pt. 1: CA, AZ, NM, TX

[photo: buzz and i seconds before entering the prius.]

[also: please note this trip is long and, despite all concrete geographical destinations, is actually leading into the heart of darkness. if i was not made out of stone at the start, i might be now. buzzo, however, is still equal parts fur, eye boogers, and pee.]

[prelude] CA:
the night before leaving, I got to do 2 things; eat my beloved blue velvet cake at the alcove, and see glenn danzig's house. finally. and the thing is, i guess it's creepy, but if people think this is truly spooky, then the shit shacks in claremont, nh, are the stuff of vincent price-narrated nightmares.

to me, the cake is spookier, because a, it tastes like blue (no trace of berry or misc kooky flavoring, just...blue), and b, if you know what digesting red velvet cake is like, it's like that, but smurfy.

anyway, lizzy and i walked to and fro tha feliz, and while i admire her for trying to talk me into loving LA, when you're mere hours away from making a journey to your motherland, talk is cheap. the car was loaded, the dog was anxious, and i, like the local morning show of my youth, was RTG, ready to go.

[photo: the difficulty of night photography...you better think about it, baby.]

at some point the next morning, after already logging several hours on rt 10, presumably towards a large open oven door, i arrived at a random gas station on the cusp of AZ. and while it was advertised nowhere on the highway, this particular shell/exxon/assraper whatever was adjacent to a museum dedicated to general patton (see above, with companion). and again, from the highway, all they advertise is gas. olbermann-y special comment: once again, oil is valued above the service of our nation's heroes. tim russert RIP.

[photo: adjacent tank graveyard; the parking lot to view a parking lot.]

also, why is there a trailer in there? is this just a museum dedicated to patton's love of camping with his dog? in which case, yeah, the gas is a bigger deal.

AZ:
i would like to forget my hours driving thru arizona as it was 114 degrees. it's like how people in buffalo and rochester compete every winter to see who gets more reamed by the lake effect, as if being burried with snow and freezing your ass off for 5 months of the year is something to be psyched about. and i'm sure people in AZ get all stoked when they can fry an egg on the sidewalk and burst into flame when they walk from the car to the house. people are funny when they live somewhere miserable. sorry, lizzy. LA doesn't even need to get that hot for there to be inferno.

NM:
i've seen santa fe, which i've heard is nm at its finest, and i couldn't really get it up for las cruces, so yeah, nm happened.

TX day 1:
because of the old '97s, i got it in my head that the alamo is in el paso, when in fact, it is in san antonio. i think i also thought this because i am an idiot. like, here's some idiot math; it took me one very long day to get from la to el paso ("it's a loonnnnnggg waaaaayyyy...back to el paaassssso. woah!"). with one more day, i could have gotten to austin by dinner, but rso told me she wasn't getting back til the 18th (she's returning from nh, my destination-- and i'm sure not even she knows why she's leaving northern new england to enter the 12th circle of hell [a further circle, cuz it has bbq]). it's idiot math tho cuz i left on the 16th instead of the 15th thinking i was compensating for this timing problem, as i can't add.

please note: doing the math to figure out that the celtics won with a 39 pt lead took me maybe 20 minutes.

anyway, at the end of the day, i furthered the assault on my stomach with a belly full of sonic drive-in. i lay in a particularly soul-crushing smoking room in the el paso la quinta inn thinking a, sonic should only sell drinks, because their food kind of sucks, and if they pureed that food and swirled it with m&ms, it'd probably be delicious, b, nothing is more disgusting than a smoking room, as evidenced by the fact that touching the sheets and then my eye made my eyeball burn so bad that the former guest couldn've just been a smoker, but also a giant cat, and c, you get what you pay for when you chose hotels based on dog friendly status and proxmity to sonic drive-in. but then i couldn't stop thinking, even if it wasn't logically, and didn't sleep for shit. i guess it's just plain hard to sleep after 12 hours of staring at the road. and drinking diet soda, sometimes laced with sugary icey goodness. and a leftover alcove cookie. ah, the idiot diet.

anyway, i gave up sleeping around 7 and found a restaurant on roadfood to eat breakfast at, a diner in a carwash near the rio grande. but here's the thing that sucks about this particular route i'm taking cross country-- i kind of hate all the regional cuisine. i have a tender, semitic palate that makes spicy food painful, plus seafood allergies, and it'd hard to eat a deep fried anything when you know you're going to be digesting it in the L position while driving through a toilet (or really literal) desert. plus roadfood is the worst about that, because all of their favorite restaurants feature lard, heavy cream, or balls of lard filled with heavy cream, then coated in bacon and deep fried. this is not driving food. this is tp wand food (get the reference or don't, i can't hold your hand through ever entry).

but on the other hand, you don't come to texas to eat falafel, knawmean? i had huevos rancheros at this place that i'm sure were very delicious if you like your huevos extra runny and your rancheros on fire.

[el tangento!: i was listening to the book "the curious incident of the dog at nighttime" (i might have missed a word in there), which a, just convinces me more and more that i'm tistic myself (i hate anything but scrambled eggs, he can't even look at the color yellow...i'm practically rainman), and b, nearly lulled me into a coma one afternoon with a lengthy, step-by-step, thru-the-eyes-of-'tism description. i switched to the radio. i had not used my henley guard. i paid the price. (this i'll help you out with; as discovered on previous trips, this nation's long love affair with don henley is still going strong. unless i start my day with 5 henley-filled seconds from my ipod, a henley-filled spacula as it were, i will find him all over the dial all day long. my last worthless evening, indeed.)]

TX day 2:
so, post-heuvos, i headed towards san antonio, wondering how i could make it across a third of the country in a day but would not make it through texas itself for at least three times that amount of time (and this is at the point where our nation is at it's thinnest, probably because much of the excess of the south has been burned away).

this is also where my idiocy once again became impossible to ignore: aside from the fact i was going to san antonio before austin because i'd so completely miscalculated my timing, i also wondered, who the fuck drives across the south in the summer, and with a dog in the car? pulling over to eat, a staple of such journeys, was virtually impossible, unless i wanted to return to a use my car as an e-z-bake dog oven. so finding dog-friendly hotels became even more important, as i'd have to find a place to park buzzo if i wanted to pick up food, which meant a fairly abusive relationship with la quinta inns.

now the issue wasn't being violated by a smoking room, twitching all night with burning eyes and phantom bedbugs (FORESHADOWING SORTA!], but staying in semi-major cities with semi-major prices. in the past, hopping from one shitty hotel to another was no big deal, since i'd just stop when i got tired in assholevania, oh, find a days inn, and spend 6 hours with my eyes closed. but hotels in real cities charge real money, and even tho i chose a la quinta next to a cracker barrel, twas i who was the cracker sent in a barrel sent over the falls.

[photo: hard to see, but that's a watertower across from my hotel for miller's bar-b-q, a local chain, that's presumably filled with sweet sweet bbq sauce. so at least the view was worth it.]

i tried to make the most of it by having an early night with some "healthy" (read: bland) tex-mex-meh food in front of the celtics final, but sitting there, robbed of much of my la quash, with my small dog hoping in vain for a piece of a really shitty taco, i couldn't help but remember the last time i gave a shit about the celtics, 22 years ago, and thinking, if you told my 8-year-old self that, at 30, i would be watching the celtics their next championship in a hotel room in san antonio, texas, by myself, on the way home to my home in nh, even tho i "work" in la, in quotes because there are no jobs, and my nh home is shared with my parents, and my dog is deaf, and the celtics are nowhere near as white as the lakers anymore (not a bad thing, but something which would so confused my little 8-year-old larry bird-loving mind!), and i still can't eat spicy foods, and don henley is still popular...would i just burst into tears and never stop? would i slap myself? would i slap my sister, just because it was a hobby at the time?

when i told onion about this, she thought i'd find it cool that my grown-up self traveled all around like a leaf on the wind, but i'm not sure. plus, nerd reference, the last leaf on the wind i know about was impaled. but at least i would get to accomplish one thing in san antonio, which was seeing the alamo, because for some reason, i was determined to see it, drawn in with the pull paul simon felt for graceland. except, if you'll recall, i fucking hate elvis and refused to go to graceland. and i don't give a shit about texas, the mexican army, coonskin caps...like most, or like the old '97s, i remember the alamo, but i don't recall who won. (alas, not those in coonskin caps).

so i woke up early, stepped out into the soggy morning heat (85 degrees at 8 am, yeehaw), and went to the center of san antone, to the alamo. which was closed. but the thing is, i didn't care. inside, outside, i didn't give a shit, just show me the alamo in one for or another. i probably would have been ok with a trip to an alamo rentacar. again, no idea why. maybe that's what 2 solid days of con queso will do to you.

[photos: alamo? alacosed; the outer-mo]

i also walked around a bit, saw all the shitty tourist crap they plant next to any grain of history that exists (i took a picture of the ripley's believe it or not, guinness world records museum, and tomb raider 3d ride in a row across the street, but really, take my word), strolled around the pretty town square, and felt ready to leave.

[photo: self-portrait]

i didn't really figure out my alamo-thing until driving through thick fog between nyc and nh at 3 o'clock in the morning at the trip's end, but at this point, i was just looking forward to getting in the car, listening to my tism book, eating breakfast in austin with friends and ordering something sans queso (but maybe with bbq sauce). and then maybe my mood'd be less blue than my not-yet-entirely digested cake.


NEXT: TX (austin), LA

Pt. only: SF/Berkeley/Mtn View/NOT LA

[photo: squint, see the hawk, shrug, say, "there's a hawk, huh."]

(let's just say) THE BAY AREA:
i like these long waiting periods between trip and write up, because it saves me from going overboard and describing songs heard on the drive and thread counts at my friends' apts and all that bullshit, plus i'm about to leave for the big trip later this week that will make the five hours in a car to sf seem like nothing. as it is now, it's nothing. i'd probably drive that far just to go to a sonic drive-in. not even during frozen beverage happy hour.

besides, the drive was uneventful, just windy as only the middle of any stretch of land can be windy (see: middle of ca, tx, the entire us), which was perfect because a, it makes pumping gas an adventure, and b, santa cruz was on fire, and gusts always help. it seems i always jump ship on this side of the country at the start of fire season; last year, it was just after griffith park sizzled, so i left just as the misplaced wildlife came to my neighborhood to hide. my dear cousin, a post-grad at santa cruz, has friends who lost their home in the current blaze, which is just awful, and i'm sure LA's yearly combustion isn't far behind. this from a city whose basketball team is the watery lakers (displaced from minnesota, but still. and why the fuck don't franchises just change their name? i'm talking to you, utah jazz.) but whatever, the lakers are just another example of how LA loses. i'm out of here (temporarily).

[photo: a giant slug seen on a walking trail in berkeley, and if he was on the run from the fires on santa cruz, i should adopt his epic journey into a screenplay.]

so i drove up to sf with (one of my few friends in LA, sam, who's actually moving to SF just as i leave-- lose lose lose!), past cowschwitz, the giant slaughter house that smells like guts, dead guts, and grass that had been housed in guts not much earlier. when we got to the city, sam went on her way, i met friends for dinner, including emily, whose apartment is a catsplosion, and teet, who, as always, fell asleep midconversation on a couch. then i got to stay with paisley at her family's house, where i haven't been to since i was 18, and see her mom and her two geriatric giant black poodles, who got along well with my own golden-aged li'l black poodle, just turning the place into an overnight canine assisted living facility.

but then i went back into SF, then to mountain view to see said cousin, where i met her new dog, oscar, who, if i don't mind saying, fucking FELL IN LOVE WITH ME and wept upon my departure. then back to the east bay, where i met up with elanor and kumar to eat bbq and watch the red sox lose in a bar. this is a recurring theme with me. i never see the games where coco punches the tampa bay pitcher and we still end up beating them like a dirty rug, just the ones where youkilis strikes out at every at bat and big papi looks bored. which is exactly what happened on sunday, but in person, and sitting two seats away from a very smug oakland fan. but we sat in a pod of sox fans at least, and i was sitting behind a lady who also loved youk for his talent and tribal status, making our own mini jews for joukilis chapter in the stands.

[photo: kumar and el, making it work despite their baseball differences.)

but it's also worth noting that on saturday, el took for me this amazing hike in the hills looking out over berkeley, and here is this picture taken from the splendor of nature where i think you can see the university's bio labs that make deadly bacteria. somewhere, right now, there is a drum circle in protest.

[photo: pretty death!]

and we saw a slug and a hawk. not bad.

also, el has a plot in a community garden with peppers and peas and all sorts of good stuff, and other people are growing artichokes and carrots, and it's kind of amazing, because in nh, we're sort of limited to herbs, cherry tomatoes, and squash (and really, you only need to eat, like, one squash a year, and we end up having 300 and bending over backwards to stick it in every pasta, soup, dessert, etc.) did i mention i'm leaving for new england later this week? go celts.

oh, and we saw indy 4, which had, like, a solid hour of "yay, indiana jones!" and another hour plus of "nigga please." it was like a speilberg/lucas time life comp of their greatest moments-- i think the real reason they switched from nazis to commies was because adding a twist of schindler's list was taking it just one step too far. otherwise, all that was missing was a giant shark. plus the skull looked like the head from a "visible alien (tm)" kit bought at a comic book store, stuffed with saran wrap. altho, if you hate shia labeouf (sp? who cares), you'll love watching him get digitally pummeled in the crotch for 15 minutes.

but, back to the baseball game, at least i got to sit behind these fine people. they felt my pain.


and teeter's been giving me shit for being a jock lately, but if you knew homesickness like mine, you'd understand. homesickness and frustration. most days, i wake up to another surprise water shut-off, courtesy of my building manager who i've now decided looks like a li'l/stoner dog the bounty hunter, and the tendonitis in my hip makes me limp so bad that, when i went to a shoppe the yesterday to buy slacks, they saw me gimping through the racks and gave me the handicapped dressing room. oh, and i have to vote for obama now. and i'm driving thousands of miles during a time when gas is laced with platinum for some reason. i know, i know, call the whaaaaambulance, whatever. point is, being distracted by boston teams-- boston, where people are refreshingly crass, where a hundred-year-old building is considered prefab, where there are 500 ice cream stores and my two other baby dogs-- fuck it, it makes sense. and also, i'm nostalgic for larry bird and robert parish. and really, who isn't?

anyway, by the middle of next week, i'll be in texas, hopefully eating bbq'd meats and taking pictures of bats (from several yards away), clear eyed and full-hearted, so i can't lose. unlike in LA, where one can't do anything but.

sf soon-- for now, haiku!

*my neighbors
drill rock, them dump it
drops so far, my whole house shakes
next door, it's baghdad

*my neighbors, pt 2
diggin that new trench
really, no pun intended
it's where dog turds go

*beirut (the band) / kids in the hall
darrill's umpah band
but not just in darrill's head
vocals? morrisey

sf trip soon. i know all 5 of you are dying to hear how much i enjoyed gourmet ice cream and went hiking and saw a hawk. how will you survive the wait?

dirty south/rock'n'roll tragedy/hiptits

*clothe me, feed me
before i forget, i wanted to solicit suggestions for places across the bottom of this country where i could find food or thrift treasure. i'm driving across rte 10 in less than a month, and while i have austin covered, surely there are other places of interest in towns like mobile, AL, or new orleans, LA, or even in atlanta, which i'm stopping thru on my way north.

also, i want bbq and weird regional foods like the basque food i had in nevada and the steak place my dad and i went to in omaha that seemed frozen in amber from 1962. and yes, i will stop at the varsity in atlanta. fingers crossed their delicious hot dogs aren't deep fried and won't jizz on my car (see: wall drug. just what i wrote about, NEVER IN PERSON).

[photo: me wantee!]

*rock'n'roll dating
i was just looking at that site as it was linked via jezebel or gawker or somesuch, and let me say this; if you are in your 30s and put bad religion, blink 182, sisters of mercy, goldfinger, anal cunt etc. on your list of musical favorites, there is a reason you're single. and it's not because girls are like, "ew, anal cunt!", it's because you're a grown ass man who listens to pop punk and/or novelty hardcore. not that you should try to lure ladies in with john mayer records and then pull the municipal waste bait'n'switch, but still, if you can drive yourself to warped tour, you're too old to go.

*no fatties please
as most friends of the 'tee know, i'm not such a big fan of public nudity (name a publicly uncovered part of a stranger that's normally covered-- toes, nips, midriff, etc-- and i'll tell you just exactly how it makes my skin crawl). as such, i prefer the one-piece swim suit. to me, bikinis are like jimmy choos or $6000 handbags; they're supposed to the status quo of what women want, but i was sick that day of womanhood school, and now i just don't get the appeal. i am an advocate of keeping the gut personal and private. hell, most men should be wearing one-pieces. and fuck a lot of man flip-flops. but we don't need to cover the issue of toe beards again.

long story short, life is hard for the one-piece shopper. first, you have the brands that seem marketed to those ladies among us who are so fat that they have to wipe their ass with a special tp wand (you thought i was gonna go with washing their backs with a rag on a stick, i know, but too easy).

nobody under 200 lbs wants to buy something called a "miracle suit," but i swear, this brand dominates the one-piece market. as if it wasn't hard enough to buy bathing suits, you now how to go into it knowing that it takes a fucking MIRACLE for you to fit into one and show your face in public. the other nightmare that keeps popping up is "storm in a D cup." i get the pun, but i feel like the only women who would buy this brand are current and/or former hosts of the view. and the lady who killed that poor 15 year old girl on myspace. and maybe tyra when she's fat.

but the worst thing i've seen this year is the following make of suit-- it's usually sold as the sole, sad, token one-piece in a pile of bikinis by designers who hate the fuck out of some fatties, or probably women in general.

most people call it muffin top, but that's at once cutesy and weirdly sexual, as it's on top of one's "muffin," and i hate when people use cutesy terms for penis or vagina (vajayjay? not okaykay, and about 17 months away from being funny). moi, i prefer the term stated up in the title-- "hiptits." because they're like boobs on your hips that hang over your pants, and while they're worse for the fat (especially in this era of mid-hip jeans), nobody is immune. except the supersickly thin. like model-era tyra.

so this bathing suit is basically a one-piece with hiptit windows. and really, if you don't care about showing off that part of your body, wouldn't you just buy a fucking bikini in the first place? belly button shame? it looks like your fat broke through the spandex levee of the suit and is now oozing to freedom, sending bikini-clad, barely legal teens to run for their lives so they don't catch fat.

[photo: even this model has hiptits! somewhere, a gay designer is laughing and filling his winter line with more trapeze dresses.]

[tangent! people sometimes get mad at me for throwing the term fat around so freely, but fuck it-- some people are tall, some people are olive-toned, some people are (different levels of) fat. fat and ugly aren't the same thing, and shouldn't be seen that way-- ugly is a straight up insult, fat is a factual state of being. people who call themselves ugly are fishing for support and compliments, while some people who call themselves fat are just telling it like it is and don't give a shit what you think.

if someone has a higher BMI than they should and wears a size 14, they're allowed to call themselves chubby because *that's what they are,* and when you scorn them for saying that about themselves, you're basically saying they should be ashamed of their bodies. which is why most women won't admit to their chubbs outloud, because they're locked in imagejail thanks to hardy seconds of denial fed to them by thinner people who are trying to help. a better reponse to someone talking about their D cup hiptits is, "whatever, yr lookin good, who gives a shit."

(and ps, i don't care what you weigh, keep your fucking clothes on and wear closed-toe shoes, just long story short, let's just destigmatize the world fat. hiptits and tp wands for everyone.)]

whatever, i hate this bathing suit.

sorry this was the bloggiest thing i've ever written. you'll hear nothing from me 'til i get back from sf.

"fuck"+wnyc+honey bunches of oats = HEAVEN ON EARTH

i know this has been posted everywhere today, but seeing as today was another downer for the 'tee, i thought i'd spread the love as watching this clip 15 times in a row is what kept me from hunting down my building manager and smashing his bong over his head (not that i've ever met him, but i might recognize him by his stench) (i just rewatched that s3 episode of buffy where oz can smell willow's "fear" and then finds her "having smoochies" with xander, and i put fear in quotes because you watch a show so many times and your thoughts can't not turn dirty, especially given the context of smoochies).

this clip is to me what that haitian weatherman clip was to the rest of the world. enjoy!

pt. 2 : nh, ma

[photo: didja ever notice that a honey bunches of oats box makes a good makeshift target? i sure did! fuck you, you delicious son of a bitch!]

[my father now refers to this breakfast treat as "honey bunches of lead."]

[also, i painted my nails black'n'badly so i'd stop biting them so much. and because i'm going to be mentally 14 until i die.]

NH:
the good part of forgetting to write this up until now? i also forget most of what happened, so consider the fat trimmed, baby!

as you might recall from when i started this travel summary 104 weeks ago, i came to nh just in time for ice out, which was sort of bittersweet in that i'm never really there for the ice except when it's just forming or on its way out. because i love to kayak around the lake's great island, but you're not really allowed on the island unless you live in one of the houses there, and i'm kind of dying to know what's in the middle, since from a kayak, you're really limited to the shore view. i know it's a small hill, but is there playground equipment on it? a mayan temple? the head and torch of the statue of liberty (i love you, dr zaius!)?

[photo: not the great island, or an island period, but still great.]

so, since nobody lives there in the winter (there's no bridge, and, as should be clear by now, the ice isn't always on your side for travel), i've always wanted to take advantage of the ice to walk over and check it out. alas, another year's passed where it was not to be. on the other hand, it was freakishly warm, so i got to tan on the dock with buzzo (who did not tan, but snoozed under a tree and woke up polkadotted with sap. oy) next to floating plates of tinkling slush. and to think that when i get back, i'll be in swimmin mode. oh my sweet new hampshire, what compells me to go. sigh.

also, see photo, i shot m'gun.

but other than that, i thrifted, worked out my summer work hours at the store, saw my few friends...i was going to mention this before in my discussion of danzig/casual male xl(ucifuge), but the powerhouse mall in west leb has a ladies clothing store called "daffodil," and a bigger ladies clothing store (ladies are bigger, not the store) next to it called "daffodil woman," which just seems odd to me. i went to that mall with my parents to eat at lui lui's, which is like an i-talian chili's but much less offensive to your intelligence and much more delicious to your mouth.

[photo: i am so cute and clumps of me smell pine fresh!]

somehow, i was reminded of a teacher at my high school named mrs. white (alas, as you'll see, i can't change her name) who worked in the health center (boarding schools don't have a nurse's office, they have a health center, which is the same thing, but bigger and licensed to distribute ritalin to those precious spoiled assholes who got bullshit prescriptions and made sport of snorting it in their dorm rooms).

right, so while mrs. white was running one of the sex and drugs classes that freshman had to take, teaching the class on womantimes, she got her womantimes, and in eponymous pants, no less. and the mood of the class, being comprised of 14-year-old girls, hovered somewhere between totally amused and extremely horrified.

and she got mad at one of my friends, who was her student but also her advisee (my school had student/teacher advisee groups, keep up), for not telling her what was happening. my parents and i were trying to figure out tactful ways one could've informed her she was bleeding her (namesake) pants, and the best we could come up with were:
-mrs red, i have a question? sorry, easy mistake.
-mrs white, are the red sox playing a home game? (in your pants?)
and, bringing it full circle,
-mrs white, are you trying to prove you're qualified to shop at daffodil woman?

then i went back to boston and we all began preparing for passover, which is like jewish thanksgiving, but with god, and in which those feasting play the native american-esque role.

MA:
so aside from the above explanation and a positive review of the meal and time spent with family and old friends i rarely get to see, there's not much to add about boston. i went walking with my mom in the magical woods behind the mall, and bought something at the gap for the first time since 8th grade (my one stop shop for kurt cobain-y stripy t-shirts!), and played tennis with my dad at harvard next to my favorite kind of harvard doubles game, balds vs. hair'ds.

but one cool thing was when i went with dad to pick my sister and her husband up at the airport, we had to wait in the new (well, new to me) cellphone lot at logan, which is right on the water. and even tho i lived in boston for my first 18 years, i'd never seen the city like, well, a tourist, essentially. it's pretty! and from a distance, you can't hear people screaming at you in their cars!

[photos: the stub end of the hub, southie from the sea/an accent by the ocean]

so i came back to LA, went to see tim & eric awesome tour, had fine cheese with friends at the getty, saw a preview of tr0p1c thund3r (get ready for "you only love me for my farts" to become the catchphrase of the summer) (also i'm afraid of universal people finding me over google and suing me for spoilering their catchphrase).

but then i got sick, then entered into several shitstorms, so i can't wait to navigate out of these choppy, fecal waters, first to sf next week, then all the way back to nh in june. ang and ashrita came to visit during the eye of the storm, which was a great boon to my sanity, but still. anchors aweigh, bitches. oh my sweet disposition, may you one day carry me home.

[this post is in memory of ryan adams' blog. shine on, you crazy (no really, literally, crazy) diamond.]

? & !

?:
vs.

just curious.

!:
i have dreamt of this. oh, yes.

just had to share.