ROUGH SCRIPT FOR METAPHYSICAL NARRATIVE. scene one two men in roomful of CCTV monitors: "a homeless man in a half-stolen hotel room smoking his last single-skin self-conciously after taking the first bath in days... little did he know that this would lead to the council's claim that he looked too clean to be homeless, maybe he should have rolled in mud first or got stinking drunk? he's started drinking shots in the morning, a cocktail of careful measures that no-one would ever notice missing (no resorting to tapwater as replacement kitchen equipment) he's been wandering city at night wherever his feet take him. one time he encounters war memorial sheltering man exactly the same as him- same name, same predicament, they shared takeaway by the park gates he then squeezed through to watch the clouds move in the only patch of sky not light polluted and he saw the sunrise a good five minutes earlier than anywhere else that it should have shed light on and outside the park when he climbed back out the same way the sky was still dark before the start of a new day he discarded the chairleg half-carved into a flute and tightened the elastic bands around his clapping shoe... and waiting outside favoured record shop he encountered homeward bound ravers who invited him back to their place where he stayed sipping chasers 'till they camedown showing signs of beginning paranoia encroaching so he left before they wondered just who the fuck he was again, besides his demo was doing their collective heads in so he let them get them down rather than getting them downcast, the mission was half-arsed so he blew his benefit and ended up in front of kids TV remnants of tracers blurring tractor with face on some harvest moonesque badly dubbed cartoon soundtracked by delta blues harp... and on the news channel hopelessly out of touch suburbanites discuss the worrying rise of gangs in burberry, they blew it all out of proportion, created some sort of stupid conspiracy theory.... how they did it, i don't know." chuhas & friend (on phone): "i trod in broken ashtray, now the green glass of home is embedded in my bare feet, main road / dog / no lead, its me and your one dimensional alter ego cutting through marsh undergrowth hung with tiger tails and erupting in newborn frogs we scoop up to live minimalistically, off the swampland if you will, to a cellar of vintage wine gums, raw toast and giant spiders. on a day like this you walk past someone hoovering their parked car and it sounds like they're conducting a symphony. practicing walking blind across a muddy country field booby-trapped with bulls and ditches is not half as risky as writing lyrics whilst crossing fratton taxi rank. i was born in the year of the falklands war, not the rat, and i learnt not all that glitters in a magpies eye is silver. there is no more master criminal than a magpie trained to attack cashpoints on saturday nights. surreality TV has hit pompey big time: from the police to most haunted to D.I.why.... we like to watch a real chef in front of our microwave meals.... you're all hoping they'll visit a council estate near you! walls plastered with ancient football stickers, and our favourite drink is a dehydrating liquid which makes no sense like spirit levels working on a world that's spherical. the clicks & pops were infectious, the tape hiss washed our ears clean, and our sinuses too...." spit sparkles on the carpet like glitter and glue. you could lose a cat in this thick white pile. tempers were wearing thin by the end of the day. all that was there when you returned was a brick wall. on my first worst birthday i was twelve and went under duress to my uncle's second wedding to endure the company of my useless relatives (aunties, uncles, etc.), still on the plus side i got warhammer 40,000- i read the manuals over my inedible vegetarian option lunch. my second worst birthday was my twenty third on which i woke up in a mess about to throw up on my chest with all the clothes i wore last night still on. that was the one just gone, as already mentioned for being crippling for the best half stroke part of the week. (still, i'm judging by the night before at sub, it was good, by the pencilled in phone number on my passport. shame i don't remember it or falling asleep diagonally down the stairs) my third worst birthday preceding number twenty three by a year and all i have to say is: it's great being homeless on such an important day i don't celebrate much anymore. my fourth and final worst birthday wasn't actually that bad, my dad came out of intensive care but i had to go on a school trip round a farm which was shit, i was ten and wrestling with my best friend david kerr because he liked queen, i recall clearly a photograph from round the time of him posing ridiculously with my mum's acoustic guitar dwarfing him as if oversized due to trick of scale, my dad's disembodied head smirked from his shoulder like result of some hideous grafting operation mistake. and i would like to say also, like, as an addendum if you will... to my worst birthdays that on my best birthday everyone performed jackarse style stunts for my amusement when suddenly a massive moth flew in from alan's open window and buju trapped it and tried to make yasson cane it in a buche, when he refused ben dropped it expelling all the smoke straight into jason's face much to the room's amusement it was side splitting. by this point in my life should i be mature enough by now to take down all my posters? to sell my action figures with weapons missing on the internet unboxed? maybe i should stop living off coffee and toast and finally learn to cook? should i grow up and act my age? should i grow up and act my age???????????????????????????? it all started with dinosaurs essentially and the roll of paper that i was going to draw a mile long mural on but after a few yards i swapped the prehistoric for pirates except some deaf relative thought i said parrots so i got a book on them for my birthday instead although i settled for a kitten after several sets of blown out cake candles and an incomplete series of stories in exercise books that gave way to the incredible saga of the time travelling chimney sweep from the victorian era with the ragged clothes and the sooty grin then i replaced writing with video games war and roleplaying, but should i keep throwing away the remnants of old pasttimes in the recycle bin or instead become a compulsive hoarder of my dead skin? keep my stool samples neatly ordered next to my bottles of urine? or maybe i think i should just wall myself in with refuse till i'm buried in my room? (and to be honest my worst birthday was actually my nineteenth spent at sheiks on sickly E's with my unattentive partner who disappeared for half the night leaving me to clutch my stomachs sides and curse the post office for delivering our one nation tickets six days late no refund and a recorded information line for said rave left us with nothing to do but visit club where bognor birds dance round their handbags to nothing good but spandau ballet, it's all bong mix shotgunned spliffs conjuctivitis and red wine vomit and that by far was the worst birthday that i think i've ever had.) yes it's the idiot who didn't fill his canteen before he left with swollen face unmade bed twisted spine and RSI no license to recieve the images his day's routines are built round in a vice clamp's grip and it's the return of the sour grape changeling with no face under his many disguises a full set of false limbs and wigs in the thickening plot a reign of error wearing hand me downs thick blue veined sprouting shirts like shedding skin lighting a cigarette that leaves him without any eyelashes. pasting picture over picture over picture over picture..... till the walls thicken and meet in the middle of the room pasting picture over picture over picture over picture..... till he's buried alive in his bedsit for good and it's swallowed up and ceases to exist buried in paper and it's swallowed up and ceases to exist pickled in glue and i wrote over every single image in permenant marker till everything was pleasingly blackened out and obscured and i scribbled over scribble over scribble over scribble till my lyric was a solid block of colour and my blackened walls and ceiling said more than i ever could. in my grandparent's old bungalow inexplicably fitted with dumbwaiter jealousy rears her ugly head & it's an uninvited guest in the fireplace her pets run geckos making screaming sounds when i try and pet one hold one down making the best of a stereotyped nightmare situation. i can see my hands as i walk on them up dirt track... to watch the sunset by the trundle and learn to keep secrets... iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii have rings trapped on my fingers, and to make matters worse: my knuckles have got stuck in the neck of a bottle as i absent-mindedly fondled the inside; like getting your big toe jammed in the cold tap and trying to remember what makes things contract (i always get them the wrong way round). i was dreaming of the ghost of my old tongue piercing i can still feel first thing in the morning like an amputated limb.... like an amputated limb. it used to grind against my teeth whilst i was asleep, a fingernail / blackboard equivalent perhaps. my first rebound's mother warned me that the dentistry world takes a dim view of shoving bits of metal through self-inflicted perforations in your mouth... today i swear i could see the yellow tint of a tooth through my gums are they now as thin as gauze? like fleshy clingfilm shrinkwrapped round ivory? the so-called wisdom pushing other memories out my head a gaping maw or a metaphor for a false jaw or dentures? my only excuse to the chattering woodblock is that i really really really can't abide the sound of brushing, something i first learnt by the fireplace when sweeping the grate, later coal bunker chores & bristles on abrasive surfaces getting under my skin like the aforementioned classic combo to you. mayhap i should have paid more attention not in school but to the carpenters, rather than just the part where i found a girlfriend who also had the secret guilty habit of eating toothpaste. now my immaculate trophies have been ground to the dust of a wiped memory card. my canines overgrew yet fixed themselves despite a thankfully broken promise that i would have to wear braces, no fittings & fixtures for me, thank you please, no drills, good luck finding a mouth doctor on the NHS in this privatised britain anyway, piano keys: i hope to never see the sharps and flats filing to a point or falling out one by one in someone else's nightmare. chew your food, bite and masticate, forgetting how to swallow a whole bacon slice on acid in a greasy spoon cafe; early in the morning at a table to myself, it's halfway down my throat and i think for a second that i'm going to choke to death in front of all these strangers as they calmly sit and eat their full english breakfasts when i retch up the offending morsel into a nearby napkin and calmly take my leave.

freeads freeads! princess slayer required! own carpet essential, forestry experience not neccessary, we will not take references from underwater chainsawing dendrochronologists or any of the following McJobs... please see the footnote encoded with microdot in the asterix. non-religous air hostesses wearing crucifixes are dispensing minature spirits to Inuits sitting next to Yorkshiremen with ferrets in the inside of their astronaut outfits, will all ticket touts help remove the apocalyptic naysayers from this food ration stamp collectors convention queue? yes! we do employ scottish tramps living on chichester roundabouts who really own mansions and turn up to your house party wearing your ex girlfriends clothes with hankerchieves threaded through the holes in their bleeding septums and stand in for acceptance speeches with emotional actresses who weep themselves unconscious i call this piece reefer pedestal regret... suspend your immaculate disbelief for a moment as you eat marmite and peanut butter sandwiches off my authentically medieval edible plate do you agree with leo sayer that brown should be a different colour? suggestions on a postcard to the usual address please! a whole army of men carrying pregnant amputees proceed to launch abortions from the safety of trenches behind enemy lines the advertising executive who came up with the crazy frog ringtone masturbates over pictures of himself as a child whilst double parked a bellyfull of butane and saltwater cracked trainers for sale we will deliver! send us all your credit card numbers and if one comes up lucky you win a hundred lottery tickets and / or six weeks in prison deidre says sword swallowers make bad bolimics send away for our easy three-step vomiting workout video and recieve a sponsored native american child for christmas FREE- batteries not included. has your life become too complicated? then simplify it NOW with our Japanese minimalist home lobotomy kit! only 9.99 plus post futuristic postage and packaging, also 9.99..... don't know anyone you can trust to keep secrets? try keeping them yourself! is that your final answer? and now the million pound question- can you guess what'll happen first? the sun exploding going supernova or your plastic ski boots decomposing? do you enjoy scratching off your scalp fragments? has squeezing spots given you more pleasure than sex ever did? are you the mental patient who tried to claim a back payment of carer's allowance claiming he was caring for himself? what do you want, some sort of medal? does mascara's f-word bring tears to your eyes?

scene two. i hate to be bitter, but i really hate christmas...... whilst my circle of friends visit their families and cook a roast i switch on the TV for some company and eat some toast and if i'm lucky i'll get stoned (despite this hash drought) i can't afford to smoke bud all fortnight so my friends sort me out but begging always leaves a sour taste in the mouth i find a day i'm not wasted is...well, a wasted day i ain't got the patience to sit still, let alone create in front of headache inducing screen if i'm not off my face so until then i'll make do with placebo reefers made of offcut leaves a couple of cups of coffee, maybe a box of codiene still i procured four beans for jesus's birthday, lets all celebrate now! and these days i can appreciate a good comedown instead of self pity i enjoy being monged out so i spent xmas on the internet in a dirty dressing gown... "the X in Xmas is a substitute crucifix for christ." "waxlit with what white noise looks like..." - it'll cause ructions else skeletal tree in ragged tinsel shedding pine needles we meant to throw it out last year. this entirely false smile is the best of my defence mechanisms- your life's had too many happy coincedences to really be plausible, hasn't it? 6:44 i can't fast forward the aquarium! 6:48 steve buys mutilated baby on E-Bay 6:49 its all fun and games till someone has their fucking eye out 6:50 or gets trapped on a melting ice chunk in the middle of the sea 6:53 the fourth floor suddenly collapses plummeting with the descending cries of last dancers 6:55 bobbing for apples in the deep fat frier.... again pot kettle last perogative a trip to the shops 6:57 now i believe in urban foxes raiding dustbins since i found a cadaver in the gutter of goldsmith avenue 6:59 the kelp and brine diet of a manatee bet striker five steps from the queen's speech podcast F when you wake up under the tree, know that you have been tattooed as a present. it's a guilt trip, whichever way you look at it. it's a stitch-up, it's christmas. "so when i went outside to find the entire city devoid of life and a thick layer of grey snow blanketing the concrete but you had to look closely to actually tell the difference: "its an ill wind..." "it's an ill wind..." "etc." having made several duplicates of myself on the photocopier and bought them to life weird science style with leads and wires and suchlike we set out across pompey: "it was bitterly cold." at the bus stop right by priory i find yasson who explains that he missed his last train and got stuck here yesterday and inbetween delirious giggles gurns and burps and fern patterns on frosted windows that we burnt our names in with lighters in a stadium rock way, a cold snap wasteland had by now drawn its veil over any recognisable landscape, the landmarks snowed in, and suddenly we hear approaching sleigh bells, we yell "SAVE US" and wave frostbitten hitchhiking thumbs and run towards the oncomer- the next bit happened all at once." the limp dangling intestine like umbilical chord. there are some things a man was not meant to see. his clockwork insides are one of them. and usually the last that you'll tick off the checklist. aforementioned, with a cheap pencil the lead breaks in every time you sharpen it. snap the end of that like the so-called unshatterable rulers in school the metre sticks that came crashing down on table waking up the lazy students in geography with mister putnam and his ill-advised moustache once this kid who lived over the road from me well, he stole some powder paint from the mostly senile art department the colour of this powder paint being white he decided to try and pass it off as speed to some first year on the bus but obviously got dobbed in but when mister putnam licked his finger and stuck it in the powder paint he said with some triumph: "that's definitely amphetamine!" that gives you an example of the average intelligence of the people supposed to be doing the teaching- but back to the intestine, i thought at first that i was pulling a fucking massive tapeworm out my gut... after i realised my mistake... it seemed too late to put the rest back in... so i'm lying on my back... making a snow angel in the grubby frost wearing the clothes i stole from a donation box. the rotten egged skeleton squashed sphere underfoot with a cracked achilles heel thick winter socks and two carrier bags in his shoes you were out in the woods following sound of duck call and trying to convince your dreaming mind your replica handgun was real when you came across afflicted man myself who explained that in times of sickness he cannot clutch his beercan any longer as it makes him drunker just knowing he'll be sipping from it in the future my predicament communicated i slumped against the lightning struck split bark of dead log and fell into a deep sleep but hardly decent the recurring themes are really beginning to do his head in you think as you navigate the landscape of memory lane schoolyards exes and too many faces from the past and trying to please everyone but failing even myself a broken greenhouse window low hanging ceiling flattened angles at odd edges in systems of plaster crevices you stare at fascinated by the reflected lights accompanying sirens on washed up rocks in your kitchen sink kids today can make up their own minds let's try and not patronise anyone but still say the limbo of flimsy limbed euphoria eats off edible plates from inexpensive supermarket pseudo greasy spoon cafes inferior to oversalted lap takeaways kept warm between knees on a long drive home whilst the TV food snob shops at mcdonalds as his secret vice moan all you like some people will never feel the way you do maybe you should stop trying to turn everyone into an earlier version of yourself out of some parental jealousy for lack of ballet classes you're skateboarding on thin ice i'm beguiled by the dim light unaware that i'm still trying to wind my emptied insides round the outside like a spare tyre... like so much dangling and exposed live wire. it begUn with bleeding gums, gastronauts, glitches and glue...... your gun is bleeding all over your shoes....... weeping for you....just for you..... just for you.... all over your shoes, yes, all over your shoes............ dissipated emancipating, the canoodling of distance beloved of saws..... the coughing of exhaust....... in great chugs reconstructed..... whilst staring disconcertedly out of the window........ overtly jingoistic followers of godbox arrest leaflet wielding man in balaclava on the escalator......... the weeping sore on his right shoulder was now bleeding profusely...... something gobbled up a child from your pushchair whilst you were staring at a hundred different televisions all showing the same channel but very slightly out of sync........... and you were just thinking of getting a new digibox to go with your newly purchased galaxy patterned curtain set... the main body of our work concerns sewer scouring in waste water.... the abandoned cafeterias below are infested with things you think don't exist...... he takes his job too seriously and i think at the end of the day you should be able to switch off. some people don't realise that life is going past them and not revolving around them, a paranoid man is the same....... thinking: how to reverse the curse that returns threefold to him? spit backwards into own gullet....... suck it up from the floor like a thirsting tongue hanging from a dogs mouth with half your childs face. i pushed mr. pugh down the language block flight of steps and there were no witnesses. (a warm, almost xmassy feeling in my stomach.) police weave some hex to give me amphibous attributes, then they dump me in the desert with a bunch of... rabid cockatiels? a shoplifting reputation: i trust my sources. fumbling for change, i'm not paying attention... as the shop becomes a classroom. the powder blue crayon, a padlock in your top pocket, a bible over your heart that could stop a projectile about halfway through psalms. to the long suffering bus driver, it's called a pecking order if you let it get it's claws in & the chickens see a spot of blood... fall billion, explode into feathered mosaic. the taxi pulled away expelling black smoke in great chugs like coughs from its exhaust. i sighed. my workmate was talking of some docu-drama he saw on tv last night, totally reconstructed crimewatch style and i paid half attention whilst staring disconcertedly out the window at the passing beggars in this year's fashion of glass eye and shitstained jeans. the main body of our work consists of sewer scouring in waste water. the abandonded cafeterias below are infested with things you think don't exist. you think you are so fucking clever i think as my partner arrogantly shoulders what is after all a kids water pistol. he takes his job too seriously and i think at the end of the day you should be able to switch off. soon the drug was added to smokestacks of old fashioned victorian design and the octave gores all, some people do not realise that life is going past them not revolving around them a paranoid man is egotistical in thinking that anyone cares what he's up to and if space were the same as infinty it would be physically impossible to be claustrophobic. hahaha now i am quite drunk draw an imaginary symbol in spit and dust. retch backwards into own gullet, fuckwit. its funny cause i thought at one point in my life that drug culture was actually a really positive thing. actually celibacy is the best form of rebellion, the greatest contribution i feel i could make to the human race is not helping to prolong it any further. he adds something to the water supply and makes us all dumb happy animals again, listen to the sound of torrrential downpour instead of downloading torrents collecting little digital things and relying on being a parasite on the gameshowhost of entertainment. and the baby boomers only piece of wisdom is "we used to make our own entertainment" hence the death of imagination and the same old recycled pigswill stagnant sewerwater concepts dribbling down / oozing out of walls and smart suits. note to self: JOIN CHURCH OF EUTHANASIA. eventually when city life became too much we fled for the woods, pursued by small puppet like monkey things from the company. stewart is taking one apart with a screwdriver and attempting to fit an old fashioned watch battery into its spinal column. sara fills her portable thermos coffee wineglass device right up to the scumline. back in town now, watching the battery run out on my flickering spaceage ipod mp3 wma dictaphone multimedia centre device hub i wonder who thought it was a good idea to make it say BYE BYE like a substitution for a real human being, ha. again i find much of this vacant technological friendliness somewhat of a slight, an insult to my intelligence or whats left of it. what the devil and miss pacman all fail to realise is that there is unparallelled beauty in cynicism. do you see jigsaw pieces overlayed on peoples faces or dream of top down car parks that you're playing columns in? does the building site pile of bricks become geometric shapes to your minds eye at night do tetris blocks fall behind your closed eyelids?

scene three the biggest bully takes the lunch money its simple playground economics and nothings changed since schooldays except the size of threats and menaces from faceless letter writers leeches hanging from their swollen ears a million missed calls curry your favour all saying censor me now... why i wish i had a debit card or overdraft to underpay i use my bank statements as kindling on a gasfire i am acutely aware of my status as only other living organism in this room when your sob story's just somebody else's makeshift curtain lack of motion is loitering when you've nowhere to go who corrects the spelling mistakes in library books in blue biro? who leaves the frowned upon midnight donations outside charity shops? i don't want to rock the boat or ride the fence there must be another option... i'm living out of carrier bags with virtual strangers trying to put names to faces of acquaintances just met playing mind games with best friends whose heads deserve better than endless re-runs of my neurotic eccentricities i was looking at a picture of a fist when then it hit me i'm a hypocrite it's one rule for me "and one for everyone else" it's a bulk of hours formulating in the earpiece of call centre workers tied tight to swivel chairs that are nailed to the floor it's telescopic peppercorn as condiments for moonwalkers and thats actually how distant that i feel that i am now let's make up and be friends so we can fall out again you know if it wasn't for the internet i'd probably be a book. all my little quirks all my gurantees are hot rocks dropped on cat in lap half-finished benefit forms means tested cross-examined and questioned for once honesty is the best defence i didn't realise how obvious my feelings were and are now i thought that i could crawl past boxed in cardboard and unnoticed when you burn a bridge then don't try and recross you know that anything gained can be reclaimed and lost (and i think i've become something less than human) ??? this mansion runs on loop of one way doors and revolving bookcases.... it shrinks to size of hamlet house i walk back & forth up and downstairs waiting for the change that is not forthcoming begging call return button and recieving silent empty space shaking coke machine until it's tilt function kicks in and you lose your multiball only to find the bearings bouncing after you as you turn to walk back down the street the clang of metal thud of concrete lock them in your wardrobe and just move out... a network of soot-stained alleys and smog-evolved developed moths led to some paranoid party pressing flesh claustrophobically against the expensive clothes of unfriendly strangers, an earlier dispute in wetherspoons with four stuck up spoilt brat drunk pseudo-WAG students led to an amusing case of mistaken identity when a roomful more entered all looking for us but got the wrong bunch as we slink subtley in into shadows and the icon representing my hiding status in the corner of my eye turns dark blue. we view the unfolding chaos with increasing unsettlement, a mess of broken heads spent condoms bottle fragments stomach contents and moans, over the girls' shoulder through the dirty glass what we can make out of this indicates the pressing need for a swift exit. the police appear from nowhere as usual spawning in a most unlikely location their panda cars landing upside down from top of mountain and they drag off daniel & david seperating major ruck. trailing them to an abandoned youth club next door through a squatter's knocked-in wall, the PC macks on and makes us all back off: "nothing to see here!" we realise the whole crowd has followed suit and our confused pursuers are now standing right behind us... daniel is released first, his scalp's fringe seeming to be cut into words in fine copperplate italics he claims just a coincedence but to me this is more interesting than inflated stories of supposed crime, police brutality and family disputes- i've heard them all before and they're usually done better on TV. sneaking upstairs through the library finding another useful shortcut we enter some armoury empty knights rusting away in each corner guarding doors that now only seem to lead to sheer drops off this crumbling fort, the next room an ordinary kitchen in westbourne. the interactive calender with a country and western theme spouts hologrammatic nonsense from our larder door. my foster mother was wrapping ripped off strips of red rizla round the filter of her fifty-fifth silk cut today. our jack russell and a mongrel of indetirminate origin called rusty looked up hopefully at a half-paralytic white haired meat man's plate. to the obese and incontinent moggy perched on the empty display cabinet above, his head resembled a wilting daisy... said cat then proceeded to relieve itself up my back, but i wasn't so mad at it when i realised i was a-wearing the green day t-shirt i stupidly swapped my gameboy for when i was thirteen. finally finding my way back to school after much repetitive re-treading of squares of carpet strapped with plastic belts to my feet, i'm second in the classroom and my early partner is this japanese girl whose vaguely attractive so i inconspicously roll up my purple shirt sleeve as if about to cheat on some ill-prepared for GCSE and try in vain to draw attention to my supposed to be black but going blue triforce tattoo assuming imaginary stereotype that all japanese people like zelda when in fact said symbol is some ancient religous sigil still found in ancient temples in the far east and the priests themselves could have been responsible for the slaughter of millions, which giving the essential nature of all religions seems likely, and i could have offended her ancestral memory and been none the wiser for this slight or misnomer. when every morning's a disappointing crunch of numbers on the digital clock stuffed in my styed eyed and sleep stained face and i realise it's right back to where i began again and we didn't get back together, it never happened and never will. the picture perfect pigtail drugstore wedding she looks prettiest when ill-prepared for rain, shielding her running make-up, sheltering in gravedigger's pub where my ex's lipsticked tag remained for an unfeasible many, it's hardly picnic weather inside my fantasising and out, i'm trying not to cling too hard to driftwood but it's so difficult staying afloat in a stream of saint elmo's fire, flotsam and lightning elementals, "if we'd all lived in stillwater frogspawned it would have been different" - "if we'd all lived in stillwater frogspawned then it wouldn't have worked at all" - i can still feel the ring on my finger when i wake up if i could just bring back one souvenier it wouldn't feel imaginary and i wouldn't feel so bad.