Below are the 20 most recent journal entries recorded in deluded dorky dancing girl's LiveJournal:

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Sunday, November 22nd, 2009
9:58 am	in class today, the teacher remarked that i have good "flow" but am too strong. this is not the first time that someone has said this to me (once a PT said that my leg muscles were too strong for my joints) (this is all in contrast to how i feel -- i recognize that i am muscular, but i do not feel at all strong). literally, this accounts, i think, for my being a good jumper (= power) and a crap turner (too much force, too little balance). (i look like i have good balance, but it's all an illusion created by my apparently incredible hulk strength, hooking myself into thin air by the sheer velcro action of actin and myosin) of course this is a problem, and even more so here, where i get to be in class so infrequently and therefore apply my bionic focus into tensing every muscle to remind myself that they are there -- or rather, that i am here, as i often doubt. in other words, this is a twofold problem, one being that my dancing has acquired a hardness that isn't naturally there (i'm usually cast in adagio roles and whatnot; i always thought my dancing, if anything, was too soft) (in chicago, one feels this. the style of dance favored is brash, flashy, high energy, and big -- and when you get used to it, it feels great. M O V I N G through SPACE! but in Hong Kong, there is no space. it all gets turned inwards, concentrated, this energy that you can't exert on the space and therefore becomes mere clenching) (i feel this in other ways, for instance in how i can't say at work how much i hate it, can't tell the fucking evangelists what assholes i think they are, can't even walk freely because there is always someone (if not a thick mass of someones) THERE) it's made me really profane in my internal dialogue. and i walk/ride through the city like this, clenched in an unstable equilibrium, ready to tumble into muted chaos with some pinprick of sensory aggression -- the sound of the wheels on the tracks -- someone shouting in your ear as they pass -- the constant stentorian announcements on the mtr. i wear earplugs on my commute and still can't bear it, arrive at work teeth gritted and hands in fists, get home thoroughly exhausted from a day of nothing, really nothing. so that is the second half of the problem, that it is totally symptomatic of how i proceed through life, simultaneously armored to the hilt and freakishly susceptible to breaks, cracks, and strains. always too much energy, hyper focus (or is it none at all?), and little progress. i think few people in real life can stand me, view me as tense, paranoid, uptight, etc etc. i admit to all these things, also have no idea what to do, in a way fear letting go of this approach because you can (by god, you CAN!) muscle your way through a hell of a lot of things that would otherwise require -- what? i'm not really sure. (Comment on this)
Thursday, November 19th, 2009
2:27 pm	and then there was a woman who looked as i might after five or ten years in this city, leaning against the pole with her arms clutching a plastic bag. she wore headphones and a lank, haphazard braid. her eyes were closed, and trails of moisture barely reflecting the fluorescent light ran down her cheeks. i searched for tears, but there were none, only dull weariness in her lined face. (Comment on this)
Tuesday, November 17th, 2009
6:07 pm	autumn has always been a time of beginnings, and this year my clock is thrown off by the weather and the office job. on a day like this, i would be behind concrete blocks and books all around with the kind of gloom you half love to have, interrupted by unplanned intersections with acquaintances suddenly grown close in the idle commisery in dampness and cruel ice. we have suddenly the dark chill of autumn in hong kong, but the gray and the dark don't promise anything like the companionability of the classical music station and tea in the morning or the familiar face of those people you pass every day but never speak to. once i saw the same girl twice on the MTR: i know this because she had eyelids that drooped morosely and her hair hung down and she had herpetic sores blossoming over her hands. we stood face to face, straining away from each other. it was cause for immediate ablutions at the automated antibacterial gel dispenser, i tell you. i spent yesterday in bed and arose to further fatigue -- day punctuated by a few e-mails, work, unanswered phone calls. i hauled myself to class. the teacher was 20 minutes late and i had stabbing pains in my knees (from what, exactly?), left early, did not care. i ought to have something better to say, progress, but i can hardly speak, much less write. (Comment on this)
4:57 pm	i play the clown but in fact wane colorless (Comment on this)
Monday, November 9th, 2009
9:45 am	which i knew i never deserved. i knew today would be a bad day when i bruised my head on a doorknob. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 30th, 2009
10:20 pm	a week ago, a friend came to visit. i say a friend, and i mean -- it is all very difficult to understand. i just saw H in Laos, but the whole thing was away and surreal. i might have imagined this visit, actually. i feel like a fish in an aquarium, and suddenly there was another fish, but i wasn't able to tell if it really was another fish or my own reflection in the glass or a paper fish tossed in to change the environment because fish become depressed if their short term memory wipe gets overridden by the monotony and replaceability of the days. i might have cried, and there might have been other hands wiping my tears. but it's all very hard to tell. (Comment on this)
Thursday, October 22nd, 2009
2:11 pm	yesterday i was walking out of the wong tai sin mtr station where they have just re-opened the covered walkway (helpfully closed for renovation for the entire summer, i.e. the rainy season). it has never been beautiful, this station. the street has a giant mcdonalds opposite, vendors selling sweet potatoes and chestnuts on the side, and little street stands of siu mai; people queue in lines reaching back to the station exits to catch an endless sequence of minibuses. in the background (always the background -- i've never gone near enough to see what it really looks like) the giant taoist temple, yellow and red, and further still in the distance the hills that would be beautiful if the city were absent. the buildings are the same ones that crowd hong kong but never make it into the movies, colorless concrete high rises. and suddenly i felt like i was used to it, that i had never had any other kind of life, and then it was like that moment in dreams when you cognize that you are flying and suddenly plummet because you know you don't know how. it becomes newly unbearable daily, the brute monotony of it all, the bodies and noise everywhere. it isn't war, it isn't traumatic, but it wears. (Comment on this)
Friday, October 16th, 2009
8:26 pm	expiration now that my expiration date is approaching, i need to get realistic. "career" has been a total bust. time to switch to plan b: marriage. i have reason to believe, despite my delayed start, that i have much better odds of achieving this one. LOADS more people get married than acquire fulfilling dance jobs and tenure-track teaching positions at top research institutions. on the other hand, i'm aware that i'll need to move fast if i'm to have any reasonable success. on my part, i am not picky. age, sexual orientation, and race are totally open. the only things that i require are a) a health insurance plan that would include me and b) that s/he not be a sadist (though, actually, i may be a closet masochist, so it's possible that i have only one condition). plan of action: 1. cosmetics. 2. weight loss (i think i am fit, but experience has shown that people only pursue me when i am close to double digits; in addition, no matter what they say, everyone loves a girl who looks like she's about to die). 3. stop being a total bitch to billionaires (okay, that only happened once)... (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 14th, 2009
2:13 pm	every once in awhile, i remember to be homesick. it's prompted this time by a smell that i can't shake, a smell like blood, or of holding your breath too long underwater, or of autumn's cold air cutting straight through to memory. i want: my dingy carpet in my studio in chicago with a pan of pumpkin muffins cooling on the windowsill. the green armchair i got for $5 on marketplace. the ramshackle lamp that a subletter insisted on repairing with duct tape. the cd player with the radio attachment that fell off (still worked fine). a pile of rainsoaked books from the powell's free box. a giant pot of tea. the quilt i had on my bed for 11 years. my bicycle. the light shining through the windows of other people's houses. (Comment on this)
Wednesday, October 7th, 2009
10:03 am	laos: a marathon entry about nothing Laos leaves me with very little to say, possibly because I had no impression of it at all before going, other than what I had read in library guidebooks from the 1990s. It wasn’t that it was a dull trip, and yet, large sections of it were dull. Sitting and waiting. Waiting and watching. Repetition without replication (or, at times, only replication: the menus in every eatery in Vang Vieng in the same A4 folder with the same insert—the insert that comes with the plastic folder, with an image of oranges, folders, and paper measurements—and then the same foods within, with only slight variations to the price (H was keeping track of BeerLao, 10,000-15,000 kip/650 mL bottle. I watched the significantly more variable fruit shake, ranging from 3000-12,000 kip, of various sizes and proportions of fruit to ice and condensed milk) (a word might be said about the cuisine: it is a cross between foods I think of as Vietnamese (pho, spring rolls, a banh mi-like sandwich on stale “baguettes”) and foods that I think of as Thai (papaya salad, curries). And then staples like plain sticky rice, or, fancier, sticky rice steamed in a bamboo tube, which you peel like a banana to eat, coffee done thick but strangely bland, served with condensed milk. And then things that were utterly surprising and lovely, like a plate of various leaves that came with something I was eating—purplish leaves with a cinnamon bite, glossy flat leaves simultaneously sweet and assertive, the ubiquitous mint) (a word might also be said about the currency. It’s 8500 kip/USD; everything is in priced in the thousands. The numbers are printed in Lao script in three corners and arabic numerals in the fourth. The largest bill is 50,000 kip, or less than $6. Our shared rooms with shared bath ran to 60,000 kip in Vientiane, 40,000 in Vang Vieng, and they weren’t the cheapest, either. H had told me to estimate a cost of $20 a day, but without skimping, it was more like $15—housing, eating, and activities). The travelling was the hard part. Few flights go straight to Vientiane, and they are expensive. When I tried to book a flight through kayak, the website for Lao Aviation turned out to be defunct, and the number they supplied for their Hong Kong office seemed to go straight to someone’s house. A nice someone: “Don’t fly to Vientiane,” he said. “Just get to Udon Thani and cross the border—it’s just like getting to Shenzhen on the East Rail Line.” So, cheap flights on AirAsia to Bangkok and then to Udon Thani, a combination of buses and tuk-tuks to cross the border: neither simple nor time-efficient, but relatively inexpensive and perhaps more interesting. Spending the night in the Bangkok airport: I enact my itinerance by lugging my bag from place to place, carefully setting out the alarm clock for my 6am transfer, stuffing my passport deep into my backpack, making a pillow out of a pair of shorts. Delighting at the gray vaulted ceiling near the VIP lounge, I lie flat on my back on the floor and wake every time footsteps approach, every 15 minutes on the nose, but no one tells me to go. There are speakers lined up like huge air filters, and nothing longer than an hour is bearable from the deep chill that gathers in the bones, so I get up and join a little encampment of travellers who have found the only darkened area of the airport and are sprawled lengthwise along the seats. A full hour’s rest there, and then the cold drives me up again, past duty-free, where no one tells me not to try the creams (I feel insane, rubbing anti-aging cream on my face in the middle of the night with my alarm clock ticking away in my bag). Plastic chairs by the moving walkway, which drones on and on in Thai and rumbling carts being pushed by. Another hour. I sample some sweets labelled “please try me!” (how could I resist?), try on a hideously gaudy plastic bauble in a jewelry shop (“please try on!”), return to the camp where a few of them are surreptitiously making cup noodles with the water from an electric kettle. Perhaps another hour, and then I am up again, thoroughly cold, checking in for my flight. Udon Thani at 8am. The clock strikes: metallic reverberations with the feedback of a recording. I am washing my hands. Everyone holds perfectly still while the Thai anthem plays, a mundane solemnity I disrupt with my typically rushed gait and singleminded haste to the escalator; I realize my error on the step and stop, but the escalator itself languorously parades my insolence before the population of an entire Boeing 737-300. The airport information counter informs me that the bus advertised to take people to the border does not exist. Instead, I must take a “limousine” (200 baht/$6)—actually a minivan with a quilted, scrolled leather design, much like the inside of a festive hearse. The ride is 50 minutes and the minivan is half full with Americans headed for Laos (but none of us look “American”), everyone a little apprehensive and tired from the early flight. Listening to a middle aged man ask my own anxious questions about border crossings, I know I could speak and do not. You get the visa with 35 American dollars, a photograph, and a wait. then you’re swarmed upon by taxi drivers clamoring for your fare. I rode into Vientiane with a British taxi driver from Key West (old, with tattooed sleeves), his Thai child bride, and their 16 month old son. While the taxi driver (the one actually driving) and the wife chatted in Thai, the Key West/London taxi driver explained to me how he typically works half the year and travels the rest (so apparently one can do pretty well on a taxi income, especially if you only work nights), “But everything has changed since we had the baby,” he explained, setting the boy on my lap (rubbery precarious thing, very scary). (We were stopped by a police roadblock on the way. KW/L taxi driver and bride said that this happens all over in the region—hand them 100 baht and they send you on your way. Driving driver managed to talk his way out of it) By some miracle/because we are amazingly organized (okay, because H is amazingly organized), I managed to get dropped at the Scandinavian Bakery a mere 5 minutes after our projected 10:30 meeting time. We drank coffee and chatted for a few hours, which was the main activity for the 5 days. Vientiane is not particularly charming or exciting. Several wats line the street in various degrees of explosive color, but the greatest of all, Wat Sisaket, is nearly colorless, brown and metal, quadrangle, silent. Innumerable buddhas lodged in tiny alcoves, seated and standing, and dismembered and damaged fragments wedged behind bars. Some festival at evening. A four hour bus ride to Vang Vieng. Dusty little nothing town, rimmed with astonishing peaks and the Nam Song river, a backpacker party destination in low season. Highlights: Being laughed at by an old man as I staggered from the river after “tubing.” “Sa-bai-dee!” he cackled, strutting away from us (it means hello). Cycling the rocky path to Phoukam cave edged by mountains, kids offering to be our "guides" and trying to charge admission fees—even better, cycling back in the long light of dusk, crossing the bridge back to VV under the harvest moon. The village boat races, in which the sedate, early-rising Lao people party all night and start drinking again at 8am, the long boats piloted by teams of people of all ages, the spectators under tents and in the margins of the river, wildly splashing and cheering as the boats glide by in grace and synchrony (or not). And then, riding a sangthew back to Vientiane, four hours in the company of a changing group of locals and their market goods, which included a chicken, a basket of crabs, a basket of frogs, a bag of crickets, two bags of fresh mushrooms, bags of herbs and greens, a cat-sized rodent, and a rooster. A Lao girl who wanted to practice speaking French with us (we all managed—which delighted her so much that she insisted on getting our e-mail addresses and photographing us with her cell phone). The 34 hour journey home: Violently ill at the bus station. Puked my way across the border. Stopped at the first guesthouse next to the bus station, which I think might also have been a brothel, and my window, which didn’t close, faced the street, where cars were gunning and people were setting off fireworks all night. Drank a gatorade for dinner and wondered if I would die or contract lice from the bedding. Did not sleep. Early morning tuk-tuk ride to the airport. The driver shouted, gloatingly, to the others on the street, “airport! Airport!” laughing hysterically. Flying. Waiting. Flying. Waiting. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 22nd, 2009
9:33 am	it was simple once i decided to act like the person i wish i were and not the person i fear i am. (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Monday, September 21st, 2009
9:43 am	I can't help but think of this in moral terms. That is, if my thoughts/writing/work are worth something, I MUST leave. And if I am a dullard with no particular talents, I might as well stay, in fact, I am duty bound to stay, because in this way, I manage to support myself without worrying my parents/otherwise burdening the world. If the latter, I might as well commit suicide, thereby reducing my overall carbon footprint. Option #3 involves being a person of type 1 who manages to make something worthwhile out of situation 2; i.e. I write a novel cramped in my uncomfortable office between phone calls from fat soul-sucking boss and his minions or sitting at the reference counter being hassled by a bunch of students who don't know how to use the library catalogue. And Option 3 is noble, requiring the best mind of all, but whether I am type 1 or 2, I am easily depressed and haven't decided whether it's a matter of will to pull out or not (though the fact that I have BEEN depressed for at least 13 years, to greater and lesser degrees, with occasional unexpected and inexplicable breaks, suggests that I haven't mastered it yet -- let's face it, I haven't got a mind of that caliber). Today was unexceptional, and yet I couldn't stand it. Could not stand it. Cannot stand the commute, the people cramming themselves all around and then plodding like grass eating ruminants, cannot stand the thorough INCOMPETENCE of my boss and other "superiors." Cannot stand that even the things I ostensibly do for my pleasure are more like punishment (loping on a decrepit elliptical in a windowless room while grunting boys slam down weights that are obviously too heavy for them to lift to someone's favorite 70s rave remix, trying to dance among other incompetent people in a tiny room that I can't extend my legs in, much less breathe). Sometimes it seems okay, but other times, it doesn't. The problem is moods, the way they're entirely overwhelming, thus making it impossible to ascertain what is right or even what I feel. (6 Comments |Comment on this)
9:39 am	I look at my calendar and see that the date I'd marked to resign is tomorrow. I already have a ticket to LA for Dec 22, have registered for MLA -- and I do not know what to do. The age is wrong for bumming around (both my age and the world economy, blah blah blah). Maybe it would be better to continue to crouch down another year and come out not better or stronger or more interesting, but safe. I've held out pretty long, forgotten a lot of what I used to do or used to like. I think this is called getting used to things or growing up. Or becoming really boring and empty. My circumstances aren't bad -- lots of people have endured much, much worse -- but would they choose to, if they had a choice? (3 Comments |Comment on this)
Sunday, September 13th, 2009
9:31 am	we danced at a conference last night. it was on the 2nd floor of a building off of nathan road -- glorious marble high ceilinged lobby to a dingy, tiled, exposed-pipe, dim little room with folding chairs. i walked in and people were hymning, their hands open palmed and raised. electric keyboard and drums and the words projected on a screen like karaoke, the pastor in full voice. "I want five people who want to feel the touch of the holy spirit to come up -- now, now, now!" cried one of the ministers. and they flocked up, and glasses shattered and a man began laughing uncontrollably. "Feel the joy of the Lord, don't be afraid," she shouted. i felt nothing at all, except the parenthetical concern that we were going to dance in bare feet on the tiled floor now strewn with splinters of glass. to dance for such people -- it almost didn't matter. i felt they would see whatever they wanted to see, no matter what our bodies did. we got changed in a closet and stretched in the kitchen and among the office chairs. when i danced, i looked out at them and they didn't seem to be looking back. we were paid with money from the offering. 200hkd. i walked out with the lashes still pasted to my eyes, mouth smeared with red. steps from the mtr, a man grabbed my arm. i didn't even see what he looked like, just wrenched my arm back and kept walking. by the edge of a dark building a man sat with his face crunched up, beating himself in the head. i recognized the gesture, the frustration. i have done the same to myself, but he was beating with man's fists, with skull cracking force, his hands blue with tattoos. i wanted to stop, say something, hand him my ill-gotten gains, but i was afraid. i feel alone, i think i am alone, but i saw this man and knew that he really was, and i never have been, not really. and further on there was another man, dirty, his feet half out of his shoes, smoking. and i wonder why i have always been all right when i don't deserve it any more than they deserved to be sitting in the night with nowhere to go, and i was paid for failing, and they were punished for it. (Comment on this)
Thursday, September 10th, 2009
11:42 am	knowing someone is alive whom you have recently inexplicably feared dead (2 Comments |Comment on this)
Tuesday, September 8th, 2009
5:29 am	my hands are bleeding with hate. (Comment on this)
Monday, September 7th, 2009
5:32 pm	I have left Hong Kong enough times now to be accustomed to leaving it, the anticipation of a dullness soon to be lifted modulated by said dullness, the body at a right angle, the strap of the seatbelt digging in. Usually, on the A41 to the airport, I am mesmerized by the suspension bridges connecting the islands with their grand unfaltering angles, the main cables stouter in diameter than the double decker buses are, the humming and soaring bridges have despite their steel and weight. The water and mountains only faintly crusted with boats and buildings in the dimmed light and haze. Tonight as I stared out the portrait window, watching a plane race us to the airport, I felt the most unbearable urge. Gum. Huge gobs of it. (Typical of my paranoia, I had secreted several pellets in a box of throat lozenges, just to see if I could. A satisfying rattle in my purse. Of course in the end no one checked, and I walked straight past customs and three men with machine guns without drawing a flicker of the eye... I think they had more pressing concerns than 8 bits of lemon mint Airwaves) As is my fate, I was seated next to missionaries. Cindy and Jeff, blond and blue eyed, American. As we did a plunge (okay, for probably 0.2 seconds, but enough to make me panic), I wondered if it was a sign that I should be asking Jesus into my heart (as Cindy recommended, before handing me a pamphlet with a rose on the front that said, "You're special" like a demented valentine), and I also wondered what is wrong with me that I can't seem to acquire this faith that keeps Cindy and Jeff and all those other people at peace with whatever happens to them (also the faith that, as Cindy put it, there are angels all around us, and they are big enough to hold up this plane), which I do long for, despite being unable to feel it (I wonder if this is also the same part of me that longs to be so drugged up I can't feel anything at all). Then I concluded that I would probably go to hell because I was so blatantly being offered all these opportunities to fall into the Jesus line and I don't even think it's possible at this point (especially because I have grown so accustomed to going through the motions of prayer with the dancing evangelists), but it is total manipulation for a missionary to talk about planes nearly crashing but being saved by the power of prayer when one is in a state of panic and thus insincerely convertible. (The real problem I have with it is the specificity, that I should be able to pinpoint salvation to a single person whose name we presume to know -- this I have trouble believing. I have no problems with miracles otherwise). At any rate, she held my hand and prayed, and I felt ashamed: nothing new here. Singapore initially looks much like Hong Kong, but where HK is an impervious layer of concrete and glass, Singapore is perforated. I think this is because of the trees, which look like those spindly blossoms you could once make on MS Paint with the "tree" command (entire trees inspired by the aspen leaf) -- that is, a wide flattened spread canopied over a slender trunk, only here with the more sinuous lines of the tropics, creating an intricate tangle of branches and dappled light. Two other things: it is possible to be alone, and people say "excuse me" when they want to get by you, and "sorry" when they've stepped on your feet. My camera abruptly began to fail the first day (immediately after a picture of me and the Parliament -- me: basilisk. camera: shutter jammed open, or so I hypothesize; pictures are bleached and exhibit lateral tremor). Judging from the pictures I have, I would not say that Singapore was meant for the eye. Pictures I did not take: The Singapore cultural center rivals that of Hong Kong for sheer hideousness. It resembles an armadillo turd, if a 3000 foot armadillo were kept on a diet of aluminum cans. Mangroves emerging from the salt estuary like a colony of desiccated medusas. The 15th annual Singapore lion dance competition: Singapore means "lion city," though historians suggest that what was meant by "lion" was probably "tiger," there being no lions indigenous to the region. This is plainly erroneous, because Singaporean lions bat foil lashes, have extensible necks, and pirouette and leap on narrow pillars -- brilliant. (1 Comment |Comment on this)
Sunday, August 23rd, 2009
8:52 am	what's most fun? 1. drinking self to death (with my tolerance, can surely do this with a single bottle: economical) 2. jumping off the golden gate bridge (pity to spend money on the airfare, however) 3. leaping from top floor of mall straight into the makeup promotion area (apparently some guy survived a 34-story jump earlier this year -- well, he did die en route to hospital, but still) 4.renting a motorcycle without a license (sure to cause death, but possibly not just mine). 5. finding a triad leader and insulting his mother (may do this inadvertently). 6. falling onto the rails on the east rail line, always a temptation during the daily commute. 7. flying into singapore with packs of gum strapped to my body, chewing vigorously in customs. 8. leaving food out in the heat 30 minutes to culture some vile microbes (could save time by simply not washing food). 9. drinking the water in the harbour. 10. trying to go the wrong way on the escalator. 11. refusing to stand behind the yellow line in the mtr station. 12. drug trafficking. 13. taking all the valium i didn't take when i had knee surgery. 14. meeting a psychopath with a chopping propensity. 15. attempting parasailing. 16. locking self into staff bathroom for the weekend with swine flu-infected coworkers. 17. submitting to another year of job applications thus abjecting self to death. (4 Comments |Comment on this)
Thursday, August 20th, 2009
3:14 pm	i've got the distinct feeling that i won't make it out (Comment on this)
Monday, August 10th, 2009
4:25 pm	Every once in a while, I remember him, Professor Winer -- well, we called him Dr. Winer. A huge man, a devoted teacher. (I saw a picture of a mouse the other day and I remembered his amusement when, on Halloween, I came to class costumed as a witch and promptly found a dead mouse on the floor.) I wasn't much of a scientist at all, but I (and many others) went to his office hours faithfully -- the room was always packed, but I always felt penetrated by his loneliness. I think we understood that about each other. He loved Wordsworth. He introduced me to the New York Review of Books. He could say cutting things, too. I remember leaving his office once and crying for hours because he accused me of producing "too much heat, not enough light." It was true. I think he lived with his mother. (cripes, this sucks. Let this be a message to you all: don't die, lest I write you an obituary) Every few years I would write to him. I wanted to tell him that things were different, but they weren't, really. And I always thought I would go back and see him one day and tell him that I'd done it; I'd mastered the conversion of energy. But I haven't. To google someone and find that they are dead: I am sure this happens all the time. And it's a message to me not to bookmark a person, leave them there until the next time you see someone walking sideways and you remember which part of the brain was destroyed in the stroke she must have had. Turns out we have the same birthday. This sucks. I'm sorry, sir, I'm still disappointing you. (Comment on this)