It's Symbolic of Their Struggle Against Reality

I don't usually link to Time.com columns, but today I do, because Kinsley's on the late swing against the war of neocons Adelman and Perle is a good one. A sample:

[Y]ou don't get to assume the success of your intentions then plead a shrugging "Who knew?" when they don't pan out. I also am in favor of toppling dictators, establishing democracy and watching it spread painlessly throughout every region where there is no experience of it. Not only that: I am in favor of turning sand into ice cream and guaranteeing a cone to every child in the Middle East. But you can't turn sand into ice cream. That is not a defect in the execution of the idea. It is a defect in the idea itself. Although Perle and Adelman and others may think they are dissing the Bush Administration when they talk about its incompetence in failing to turn sand into ice cream, they are also displaying the Bush Administration's key vice, which is assuming that things are how you wish them to be and not how they are.

To think, all this time the Iraq War was really just the struggle of Stan to have babies (with a more slaughterous punchline).

We Have All The Time In the World

George Lazenby's debut as James Bond in On Her Majesty's Secret Service should have been a bigger deal than it turned out to be. Lazenby was the male model and BP pitchman who, with the help of Sean Connery's tailor and hairdresser, landed the biggest role in British cinema in 1969. What Lazenby lacked in acting chops he made up for in sheer physical prowess and athleticism. No other James Bond has ever been as convincing in close fight scenes as Lazenby was in this film. He gave the impression of a man who really could kill with his bare hands. What acting he had to do, he did well for a beginner. He was a bit stiff in some acting scenes, and someone else had to dub his Sir Hilary Bray dialog because Lazenby couldn't handle the posh accent; but his performance in the final moments of the film was poignant, and, when Bond was in crisis and appeared to be at the end of his tether in the middle of the film, Lazenby conveyed Bond's fear and desperation every bit as well as Roger Moore did at a similar moment in Octopussy. If Lazenby had allowed himself to grow into the role (Cubby Broccoli offered him a five picture deal, which he refused), Lazenby might have grown into a memorable 007. Instead, he ended up, somewhat undeservedly, as the forgotten Bond.

A great supporting cast helps Lazenby out on this adventure. Diana Rigg was an inspired choice for Tracy D'vicenzo. The second Avengers alumnus to take a part in a Bond film (the first was Honor Blackman in Goldfinger, and the third was Patrick McNee in A View To A Kill), Rigg brings wit, style, smarts, and a surprising amout of physical prowess of her own. It's easy to see why Bond thinks her character is special. Telly Savalas is the best of all the actors who played Ernst Stavro Blofeld, giving a sinister, tough performance as the snobbish, social-climbing, ruthless, master criminal. Gabriele Ferzetti plays Draco, Tracy's father and a master criminal himself, with a sly smoothness.

If life were fair, On Her Majesty's Secret Service would have launched Bond in some interesting new directions at the close of the 1960s, but in part because of Lazenby's refusal to continue and in part because box office receipts dropped from 1967s You Only Live Twice, it was not to be. Connery returned for one more outing in the wild, over-the-top Diamonds Are Forever, then it was time for Yaphet Kotto and his partner, Death Incarnate, to threaten former Saint and new 007 Roger Moore in the blacksploitation influenced Live and Let Die. That'll be next.

(Bitterspice has another take on On Her Majesty's Secret Service here.)

Underneath the Mango Tree

In preparation for the opening of Casino Royale, I've taken it upon myself to watch the other five James Bonds in their debut films. The first up, tonight, was Dr. No. The film is an oddity among the Bonds, because so many of the elements that we've come to expect from later 007 pictures weren't in place for this one. There's no pre-title sequence, and Bond's walk in the gun barrell (done by stuntman Bob Simmons, not Sean Connery), is not accompanied by the familiar John Barry fanfare. The adventure itself is also unusual in the canon. There's only one car chase scene, and it's unspectacular by later Bond standards. Also, while other 007 films emphasize the action and explosions, Bond spends a lot of time investigating in this one.

Connery certainly had a bead on the character even in this early picture. Critics like to talk about what a rough customer Connery was in the films (usually to contrast him with Roger Moore and Pierce Brosnan), but what struck me most about him was his grace and relaxation. In all the Bond films, Connery is the only one who ever sings a charming little tune, and he does it in this picture. I don't recall any of the other actors consenting to a chair dance during their tet-a-tets with Miss Moneypenny. And for all the Connery-Bond's roughness, he makes clear early on that he prefers his Baretta .25 to the 7.65mm Walther PPK, even though Q (this time not played by Desmond Llewellan) disparages the Baretta as a lady's gun. Connery's Bond was masculine enough that he didn't have to prove his masculinity to anyone. It's part of what made him so cool.

It looked like Connery had a ball playing James Bond in this one, and it looked like Bond was having a good time dodging death in the islands. Me too.

On to George Lazenby, Diana Rigg, Telly Savalas and the first great Bond ski chase in On Her Majesty's Secret Service.

Ugh

First Ed Bradley and now Jack Palance. I've crapped bigger than this week. Seriously, thanks, Ed, for all that brilliant reporting on "60 Minutes" and thanks, Jack, for Shane.

Read This Or I'll Sentence You to Life With An Objectivist

Via Ezra Klein, I found an article by Chris Hayes about the flaws in the way lower division economics courses--the ones that drove Neil and me around the bend when we were students seventeen years ago (goddamn! seventeen!)--are taught. All I can add to it is that Hayes's descriptions match my experience of Econ 101 and 102.

When Neil and I took macro, during the Pelopennesian War, our professor was a former hack for then-Senator Slade Gorton. His opening lecture was slightly different from the one Chris Hayes's professor used--our professor compared the free market to the movement of cars on the interstate, explaining that no one tells each car where to go and each driver works individually to achieve his own ends. He didn't explain who built the interstate, or drew all the white lines, or put up the signage, or decided which way the traffic should travel, or empowered the cops to fine or arrest motorists who tried to achieve their own ends too aggressively; but that would have involved taking into consideration the helpful effects of both government and law, which our professor would only have acknoweledged if the alternative had been vivisection. I don't know how many other people saw through the attempt to dress ideology in the clothing of fact during the lectures, but Neil and I certainly did, and it turned me off to the whole discipline.

This was not my experience with other social sciences. My professors in political science seemed able to survey the breadth of the field without making me feel as if I were at Junior Libertarian camp. In Sociology we covered Weber and Marx, but the only tilt I noticed was that we seemed to be reading a lot of Germans. It seems like the distinction here is that while other survey courses try to bring in a mix of theorists for the students to ponder, Econ 101 pretends that the neo-classical economics of Milton Friedman is the only functioning theory of economics that anyone takes seriously, and that its policy recommendations are always correct. This does double harm. Many students will emerge from the classes convinced that the normative positions that their Econ 101 professors present as truths are gospel (and change their voting behavior accordingly), while others, who might otherwise find economics interesting, become so pissed off that they sell their books back at the end of the quarter and move on to other disciplines. My experience in Econ 101 has left me forever suspicious of economists and the arguments they make, and it needn't have been so.

Read the article. It's a good one.

A Good Day

The Democrats have taken one, and possibly both houses of congress. There's a lot of ugliness still to come, and I still see this country as one in enormous political and cultural trouble, but at least this is a step in a more hopeful direction. I wish I could feel good about Donald Rumsfeld's departure, but even if an ostensibly reasonable person replaces him (and I don't think that Robert Gates, who deliberately exaggerated the Soviet threat to please his masters in the Reagan administration, represents that much of an improvement), you have to watch for the people Cheney will stick in as his aides. For all we know, the new guy's assignment may be just to sit there and look respectable, kind of like Powell. I'd pity the man, if I were still capable of pity for anyone associated with the Bushes.

Still, things look better today than yesterday, if only slightly.

Tonight I go to see Waiting for Godot for the first time (on stage anyway). My personal Godots are hope for the future and the Oakland Raiders offense. The Raiders' offense still hasn't shown up, but I think I see, maybe it's...

Rrrraaawrrrr!

Your results:
You are Hulk

Hulk 90% Green Lantern 85% Batman 70% The Flash 65% Catwoman 65% Spider-Man 55% Supergirl 50% Superman 45% Wonder Woman 45% Iron Man 45% Robin 37%

You are a wanderer with amazing strength.

Click here to take the "Which Superhero are you?" quiz...

K-Fed and Britney Are Over

This means that the talentless but insanely fertile Federline is on the loose again! Women everywhere flee in terror! It's a bug hunt, man! Game over, man!

So What's Going to Happen Tomorrow?

I don't know about nationally. After three straight election heartbreaks, I won't feel happy until every last race is called. Indeed, if the Democrats should manage to pull this off, I still won't be happy, because I know that the Bush people, the Fox News guys, and their various right wing minions, will be even uglier in defeat than they are in majority. (See Clinton Administration, The) You can count on Nancy Pelosi being accused of at least ten counts of drug/prostitute related ritual witchcraft slayings, Harry Reid being called a mafia-don, crypto-terrorist, baby slaughterer. And that'll be before Ann Coulter has opened her mouth. That's the fun we're in for, if we win.

Still, locally, the citizens of Washington state will do their part. My calls:

Senate:

Cantwell defeats McGavick:

McGavick was a crummier candidate than a lot of local pundits thought he was, having stepped into a pile of his own shit with that DUI thing last summer. His main problem, though, was that he didn't have an issue. He started out arguing for better relations between our state and Alaska, which allowed Cantwell to say that instead of worrying about pleasing Ted Stevens, she was in there pitching for her state. McGavick than tried to attack Cantwell on the grounds of general niceness--a hard attack to make against a small, shy woman with a quiet voice. Then McGavick started in on the Mexicans and estate taxes, which nobody but the 38% of Washingtonians who already vote Republican were going to get all that excited about. In the end, he tried to argue that because Cantwell's position on Iraq had been inconsistent, that his equally hard to decipher position would be preferable. In my weaker moments, I came within about a half-mile of pitying McGavick. But he's fucked, so fuck him.

Washington 8th:

I have no idea who's going to win this. I've seen polls with Democrat Darcy Burner up, but this is Washington's 8th, Republican district for as long as I can remember. And while I think Dave Reichert hurt himself by getting a school bus driver fired for flipping the bird at the President, I'm not sure how much it hurt him. This one may not be decided before Wednesday morning.

Washington 5th:

Goldmark, the Democrat, has run a good race, and this is the sort of year where a Democrat running a good race in Spokane just might have a shot. Still, it is Spokane and its right-leaning environs, so I'd say the incumbent, Cathy McMorris, still has an edge.

Everyone other member of congress in the state is safe.

Toles is Cool

Nice cartoon:

Has James Bond Lost His Cool?

I understand that the early British press reviews for Casino Royale have been positive, but after having watched the trailer and read the article I'm still concerned about the direction they're taking the character:

Several reviewers noted one joke that deliberately breaks a Bond tradition. When asked if he wants his vodka martini shaken or stirred, Craig replies: "Do I look like I give a damn?"

Now of course I don't know who Bond is supposedly saying this to, but the response seems like a graceless bit of posturing--see how rough and tough I am in comparison to that wuss...um...Connery. It lacks what to me is central to the appeal of the Bond character: cool.

Cool is no mean trait. It reflects a feeling of ease, of sensuality, of joy in living. Cool makes it possible for the character to do what he must to hold our interest. Cool makes us all want to be James Bond. It's what separates James Bond from Jack Bauer and Jason Bourne. I can't imagine anyone wanting to be the lead character in 24. Jack Bauer's life looks unendingly painful and unpleasant. (I'll bet even his vacations are taut, nerve-wracking affairs, fraught with moral complications.) Jason Bourne's life seems to be spent holed up in grubby rooms, when he's not causing massive traffic pile-ups. When I watched The Bourne Supremacy, I never once sat up and said, "Boy, that looks like fun." I was too busy thinking, "Gee, it sucks to be you."

The best 007s--Connery, Moore, and Brosnan--all had cool. They wore it differently, indeed, they all seemed to be playing just slight variations on themselves, but that's part of cool. The less successful James Bonds--Lazenby and Dalton--seemed to be trying to be James Bond. They were always pushing and striving and straining. Everything they did, even ordinary movement, seemed to involve effort, like novice dancers who have to count the steps out loud. Connery, Moore, and Brosnan simply were Bond. They knew the moves.

Does Daniel Craig have cool? I guess it remains to be seen, but what I hear is not promising. Maybe the Broccolis should have taken Quentin Tarentino up on his offer to do Casino Royale for them. There is a filmmaker who could give master classes on how to manufacture violent, dark cool.

Know Your Sith Lords

Dick Cheney said that his critics think he's Darth Vader. Certainly not. Lord Vader was once a good person. A more appropriate Sith Lord comparison would be to one who used fear and lies to boost himself a level of power that was nearly despotic: Darth Sidious. I realize that this analogy is imperfect as well. Sidious had, at least, a superficial charm. While I can accuse Cheney of a great deal, unctuousness and smarm have never been among his crimes. Cheney is a taciturn, charmless killer, and a more apt movie villain analog for him might be Karl Stromberg from The Spy Who Loved Me or Jame Gumb from The Silence of the Lambs, but, as long as we're playing in George Lucas's ballpark, Darth Sidious will have to do.

As for George W. Bush, well, he doesn't get to be Lord Vader either. Whenever someone failed Vader, Vader killed him. Bush keeps promoting his incompetents. Maybe we can cast Bush as one of those Trade Federation guys that Vader wipes out in Revenge of the Sith. They were malicious, vain, ignorant, and given to trusting the wrong people. If we could leave Lucas behind, and if Bush developed better taste in clothes, we might just be able to compare Bush to Brett Easton Ellis's Patrick Bateman. ("I like to torture Arabs. Do you know I'm utterly insane?")

Or maybe Bush is Max Cady or maybe...

This is making me sad.

What Losing Means

Matt Yglesias has a great post about how it's impossible to separate military outcomes from policy outcomes, using Tet as an example:

The goal of the VC/NVA military campaign was to persuade the United States of America to stop backing the Republic of Vietnam regime in order to precipitate the collapse of the ROV government and unite the Vietnamese nation under the leadership of the Communist government in Hanoi.

The Tet Offensive did not, on its own, accomplish any of those things. It did, however, achieve major strides in that direction. It was, therefore, a success. It wasn't a "military" failure but a "political" success, it was just a success.

Read the whole thing. It's very nicely stated. And remember it the next time someone says the Iraq War (or the Afghan war for that matter) was a military success but a political failure. They were neither.

Saturn After Dark

No comment required.

A Saner Relationship With Sports

The Oakland Raiders lost again today, 34-20 to the San Francisco 49ers. It was ugly. The Raiders once again gave up a halftime lead, committing turnovers and losing any sense of rhythm. Ah, well. So it goes. For the next few months, I'll root for Peyton Manning and the Colts. It's more fun. I'll leave the Raiders to get on with the losing it seems they have to do, checking in occasionally to look for signs of improvement.

I mention this because of the exaggerated sense of disappointment that I'm picking up from some quarters of Raider fandom. To a degree, I understand fannish anger at what looks like a another lost season in which the Raiders have, if anything, regressed from the Kerry Collins era. We all still remember the Gannon years, which were simultaneously great and tragic in ways that only the Greeks could chronicle. At the end of that era, the Raiders got old fast. They lost too many players (Gannon, Rice, Brown, Romo, Garner, Parella, Adams, Barton, Rod Woodson, Charles Woodson, and others), and the ones playing underneath them were in no position to just pick up and carry on. Attempts to reload fizzled partly because any plan that requires Kerry Collins to play consistent football indicates a need for a new plan, but mostly because at the core--the offensive line and the defensive front seven--the Raiders no longer had the players to compete week-to-week. Those kinds of problems can't be fixed with high profile acquisitions. They require good scouting, good coaching, and consistent dedication to getting the little things right. Until the offensive line plays as a unit, and the defensive line and linebackers can play with both aggression and awareness, not much else will matter for the Raiders.

Now I could go over all the things the Raiders need to do in order to become a competitive team again. (I'd say prepare for a youth movement, which to a large degree has already started, because with the rising salary cap, I don't think the Raiders will be able to snag too many flashy free agents in the next few years.) But none of that really matters. I don't run the Oakland Raiders, and no one in the organization is listening to me. (And why should they listen, really? What the hell do I know about running a football team?) Instead, I want to put in a word for sanity, a plea to relax for your own sakes and to find the courage to let the Raiders go, at least for a while.

Quoting George Carlin:

You know the best thing I did for myself during the past five years? I told sports to go take a flying fuck. I was fed up with the way I related to professional sports, so I reordered the relationship on my own terms. I became a little more selective.

I couldn't believe how much time I had wasted watching any old piece of shit ballgame that happened to show up on TV. I must have thought there was some inborn male obligation to tune in and root every time a bunch of sweaty assholes got together to mix it up in a stadium somewhere.

I also realized I was wasting perfectly good emotional energy by sticking with my teams when they were doing poorly. My rooting life was scarcely better than those Cubs fans who think it's a sign of character to feel shitty all the time. It's absurd.

I decided it's not necessary to suffer and feel crappy just because my teams suck. What I do now is cut 'em loose for awhile. I simply let them go about losing, as I go about living my life. Then, when they've improved, and are doing well once again, I get back on board and enjoy their success. Yeah, I know, I can hear it: diehard, asshole loyal sports fans screaming, "Front runner!" Goddamn right! Don't be so fuckin' juvenile. Teams are supposed to provide pleasure and entertainment, not depression and disappointment.

I can't improve on what Carlin said right there. Folks, the Raiders are going to have to do some losing. Let's hope it's not too long a dark period, but it might be. There's a lot of work for Art Shell to do. (And I actually think that, irrespective of this year's record, Shell should stay. The Raiders do not need to waste another season bringing in yet another head coach to switch everyone around all over again, though a new offensive coordinator might be a fair idea. Vermeil and Gibbs were allowed to survive their disasterous first seasons, and got much better results after a year or two, despite working for owners who were every bit as out of it as Al Davis is now said to be.) Building through the draft and getting a system fully ingrained takes time. If you want to watch in order to see how it's coming along, fine, but don't expect much, and don't let the failures ruin your week. Find some other pastimes to tide you through. There's a big world beyond the gridiron. Now's your chance to go find it.

As Close As You Can Get To Pissing Me Off

Just a small thing that's bugging me, gang:

Lexus commercials, already given to using the odious construction "certified pre-owned" in place of used, are now claiming that their "certified pre-owned" vehicles are the closest thing you can get to a new car. No, you hustling prick, the closest thing I can get to a new Lexus is a new Lexus. New means unused. All used cars are equally far away from newness. That's why the instant you drive the car off the lot, they won't let you trade it right back in for full value. Try the "closest thing to a new Lexus" line on the car salesman after you've driven the car off the lot and see how far you get. He'll say, "Bullshit, that fuckin' car is used, but can I interest you in this pre-owned vehicle? It's the closest thing to new!"

Embracing Unpopularity

I caught Dennis Miller on Jon Stewart last night. Miller started out funny, but when the subject turned to the administration he embraced a view that I once assumed Miller would be smart enough to see for the rubbish it is. I can't quote it, but it went something like this: yes Bush was unpopular, but Miller discovered through his reading that two other presidents, Lincoln and Truman, were unpopular, and history judged them kindly. Stewart seemed slightly skeptical of the comparison, but Miller insisted on holding to it.

Dennis, Dennis, Dennis, the old you would have seen through the logic of this idea as if it were used Neutrogena. Schopenhauer expressed Miller's sentiment this way: "All truth passes through three stages. First, it is ridiculed. Second it is violently opposed. Third, it is accepted as being self-evident." The more popular variant is, "They laughed at the Wright Brothers". True, but, as Carl Sagan pointed out, they also laughed at the Marx brothers. It's not true that all truth is ignored or ridiculed before it is accepted. Einstein's theories were neither ignored nor violently opposed. Nobody gunned for Achimedes or Da Vinci. (Actually, a soldier, looting the city where Archimedes lived, did kill him; but the soldier had no idea who Archimedes was.) Madam Curie's only enemy was the element she discovered: Radium.

Besides, many promoters of ideas are either violently opposed or ignored because they deserve it. Yes, people laughed at the Wright brothers, but they also laughed at the hundreds of other cranks and would-be inventors who promoted their ridiculous attempts at flying machines. Yes, Lincoln and Truman were unpopular in their eras but vindicated by history; but consider for a moment Nixon, Harding, Buchanon, Hoover, Andrew Johnson, Bush ancestor Franklin Pierce or Bush the First for that matter. All did things (or failed to do things) in office which made them widely disliked in their time, and history has decided that these men earned their imfamy.

A thing to bear in mind if you come in for public criticism--people may laugh at or attack you because they can't accept how right you are; but you must consider that they also may laugh at or attack you because you're either really fucking funny or dangerously wrong. Dennis Miller, much like his friend George W., is stuck on option A, unwilling to consider the (much more likely) option B.

Honestly, Dennis, do you seriously believe that historians are going to look back at the botched response to Katrina, the hideously mismanaged and horribly misconceived Iraq War, the massive public debt and corporate scandals, the torture and the killing, the rapid diminution of personal liberty and privacy, the degredation of the Atlantic alliance and the foreign policy order of the last half century, the ruin of America's image in the world as a good-faith and rational actor in world affairs, and conclude that there really was a pony under all this shit? If you can believe that, I have to wonder what President Bush would have to do to curdle your faith in him.

Crisis Over

Well, for anyone still listening out there, the fiscal crisis that made the last four months a valley of woe has abated. I'm not rich, but I'm no longer counting coins every time I have to buy milk at the store either. This experience didn't kill me, but the stress of it probably took a few years off my life. (Of course, if the Republican regimes continue, it's not like I'll want them back.)

It is good to know that under the stress I can still be productive. I should be able to start submitting Escape Velocities in a month or two. I also finished my new action/adventure screenplay, which isn't too far from ready to mail. Matt Damon and Ed Zwick fucked me on the title I wanted to use, so I'll have to think of something else to call it. Damn you, Damon. Damn you and your progeny to the deepest icy bowels of Hell, you miserable Oscar-winning, math promoting, Project Greenlight producing son of a bitch! I'm sorry, but Blood Diamond really was a fucking good title. Anyway, I see Christian Bale in the lead; bitterspice is pushing Aaron Eckhart.

For my next trick, I'll get myself arrested by the administration and see if I can manage to continue high-level literary production while being imprisoned and tortured in Eastern Europe.

He Is Not

I've been away for a while, I know, (regular posting will begin again once bills are paid and more important work accomplished). Still, I wanted to take a moment to counter this outrageous slander by Hugo Chavez of Venezuela:

Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez took his verbal battle with the United States to the floor of the U.N. General Assembly on Wednesday, calling President Bush "the devil."

Mr. Chavez, I expect a retraction of this statement immediately. George W. Bush is most certainly not the devil.

The devil is smart.

Things that Make Me Smile

Mike McGavick, he of the media confession, apparently lied about just how drunk he was when he was arrested for DUI. The Seattle columnists who congratulated McGavick for his reflectiveness are now pissed.

I never actually gave a damn about his confession. I just assumed he was trying desperately to draw attention to himself and a campaign that never had a compelling reason for being. (Is anybody in Washington State really worried because Maria Cantwell and Alaska Senator Ted Stevens don't like each other? In a fight between the two, half the state would root for Cantwell, and the other half would jump in to help her beat up Stevens.) Still, after having logged all this time as a political hack, McGavick ought to know better than to lie about something that the press--or anyone with time on their hands to file public records requests--can easily find out about. Who does McGavick think he is? George W. Bush?

The strange case of Lee Siegel, the ex-TNR blogger, is another thing that made me smile today. Apparently Mr. Siegel, who spent much of the summer hurling the word "blogofascist" like a single-A pitcher with no command, has been suspended from TNR for sockpuppetry. (Sockpuppetry is the practice of signing onto your own blog, under a fake name, and variously seconding your own posts or attacking dissenters.) I've never witnessesed an act of sockpupptry, but I have seen something kind of similar. Check out this user comment for The Mangler 2 on imdb:

Much etter than the first one, 10 January 2002

Author: mhamiltonw from los angeles

A great idea. Nice intro with the female lead, Chelse Swain, who looks great on film. I don't think the other person who commented on this film actually saw the same movie I did. This was fun, hip, and fast paced once the computer virus was downloaded into the school's computer system. I nice DVD rental if you like these kinds of teen thriller "what if" movies.

I grant you, mhamiltonw is not a very good pseudonym for Michael Hamilton-Wright, the film's director, but given the overall quality of his movie, his unimaginative choice of alias is understandable. While Lee Siegel picked a better nom de plume, the overall effect is still to make himself look not only dishonest, but also ridiculous. It's one thing to send yourself birthday and Christmas cards. It's quite another to show them off in public.

During a period where I'm under a lot of economic stress and am often deeply depressed about the state of things, I need stuff like this to make it all worthwhile. Thanks guys. You're wonderful fuck-ups. Whatever you do, don't ever change.

(Hat tip to Majikthise for the Lee Siegel thing.)