper. I, apparently, was missing flavor in my life.

Now comes the downside. On a typical day I consume up to three of these tasty little packets. That’s a total of 3000 milligrams of added vitamin C in my life. Silly me decides to get on the interwebs and look up “vitamin C toxicity.” While non-toxic (how a toxicity can be non-toxic is beyond me), due to the fact that vitamin C is not stored in the body, but, rather, water-soluble and flushed out of your system, high doses of vitamin C can lead to other issues: kidney stones being the scariest.

I may be overreacting. I drink enough water in the day to keep a pretty constant flush going all the time. I would hope that keeping my kidneys in constant “motion” would keep me from getting those nasty engine deposits that can cause knocking, pinging and crippling pain. The thought of a “stone” growing in my body terrifies me. That’s right, I’m afraid of my First World problem. Where else but America would someone worry about getting too damn much of something other than fast food and booze. Scurvy has been on the rise in English children for the past couple of years and I’m bitching about how much vitamin C just pours out of my body. That’s right England, I just took away your First World status.

This worry, much like my impending kidney stones, will pass. I’m not sure I’ll ever jump on the Crystal Light kick that seems to be sweeping the nation, so I’ll just dutifully stand by my Emergen-C.

I think I’ll have one now and worry about my future.

Ugh, another damn yoga post? Doesn’t this idiot have anything else better to write about?

Today’s answer: no.

This morning I woke up extra-groggy and with a scratchy throat. Knowing that the creeping crud has been taking down friends left and right, I was very determined to find refuge in a nice hot yoga class to help burn out the funk.

In the past month my morning ritual has gone like this: alarm goes off, alarm gets ignored for about five minutes while I listen to NPR news, check email, pet and harass cats, eat breakfast, go to yoga. Sure, this whole mess takes about two and a half hours, but it’s a ritual. The only real difference this morning was that I got my grumble on because I could feel my sinuses revolting on me.

While I have skipped Sunday practice on a couple of different occasions, it was particularly important to me to make it this morning as it was my twenty-fifth class.

Class twenty five: quite the starting milestone. Getting through ten classes relatively quickly is the right way to start your practice. Pushing through to twenty-five is the best way to solidify your practice. I did it in less than a month (twenty-six days to be exact) and boy-howdy how I have changed in that time.

The most immediate change is the fact that I’ve dropped a chunk of weight. Sure, I’ve changed some other aspects of my life that have helped with that as well, but the yoga is definitely a major part of it. With every class I feel more and more like a rotisserie chicken just melting off fat into the fire (yes, I’m also rather tasty). The next major change is that I’m bendy as all hell now compared to where I was a month ago. Sure, all my years of playing soccer and/or doing nothing have really done a job at tensing up my hamstrings, and, as a result, I’m still horrible at attempting to do anything that requires touching my toes or feet whilst keeping a straight leg, but definite progress is being made. My nemesis pose Gomukhasana (Cow Face Pose) is still something that humbles me with every Fire class I do, but I’m very slowly beginning to lower my sit bones. Maybe at class one hundred I’ll be in line with everything.

My balance has improved and my stamina has done remarkable. I’ve been mostly doing Fire classes lately, so I’m sure a good Wood or Earth class will humble me a bit more, but I’m digging my roll. I’ve met some incredible instructors who have motivated me to keep with it and provided me with adjustments and encouragement to help get the most effective stretches out of my awkward body.

Trikonasana (Triangle Pose) is no longer the bane of my morning. While I still need a lot of work with it on my left side, I feel great on my right.

If you couldn’t tell, I’m even retaining a lot of the “real” pose names: something I thought would never stick after my first couple of days.

On to class fifty!

Yesterday I had myself a bit of a rant. Yup, I’m not a fan of Christmas and I wasted an entire blog post bitching about what I didn’t like about it.

Today I’m better, so that post is gone. I’m still not a huge fan of Christmas (no Dickensian revelations for me), but why the hell should I harsh everyone else’s mellow? Last night I got to see Hagfish play a reunion show to a fantastic hometown crowd, so all was well with the world.

All-in-all, yesterday wasn’t that bad. I think it’s all the lead-up to Christmas that really raises my ire. Frantic people bustling around like ants under a magnifying glass all at the last minute and with a “drive” and “purpose” that pretty much isolates many people from such common things as politeness and human decency.

Never is it so apparent that people suck than at the holiday season. Thankfully, that’s over. All we have left is the “amateur hour” drinking holiday of New Year’s Eve: a night where every year people are shocked and appalled at the number of DUIs and other police incidents. Since we are moving towards a semblance of economic recovery, I’m very curious to see if this year is worse than the past few, or better.

Then we can move ourselves right into 2011. I know I will be annoyed by the packed yoga classes I will encounter for the first few weeks of the year as people attempt to adhere to their resolutions. Don’t get me wrong, I find it very encouraging when people make the effort (however slight it may be) to follow through with some sort of self-improvement plan at the start of the year. I’ve attempted and failed so many times that it’s almost funny. I know the larger yoga classes will annoy me a bit, but kudos to those folks who actually got off their lazy butts and got in the room. That’s the hardest part of the process.

Bring it on.

The last time I took a yoga class, Bill Clinton was just starting his Presidency and I had no concept of what working out in a “hot room” was about.

Today, I returned to yoga and lived to tell about it.

Because I have managed to fill my active time with other activities for the past couple of years, I basically shunned yoga. In the past few months, many things in my life have changed and I reached a point where many signs were pointing to me initiating a yoga practice for a variety of my physical and mental needs.

So I did it. I jumped right on the internets and signed myself up for the wonderfully frugal “$10 for 10 days” special at Sunstone Yoga. After all, the hardest part is just committing to yourself that you are actually going to do it.

Fortunate enough, there are quite a smattering of Sunstone studios around Dallas and one right down the way from one of my favorite watering holes. My brain being determined, I looked up the schedule and set about planning to attend the first of the two-phased introductory classes offered.

I fretted a bit; I even got a bit anxious in the time leading up to actually walking out my door and heading to class. I was going to be putting my body into poses I knew I couldn’t hold in a room set to around 98.6°F for ninety minutes. That’s pretty intense. Pretty much the only thing I had going for me before the class started was that I’m really good at keeping myself hydrated (one of the most important things in life) and I knew that I wouldn’t be judged when I passed out.

It turns out, that’s all you can really ask for. My class consisted of me, one other student and the instructor: serious one-on-one attention. We started out by just doing savasana (I excel at this pose) which basically consists of lying flat on your back and focusing on your breathing. It’s not as easy as it seems in a room as warm as you are. After acclimating to the temperature for a while, the instructor took us through the basic poses of a “Fire” class at Sunstone. Sunstone has their classes broken into elemental designations. It makes it quite easy to see on the schedule and the outline of each element gives a good rundown of what will be covered for each class.

The class was intense, but went along pretty quickly. Before too long, I was attempting to work on my balance (my feet are constructed horribly and were probably first intended to be flippers) and then the lengthening of my spine (did I mention I have a freakishly long torso?). Adjustments to poses were made and, after no time at all, class was over.

The basic progression of the class went: standing poses, savasana, lay on your back poses, lay on your belly poses, savasana. Lots of twists and tweaks and shaky muscles happened somewhere in the middle along with at least a gallon of sweat.

Coming out of the class, I felt very rejuvenated. I felt a couple of inches taller and, remarkably enough, my horrible hearing was definitely better.

I know I’m going to be as sore as hell tomorrow morning, but that isn’t going to stop me from trying out another class. More benefit comes from new students keeping at it than not and I’m really liking the progress I made with my old broken body.

There might just be some new tricks in this old dog. Oh, and, Namaste.

Many of you might be aware that I quit my job a little over two months ago to persue a life of leisure.

There are many reasons why I finally walked away from my job of five years, but they really aren’t important to anyone other than myself. The big thing that a lot of you who come in contact with me on a regular basis is that I feel like a new human being.

No more stress over factors that irked me to no end that I had no control over; no more false senses of urgency; no more working insane hours. It’s like heaven!

I gotta tell you, for the first month all I really did was sit around and watch the games of the World Cup. Sure, I cleaned the house like a madman just because I didn’t know what else to do with my idle time, but I got to see almost every game live. That’s a big first for me.

Then, when The Cup ended, I had to start thinking a little more long term. I took a little bit of time to finalize some projects that I had been freelancing on prior to quitting, but, with all this extra time, that happened really quickly.

I finally caught up on my five week backlog of comic books. Believe me, for my insane habit, five weeks is a crap load of books.

I got to play a video game for two days straight. I know that’s horribly hedonistic, but it was pretty damn awesome for me.

I bleached my hair and finally got my right lobe pierced to match the left one that had been pierced for the past twenty years (it’s the little things that working for “The Man” make you really appreciate).

I slowed way down on my smoking (I’m not going to say I’ve quit until I haven’t had a single smoke for three months and I’m not doing that hot towards that goal these days), and I started to aggressively attack a “Couch-to-5K” program. If all goes as planned, I start week four day one tomorrow morning.

This lack of day-to-day responsibility has got me feeling more centered than I have felt in a very long time. I’m less grumpy, anxious, sleepy (and other dwarfs as well) and I actually feel more healthy (except for the blasted summer cold I’m nursing right now).

And, because I can’t stay idle for too long, a friend and I have started a company to book Dallas-area bands (visit ManhandlerBooking.comfor more details). This will help me turn my habit/fascination with live music into a productive endeavor without having to expose anyone to my horrible horrible musical skills. I mean it. There’s a reason I do the vocal parts of Rock Band while squeezle is out of the house. There are just a few people who have been exposed to my dabbling in karaoke who are still alive to tell the tale. It’s just badness.

Unfortunately, the one thing I really intended to do over the past two months, but really haven’t gotten around to is write. I’ve been so lax with this blog that I probably need to get in here and scrub off a goodly layer of dust and mold before proceeding.

So, here’s the deal. I’ve got more to say and I’m hoping you folks are still willing to read it. I can’t promise any of it will be heady or substantive, but it will, at the very least, give you a little brain break for part of your day.

To quote something a very wise man said upon being woken on the couch: “My mind is a sewer, and I live in a cardboard box.”

P.S. For all of you worried about that mouse up there at the top of my post, don’t worry. He’s suspended in a PFC solution, so he’s just fine.

Yeah, so I’ve been a little lax in the writing these past few weeks, but I’ve got a good (if not lazy) excuse. Ladies and gentlemen, it is World Cup time!

Typically a large majority of Americans have to be reminded that this grand culmination of the FIFA championship is going on. This year, however, a couple of factors have conspired to bring the World Cup to the attention of Americans.

The first of those factors are the two goals that FIFA officials robbed the US team of in the first round of play. Nothing unifies Americans faster than the thought that we are getting screwed over by some foreigner. That combined with the general hatred of referees in any sport and you’ve suddenly got Joe Six-Pack talking about the World Cup with his buddies on their bass boat.

The second, and way more important, factor has been the ever-present drone of the vuvuzela.

Never before has a two dollar piece of mold-injected plastic generated such a buzz (see what I did there?) on such a grand scale. Broadcasters have had to create new audio filters to cancel out some of the noise, whiny players (I’m looking at you Cristiano Ronaldo) have complained that is breaks up the players’ focus and doctors have been all over the media warning about potential hearing loss due to the 144 decibels these little monsters can pump out.

At first I really didn’t think twice about the hub-bub. It was kind of nice having something to distract from the inane commentary while I watched the first round of matches.  After the third day of three-match-a-day footie (and yes, I’ve been watching every single match), I just began ignoring them.

Then I tried watching an MLS match.

The play was good, I had beer and grilled meats, but something was missing. That’s right, I wasn’t enjoying my footie because it didn’t have the constant drone of the vuvuzela. In just one week I had been turned into Pavlov’s bitch.

Lucky for me, however, I had a variety of means at my disposal for faking that vuvuzela feeling. The easiest was to just get on the internet and download an mp3 of the buzz. Next, I hopped into the iTunes app store and found a couple of free apps that filled my need (plus it’s a great app for confusing people in bars).

So, damn the naysayers. I can understand banning vuvuzelas at events like Wimbledon and the US Open, but these plastic horns are here to stay. Besides, I’ve been seeing them at high school and college football games for years.

Haters gonna hate.

I did something today that I haven’t done at all in my adult life: I didn’t leave a tip at a restaurant.

As someone who has worked in a variety of restaurant jobs over the course of my teens and twenties, I cut a lot of slack for a lot of the standard crap that goes on in the course of someone serving you your meal. I understand, to some degree, that omissions and substitutions can sometimes wreck havoc on the kitchen and I also realize that a ten table station is downright ludicrous.

What happened to me today at lunch was just a snowball effect of horrible management and apathetic self-victimization.

I’ve been going to a Thai joint near my office every week or so for the past five years: my first time being about a week after they opened their doors. It’s a pretty simple place with a mere dozen menu items for lunch that comes standard with a little cup of soup and a tiny eggroll. On most days, about half of the fifteen or so tables are filled and the whole lunching experience takes about thirty minutes and it’s right back to the office again.

Not today.

Today I walked in and everything seemed moderately normal: about ten of the tables were seated and the normal Asian server/manager was hustling around from table to table. I sat in the corner and she immediately came over to get my usual order: Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy and an iced tea. She shuffled off and sent the other girl who typically acts as food runner over with my iced tea.

From there, the circus began.

As is typical with most days I’m out at lunch, I had my Kindle with me and was reading the latest crap novel that I crave so much, so I don’t often pay attention to much of what is going on around me. After five minutes of reading with no sign of soup, I started to look around. I would guess that more than half of the ten tables had their food and were throwing down the nom while the rest of us waited. A table near me who, I’m guessing, had recently ordered, flagged down the server/manager type who was standing in the corner opposite me. From their gestures I gathered that they were curious as to where their soup was. At that point I was curious as to where mine was, so I made the “inquisitive” face towards the server/manager. Rather than wander over to see what I needed, she merely yelled across the room “No soup yet?”

She hadn’t brought me the soup, and her runner had made herself scarce in the kitchen, so yes, she knew damn well that I had no soup. She proceeded to take three more tables of orders and, as an afterthought five or so minutes later, brought me my damn soup.

When the soup was dropped off at my table I asked her if I could get a refill of my tea. She motioned to the other end of the dining room and told me it was over there. Not once in my five years of going to this place have I ever refilled my own drink. I looked her in the eye and said “Seriously?” and her reply was “Yes, it’s over there.”

At this point I was already starting to get a tad pissed off.

Another twenty minutes passed and Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy, was still not in front of me. The remainder of people without food around me were also wondering where their dishes were and started signalling to the server/manager that they needed to get their food out now or packed up to-go. The server/manager would make these exasperating huffs and then go back into the kitchen only to return a few seconds later explaining that she told the cook(s) to make the order. She proceeded to do this five or six more times for five or six more customers.

Finally, someone who had been seated before I got there got up and said forget the order and he was going to have to leave to get back to work. The server/manager got really indignant and said that the customer couldn’t do that because the food was finished. The guy gave a little chuckle and then walked out the door.

I was still without my Thai fried rice with beef, medium spicy.

Two more tables say they either need to cancel or have the food packed to-go right now and stood up. The server/manager began scurrying around the restaurant like ants after someone upsets an anthill; and, like those ants, it seemed that nothing was being done.

Suddenly, a plate of pad Thai came out of the kitchen and was delivered to a table where three gentlemen were seated. I’m not sure where the other two dishes were, but the other two guys got up and left.  After another couple of minutes another plate came out and the food runner angled towards my table. “Fried rice?” she asked. “Yes,” I responded and she plopped the most lacklustre plate of greasy fried rice I’d ever seen in this joint down in front of me and scurried off. Sure, it was Thai fried rice, but it was chicken instead of beef and had a spicy factor of zero.

It had been about forty-five minutes since I had sat down, so, instead of sending the plate back and trying my luck with another hour of waiting, I began eating.

Another plate emerged from the kitchen and it was another plate of Thai fried rice; a plate that looked suspiciously like beef. “I ordered chicken,” said the gentleman server/manager tried to put the plate down in front of. “He took yours,” said the server/manager pointing in my direction.

That was it.

I shovelled a few more forks full of rice into my gullet and gathered up my stuff. As I headed towards the counter where the cash register was the server/manager scurried over to find my check. We didn’t exchange a single word as I gave her my best head-shaking stink eye and paid for my failure of a lunch. I’m pretty sure she knows that I’ll never be back in there again.

Dear plainskin™ stranger,

I’m glad you have the courage to talk to people you don’t know in just about any locale or circumstance, and I’m glad you appreciate the artwork that adorns my skin, but please, please oh please, don’t waste my time telling me about the “bad ass” tattoo that you are going to get or that your cousin or your cousin’s step-mother’s boyfriend’s parole officer has. I couldn’t give less than a rat’s ass.

Don’t get me wrong, I talk about potential tattoos and the tattoos of individuals’ relatives all the time, but those are people that I know. Much as back in article number two, while you are not touching me, I also don’t need to know your genealogy.

You would honestly be surprised at how often this actually happens. It even can be predicted by some telltale gestures and facial expressions as the person is moving towards me screwing up their courage to regale me with fantasies of giant tribal pieces “not like that other crap you see,” and un-ironic armbands of barbed wire. In fact, I would dare to say that the conversation almost always starts with: “Those are some pretty [insert modifier here] tattoos. Are you an artist?” Then they launch into the usual drivel.

I can only think of one instance where this conversation was ever fruitful: a plainskin™ stranger was telling me about what her boyfriend was going to get while I was waiting for a drink at some bar, and, before I could entirely glaze over, she got to the point and asked me where I got a couple of my pieces because she really liked the strong colors. That one was borderline.

Just remember, by attempting to keep my attention with your story that I don’t care about, you leave the door wide open for ridicule and mocking. Generally I’m a nice guy and will put up with a bit of that crap, but, every so often, I have one of my days where I’ll move straight into mocking mode. Because you engaged me in a conversation I would rather not be having, it is your fault that I’m making fun of your and/or your family. I realize that this truth will do nothing to quell the immediate anger you will feel towards me, but didn’t your mother tell you to not talk to strangers as a kid? There, lesson learned.

There is one and only one exception to this rule: if you are bringing me food and/or alcohol, I’ll listen to your stupid story. That’s right, my time can be bought. I do, however, reserve the right to waive this exception because while I may be a whore, I am not a cheap whore. For reference, I tend to enjoy pints of English and Irish ale and good Irish whiskeys.

Think before you speak, I may indeed bite.

justin.

I’ve got to be honest, this one came after a lengthy conversation with squeezle over some tasty breakfast tacos, but it really should have been the second in this series rather than the sixth. I’ll claim the fail on that one.