Where's amberance?

I'm not allowed to tell you where I am and I'm not allowed to tell you what I'm doing. I'm not allowed to tell you who else is here, which I find hilarious because I don't know who anyone is to begin with.

More lack of information to follow.

Cultural Differences

American classmate: What is that thing?

British classmate: It's for your face. It sprays mist, for when it's hot outside.

AC: That's so cool! I've never seen anything like that!

BC: They're hard to find here. I got this in France. I'm surprised you don't have them in America though.

AC: Well in America we have air conditioning.

Note: This conversation occurred when it was 72 degrees outside.

I Should Not Be Allowed At Concerts

A conversation between my cousin Kelly and me on the occasion of StereoNinja taking me to see Arcade Fire, which I was uncomfortable about it because the only thing I knew about Arcade Fire was that I'd heard of them, maybe: 

me: We are going to Arcade Fire tonight and I feel kinda bad because I literally do not know even one Arcade Fire song and [StereoNinja] is SO EXCITED and I'm like "whee I guess, I don't know". Am I the only person who doesn't have any idea what Arcade Fire are like? I think maybe I am.

Kelly: I've gotta tell you about arcade fire from my pov.

1. they're talented.
2. there's A LOT of them
3. you're prolly not gonna like the music.

me (now at the show): People are dressed up like it's some kind of masquerade and there are hipster beards EVERYWHERE help help

Kelly: oh shit. i forgot to mention the hipsters. aaaah, masquerade, yeah that sounds about right. is there an opener?

me: Oh my god the opener was AWFUL and they played 45 minutes I don't even
Ok a metal Michael Jackson just popped up on the stage where the djs are and is dancing, why am I not into drugs?!?!?
Ok they are on now...this band really likes hexagons there's like a million of them
A guy has a light box for a head and the curly haired lady was shinning lights on us with mirrors this is hilarious
Pretty sure the entire band raided bono's wardrobe

Kelly: aaah, a few scarves and orange sun glasses??

me: Also bizarre suit jackets. Ok you were right I don't get it at all. It's listenable but I can't tell any songs apart and if I never heard them again they wouldn't be missed. Everyone around me is losing their minds however

Kelly: yuuuuuup.... that's pretty much it

Commercials That I Hate - UK Edition

I've been here long enough now to start hating television commercials, and rather than continuing to throw things at StereoNinja's perfectly innocent tv set, I thought I'd come complain about them here.

Watch Dogs - I don't know if they are running the same series of promos in the U.S. as they are in the UK for this new PS4 game (that everyone I know who games thinks is total crap). It's a game set in Chicago, and while the commercial shows a graphic Chicago that is well done enough for me to recognize, the voice over is completely nonsensical. It starts out with the phrase "I hacked the city to make it my weapon". Well I'm here to tell you that, no sir, you did not. You are implying a level of organization to the running of Chicago that I assure you doesn't exist. This statement is accompanied by a scene in which some guy pushes a button on his magical city-controlling remote which stops a CTA train at somewhere that isn't a real stop so he can get on. I fell out of my seat laughing because a) you don't need a magical remote for this, CTA trains stop in the middle of the tracks for no apparent reason ALL THE FUCKING TIME, he could just stand at basically any point along the tracks and at some point during the day the train would inexplicably stop near him; and b) I assure you there is no wireless controlling system on the CTA that you could "hack" into to stop the trains. If there were, I wouldn't be able to link to this video from just a few months back of a CTA blue line train pulling into the station at O'Hare airport at full fucking speed before jumping the tracks and hurtling up the escalator like it was about to miss its fucking flight. The CTA is still working on replacing old track, some of which was laid roughly 100 years ago. An upgrade to a centrally controlled hackable train operating system is something I expect to happen some time after we get flying cars. The voice over goes on to say "My enemies may run Chicago, but I control it." I'm sorry, who are your enemies, the Latin Kings? Tony Rezko? I'm not sure how hacking trains and street lights is supposed to help you defeat political corruption or a street gang that boasts Chicago police officers among their membership. But yeah, go ahead and hack that centrally controlled traffic light system that doesn't exist.

Canesten is a UK brand of creams, pills and pessaries for the treatment of yeast infections, or as it is quaintly called here, thrush. They sell these products individually but also in combination packs, much in the same way as American brands like Monistat. Unlike Monistat, however, their new commercials promoting their combi products are illogical and vaguely disturbing. You wouldn't wash your hair without using conditioner, they reason, so why would you use just one product to treat your crotch infection instead of two? I don't know, Canesten, two medicines are probably better than one, but not for the same reason that it's a good idea to condition your hair after you've washed it. There is a huge difference between using a pill and a cream to make your nether regions stop being on fucking fire as soon as possible, and wanting to be able to get a comb through your hair. These things are not even remotely related, or at least hopefully they aren't because if you're trying to use conditioner to get a yeast infection out of your hair I'm worried that you might have bigger problems.

Currys PC World - I don't know if you know this, but the World Cup is starting in about a week. I know it because pretty much anything that can be sold in the UK is being cross-promoted with it, which leads to me thinking I've bought the wrong Coke Zero every time I go to the shop because the yellow and green World Cup logo makes it look like Coke with lime. Currys PC World, purveyor of fine electronic products, has jumped on the bandwagon as well, reasoning that now would be the perfect time to buy that giant tv that dwarfs the rest of your living room and makes your friends think you're a pretentious asshole showoff because HOLY SHIT THE FOOTBALL IS ON, as if the Premiere League isn't on the air constantly. But whatever, that's a reasonable premise for a commercial. The problem is the tack they've decided to take with their sales pitch, which boasts not one but TWO of my most hated advertising tropes: all women obviously hate sports, and mens are stooopid amirite? Because why be offensive to just one gender when you can negatively stereotype nearly the entire population*? These are actually a series of basically identical commercials in which generic huband tries to trick generic wife into getting a new ginormous tv, ostensibly so she can watch some show that's totally for the womenfolk, like a gardening show or Downton Abbey, when in reality, super man type person wants it so he can watch the World Cup, but, you know, BIGGER. Unfortunately, since MANS ARE DUMM, he always screws up his pitch and half of the word "football" slips out by accident, which leaves wife type person with a shitty look on her face because ohmygod my husband is so dumb and also how dare he want to spend time watching a sport that 90% of the country is also watching nearly all of the time? Seriously, everyone knows that marriage is all about tricking your spouse into letting you buy shit they don't want and then them resenting you for it to an unreasonably disproportionate degree. OR, maybe you could have gone with something less tired, insulting and frankly obvious. Something like man comes home and finds wife planted in front of giant tv she didn't tell him she was buying, screaming at the football match like a lunatic and he shakes his head bemusedly and hands her a beer. Maybe something like that could sell some tvs? I don't know, I'm not omnicient, but it might be worth a try instead of the same boring and unrealistic gender stereotypes that everyone advertising to a household market has already (poorly) used. Seriously, fuck this commercial. In the ass. With a football.


*Those not subscribing to the presumed gender binary excluded, but only because they can't figure out an angle for selling you their crap.

Fifty Shades Of Dissertation Research

So here's what I've decided on the dissertation front: I'm going to compare Fifty Shades of Grey with the movie Secretary in their portrayals of BDSM and in the responses each got from the public in an effort to determine whether mainstream portrayals of BDSM relationships are creating a more relaxed attitude toward it or just reinforcing negative stereotypes that already exist. I also thought you'd like to know that you all got a big mention in my dissertation proposal as my justification for undertaking this particular research project so thank you SO MUCH for being awesome.

Now that the dissertation proposal is done and I don't have another thing due until July, I'm hoping to get back to regular blogging including writing the last two or three Fifty Shades Freed reviews so I can get that off my docket and light the book on fire. I started writing one many months ago, but it's been so long I might have to actually go re-read those three chapters which is a special form of torture and TOTALLY not fair, but all I can remember about them is being upset with myself for having gotten more angry that E.L. James doesn't understand how a bank works than I did about a man explicitly threatening to rape his wife. Apparently E.L. James has turned me into some sort of horrible rape culture reinforcing monster, you know, like UKIP*.


*Dear Americans, hi. If this reference doesn't make sense to you, it is because our country's major news outlets are crap at covering international news unless it's too sensational to ignore. UKIP is a political party in the UK based on racism and reactionary conservative values, such as that it should totally not be illegal for a man to rape his wife and Romanians are like a plague of locusts and are going to come to the UK and eat all our food or something. I'm not sure exactly, they don't really make any sense and when they open their mouths a pile of bigoted diarrhea sprays out so I try not to stand too close to any of them. Anyway, that's what I was referencing. Straddling two cultures is hard y'all.

A Household Divided

"I wish it was my birthday coming up instead of yours," I announced to StereoNinja on Sunday, "because then I could just whine until you bought me that rug." StereoNinja and I generally have similar taste in decorating. In particular we both for the most part hate rugs. Rugs do not go on carpet - that is what CARPET is for, and if you have beautiful hardwood floors anywhere in your home, why on earth would you cover them up with some kind of crappy rug?

Be that as it may, currently I do not live in a house with beautiful hardwood floors, I live in a house with crappy plastic "wood looking" floors because that is what happens when you rent. AND, a couple of weeks ago, I noticed this. For those of you too lazy to click on the link, Think Geek is currently selling a floor rug that looks exactly like Han Solo trapped in carbonite and it's only $50 and IT WOULD FIT PERFECTLY IN OUR FRONT HALLWAY. And StereoNinja won't let me get it because his hatred of rugs apparently trumps my happiness. I even tried appealing to his sense of geekery by pointing out that we NEED this rug in order to enhance our nerd credentials and he PRETENDED LIKE THAT WASN'T EVEN A THING. But it is. It is a thing and not having this rug will come to represent an epic failure of my nerdcoreness that I may never recover from. All this because I got into a serious relationship. I knew Admiral Ackbar was right.

UPDATE: A key tenet of StereoNinja's objection to the rug (other than the mere fact that it is a rug) is that we can't put a Star Wars rug in the front hallway because we have prints of Batman characters hanging in that same hallway and you can't mix genres because reasons. However, he said this whilst walking past the bookcase in our stairway on which are displayed toys from Star Wars, Star Trek, Doctor Who, books with the art of H.R. Giger, and two knitted dinosaurs, which I maintain COMPLETELY invalidates his entire argument. I NEED THIS RUG YOU GUYS.

Just Where The Hell I Have Been

I turned in both of my papers yesterday. It was much easier for me this time than it was the last time I had two papers due on the same day, less because I had done it before than because I cared about them differently than last time. I say "differently" because last term I had the weird experience of having one class that I thought was brilliant - I had strong opinions which were typically diametrically opposed to everyone else in the class and a massive crush on my teacher, and the other class that I spent every single moment of wishing "class" was something you could stab in the face. So when it was paper time, I was riled up and excited to write a paper on the UK's extreme pornography ban and why it is a load of complete and utter bullshit, and the other paper...well, I just gave no fuck whatsoever about that paper, so I just filled it with buzzwords like "discourse" and "paradigm" and my person favorite "lived experience" and turned it in. I had done the exact same thing on the annotated bibliography I'd had to write for the class earlier in the term and received a merit for it so I figured, you know, fuck it.

I now need to begin work on my dissertation, a task that would be much easier if I had ANY IDEA AT ALL what to write it on. My first instinct was, of course, Fifty Shades seeing as I am apparently one of the world's leading experts on how bad it sucks. But "Fifty Shades of Grey: No Seriously, What the Fuck?" is not an appropriate or even reasonably narrow topic and also the main piece of advice on picking a dissertation topic seems to be "pick something you like because you're going to eat, sleep and breathe that fucking subject for the next six months" and I think we've pretty well established that Fifty Shades of Grey is decidedly NOT something I like. I like being semi-internet famous for creative swearing and pushed to the top of reddit lists, but that is not likely to factor into dissertation research so much. So anyway, about three weeks from now I need to turn in a dissertation proposal roughly the length of a module essay on something to do with "gender" or "sexuality" and I have precisely ZERO thoughts on what that topic should be. SO I;ve got that going for me.

Now, since it's been so long, let me switch topics on you entirely and go back to complaining about my adopted country. Which I LOVE by the way - I know I complain about how homesick I am and how everything is too "not-America", but I do genuinely love it here (the sheep across the river had some lambs and I can hear them from my bedroom and the lambs run around all cute and small and then randomly jump up in the air for NO REASON and it is fantastic; in related nature news, the two gay ducks (we think they are gay because they are both boys and are never, ever more than about three feet from one another so they are obviously a couple) that hang out in our marina have taken to coming right up to the kitchen door begging from bread and one of them will eat it right out of your hand). Having said that, I would now like to complain bitterly about Easter and daytime television.

As Easter approached, I asked StereoNinja why the stores had put out all of the Easter basket stuff yet and was greeted with a blank stare followed by "what is an Easter basket?" Because Easter baskets are NOT A THING. You know what you get here? A chocolate egg. One. THAT IS IT. And unlike a chocolate bunny, that egg is hollow, my friends. It probably has less total chocolate volume than a regular candy bar. In Chicago I made StereoNinja buy real Easter baskets with real Easter basket stuff for his children because I found the situation so unacceptable. But wait, there's more! Even worse than that atrocity is the fact the coloring Easter eggs is ALSO NOT A THING. I just...I don't even...WHY DON'T YOU WANT YOUR CHILDREN TO HAVE ANY FUN, ENGLAND? So I bought the Paas color cups when we were in Chicago so as to show StereoNinja & Spawn (TM) what they were missing. And then immediately ran into another problem: all the eggs are brown. Finding a white chicken egg in this country is harder than finding a burrito. I eventually figured out that Whole Foods in Kensington was selling them, but not until AFTER they had already sold out. StereoNinja went and got some white duck eggs from somewhere, which I discovered don't really work as they are quite translucent and not nearly as permeable. Plus then you have a house full of duck eggs which I'm not sure what you're supposed to do with. So apart from the fantastic ham I made, Easter was a kind of a disaster.

Now then: being a full time graduate student and not having a job means that I spend a lot of time at home during the day with the television on in the background for some noise so I don't go crazy and I have to say, there is NOTHING ON TELEVISION DURING THE DAY. Seriously, nothing worth watching unless you count Top Gear reruns I've seen a thousand times. Mainly all there seems to be are episodes of Charmed and an Australian soap opera call Neighbours. Everyone else at home in the day must be bored too, because what I really wanted to complain about is the sheer volume of commercials for a. online casinos and b. predatory loan companies. It is pretty much ALL they advertise during the day, one right after another. I can't help feeling like these things are related, and that they are preying on the weak as I would assume a significant percentage of the daytime television audience is made up of people who are out of work. Frankly, I think that's pretty shitty and I'm not sure why that's being allowed but watching BDSM torture porn on the internet in your own home is is not.

Coming up: Things I did in Chicago, as soon as I can remember what those things are.

Placeholder Post

Once again I find myself frantically writing two papers at the same time for graduate school and no time to blog. Additionally, I was in Chicago for a week which added lots of things to blog about but was detrimental to my having time to actually do it. Real posts forthcoming in about two weeks. Until then here's the short version:

• StereoNinja saw his first Blackhawks game and nearly left his jaw in Chicago where he dropped it in the United Center. He now totally gets why I thought the Slough Jets and their "arena" were fucking hilarious.
• I WENT ON A SUBMARINE. A SUBMARINE YOU GUYS. (It was not in the water.)
• FYI, if you have an hour and 45 minute layover in Dublin on your way to Chicago, it will not be nearly enough time to get through U.S. immigration pre-clearance and security between flights. This won't be a problem, however, because literally HALF of the people on your flight will be in that same line and they will delay the flight for twenty minutes because my country's obsession with security theater is insane. 

I will now go bury myself in anti-pornography literature and try to critique it rationally without shouting "BITCH YOU DON'T KNOW MY LIFE!" to an empty room.

They're Baaa-aack

I've been feeding the next door neighbors' cat all week because they are out of town. I say "neighbors' cat", but it's really a stray cat called Hissing Syd, who won't come within 10 feet of people, but who will sit exactly that distance from his food bowls and look around in judgement if they are empty when he gets there much in the way of a normal house cat. I grabbed the cat food and was about to walk through my back door when crumpled in the door jam I saw the biggest spider I have ever seen in England. So big in fact, that I looked it over for some moments actually thinking "maybe it's not a spider. Maybe it's a scraggly piece of something that fell off of a bush." But nothing else in the world has leg joints in exactly those places. Nothing. I seriously didn't know they had spiders as big as this here. I think it must have followed me here from the U.S...from Texas probably (I'm made to understand everything is bigger there). It wasn't moving and looked as if it had been smushed by the door, so I made the assumption it was dead and closed the door on it. Then I grabbed the cat food, went out the front door (after very carefully checking the entire doorway for spiders, because if I missed something and then came back and there was one outside THAT door I wouldn't be able to get back in the house), walked halfway across the island to the common entrance to the marina, and then all the way back to their garden while muttering "ohgodohgodohgod" with my heart trying to escape from my chest the entire time to feed the goddamn cat. I am now back in my own house, have texted StereoNinja to inform him that I am NEVER GOING IN THE GARDEN EVER AGAIN. I am checking everything in the house for spiders before I touch it (I looked inside the Dorito bag) and experiencing a mild to moderate level of general panic that I know will subside gradually over the next few days UNLESS another spider appears.

What I hate about this phobia is not so much that it controls where I can go and what I can do - there are work arounds for that, obviously, as I've just walked clear across an island to feet a cat sitting 30 feet from my backyard - but the (I assume, I'm not a psychiatrist) post traumatic stress that I end up living with for days, sometimes weeks at a time. And the effect is cumulative: seeing another spider in that state doesn't just extend how long it lasts but heightens that feeling. I was already in that state before the incident today from a small spider I saw on the outside of my car a few days ago. I've walked the two miles into town twice since then rather have to face getting in my car. I tell myself I'm getting exercise, but I'm really just paralyzed by the thought that if it has gotten in the car I'll be trapped with it and no one can help me.

It's the worst time of year for me. Spring is when all the spiders come back, and just to reiterate, I live IN a river. In the past few weeks, I've seen StereoNinja lunge across a room to step on a spider I hadn't seen yet and go into the toilet and immediately come back out again to get the bug spray before going back in there calling over his shoulder "I didn't just see three spiders in there." I've seen two in my bedroom when he wasn't home that I had to spray myself before texting completely insane yet wholly serious messages to him: that I needed him to remove their dead bodies when he got home and then burn our duvet, or that I was moving to France. And now it's effecting him too. He used to see a spider and not have any sort of reaction at all but now when he sees one he has almost a fear response - not of the spider itself but more like "Oh god holy shit there's a spider in the house kill it immediately before Amber finds out AAAAGGHHHH".

Ugh. You guys. IT WAS SO FUCKING BIG and it was ALMOST INSIDE MY HOUSE. I don't know how to stop thinking about it. Even the "research" I'm doing on "extreme" pornography for my next paper isn't helping me. SINCE WHEN CAN I NOT CONCENTRATE ON PORN?

Cockles And Mussels, Alive, Alive, Oh

Having seen the weather report in our area for last weekend (a month's worth of rain in 48 hours), and having failed to remember to plan anything for a trip to Prague (remembering stuff is not StereoNinja's forte and my ongoing depression battle is fucking with memory type things - I'm feeling quite a bit better by the way), StereoNinja and I decided on a last minute escape to Dublin for the weekend. (It's a good thing we did - while the flooding did not return to the levels it was at when our only road got swallowed by the Thames, we found out from neighbors that the power was out to the island from late Friday morning until Sunday afternoon. Everything in our house from the oven to the the heating is electric. It would have been like camping and as previously explained I do not camp.) And I'm kind of in love with it now.

I had never been to Dublin before, and StereoNinja had never managed to go there while also having a good time. Since I really don't know a lot about Ireland, I didn't have any real expectations of what it would be like. What it is like is awesome. Without travelling anywhere else on the Earth I haven't already been, I will say with total confidence that Dublin has the friendliest cab drivers in the world. Seriously, apart from one or two guys (we took cabs EVERYWHERE because we decided to escape rain by going someplace that was also pissing down rain because we're imbeciles) every cab driver wanted to know all about us and what brought us to Dublin, professed to adore America, gave informal city tours complete with history about buildings (which sometimes have no windows because England used to tax windows so they just built them without any because fuck you), gave solicited and unsolicited advice on what we should see and where we should drink, and generally rounded fares down to avoid anyone have to deal with coins which I thought was great because I despise them.

I was a bit worried before we got on the plane about whether there would be anything for me to eat there. Since I don't like potatoes, and the stereotype of Ireland is that everything is made out of potatoes there, I was somewhat concerned that I might starve to death. This turned out to be entirely unfounded. The restaurants in Dublin are universally spectacular, based on the fact that every time one of us said "Do you want to just go in here?" the food there was so good I had to be restrained from humping it. Maybe the best Italian restaurant I've ever been to in my life was in Dublin (amaretto tiramisu you guys. AMARETTO TIRAMISU). We went to a french place for lunch and I loved it, and if you remember I wouldn't eat much of anything when I was in actual France.

We also partook of Dublin's many museums. Recommended for nerds: The Science Gallery at Trinity College, currently running the "Fail Better" exhibit - a collection of inventions that didn't work, but which led to advances in science or some other positive contribution. Recommended for sheer hilarity: The Ireland Natural History Museum, which seems to basically be a room full of taxidermied animals of varying age, quality, and disrepair. The fucking massive extinct deer skeletons near the entrance are singularly impressive. The basking shark hanging from the ceiling, if I'm being kind, has probably seen better days. To be fair to the museum, the upper and lower floors of it are currently closed, but on the other hand it is severely lacking in any information on the animals apart from their name.

Deer: huge; impressive.

Basking shark: c'mon, man.

Our first cab driver, upon hearing that we wanted to go hear some real Irish music, directed us to the Brazen Head, which is self described as the oldest pub in Ireland. It was described by the cab driver as "nearly a thousand years old". It's actually a little over 900 years old, but I suppose "nearly a thousand" is correct depending on where you're rounding from. We met a nice German kid there, but did not meet the Brazilians who were also in the house. I know they were there because of the gregarious and extremely drunk Irishman who kept shouting at them, "BRAZIL? BRAZIL? THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING IN DUBLIN ALL THE WAY FROM BRAZIL?" There was a little group in the corner playing, who unfortunately had a broken amplifier and were therefore mostly drowned out by the noise from the table of vapid, oblivious women who were all talking at once AS LOUD AS POSSIBLE and failed to notice either the music or the collective death stare of literally everyone else in the room. That was until an enterprising guy at the next table started a shushing campaign that grew until the ENTIRE pub would hiss at them every time they got out of hand.

We also checked out the Guinness Storehouse, home of all things Guinness. For those of you Americans who have been to the Budweiser brewery in St. Louis, just, no. The Storehouse makes that place look like a miniaturized Lego model of a brewery, it is that massive. Additionally, when you get up to the top where your free pint of Guinness awaits you, not only do they take the time and care to draw you a lovely shamrock in your foam, but the 360 degree windows that make up the walls of the room give you an aerial view of the entirety of Dublin and beyond, all the way to the mountains in one directions and all the way to the sea in another. Of course, I used the opportunity to text Cap and taunt him because I am an asshole sister.

Enjoy your beer, insignificant speck of a human.

Dublin, with its abundant cabs, myriad of pubs, river flowing through it, cool stuff to do, nice people, great food and many college students, reminded me quite a lot of Chicago. Except for this one thing that happened that made me realize how spoiled Americans are. Because one thing we have precious little of in America is domestic terrorism. When bombs go off at the Boston Marathon or Oklahoma City or the Atlanta Olympics, they are weird, isolated things that shock us because it is not a thing that happens in America, so infrequently in fact that we don't even think about it and take that for granted. Meanwhile, in Dublin, in our first cab on the way to the hotel, the very friendly cab driver/tour guide/historian said to us, "This is a great area right here. It used to have statues absolutely everywhere, on all these corners. But of course the IRA blew them all up." And he said it with such casual resignation, because stuff used to blow up there - a lot - and that was his normal. So, you know, be aware of how lucky you are and shit, because you could think that all your statues blowing up is normal.

ANYBUTT, I fucking LOVED Dublin, as evidenced by everything that came out of my mouth while we were there was prefaced by "Next time we come, we should..." and that's just not something I typically say because I am of the television generation and easily bored. You should totally go there if you like doing things that are fun and/or being around nice people. You should probably also be okay with a bit of rain and own an umbrella.

Shove It, Popeye

 I am sitting on the counter in the kitchen. StereoNinja is about to fry some spinach because everything he eats is gross.

Me: I guess I should help you or move. I'm practically sitting on the spinach.

StereoNinja: You look like you'd rather sit on it than eat it.

Me: Well it looks more comfortable than delicious.

Drownin' In The Rain, We're Drownin' In The Rain

Remember when I said the water was receding? Well it's now worse than it was when it crested the last time. Lake Titicacao is indistinguishable from the river and it's all flowing so fast that we've been watching ducks go by backwards since they aren't strong enough to swim upstream or even stay in one place. Also rain is forecast in my town for at least the next five days. The only road out of the island is impassable by anything other than a monster truck, and conversations with other islanders about what we can do about it amounted to "Yeah, you're pretty much screwed." Being as my car is roughly the size of half a semi-truck tire, I'm effectively stranded in my house, conveniently (?) during reading week, meaning I don't have to swim to the station to catch a train to London for class, so I've got that going for me. StereoNinja bought us both waders today, which I put on to try them for size and am now still wearing them. I told StereoNinja it was for safety:

me: I'm leaving these on.
StereoNinja: You're going to just wear them around the house?
me: Well, in a couple of hours the water might be in the house.

But really it's just because I'm pretending to be a fisherman. I'm trapped, don't judge my methods of entertaining myself.

I'd like to point out that the last time it rained this much in England, my country didn't even exist yet. Speaking of my country, sorry about all the snow there most of you, and for those of you in California, if you can figure out a way to get this water over to you, you're more than welcome to have it.

Are You Ready To Explain Some Football?

Last night was my first Super Bowl in exile, and I have to say, seriously, what the fuck. But let me back up a bit.

I had managed to get excited about the Super Bowl in a way that I hadn't gotten excited about Christmas or my birthday. And I prepared for it as well: I dressed up in all the NFL branded clothing that I own, I made Rice Krispie treats shaped like footballs, and I drank an enormous amount of caffeine so I could make it to kickoff at ELEVEN FUCKING THIRTY local time. I commandeered StereoNinja and his teenage daughter to watch it with me because all my other friends have "jobs to go to in the morning" or some shit, and we all ate a cheeseball I had made, despite them both eyeing it with suspicion at first because no one here has ever seen a cheeseball before. StereoNinja had watched some of the Seattle game with me two weeks ago, and so at least had basic concepts figured out like downs and field goals; his daughter had no experience and insisted the game was called "handegg".

The pregame show was that we didn't get a real pregame show. What we got was some Irish guy I've been told is called Colin Murray and is famous for something, and a very uncomfortable looking and disinterested Terrell Davis, whose name Channel 4 managed to misspell. My best guess is that Colin Murray has never seen an American football game before in his life, and I spent the hour before kickoff screaming things at the tv like "FIELD! IT'S CALLED A FIELD." and "NO YOUR HEADSET ISN'T WEIRD THAT'S JUST HOW THEY ARE BECAUSE IT'S A FOOTBALL GAME". Even StereoNinja was annoyed, and displayed his recently gained knowledge: "Yeah. It's not called a pitch goal, it's called a FIELD goal. And why does he keep touching everybody?" because he was, Colin Murray that is, touching his co-presenters on the arm or the shoulder with an an uncomfortable degree of frequency. Meanwhile whatever he was saying was so confusing, Terrell Davis stopped listening to him and and started absentmindedly picking at the edge of the table on live television.

And then the game started. I'm assuming many of you saw the start of the game, and potentially the rest of it, so I don't need to tell you what a clusterfuck that was for Denver from LITERALLY THE FIRST PLAY OF THE GAME. What I did have to do was begin my companions' American football education by trying to explain what a safety is because of course I did. I also had to explain a shotgun formation because I had previously told StereoNinja in great detail and with extensive demonstrations how the quarterback lines up under center, which was not at all an exercise in crotch grabbing disguised as sports education SHUT UP. And throughout the game I was struggling to justify to StereoNinja my belief that Peyton Manning is the greatest quarterback of our time, AND that the mistakes he was making were not always his fault because the offensive line apparently decided not to play. Based on that game I wouldn't have believed me either.

It was actually kind of fun explaining things that it hadn't occurred to me would need explaining because I've just been watching it all my life. Like how a false start works:

StereoNinja: What happened?

me: False start. That guy jumped.

StereoNinja: WHAT? He barely even flinched!

me: I know. Doesn't matter. You can't move until the ball is snapped.

StereoNinja: What about that guy? That guy is moving. And that other guy is moving too!

me: Oh, right. Some of the players are allowed to move. But not the ones on the line of scrimmage.

StereoNinja: On what?

me: Um, on the blue line.

and flags and timeouts:

StereoNinja: Someone threw their gloves on the field.

me: No they didn't.

StereoNinja: Then what are those yellow things?

me: A penalty flag. The officials throw them when there's a penalty.

StereoNinja: Why?

me: .....because that's how they do it.

later

StereoNinja: Penalty?

me: No.

StereoNinja: But they threw that red thing.

me: That's a challenge flag. The coaches throw them when they want to dispute the call on the field. Um, but you can only do it a few times. Also if you get it wrong they take one of your timeouts.

SN daughter: What's a timeout?

me: It's so you can stop the clock. You get three per half.

SN daughter: But the clock is already stopped.

me: No, the play clock not the game clock.

SN daughter: What?

me: Um.

I did get some amusing help from StereoNinja with explaining the game to his daughter, such as first down: "Do you see that yellow line? That's how far the ball has to go. Also that line isn't really on the field." and she did seem to grasp what was happening overall as evidenced by this comment: "The oranges suck. The catchy man can't even catch it."

We stayed up for the halftime show for some reason where I learned that Bruno Mars can play the drums and thinks he's James Brown and the Red Hot Chili Peppers still can't afford to buy shirts apparently. But by then it was 1:30 in the morning and it didn't appear the game was going to be a contest of any sort so we just went to bed. So my first Super Bowl in exile probably could have been better, but I certainly was having a better time than Peyton Manning was.

England: They Have Stuff Too

Here's another example of "little differences": Last night, StereoNinja and I went to dinner at a steak restaurant called Cattle Grid. It was the most American thing I've encountered since I've been here. Now, I have no evidence that its intention is to come off as American, but it absolutely fucking does. It has a very American decor to it, authentically, not "this is what we imagine America looks like" decor, a menu that list its beef and pork dished under the headings "COW' and "PIG", enormous American sized portions of things including a massive rack of barbecue ribs the likes of which I have never seen here, onion strings which I have also never seen here before and which caused me to actually audibly gasp when they were offered to me and a highly American looking desert menu meaning we didn't order any because StereoNinja couldn't get a cheese plate (also that whole thing about the giant portions). There were only two things that gave it away. One was a completely disinterested server - not a bad server, just a man who was clearly not working for tips. The other is a thing that keeps happening to me every time we eat somewhere which is StereoNinja has to remind me to properly arrange my cutlery. Because unlike America, where they are watching you and waiting for you to slow down, or coming by to refill your drink since it's free refills ALL THE TIME in Fatassland, and they ask you while they're there "Can I take your plate?", the only way to have your plate cleared here is to align your fork and knife right next to each other across your plate. If you leave your utensils either on the table or strewn about your plate all willy-nilly in the wrong configuration, you will be sitting there waiting for the check (cheque) for hours. It's like the Bat signal for "I have finished my meal." And I ALWAYS forget.

Right so, anyway, not my point. What I actually meant to do right now was write about some of the things I love about being here, because I feel like all I've done is complain so far, and it's really not that I don't like it here, it's just that it's not home yet. So here's a few things that I think are fantastic that you have thus far dropped the ball on, America:

Roast dinner. Yeah, ok, we have roast dinners in the U.S., but there are certain designated days for them which are Thanksgiving and Christmas. The rest of the year you just are like "Oh won't it be great when it's Thanksgiving and we'll have roast turkey again?" Yeah, um, yer doin it wrong. Because it is Roast Day here EVERY SUNDAY. You can make a roast at home or you can go to a carvery or you can go round someone else's house - whatever. Oh and another thing: Yorkshire puddings. Get in on that, Murica, you are missing out.

QI. There is not a show being produced right now on American television that I am aware of that is nearly as awesome as QI. A show that is funny AND has Stephen Fry AND you get to learn cool stuff? It's like an arrow of joy aimed straight at my little nerd girl heart. I am particularly overjoyed when there's an episode that has either Bill Bailey or Jeremy Clarkson who say they funniest things and know some of the weirdest shit. And I lose my fucking mind every time I actually know the answer and shout things at the television like "NO! It's because it has a three foot long tongue!" or "Oh my god, I know this one! IT'S A THING FOR EXTRACTING BOOGERS FROM A CORPSE!"

Road signs. I find the road signs here to be generally more helpful than the ones in America. Like, coming up to a roundabout or a slip road (this is an on or off ramp), there will be a sign with a picture of the exact roundabout or shape of slip road you are about to encounter. But that's not even what I like about them. The best thing about the signs is how ambiguous they are if you don't already know what they mean. Before I started driving, I started making up my own meanings for some of the ones I thought were funny.

Windsocks are dangerous

WARNING: Killer duck

Sad wiener

No perspective

I didn't make up a meaning for this, I just want to vandalize it and make it into a centaur.

Beware of men with giant umbrellas

Caution: Bra in the road

SURPRISE MOTHERFUCKER.

See, so some stuff is great, but it's not gonna get me a slice of Pequod's or an episode of Tosh.0.

Answers That Aren't 42 And Also A Thing About My Birthday

MIXED NEWS, EVERYONE! I have finished and turned in both of my papers (yay!) which I am pretty sure are both complete garbage (boo). But I'm back for now and I'm going to write some blog posts, starting with answering the questions you guys left for me in the comments:

exoticchemist said...

I'm curious as to what exactly triggers you to feel homesick. Is it just randomly wishing you were back in the US? Missing family and friends? Or is it specifically the differences between the US and UK? Maybe this is a dumb question...

It's not a dumb question, but it is a hard one to articulate. For one thing, I am now having a completely different cultural experience from the rest of my countrymen. While I don't miss snow (AT ALL), and I certainly don't want to be living in temperatures that can kill you in minutes, the whole polar vortex episode was hard on me because I felt...I don't know, left out. I still like to imagine that I am from Chicago and Chicago is my home and everyone at home was having this shitty but nevertheless collective experience and I wasn't there. And what made it worse was the UK was having a different collective experience with seriously damaging flooding seemingly everywhere, which is the experience I had, but it was the wrong one. And by the way, I'm crying right now. Sure I miss my family and my friends, but I can talk to them because the internet is magic. What I can't do is go back in time to when everyone was at the terrifying weather party and show up this time and be in on the jokes and know the stories.

Maya's comment was spot fucking on, and I really just wanted to post it and write "THIS ------>" next to it, but I'll elaborate instead. Maya said this: " I think, for me anyway, it was the fact that most things in the UK are so similar to North America that the differences, even the little ones, felt like a personal affront." I would say especially the little ones; the kind of things you never notice until they are different. In America, almost invariably, when you go inside a public building you just walk into it without breaking stride because the door is going to shut behind you. But in England where many of the buildings are older than my country, you walk into the building and you have to remember to shut the door behind you or it will just swing in the wind until the person at the desk gets up and closes it while glaring at you. There are no screens in the windows because there aren't that many bugs; you go shopping several times a week because the bread and the vegetables haven't been engineered to last for 2 months; the toilet doesn't flush the same way. I cannot fucking find wax paper at the store - grease proof baking paper is the closest thing. I know these things all sound dumb and petty because they are, but they add up into this sick feeling that this is not your home, no matter how much you want it to be.

Ok, that was sad. Let's do a different one:

Anonymous said...

44 degrees celcius here in Australia today, nature is bi-polar (and yeah that whole global warming thing). my question - did you ever choose a stripper name? or did I miss the big reveal in one of your posts?

Well anonymous, I'm pretty sure all of North America hates you right now, despite the fact that if it were 44 degrees there (111 F) they would be complaining that it was too hot. I did choose a stripper name and I did write a (half-assed) post about it. For the show I went with Phoebe Moon because I am a nerd. Now that I am in the UK however, I'll be using Poppy Cox because it's better and people get that joke here.

S said...

What have you learned about Brits/Britain by living here that you didn't learn by visiting?

Many many things, actually. I've learned that the words "noodle" and "pasta" are in no way interchangeable. In related news, I've learned that I'll need to bring a shit ton of Ramen back with me when I visit the states because the equivalents here are yucky in comparison. I've learned that people will fall over laughing if you pronounce squirrel as "skwerl". I've learned that driving students aren't allowed on the motorway, which means that when people get their first driving license, they have not learned to drive on one, which seems kind of dumb. Just last week I learned that when I say "look at those cans" no one realizes I'm talking about boobs. I've learned what stollen is, and that I hate it (raisins. why must everybody ruin perfectly good bakery with raisins? Knock it off already). I've learned that Christmas tree skirts aren't a thing here. I've learned that StereoNinja can't say prosciutto correctly. One thing that I already knew, but can't seem to get used to is being greeted with the phrase "You all right?". The American equivalent would be "How are you?". "You all right?" is what you would ask if someone just fell down the stairs or slipped on some black ice and landed on their head or just was walking around looking all sad. So whenever I'm asked that I immediately am confused about why they think I might not be all right. Gets me every time.

Thank you all for your questions. I like answering questions, so send more if you like and ask about whatever you want: stuff about me or why do Americans do that weird thing or where can I buy dildos or what is it about Patrick Stewart that makes him so sexy or Chris Christie, seriously, wtf is with that guy - whatever you want.

I'm not going to do a birthday wrap up post because it was overshadowed by paper writing and homesickness, but I did want to mention that StereoNinja bought me a telescope. HE BOUGHT ME A TELESCOPE. A FUCKING TELESCOPE. This feeling that I'm feeling is I think what it would be like for a normal person if their partner bought them a surprise Ferrari or a diamond as big as their hand. I HAVE A TELESCOPE YOU GUYS, and I live somewhere that I can actually use it. If it ever stops being shitty weather, that is.

It Can't Always Be About Raping Zebras

StereoNinja, reviewing my paper on masculinities in boylesque: (reads a passage out loud in a mocking tone of voice)...hahaha you sound so academic.

Me: It's an academic paper. It's not going to read like Bizzybiz.

A Question Deserves An Answer

Anonymous said... 

Where for art thou Amberance? 

10:49 PM 

Very good question, anonymous. It's been a rough couple of months. Moving to a new country, even one that you love, is emotionally more difficult than it is possible to prepare for. Christmas, which is normally my FAVORITE THING IN THE WHOLE FUCKING WORLD, was mostly a nightmare, and my birthday, which is Sunday and which I would normally have been reminding you all about on a daily basis for the last six weeks is only being observed at all this year to appease StereoNinja, who has made it very clear that my strategy of hiding in the bedroom ignoring him (and everyone else) while failing to engage in any of my beloved hobbies (blogging, my birthday, gratuitous nudity) is no longer acceptable. Having now spoken to a number of people who have already done this, I've had to severely lower my expectations for the foreseeable future, as the collective wisdom of those who have gone before me is that I will continue to burst into tears at completely random intervals due to vicious and overwhelming homesickness for at least 18 months. I don't even want to talk about how miserable I was on New Years, though at least I managed to leave Devon the day before it disappeared into the sea.

I have two papers due in a week, so as I said in November, let me get those written and turned in, and then check back here as I plan to reward myself by writing the next Fifty Shades review and/or going to Prague (oh yeah, I've decided I want to spend a weekend in Prague though I have absolutely no idea what is actually in Prague or why I want to go there - my main motivation seems to be the ability to say "When I was in Prague over the weekend..." - so advice on what I should actually DO in Prague would be lovely). I've been ready to write it for a while actually, but have been putting it off because I felt that I was upset about the wrong things and was trying to adjust my rage to match my logic. It hasn't worked, so I'm just going to write it the way I'm feeling it and then pack my bags for my journey to Hades since I am a terrible person.

Where I am at this very minute is sitting in my living room looking out at the sea. While all you guys in the U.S. have been at the travelling Antarctica Experience exhibition this week (the first time I saw someone write "Chiberia" made me laugh much harder than was probably warranted), the U.K. has been dealing with its own disastrous weather since roughly Christmas, mostly in the form of massive rainstorms combined with extremely high tides and a recent habit of building homes on floodplains. In typical British fashion, this was described on the news in the most hilariously understated way possible as "unusual weather". Living on an island in the Thames as I do, it is impossible not to notice. The field directly across the river from us which is typically filled with sheep first became a lake (which I named Lake Titicacao because tits! and chocolate! and I'm a massive child!) and then a few days ago even that was swallowed up and now the whole thing is just part of the river. Our marina is entirely flooded, the water covering not only the gangway that goes around the outside of the marina but also the first two steps leading up to our garden It is an inch from covering the third, which would leave only two more stairs before we go from living on riverfront property to living in the actual river. There are two roads leading into the island, but only one road that leads away from it, and that road is also flooded, meaning I actually drove my car through the Thames twice this morning. I was lucky I made it through - on my way back, there were two cars stranded on the road who had tried to drive through the river but were too low profile to get through and were now stranded in non-working cars waiting for rescue. If the river doesn't crest today I may be stranded here all weekend. Every once in a while, a helicopter flies over and I imagine them looking down at us and saying "Yep, still flooded." I think I should write a really rude message for them or draw some tits so their day will be more interesting.

Anyway, give me a week to finish my papers and I will write you guys a scathing review about how E.L. James has apparently never been to a bank and being threatened with rape is super romantic. 

P.S. I have enjoyed answering this question. Feel free to send me more questions you would like answers to and I'll answer them in a future blog post. It will be like a conversation!

Sorry, Dudes.

Hey. So I know I failed at the last 4 days of NaBloPoMo, which I'm sorry about, but the school stuff has come up again, and the Christmas stuff, and the depression fatigue/dullness. I have read the next batch of chapters, two of which I live tweeted (I have updated that post with a transcript in case you missed it). I'll get something up soon. It felt good blogging again, I don't want to slip back into not doing it again.

Tonight!

I'm reading 50 Shades today. I'm one chapter into the three I was planning to read tonight and I'm already getting very pissed off about it. I'm going to take a break for a few hours and do real life stuff, but at 8:00 pm GMT I'm going to live tweet the other two chapters I'm reading today over on my Twitter account. A brief recount of what I just read so you don't feel behind: Ana and Christian fight for the entire chapter and then a bombshell happens. Since it's impossible to actually spoil this story, the bombshell is that Jack Hyde calls her. Can't wait to see what that insanity is all about. So, 8:00 pm GMT (3:00 pm EST, 2:00 Central, noon Pacific if you don't feel like doing that math, America. Europe, you're on your own.) on Twitter. Hope to see you there!

P.S. I realize I should have announced this like two days ago so people would have had time to plan, but I've just thought of it and I won't have time to do it later this week with school and Thanksgiving. And I'll add the tweets to this post later on, so no one will miss anything, really.

Update:

Here's the results of the live tweet, including page numbers so I could remember what I was talking about.

Got my rum. Got the book. Here we go #50live

445: This is an insane amount of hatred. Hyde could have just gotten a new job by now

445: Can't they just find him based on the cell signal?

446: Well, he has her phone, that's a good clue. Also it's this book so of course he has her. Asshat.

446: FACT: terror tastes like metal.

446: Your plan to free Mia starts with go home and change clothes? What is wrong with you?

447: You have to keep CHRISTIAN safe? Are you high? Also, where was Mia's security. You're slipping Christian.

448: You can't complain about Christian's unsafe gun storage and then put it in the waistband of your pants dumbshit.

448: Yeah call him from inside the house. That's not suspicious.

449: "I have to collect five million dollars." Kidnap Monopoly!

450: He's not following you because I'm sure Christian has a tracker on your car.

450: DON'T DESCRIBE THE BANK WE KNOW WHAT A BANK LOOKS LIKE

451: NO. One bank doesn't hold the cash reserve for that entire part of the country. That's not how banks work. Jesus fuck

451: Oh your name doesn't match your account on official ID? No problem! - No bank, ever in recorded history

451: Your husband is not the authority here IT'S A FUCKING BANK

451: I'm going to stab something. This is not how banking works. I WORKED FOR A BANK

452: He's a rapist and he hates you. She'd already be raped by now.

452: Oh Jesus Christ. Plus you lie to him ALL THE FUCKING TIME

453: JUST FUCKING TELL HIM YOU DUMB FUCKING TWAT

454: Why would you tell the police? You never tell the police about anything.

455: It is absurd, he's going to rape the crap out of you, not be like "kthxbye!"

456: Because he's following you, how can you possibly be this stupid?

457: In what universe would that even work?

459: Unprovoked. Are you fucking serious? Only an idiot would have gotten in that car. Or done any of this really.

460: "Darkness.....peace." I FUCKING HATE YOU SO HARD

460: Exactly how I thought it would end. Your attempt at unpredictability has failed again, James.

Ok, Chapter 23. Just had a short break to vent to StereoNinja and down my rum and coke.

461: He wants the baby. THAT'S what you're thinking about? WHAT IS WRONG WITH YOU?

461: Seriously, why can't I move and where is Mia should be your first two thoughts if you are a normal person. Oh wait...

462: If he roofied her and DIDN'T rape her I will buy a hat and eat it.

462: No, she was incredibly STUPID. It's different. Also Christian will heart guns now, I can already tell.

463: More paperwork! Can't have that! NO ONE TALKS LIKE THIS

463: This is a horrible story telling device, James. Just pure shit.

463: Oh my god this conversation is not happening.

463: No, the ones you love are the ones you should be trying NOT to hurt you jackass.

464: I beg to differ, I am truly LIVID at this author.

464: NO YOU DON'T HAVE TO PEE YOU WOULD HAVE A CATHETER HAS THIS WOMAN EVEN SEEN A HOSPITAL

466: Oh you DO have one. Then it's in wrong because YOU SHOULDN'T NEED TO PEE WITH A CATHETER.

466: Good idea Christian, tell the nurse how to do her job and to rush while she's at it. I fucking hate you.

469: "She wasn't harmed." I don't believe you.

470: No Ana, that's what he ALWAYS thinks. Jesus how do you no know this?

471: Why does it matter that the doctor is African-American? It's like you've only seen 3 black people in your whole life

474: Tracking device on the Saab. I WIN ONE TO NOTHING

475: No Ana, a hospital that knows you are pregnant prescribed you pain meds that would hurt the baby. Idiot.

480: You'll be a terrible father Christian. TERRIBLE

481: YOU ARE NOT NAMING THAT KID BLIP FUCK OFF

That's it tonight. I'm going to go wash the terrible off me now.

Tip Top

I had the BEST day yesterday you guys.

So we've bought a lot of IKEA furniture since moving here, since I sold all of mine (it is cheaper to buy everything again than it is to ship it, and given how long it took my not furniture things to ship I'd just as soon not be living out of a suitcase for three months anyway) and as everyone knows, when you buy IKEA furniture, you end up with a mountain of cardboard and Styrofoam you need to get rid of. Now, for all the Americans, let me explain something to you about England. There's no room here. The houses are small, the streets are narrow, the standard size refrigerator is  roughly the size of the one you took to college with you freshman year. And because there's nowhere to, say, bury a big pile of trash out in the vast desert (and also no desert), you have to recycle pretty much everything (I say have to, but you should be recycling crap anyway you bums). And this involves a visit to the tip.

Again, for the benefit of the Americans, the tip is pretty much the dump, except sorted for recycling to a degree our country isn't even aware of and you have to drive your junk there yourself. Top Gear did an episode where James and Jeremy go caravaning and spend the bulk of the episode either washing their caravans or throwing things away at the tip, including the Stig.

I am fucking in love with the tip. You just drive up to it, park, and run around throwing your crap into various absolutely enormous bins. If you're not sure which bin you crap goes in, there are friendly guys in orange vests who will direct you to the right place. The also have humongous metal claw reachy-thingys (technical term) that they use to fish out things people have already put into the wrong bin. I was so fascinated I almost forgot to throw my 7000 Coke cans into the scrap metal bin. And then an actual caravan drove up to throw things away and I almost peed my pants.

On the way there, we passed a sign saying they were selling real Christmas trees at this garden center practically across the street from the tip, so on the way back we decided to stop and have a look at their inventory. I've been growing more and more concerned with each passing day that I would be unable to get a suitable tree since I don't have a single friend who has ever bought one taller than about 4 feet, which is only half a tree and totally unacceptable. Not only did this place have Christmas trees that could actually reach my ceiling, but they also had a pet shop, which we went in to look at birds because StereoNinja loves them and also so I could try to have a conversation with the bunnies. We noticed a door leading to another part of the shop, and when we went through we discovered they were selling dishes and aprons and beers that were all Christmas themed. I was super psyched, picked up a Santa spoon rest and a gravy boat, took one last glance around the store and noticed a ramp leading to yet another store area above us...and it was twinkling. "OH MY GOD SHINY THINGS!" I shouted, for real, as I ran up the ramp to a GIANT CHRISTMAS STORE leaving StereoNinja in my dust and presumably shaking his head in frustration and wondering why he'd brought me there in the first place. You guys. It was a MAGICAL WONDERLAND. I may have said several times that I would go back there later this week and just sit in there the entire day.

I don't even remember what we did the rest of the day since all I could think about was the tip and the Christmas store and how everything was coming up Milhouse for me. It was the best day ever.