"Lost" Is Found!

Okay, if you don't watch Lost, don't read this, 'cause I'm not doing exposition or backstory.

If you haven't watched the two-hour season closer, don't read this 'cause there's spoilers all OVER the place.

Right,then...

How AWESOME was that! I am still buzzing and fizzing...sooooo many answers.


The Island moved! By means of Ben and a frozen donkey wheel! Like Conan the Barbarian's Wheel of Pain, though Ahnuld way buffer than poor scrawny Ben.

It seemed to sink like Stargate Atlantis. Where is it now? Will it pop up in the middle of shipping lanes?
Captain of cruise ship: Steady as she goes...WTF?!?!?!?
Island: Hi there!
First officer: We seem to be located three miles inland in the jungle on some island, next to a pirate ship.
Captain: Bloody hell.


Best line: "Couldn't find the anthuriums, could you..." And then Ben twiddles the flowers at Locke! Awesome.
Also: "So?"


Dear Pacific Ocean,
Thank you so very much for removing Sawyer's shirt. It was deeply appreciated. I wish you could have managed to remove his pants too, since it's hard to swim miles to shore wearing jeans. And if he'd been nekkid, his appearance to a beach-sitting Juliet would have nicely bookended his Season 1 ocean emergence to a beach-sitting Kate. Just like Venus emerging from the foam. Only with chest hair. But thank you anyway. I'm sure you did what you could and I'm grateful.
Sincerely,
Patricia


LOCKE IN A BOX! Wow. I did feel it would turn out to be so. I saw the foilers on Good Morning America, and was very very glad it wasn't Sawyer or Desmond. It was upsetting enough seeing them lying there like that.
But what about that obit for "Jeremy Bentham" which mentions he was from NY and had a teenage son? Did he adopt Waaaaalt?

VERY glad to see the end of Michael. Jin, not so much. Maybe he's not really most sincerely dead...maybe he jumped and got caught up in the Island's departure wake forcefield. Then again, Daniel Dae Kim was busted for DUI, and we all know what happens to Lost stars who drink and drive...RIP Ana-Lucia and Libby, see ya around. Three for three bite the dust. Yeesh. You'd think the actors could afford to hire drivers or take cabs when they've had too many mai tais...

Yunjin Kim's acting in the chopper absolutely brilliant. She's amazing.

And DesmondPenny! Cried like a baby. Now that they're together at last, I just hope TPTB leave them alone and don't have Widmore kill Desmond or anything.

I guess Des will now have to learn to keep his shirt buttoned. What a pity. And doesn't he look amazingly like the mid-period Eric Clapton??? Which is no bad thing. See you in another life, brother!

SUN! What a badass! So she blames two men for what I guess we must now accept (at least for now) as Jin's 'splody and fiery death. Her father, and....Widmore? That's what I think, though others have said Desmond, Kate (not a man, but still...) and Jack. I think it's Widmore she blames, and you notice she didn't answer him when he asked "Why are you helping me, Ms. Kwon?" Because she's NOT helping him, she's going to destroy him. Yay!

Loved SawyerMySawyer jumping from the chopper. He's a hero. Jack is just a jealous Jackassical wannabe. Lord, how I hate him, and his stupid-looking beard too.

Loved that Frank Lapidus made it off safely. He's cool.

The lying still bothers me. I know they want to protect the ones left behind, but plenty of people already know they're a lying bunch of liars. Widmore, Waaaaalt, Waaaaalt's grandma, the crew of Penny's boat, Abaddon, probly Oceanic itself...the secret must come out sometime. They could blow the whistle whenever they want.

Then again, what are the O6 gonna say? "Oh yeah right, we crashed on this magical time-travelling island that heals some people and kills others, and there were polar bears, and a big giant crazy-ass smoke monster, and equally crazy-ass multiple-murdering people living there already having book club sessions and barbecues in a cute little Spielbergville village, and pregnant women die, and dead people walk around, and magical black horses, and there was a crazy French lady, and an underwater station, and a valley full of pneumatic tubes, and a four-toed statue, and kids get kidnapped, and..." Well, okay, maybe not so much.

So few left on the Island now: Sawyer, Rose, Bernard, PossiblyDead!Claire and Locke are the only LostieClassics. Plus Losties 2.0: Juliet, Miles, Charlotte and Dan (we hope he made it back from the boat before the Island went walkabout). And maybe a few redshirts. And the plane kids kidnapped by the Others, whom we never saw again. And Richard the Changeless (oooooh Nestor Carbonell! He hot!) and the rest of the Others of New Otherton, who seem to have accepted Locke as their new king.

But all those answers and more questions too! Claire, she dead? Or just a self-serving dream of Kate's (who doesn't need to be told not to bring Aaron back to the Island)? How Ben got to Tunisia in a parka with the name Halliwax on it. He had to leave the Island because he moved it...did Widmore do the same, long ago? And did Locke, hence ending up dead in LA? Loved Sayid springing Hugo from the nuthouse...great hair, Future!Sayid. Will they all end up working for Ben now? How do they bring Locke back to the Island, since Ben says all of them must go back? Kate won't: she can't by terms of her parole (can't leave CA for ten years, and I doubt they'll flash forward that far), and wouldn't go anyway, she has a nice house with "her" son and doesn't have to worry about jail. Jack wants to, fine, sure, whatever, the pill-popping sot. Hurley maybe too. Sayid? Aaron? I doubt Sun will, unless it somehow furthers her revenge.

Sigh. What a great, GREAT finale. I am deeply content. And waiting patiently for February. Or maybe not so patiently.

A Salute...

and a moment of silence to honor those who wore the uniform:

My father, Joseph Kennely; my grandfather James McDonald; various great-grandfathers and great-uncles; my uncles James McDonald, Michael Antoniello, Gerard McCue, Gerard Harkin and Gerald Quinn; my cousins Roddy McCue, Peter Delvers and Gerald Quinn; my friend James Allen Davis; my not-friend Oliver Stone; my husband's father, George Stephen Morrison;

and all those who have served then and who are serving now.

Honor, respect and protection to all of them on this Memorial Day.

And to all those who protest the necessity and circumstances for them to serve at all.

Hold your own heroes in your heart.

Obama-lama-dingdongs...

I am sick and tired and disgusted beyond the point of barfdom by the pseudo-outrage generated by Barack Obama and his flying devil monkey squad of campaign advisors.

First, he gets jealously pissed off because, oh boo freaking hoo, President Johnson succeeded in passing an epic civil rights law and a black person didn't. And Johnson gets the credit! Wow! How racistly unfair! The honky fiend! How DARE that redneck Texan LBJ usurp the props of oh yeah right, that black president we DIDN'T HAVE AT THE TIME SO HE COULDN'T POSSIBLY HAVE PASSED IT.

Then one of Bammy's lackeys calls Hillary Clinton a monster, and gets, rightly, fired (you can't tell me she actually resigned out of honor...).

Now it's Hilary's own comment about how primaries and contesting candidates used to run all the way into June, you remember, when Robert Kennedy was assassinated.

And oooo-eeeee, the fur it is a-flying. The New York Times is being urged to rescind its endorsement of HRC. People are unloading such vituperation on her that would have been better dumped on Adolf Hitler. Here's a great bit from a poster on the NYT board, in SUPPORT of Hillary:

This is just so stupid; everything she says is not about Obama. It is true that Robert Kennedy won the California primary in June 1968; it is also, sadly true, that he was assassinated. It's just another trip to the fainting couch for these frail Obama supporters based on a statement by Clinton that had nothing to do with HIM. Even so, she did graciously apologize and made it VERY CLEAR that she did not intend any derogatory meaning by her words.

I am so tired of these tirades by Obama people and I've been a lifelong Democrat. I've had it. They trash Hillary's every move, try to hound her out of the race, demean her for staying in, and have fits of outrage over every remark. Their smelling salts strategy won't work against McCain and it won't work against world leaders. I'm not sure why it works against Hillary, but I'm fed up with Obama people.

You can have him but he's not getting my vote!


Brilliant. I've pretty much arrived at the same place myself. And for the first time I'm considering not voting the Democratic ticket if Obama is atop it but maybe, oh, I don't know, the Jedi ticket. Or writing in Bono.

Thanks to a spineless, gutless bunch of media whores, Obama is canonized and even deified. WITH NOTHING WHATSOEVER TO BACK IT ALL UP. He wants to have nice chats, without stiff pre-conditions, with the murderous thugs who run the terror countries. He has an inferior universal health plan. He doesn't seem to have a clue, being as he's so, oh you know, INEXPERIENCED, as to how to deal with the economy, the war or any number of hot issues.

But NOOOOOOOOOOO. BHO is hailed as the one to bring us the Second Coming. Me, I think he's more likely to bring us the Second Term of Jimmy Carter. Without the class.

And we're supposed to all fall on our backs and open our legs and pull the lever next to his name. Because he WAAAAAAANTS to be President, wannawannawanna! Never mind that he served in the Senate for about two and a half hours before deciding he deserved the Big Job and is prepared to pull some pretty unsavory stuff to get it. Because he's a half-black person who worshipped for two decades below the pulpit of a raving racist pig at whom Christ himself would throw a chair. Because, since spouses are apparently fair game, he's got a snobby, condescending bitch of a wife. Because he speaks the magic spellwords Imperio and Crucio, oops, sorry, I meant to say Change and Hope. Oh, please!

Listen, as I've said before, I would absolutely LOVE to see a black person become President. I just don't think it should be THIS black person. And I'm sick and tired of the fact that people who utter such apparent blasphemy are immediately tarred as racists by Barack's bleating lickspittle minions and gangs of half-assed liberals (and there are plenty enough to go round: Teddy Kennedy should be ashamed of himself, but perhaps that was the brain tumor talking) and starry-eyed students with no connection whatsoever to reality.

Yeah, yeah, we were starry-eyed too, in our day, in 1968, before people were ASSASSINATED. But those starry eyes were also beadily cynical and all-seeing. We had hopes for change, sure, but we also had a healthy quotient of suspicion, the big great uh-HUUUUH. We just couldn't get it together in time.

And I'm tired of seeing Hillary trashed by a bunch of fucking self-righteous half-educated yahoos for making simple historical factual comments. She wasn't advocating somebody take Bammy out. She was merely using RFK as a reference point in time. She said the same thing in a similar context back in January or February, and nobody's knickers went into a twist.

Geez! Get a grip, you morons. And though pretty much anybody is preferable to squicky old John McCain, I have to say, I'm really not looking forward to living in Obamaland come next January...

House of the Rising Sun

Today I spent the afternoon being interviewed for Japanese television. About Jim, of course, but with a difference: the documentary they're doing is one of a series, each about a specific artist or band with emphasis on a specific song. Which makes for a pleasant change from the usual Jim-doc topics, to say the least.

The crew and interviewers couldn't have been more delightful. We filmed in a tiny place in the West Village called Caffe Vivaldi, an old-school coffeehouse (but only 25 years old, not a centenarian like Jim's and my favorite place, Cafe Reggio...). The interviewer, a lovely woman called Marie, and the director were the only people who spoke English, though the others seemed to understand quite a bit, so there were many bows on all our parts to carry us over the moments. Formal courtesy and etiquette are very important to me, and I love Japanese bowing, which seems to really focus one's attention on the other person or persons. And it was fun to listen to them speak Japanese among themselves, even though all the Japanese I know I learned from reading "Shogun." So I just said 'arigato gozimash'ta' a lot...

I got to talk a lot about Jim and music and the Doors, which made me very happy. Also about the Sixties, and being a woman on the forefront edge of the great wave of rock just starting up, and how I and other women (so few of us there were) managed to surf it without wiping out.

They're going to be talking to a bunch of other people, of course, so I doubt I'll be in it for more than a couple of minutes. They also interviewed my friend the writer Michael Lydon, who was there with me back in the day (check out his book "Flashbacks", about some major Sixties scenes; fantastic writer and thoroughly nice individual; he's a musician, and plays gigs around the Villages here, East and West), and I would guess they'll try to talk to the surviving Doors themselves.

What pleased me most was being able to give credit to the band for being the superlative musicians they are; you don't hear their names mentioned a lot, sadly, when the lists are being made of great rock guitarists or drummers or keyboard players. But they were, and I've always been scrupulous to give them major props where props were due. (Too bad they don't seem able to return the courtesy where I'm concerned---except John---but there it is. I'm certainly not going to diss them out of spite because of it...) But as I say, I don't often get asked about the band's musical importance, both then and now, and it was nice to do what I could to put them in their proper perspective.

But Jim, of course, was the focus of the interview, and it was even nicer to do what I could to help dispel the erroneous and all-pervasive image. And nice that that was what the intent seemed to be, again a huge change from other interviewers.

As I said, lovely people, and I hope it will all translate into a fine and thoughtful documentary.

(And isn't it interesting that I, Patricia Morrison, am the one continually being invited to appear on these programs. Not the desperate and demented harridans who continually rail and screech against me on Doors boards...you'd think this kind of cred would go a long way to settling this stupid idea of how "unimportant" I was in Jim's life... )

It was also most pleasant to be treated as a professional from back in the day, not a rockwife, not a groupie, not just someone who was on the scene but someone who commented on the scene and someone who even helped create the scene.

For the fashionistas: I wore a black shirt with dark leggings, and my hair up. Jewel porn alert: wore Jim's silver and turquoise Navajo squash blossom necklace with a choker of turquoise chunks the size of eggs, and the tiny Victorian diamond heart Jim gave me, double-pearl drop earrings, our claddagh rings, my emerald engagement ring and the silver ring with a crowned lizard on one side and a wolf's head on the other, for us, set with a 20-carat white sapphire, that was my present for Jim being dead 25 years (I felt he owed me a major rock...).

I also allowed them to see some of Jim's private poetry to me; and even recited a little from it. Fair use, people! And nothing that's not posted here or that I haven't shared so previously. Well, maybe one or two things. Especially several lines where he addresses me, in his own handwriting, as his wife. I never get tired of reading those...as well you might imagine.

Anyway, thank you, Marie and Sho and Taku and the rest of your colleagues, for a rewarding and satisfying afternoon. You made it very easy for me...

So afterwards, I treated myself to a nice lobster for dinner (from The Lobster Place on Bleecker Street, already steamed and ready to eat, a little pricey at 15 bucks a pound and I went for a one and a quarter pounder, but a rare indulgence, and I'd worked hard for two hours and thought I deserved it), and some lemonade to go with, and a bunch of purple hyacinths whose fragrance is even now filling the whole room.

Then I watched the "Ugly Betty" and "Grey's Anatomy" season closers, and now I'll work on "California Screamin'" for a bit, since I'm totally wide-awake. And it's the gym tomorrow for sure.

This very day, the 22nd of May, in 1970, Jim called me at Jazz & Pop, in the afternoon, just to chat. He did that often, but for some reason, that day, it just made me explode into a puddle of light and warmth and joy when Laura, the magazine secretary, announced that he was on the phone for me. It was nice to remember that today, and to feel his presence at the interview...and I wasn't the only one who sensed it...

McCain Scrutiny

There's an excellent piece by Frank Rich in today's NYTimes, on John McCain and what a tool he is (I'd post a link, but I lack the skillz). Check it out.

Which reminded me of a little bit of McCain history that he's been getting a free pass on from the media...you might even remember it.

The time he called his wife a cunt in public.

Yes, that's right, the old POW hero actually lost it with his (much younger, much richer) spouse so badly as to viciously snap at her the worst, most offensive word anyone can use to a woman.

Leaving aside why we use physiological words as snarling epithets (prick, cunt, cocksucker...), which is a blog unto itself, I have to say I am really interested in the dynamics of this incident, and in what it says about McCain, whom I hate with the fire of a thousand burning suns. Nay, a million.

Here's a piece I found online, about a related incident from May 2008:

A man attending a McCain event as a registered member of the press was kicked out of the Des Moines town hall meeting for asking a question that working press should have asked him weeks ago: Did you call your wife a "cunt"?

The headline is typical of the kid glove treatment McCain gets from the media. McCain didn't "field the question" he kicked a member of the press out of his town hall meeting for asking a question:


McCain fields audience question on whether he called wife an expletive


REGISTER STAFF • May 1, 2008


A Clive man drew gasps from fellow audience members at today’s presidential candidate forum by using a four-letter word in a question to Sen. John McCain.


A member of the audience, identified as Marty Parrish of Clive, asked McCain during the event at the Polk County Convention Complex about a rumor that McCain had once used a profane word referencing female genitalia to describe his wife.


A book, “The Real McCain” by Cliff Schecter, accuses McCain of using the word in an exchange with his wife, Cindy, in 1992.


Here’s a transcript of today’s remarks:


PARRISH: This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I’ve been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a (expletive)?


MCCAIN: Now, now. You don’t want to … Um, you know that’s the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don’t, there’s people here who don’t respect that kind of language. So I’ll move on to the next questioner in the back.


The audience gasped at the question and applauded at McCain’s handling of it. Parrish was escorted from the event and questioned by Secret Service, but not charged. Parrish had checked in to the event as a member of the press.



Parrish, a 45-year-old Baptist minister and technology business owner, said he attended the event specifically to confront McCain about the rumor.


“This is about character,” Parrish said, when reached by telephone afterward. “And in a moment of intemperance, he called his wife the most despicable name a person can call a woman.

Notice McCain didn't have the guts to answer the question. The word "no" was not, last I checked, considered profane even in Des Moines.

It's not like the McCain campaign has a policy of not responding to the cunt allegation. McCain had his spokeswoman accuse Schecter of fabrication in the New York Daily News when the Scheter's book came out:


McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker brands the book "trash journalism" and tells us, "The story is completely fabricated." [NYDN]

McCain was implicitly warning the rest of the media not to ask him questions that make him mad.

Takes a big man to send out your spokesman to defame an author and kick a preacher/citizen journalist out of your town hall meeting.

McCain is a petty little coward whose toadies are crying "ambush" for a question about an allegation that was published over three weeks ago, addressed by a campaign spokeswoman, and discussed extensively in the media and online.

This is exactly the kind of bullying that lends further credence to Cliff Schecter's account and the many other examples of McCain's peevishness, intimidation, and rage he chronicles in his book, The Real McCain.



Man! This guy is dangerously unstable. Not to mention a misogynistic beast. Can you imagine the repercussions if he used the same word against a female head of state he disagreed with? I'd love to have seen him pull that on Margaret Thatcher or Benazir Bhutto...they'd have had his nuts for earrings, and rightly so.

But the larger horror remains. He called his own wife a cunt. The context was as follows: she had been teasing him for his hair getting a bit thin in the thatch, maybe a tad bit cruel, okay. And then he comes back with "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

Nice! And despite the above story claiming that this was discussed "extensively" in the media, I didn't see it. And I read a LOT.

So where oh where is the journalistic outrage, the outcry of the citizens? Quashed, nonexistent. Muffled at best.

This should have been plastered across college newspapers coast to coast. And regular journalistic outlets as well. Any man who could lose his temper so far as to call his own wife a vile name in public is not a man to be trusted on any level.

He's no statesman: he blatantly lies about his own voting record, and he still cravenly supports the now utterly disconnected (possibly even clinically so) Chimpy (yea, verily, even on that horrible piece of legislation about denying children, CHILDREN!, an extension of health care benefits that would have cost about an hour of his private little war). McCain's a piece of feculent vermin, the cloaca of iniquity.

And I want to see him trodden underfoot in November. I want to see the Boot of Karma, the Foot of Pride, come down on him and squish him into the dirt like the utter cockroach that he is.

That's all.

Spring Running

It's a strange thing, but the first week of May, right on up to around the 12th or 15th or so, has always been unusually evocative for me.

It isn't necessarily even connected with some major event, like Jim proposing, which of course put a mythic longing and achingly reminiscent spin on the first week of May forever. Could just be a cool, windy, rainy day, with the new ridiculously green leaves and the white blossoms on the pear trees all flying.

But there's something about the quality of the air, and the way it smells and feels, as it transitions from one season to the next, that just sandbags me, buckles my knees, the freshness of it, and the light, that gets me every time. Makes me want to weep, and also exalts me clean out of myself.

Even when I was a kid. As some of you may have noticed from reading my books, I'm a big fan of weather and seasons. Right up there with jewelry and hair. And it isn't just spring that can haunt me right there in the middle of itself.

Autumn does the same, even better; and winter, only different of course. It's only summer that doesn't grab me the same way, mainly because I hate the heat and humidity. But even summer can do it: an afternoon with a thunderstorm on the way, everything all hot and thick and waiting, the leaves are so thick and green they smell like milk. And then when the storm finally hits, the gaspingness of it, the smell of the rain on hot stone pavement or roads, the wind that's like a slap in the face.

But these few middle weeks of spring are to me the most poignant, damn near unbearable, as they change and slip away for another year. And I just felt like talking about it.



(I hope at least one or two fellow Kipling fans caught the title...)

Block Island

Well, it's not BLOCK, exactly. It's just that I'm having a really, reeeeeeally hard time with "California Screamin': Murder at Monterey Pop." If, indeed, I can say that about a book that's already 80,000 words long.

I'm very, very happy with the characters and what they're doing/how they're growing; that part's easy. But the mystery part...giving me unbelievable trouble! And I don't know why.

I have NEVER had such problems with a book before, and perhaps, after publishing ten, and writing at least as many again (a huge, annotated book about Jim, me and spirituality which will probably never be published; a kid's book that my editor deemed too sophisticated for kids and not meaty enough for YA, but would have been illustrated by Tom Canty; the Viking book; plus all the Rennie ones currently in various stages of completion), I guess maybe I was due for a rough patch. My books have all come so INCREDIBLY easily, always, that I just figured a book of mine always would...

And this one too. Until now.

Admittedly, the murders are fairly complex this time, with a veritable fishmonger's stall of red herrings. Without giving too much away, the murderees and murderers are deeply intertwined and interconnected, and hopefully you won't guess First Murderer until the big reveal at the end. But maybe you will. And I'm still stuck on how Second Murderer is discovered. And Third Murderer.

The rest of the book I'm really proud of. There's some very nice music writing, if I do say so myself, about the Festival itself: the actual, real bands as well as the big breakthrough appearances of Turk, Prax and Tansy, and the local color. Plus the growth of Rennie as a person, and some cameos by people like Janis Joplin and Jerry Garcia, and some new characters I'm very pleased with and hope you will be too.

Alas, it won't be out in June, as I in my traha had recklessly boasted. But since the third book is done, I still hope to have both of them out this year.

It's the figuring out the denouement of the mystery angle and the reveals that has me all knotted up. But, tempting though it is to use the Gordian Plot Device ("And then the sun went nova and everybody died! The End."), I'll make them bend to my will yet. You'll see.

And, by Gwydion, god of writers, and Kwang Gung, god of war and literature, so will they.

Potato, Potahto...

I have been following, with horror of several different sorts, the story of the cyclone disaster in Burma. First off, the appalling loss of life and property, and the equally appalling backwardness of the government in not allowing foreign aid workers in. Though when Shrub starts stuttering about US Navy warships standing off the coast willing to "help" I can sort of see why they want no part of it.

But yes, that's right, I said Burma. I absolutely refuse to call that poor sad lovely country by the name given it by the bunch of repressive thugs that run it.

In this, I take my cue from the Times of London, which calls it Burma loudly and proudly in all its coverage, and I want to smack all the newspapers and TV and radio stations in this country who cravenly cave in and call it by the unattractive, thug-conferred moniker of "Myanmar."

You'd think that since our own government is so allegedly opposed to the ruling junta, they wouldn't accept the imposed name. And yet they do. Go figure. While all the exile organizations and exiles I've seen in print and on TV unambiguously call their land Burma. They should know what its true name is...

Hey! BURMA BURMA BURMA BURMA BURMA! So much more evocative...can you imagine Kipling writing "There's a Myanmar girl a-sittin'" by that old Moulmein pagoda while the dawn comes up like thunder out of...what, Vietnam 'cross the bay? No, you can't. At least I can't.

I dislike being so railroaded. Which is also why I don't cotton to the damn Pinyin system of Chinese transliteration. Why in the name of hot horse-apples must we use the unlovely and unpronounceable romanizations such as Xi and Qi?

I don't know about you, but when I see Xi and Qi and Qan I say Zee and Kwee and Kwan. If the Chinese want us to say Shi and Chi and Chwan, then they should damn well let us spell them like that. It makes no difference anyway, since it's different letters and different alphabets, so why not go for the simplest orthographical solutions?

Again, a bunch of stubborn, repressive, ingrown, sullen thugs. Let 'em eat lo mein. As long as they don't start trying to spell it differently.

And Then He Kissed Me

But first he asked me to marry him. On a lovely spring afternoon in Central Park, under a flowering pear tree, on a grassy lawn the color of the emerald he gave me.

Thirty-eight years ago today. And it seems like...today.