XCOM

I finished a round of XCOM: Enemy Unknown for the XBox 360 yesterday.  I don't finish much on the XBox (or the Wii, or the PS2 for that matter). I'm just not willing to dedicate the time, even when I'm laid up in bed for a month or two.  I did finish all the achievements in Minecraft, but you can't really finish that game, you just wear out.  The same can probably be said of Skyrim and definitely of Call of Duty. XCOM is a fond memory for me, because back in 1994 and 1995 (around the time we were moving between Richfield and St. Louis Park) I played a lot of XCOM: UFO Defense and Terror from the Deep.  The new one doesn't bring back the joy I had when I was twenty years younger and it looked like this.  I found myself a little disappointed because I missed the buttons and the imaginative detail I put into the less well rendered soldiers.  But I renamed quite a few of the soldiers to compensate.  Kyle died twice, and only Kyle III was around to participate in the end, although he was back at base recuperating.  And a combination of a sniper named after myself and a psionic solider named after Amy from Doctor Who (red hair, despite a Japanese last name) won the game.  Eryn got into it when she realized I'd renamed the characters and that they'd been developing a bit of history over the course of the game.  She's started playing now that I made it through it once.

Given how much time it takes to win these games, I wonder that I ever had the time to play through these not once, but many times each.  I was working hourly wages about 50-60 hours a week at the time.  It gets stranger for me when I realize 1995 was four years before I started at my current job as a contractor (I went full time about two years later), so in 1996-1997 I had been at my first full time contracting gig for a year.  That seems about right given I remember how excited I was when VB 5.0 came out in 1997.  This computer technology is one to two years older - max, probably less than a year for Terror from the Deep - than when I started working as someone who programmed computers with Visual Basic 4 (16 bit).

And yet, here I am again, finishing a game of XCOM.

L7

It never occurred to me to look up the history of some of the bands whose songs we used to play so often on Rockband and Rockband 2.  But today I was listening to The Current and they played Pretend We're Dead by L7. So I looked up the band on Wikipedia, and was treated to these amusing anecdotes in the controversy section:

During their performance at the 1992 Reading Festival, the band experienced "technical difficulties with their audio equipment" and were forced to stall their set. Quickly, the rowdy crowd grew restless and began throwing mud onto the stage. In protest, lead vocalist Donita Sparks removed her tampon on-stage and threw it into the crowd yelling "Eat my used tampon, fuckers!". Sparks has remained unapologetic about the incident. This has been referred to as one of the "most unsanitary pieces of rock memorabilia in history". 

In 1992, Sparks again created quite a stir[citation needed] in Britain when she dropped her pants on live television, appearing nude from the waist down, during an L7 performance on the UK variety program The Word. 

In 1999, the band raffled a one-night stand with drummer Dee Plakas at a London gig.

Update: even better, you can enjoy a bit of it live on YouTube!

Bicycling and the Hip

Not that I didn't already know it, but the last two days called out that bicycling indoor on a trainer and bicycling outside in the wind, ice, hills, and drifting dirt, one a machine that requires balance instead of being strapped to a stand, are very different beasts.  I can feel the stressed muscles in my upper legs with only 24 miles of bicycling commuting.  Not just the left hip where the plates are.  There's a little bit of an ache there.  The right one too, and moreso on that side.  I think perhaps because the right leg is now in charge of compensating for what the left leg feels it deserves a pass on.  Maybe I'll end up like Homer when he only lifted a barbell with one arm.

Biking Season 2013

My new-ish bicycle, parked outside work for the first morning this year.  No trailer yet.  Didn't seem necessary.  I'll get it hooked up this weekend in case I need it.  It was cold enough out that I could wear work clothes and not worry about sweating through everything, even with fleece pants and a ski jacket on.  It did create a potential problem for lunch because we were all going out with Sean for his second-to-last day as a contractor, and bicycling to lunch is slow, but Sean gave me a ride in his classic (e.g. cheaper) Jaguar.  Nice lunch - we did the all you can eat sushi in Eagan.

The only big issue on the way to work was the ice on the trails.  Over by Glacier Hills, on the hill, there was enough ice that I just started louge-ing at one point.  Scary if you're on a bike with a laptop on your back.  The bike is great.  I'm not exactly shooting along at top speeds, but it was a replacement for my mountain bike and carries me along at a comfortable 10 mph, just like the mountain bike did.

Amusingly, or disturbingly, once I got to work and swapped from my leather boots (thank you internet for recommending them as appropriate footwear) to my brown dress shoes, this fell out of my dress shoe.  50 weeks later, and I'm still finding safety glass from the Mustang.  I didn't keep this piece.  I have my bag full of glass and a picture is sufficient.

Double Feature

It's spring break and we didn't make any plans to go anywhere, so when I had the day off, I took Eryn to two movies.  We went to the animated movie The Croods and G.I. Joe: Retribution.  That is just a weird double feature.  I really enjoyed The Croods and I didn't think I would.  Primarily because Nick Cage usually takes a few approval points off the top of anything.  But it was a very good daddy-daughter movie, and although it lacked a bit in story quality, it was a beautiful movie.  Whomever was in charge of textures - the water and the smoke - did a wonderful job.  I think they were better looking than the real thing.

As for G.I. Joe, Eryn really enjoyed it so it was amusing.  She compared it to a game of Call of Duty and thought The Rock's cupcake shooting gun (for shooting cupcakes, not like it had cupcakes as projectiles) was funny.  Toward the end, I mentioned that Cobra Commander must actually be Heinz Doofenshmitz behind his silvery, face-concealing mask because all of his satellites came with a very obvious self-destruct button. In that metaphor, Perry the Platypus was played by Dwayne The Rock Johnson.

Book Meme III - Horror

This was difficult.  Extremely difficult.  I'm just not a voracious horror reader, despite reading a bit of everything.  And when I do read horror, I'm very critical.  It's the lowest rated category in my book list, primarily because I'm supposed to find it frightening, and usually I find it boring.  I remember liking it much more as a teenager when Christine, The Stand, It, and Pet Semetary were new and I was still coming off a childhood of Hammer films and Soylent Green.  The only thing to make me nervous as an adult was a movie, not a book.  I went to Dawn of the Dead alone close to midnight in 2004 when it came out, and when I walked out the back of the theater into an empty lot I was a bit twitchy.


The last horror book I read was:
Law 101: Everything You Needed to Know About American Law by Jay M. Feinman.  Actually, Horns by Joe Hill.  Enjoyable, but not great.  I do like him better than Stephen King.

The horror book I am reading right now is:
I am not.

The next horror book I will read is:
Probably the new Joe Hill book, Nos4A2

The last horror book I didn’t finish was:
I almost didn't finish The Cipher by Kathe Koja.

I didn’t finish it because:
It gets a little weird for a little too long and the language requires some work in my opinion.

The last horror I recommended to a friend was:
I never recommend horror books to friends.  Although I have told my wife a few times whether something was ok to read, like a Stephen King book (I think I told her Under the Dome and Cell were ok reads).

The last horror book someone recommended to me was: (Did you enjoy it?)
I truly think the last horror book someone recommended to me was Pet Semetary in high school.  And I did enjoy it at the time.  Someone recommended The Last Gunslinger series to me, but I consider that fantasy and I didn't really enjoy it.

My favorite horror novel is:
This is truly the lowest rated category in 17 years of tracking what I read.  The Living Dead edited by John Joseph Adams was good, lots of short stories about zombies, but only about 1/4 of it.  1/4 of that book was truly excellent reading.  The other 3/4 not so much.  I suppose it can't be my favorite then, because even if I gave it a 10, the other 3/4 drags it down to a 2.5?  I think John Dies in the End is my favorite I can remember recently, although I disliked the sequel.  I do like the classics: Frankenstein, Sleepy Hollow, Dracula, and The Mountains of Madness.  One of the scariest endings I remember to a book was A Handful of Dust.  It gave me the sort of feeling I imagine I'm supposed to get from slasher movies.

An underrated horror author is:
I think most horror is overrated: King, Koontz, Lumley, Brooks (Max that is, as in World War Z).  So I'm going to go with zombie SHORT stories are underrated.  There are some gems if you read enough of them, but you have to put in some time and get past a sizable selection of turds.

My favorite sub-genre of horror is:
Using this list from Wikipedia, comedy horror and science fiction horror.

Book Meme Part II - Fantasy Category

I didn't think this one through thoroughly.  There's a lot of things I read that are fantasy that I don't usually think of as Fantasy.  Harry Potter.  The Magician King by Grossman (recommended by Larry, loved both books). Illearth Series. Pratchett (I put off reading some of the Discworld books so I always have some to go back to.  It's the reverse of worrying about whether an author will die before he completes a series.  I almost died before I completed what was available of Pratchett).  Bradbury.  And I had to go back and update for Bull, Mieville, and Gaiman, which is inexcusable.  I'm not sure why I don't think of them as fantasy...apparently I have a prejudice where I stereotype fantasy as elves, dwarves, Terry Goodkind, and Tad Williams Green Angel Tower trilogy (see the bottom - you can slot this into never read, even though I pawned it off on Kevin).

The last fantasy book I read was:
Elfstones of Shannara.  Read it out loud to Eryn.  I had some criticisms, but he uses Awesome much less often in the Sword of Shannara.

The fantasy book I am reading right now is: 
Wishsong of Shannara.  Reading it out loud to Eryn.  She's annoyed that one of the characters says "For Cat's Sake" so often.  Not nearly as good as Frack! or the Firefly swear words:

The next fantasy book I will read is: 
Maybe I'll just celebrate being done with 1150 pages of the Shannara trilogy.  Once again, I don't have anything queued up.  I'm moving to Law 101 and PMP studying.  A bit of nonfiction.  Wait..that's a lie.  I'm going to finish reading Felix Palma's Map of the Sky.  I ordered it from the library yesterday.  Could be construed as science fiction, but it's more fantasy than scifi in my opinion.

I also have a copy of Neil Gaiman's Fragile Things sitting on the table that I checked out yesterday, although it'll have to wait until after PMP.  And I'm way past due for a Jasper Fforde book and a Discworld book.

The last fantasy book I didn’t finish was:
Palma's Map of the Sky.

I didn’t finish it because:
Library requested it back, and I've been reading it slowly, partially because I had to finish The Map of Time before I started it.

The last fantasy I recommended to a friend was:
The Rook - recommended it to Kevin.

The last fantasy book someone recommended to me was: (Did you enjoy it?)
Larry recommended The Leviathan Trilogy, which is steampunk, which I categorize as fantasy.  I liked it enough that Eryn and I read it together again for evening reading time.  NPR recommended Robopocalypse: A Novel, which is likely classified as scifi, but feels like out and out fantasy or a horror-related zombie riff to me.  NPR is dumb.  It sucked.  Hard. Kevin said that whole Hunger Games thing was good when he saw me with the book in St. Peter.  Once again, border line between scifi and fantasy.  I didn't enjoy it - I'm still sort of mad I read it from a literary perspective, although from a modern cultural perspective, at least I have something to complain about when someone tells me how great it is.

My favorite fantasy novel is:
I came back to this question!  I do have an absolute favorite, War for the Oaks by Emma Bull.  Magic Realism in Prince's Minnesota.  Ananasi Boys and American Gods - e.g. anything by Gaiman.  And ALMOST anything by China Mieville.  The Scar, Perdido Street Station, and Iron Council, but NOT Kraken.

[Old Answer: Lord of the Rings.  It's got historical/english professor undertones...or overtones.  And although I'm older now and I know it's not as good as I remember at the time, the Song of Albion trilogy by Stephen Lawhead was my favorite for a long time.]

An underrated fantasy author is:
I'd rather state I think George R. R. Martin and Robert Jordon are overrated, and there's almost nothing I'd read in top 20 authors on the Amazon fantasy list.

I think Emma Bull has always been underrated.  She's wonderful.  That whole circle of authors she's involved with (Gaiman, Shetterly, et al) is excellent.

My favorite sub-genre of fantasy is:
If I use this list, probably Alternate World followed by Arthurian followed by Juvenile.

Should add two questions...don't ever read... and favorite fantasy film:
Per above, stay away from that damn Tad Williams trilogy.  It's boring, and a LOT of boring.  As for movies, Princess Bride and Spirited Away (anyone ever say anything different unless they're LoTR uber fans?) are at the top of my list.  I don't think Grave of the Fireflies is fantasy, or I'd rank it higher than either.  Are superhero movies fantasy movies?  This all gets very grey...

It's been a long time, and I've been meming to meme...

John DeNardo posted a meme over at the SF Signal.  It asks questions about scifi, fantasy, and horror, so I'm going to break it down into three parts.  Part I, the Scifi Book Meme:


The last science fiction book I read was:
The Hydrogen Sonata by Iain Banks.  I read a lot of Banks and Scalzi.  I read Redshirts while I was recovering my card accident last year.

The science fiction book I am reading right now is:
Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson

The next science fiction book I will read is:
I'm not sure.  I'm not currently queued up and I want to finish Law 101 and getting ready for my PMP, so it'll be a short gap, even with my 50 pages a day (average) rule for 2013.

The last science fiction book I didn’t finish was:
Subterranean Scalzi Super Bundle

I didn’t finish it because:
It's a mix of scifi and nonfiction about writing, so I'm reading it in chunks over a very very long period of time.  Like one chunk between each other book I read, and there are a lot of chunks.

The last science fiction I recommended to a friend was:
Banks to my wife.  The Expanse series (James S.A. Corey) to Erik.  Soft Apocalypse (Will McIntosh) to Ming.  I don't think Ming read it, although he liked 2030 when I recommended that book.

The last science fiction book someone recommended to me was: (Did you enjoy it?)
Larry recommended Constellation Games by Leonard Richardson.  I am enjoying it.  I like the quote (among many excellent pieces of writing), "You are employed by a suspicious number of douchebags!"

My favorite science fiction novel is:
Probably Orwell's 1984, although I don't usually classify it as science fiction.  But I always pair it with Zamyatin's We, and that's definitely science fiction.  I rave about War With the Newts by Karel Capek all the time.

An underrated science fiction author is:
Terry Pratchett.  He gets props for his fantasy, but The Long Earth (with Stephen Baxter) was underrated.  It was a good book and I particularly liked that my family liked it, both my wife and daughter.  Eryn liked it enough that she used it for a school project.  I'd say the same about A. Lee Martinez and Emperor Mollusk versus the Sinister Brain (also a favorite of Eryn after I recommended it).

My favorite sub-genre of science fiction is:
Hard science fiction.  I like it technical.  Technical enough to bother other casual scifi readers.  I also like historical.  Not a sub-genre as in books about the past, but rather I like reading older scifi like War With the Newts, Wells and Verne, Sturgatskys' Roadside Picnic (another candidate for favorite), and dystopias that span history and were perhaps thought of as scifi in their time.

Malaysian Booty

No, not taut, sweaty, pumping Malaysian buttocks.  That's already been done.  These are the things my friends brought me back from Malaysia after visiting relatives for the Chinese New Year.

Soon brought me back two ornaments.  Or at least that's what they are now.  They went into the Christmas tree storage area so they make it onto our Christmas tree.  Baby Jesus would approve I think.


Here's the other one.  I really like the knotting on this one, and the dragon on the other one.  However, the threading hanging off the bottom of this one reminds me of the two colors of beads your earn in the Boy Scouts.


And he brought Eryn a craft project.  So I made the first one.  I apologize that part of his hat is on backwards in this photo.  Soon said they're the Fu Lu Shou.

Fu Lu Shou (simplified Chinese: 福禄寿; traditional Chinese: 福祿壽; pinyin: Fú Lù Shòu) is the concept of Good Fortune (Fu), Prosperity (Lu), and Longevity (Shou). This Taoist concept is thought to date back to the Ming Dynasty,[1] when the Fu Star, Lu Star and Shou Star were considered to be personified deities of these attributes respectively. The term is commonly used in Chinese culture to denote the three attributes of a good life.

I could have used that Good Fortune one last year prior to the accident.  Hopefully he'll do me some good this year.  But Soon said the one I built is definitely not longevity, so I better get on it.  I don't really want to be prosperous, lucky, and dead.
 

And Ming, Ming brings me food.  Which is very cool.  I haven't tried any of it yet.  I've sort of been saving it for sometime special.  Like a Durian and biscuit/cookie coffee break when Kyle comes over.  We can sit around, drink a big, steaming cup of sugared, creamer-laden, durian goodness and reminisce about that time we saw Jean Luc at that cafe' in Paris.  I thought about dropping in "durian" for vanilla in the Jean Luc commercial, but I'm too lazy for that, and they'd probably sue me for use of something that's not under creative commons. (Hey! Giles is a sexy Nescafe coffee guy!)

Soon Ming.  They won't sit there for a year.  I promise to try everything.

WTF

I really enjoyed today's The Daily WTF, Accounting for Development.  Primarily because it once happened to me as a contractor.  I wasn't an accountant, but I was told the job I was interviewing for - and it was a two-way interview in my opinion, most contracting gigs were - would be bypassing IT.  The team I was talking to needed a new application, but couldn't convince IT to implement it on their time schedule.  They'd found some money in their budget, and wanted to use it "during the fiscal year" (which I interpreted to mean there might be money to start their project, but not necessarily to finish it) to show off what IT wasn't building and that they could build without them. I wouldn't be referred to as a developer, just a "consultant", and I couldn't use corporate images or database instances, because then IT would find out and put a stop to it and "they have more corporate clout in our organization."

I politely declined the gig, which really annoyed my contracting placement rep - although the fact that I'd been sent alone spoke a bit to faith in my ability to sell myself and make good decisions - until I pointed out we'd lose all other contracts with that rather large company had I said "yes".  I've often wondered if they ever found someone willing to take on their IT-flanking object and how miserable that person must have been once the inevitable political fight erupted.

Pen Response

Larry sent me back a gift for the big box of pharmaceutical pens I sent him.  I like his gift better.  Enoch Arden by Alfred Lord Tennyson.  And a neat copy - all worn and leathery.  Odysseus as a fisherman turned merchant.  I'll have to read it as soon as I'm done with the half dozen books I currently have queued up.  I've read myself into a trap that it's going to take me a month to read out of, if I'm studious, and that doesn't include rereading PMP materials for my test.

This is the postcard that came with the book.  Larry is big on postcards.

Dark Bread

My sister sent me this a while ago.  Originally, I was worried about what he was up to, trying to cook bread with a flashlight.  That's just not enough heat.  Then, after I'd looked at it for a while, I was much more disturbed that he's trying to cook a yeast-based product in a room with that much junk on the table and a washer (and presumably dryer) in the room.  I'd be worried about my loaf tasting like old socks.

If you're up for it, please leave your submission for a caption contest in the comments commemorating my father and his strange behavior.  Something like, "I've been standing here for a week, and the loaf still isn't browning."  Or, "If I stand here long enough, I'll catch those bread gnomes in action. They have to get done making cookies at some point."  Or, "I prefer light bread."Jesus? If you're in there, would you turn it into a bunch of loaves?" Or, "This should help fortify it with Vitamin D."

Katie Mullins

We sponsor something on Kickstarter here now and then.  Perhaps more often "now", as there are a few games in the works we've sponsored that are still on their way.  Like five.  One related to the Salem witch trials, one related to the Great Fire of London, one related to chemistry, a Bootleggers reboot, and a game with lots of dice.  We also sponsored a movie, two if you include a bicycling documentary, a local art calendar, a local artist or two, a writer, and we sponsor something musical now and then.  The Sudden Lovelys were the very first Kickstarter project we backed when Paige and Danny wanted to produce three albums in a year.  Not so long ago we sponsored Katie Mullins' second album.  She sent me a very nice signed lyrics sheet.

Inappropriate Snail Mail

Dish TV says I'm spending too much on TV.  They can save me $942 if  I remember the innards of the letter correctly.  If they're serious about it, they can send me a check for $942 and then not charge me for service at all, because that's the only way I know that they can save me $942 compared to the $0 I now pay for an antenna.  I believe we told them we were ditching them in favor of an antenna because they weren't willing to negotiate.   Good job with your data system and targeted marketing there chuckleheads. 

Maybe they're worried I'm culturally suffering from not having cable.  Or that the $40 or so I pay for a show or two on iTunes to keep Eryn happy is too much for getting exactly what I want instead of everything but what I want (no Doctor Who on Dish).  Still not sure how that translates into possibly saving me $942 unless they think I'm buying dozens of shows.

Google Trends II

Armstrong boosts bicycling popularity, but will it last?  Maybe not...

On the other hand, Lance's popularity looks just like the mountains he once climbed.

Google Trends

Apparently both my wife and I are trending downward on the web, but she's trended down significantly more since marrying me, until it looks like I may finally pass her in popularity.  Another 20 years of marriage, and she's going to go below the base line at this rate.

Quotes

I was interviewing an intern candidate today and had her write a very simple method to print a passed in string 100 times.  Fortunately, unlike the last candidate I interviewed, she didn't print the string 101 times.  However, because we interview across a variety of internship spaces, including testing, I asked her how she'd test her method and what sort of values she had to watch for being passed that might be a problem.  She talked about regex for a while and making sure that if the value was a name, it was limited to upper and lower case letters, and that if it was an address, she'd allow numbers.  Then I asked, "What if I pass in a null?" hoping she'd discuss catching it and talk about value types and reference types on parameters.  She wrote down null next to her string parameter on the method, stared at her writing for a while and then replied, "Well...it would print null one-hundred times."  She looked up at me, and a dawning realization crossed her face that she'd given perhaps the stupidest answer she'd ever given to a programming question.  Rather than panic, she took her pen and added two sets of quotes to make it "null" and then provided a much better answer.

Cube Beautification

One of my coworkers recently moved closer to my office.  And then immediately went on vacation.  So while he was out of office, I spent a few minutes each day decorating his new cube with pictures of him, one of them singing a Taylor Swift song, and lots of strange mugs.

I was asked, "Did you bring all of those mugs from home?"  No, no I did not.  I had to admit that I had all those mugs in my office and it was a crime of convenience.  Thanks to Kyle and my mother, those were merely a third of the mug collection I once had squirreled away in my office.  Unfortunately, he had it all ripped down before I got in.  Troy was right; I should have set up a webcam to capture his reaction so it could be preserved.  He lamed me for his nameplate being upside down as well.  Something that couldn't be fixed without a screwdriver.  But despite all the other changes, that one can't be attributed to me.

Pink Floyd Experience

Last night Kyle and I went out to dinner at Origami and then over to Mill City (not where you think, if you think like I do) for the Pink Floyd Experience.  We got to Origami exceedingly early for a 9:00 p.m. performance just down the street.  Around 6:20 p.m.  But the timing was right on.  After two ten-piece sushi platters with rolls, an extra spider roll, an extra NY NY roll (very good - had a bit of soft apple in it), some underwhelming wasabi tobiko, and green tea ice cream that was perhaps pushing it, but hit the spot, it was closing in on 8:15.

We thought the performance would be by the river.  That's the only Mill City I've ever heard of.  But it turned out to be in a club, Mill City Nights, in the warehouse district with an interior reminiscent of First Ave.  Although, unlike First Ave, I could see the stage almost the entire time.  Except for when this guy built like a 6'6" sumo wrestler stood in front of me.  Despite being more than a meter away, I couldn't see much around his head without leaning.

The performance was better than I expected and they reached back into some older albums and deep cuts to really deliver a good performance.  I remember thinking, "They're not quite as good as Floyd."  But they were also in a small club without an enterprise level sound system.  So damn good given the constraints.  Couple of characters around us, including two guys who went for the high five and missed (have another), and a guy who tried to high five his friend three times in under a minute.  On the third try, his friend just left him hanging.

I didn't realize until later that I didn't get the main singer in my shots.  In the second one, I didn't even get most of the band.  But they look almost exactly like the photos at their web site.  And if you'd like to hear them, there are a bunch of videos on YouTube, including a 38 minute clip.  Here's a more reasonable 4:26 clip of them doing Wish You Were Here, with a lot of audience participation.

The screen behind them had a variety of psychedelic videos, many of them featuring large eyes and a lava lamp motif, sometimes blended together.  And yes, per the video and from what you can tell in these photos, mostly guys.  But it was a mixed audience, age and gender wise, and there were a few 20-something women nearby.  The middle aged overly excited guys just happened to predominate, both in number, and in their dancing, fist pumping exuberance.

One Stop!

I noticed this while pulling coupons out of the local paper the other day.  While non-surgical options are always preferable if possible, having the procedure done by a magician poking his magic wand at your hemorrhoids seems dubious.  And that wand looks like the tip isn't solidly in place.  Probably because it has some magic scarf secreted away.  Bad enough that you might go home with an itchy wand tip lodged where the sun doesn't shine, but pulling an endless train of multi-colored handkerchiefs out of your rectum the next time you visit the porcelain?  That's uncallled for.

And who does both hemorrhoid care and nail fungus treatment?  Wait for it...someone who treats people with a foot up their ass?

Someone over at Deviant Art did a fine job of Seussifying that idea...