Category: Ramblings

I do not take New Year’s Resolutions very seriously; they seem to fade and are often too nebulous in that they relate to a person’s state of being rather than to actionable activities. Goals, on the other hand, tend to be much more concrete. Even if a goal is not accomplished in its entirety, the effort spent toward that goal often yields some tangible good. Ironically, sometimes the good that comes of the goal is the realization that the goal is not worth the effort of accomplishing it. In that case, you can discard that goal and it no longer distracts you from your other, real goals.

Last year I set down in writing a number of goals for me to accomplish throughout the year. I put those goals in the context of something that one of my high school teachers, Mr. Zimmerman, laid out for our eleventh grade English class at the beginning of the school year. His model for life was corny then and it remains corny to this day. It was, however, fun to reminisce about Mr. Zimmerman, one of the best teachers who ever tried to impart some amount of knowledge and wisdom to me. Thinking about my goals for this year, however, some do not fit neatly into Mr. Zimmerman’s PIESMC Model of a Life Well Lived, and so I am setting aside Mr. Zimmerman for this year.

Some of my goals for the year are resurrections of unmet prior year goals. That just means that those goals were worthy goals that need more of my attention and energy. Others are updates of goals that can persist from year to year, even if partially or wholly met. Some are new goals.

So here they are.

Run 500 miles. Last year the goals were to run 700 miles and maybe take up yoga. I did neither. 500 miles is much more attainable. I was a bit shy of that in 2020, but should be able to reach that this year. Given my schedule and responsibilities, 500 miles is something I can reach, but only with a good effort. Yoga moves to the back burner for this year.

At the outset of last year I remarked that staying focused was a major challenge for me, intellectually. I spent the rest of the year proving just that. I had intended to read a number of works by a range of people, but of the ones I intended to read, the only one I actually did read was Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, once I found a suitable translation. I followed that up with Aristotle’s Politics, particularly apropos of last year. I also read a number of other books, most of them very worthwhile. This year I will continue with the classics, although I have decided to put off Shakespeare for some other year.

One goal I have found renewed enthusiasm for is to master beginning Italian. Last year I proposed a vague “expanding upon the limited amount of Italian I learned in 2019” but that came to naught. Almost. What I did accomplish was devising a much more definite plan. I replaced my missing Learn Italian CD lessons, for one. I also obtained both an Italian and an English copy of Italo Calvino’s Se Una Notte D’Inverno Un Viaggiatore. Common Italian, written by and Italian, for Italians. What could be better. Bello! I have even started reading both.

Next on my list of goals is to buy a sailboat. A small one. Something that can be sailed locally.

Of course, the next goal is to learn to sail it.

I also intend to submit a book (novel) for publishing. I finished a rough draft on one manuscript a while back, but when I read it, that one just does not seem all that good. Not something someone would want to publish, in my opinion. And I am not being a perfectionist, here. It is more along the lines of it being the output of someone who is not yet good at his craft. I might try to re-work it some and send it off in hopes that someone will find it publishable. Additionally, though, I have already started on a second novel, which ought to be better. After that is in reasonable shape, I will send that one off. And then write another. Until I write good enough for others to read.

One last smaller, much more accomplishable goal I have is to bake a loaf of povitica for each of my siblings and give it to them for their birthdays. I have made a couple of loaves from a recipe I found and those two efforts turned out surprisingly not-so-bad. Since my older four siblings are part Croatian (as is my wife, Mary, and, hence, our two kids) it seems like a personal present from me to each of them. Hopefully, this pans out.

I did not achieve most of my goals which I set out for myself last year. I allowed a pandemic to take my eye off the target. The days became less distinct than they had in the past. Without the usual cadence of weeks to use as signposts, I let the year slip away. Because of that, my writing suffered neglect. To combat all that, I will take a daily reckoning and a weekly reckoning. I will use each of those to keep myself focused.

Now, since we are at the end of January, not the beginning, I have left myself with eleven months rather than twelve months to do the things I want to do. However, as Leonard Bernstein once said: “To achieve something really great, all you need is a good idea and not quite enough time.”

That means I need to start NOW.

Mr. Zimmerman, one of my high school English teachers, presented our class with his paradigm for life at the beginning of the school year, as, I am sure, he did for each year’s class before us. I imagine he continued this tradition for each year’s class after us until he became Harry S. Truman High School’s principal. Despite it being one of the cheesier life plans one will ever encounter, I remember it fondly.

He first drew on the chalkboard (yes, we used chalkboards back then) a circle and then drew three lines through the circle, dividing that circle into six equal sections. In the top three sections he wrote the letters “P”, “I”, and “E” and he filled in the bottom three with “S”, “M”, and “C”, like this:

Mr. Zimmerman went on to explain the meaning of this diagram of his, maintaining that each slice of the “pie” represented a different aspect of our lives and that the slices ought to be all about the same size and that we ought to devote equal attention to each slice.

So, in memory of Mr. Zimmerman, here is what I plan for my slices in 2020:

Physical – Mr. Zimmerman was not really big on the physical fitness aspect of life. He was, after all, a high school English teacher. He did, though, recognize the importance of being physically active and physically engaged. I have a number of physical goals for this coming year. I want to continue running and aim to compete in a half marathon, at least. I also plan to run 700 miles over the course of the year, quite an increase over what I ran in 2019. Who knows, maybe I’ll even take up yoga.

Intellectual – The need to stay focused and not wander randomly is my main intellectual challenge. For 2020, I will keep my reading centered largely on classics which I have heretofore neglected. I will start with Shakespeare’s Henry VI trilogy and Richard III. To those I will add just a few current novels and finish Ron Chernow’s Alexander Hamilton and read Plutarch’s Lives. This past year I read Republic and a few other works by Plato. I would like to follow that up in 2020 with Aristotle’s Nicomachean Ethics, if I can find a translation that makes sense to me.

Emotional – I am a fairly even person emotionally, not out of control on the upside nor the downside. So, for 2020, I guess it will be steady as as (s)he goes. Or, perhaps, what would do me some good would be more emotional involvement in the world around me and, with it, more emotional maturity. Maybe I need to open myself up to experiencing life’s highs and lows more. Laugh more, cry more. More weddings and funerals in 2020?

Social – While I am not a very social person, I am not anti-social, either. I guess you could call me “asocial” if you want to call me anything. As I become more emotionally involved with the world around me, I expect that I will shorten the social distance between myself and others. I know I should want to be more social, but, in reality, I am happy as I am now.

Moral – The more I look at myself, the more I see the need for a more moral me. Morals, after all, are the animating force behind a person’s actions, or at least should be. A more moral me would be a more outraged me and a more compassionate me and a more socially engaged me and a more emotionally charged and mature me. It will begin with a more moral me.

Cultural – I feel that the cultural part of me is the part that presents one of the biggest opportunities for growth. After 2019 slipped by without me being all that culturally active, I have decided to be much more culturally active this coming year than last. Reading plays is one thing, but there is nothing like seeing them performed. I will be taking in a modern re-telling of Richard III, the play Teenage Dick by Mike Lew, which will be at Washington DC’s Woolly Mammoth Theater in June. That should be a nice wrap-up to reading the bard’s plays. I also have a number of other live performances planned. Additionally, I will be expanding upon the limited amount of Italian I learned in 2019 before visiting Rome and Cinque Terre. I am committed to more travel abroad in the future, but for now that is a hope, not a plan.

I am quite sure I have not done justice to Mr. Zimmerman’s “pie” but at least I have a start.

Thank you, Mr. Zimmerman.

Read the photo essay (if you can call looking at photographs “reading” them) from Issue 148 of Granta, the Summer Fiction issue, along with the accompanying commentary. The photo essay was on H+, transhumanism, by the multi-talented Matthieu Gafsou. Each photo dealt, in some way, with mechanical and electronic and software augmentation and supplementation of humans. The pictures were mostly stark, cold, clinical. This starkness enhanced the effect of the technology and dampened most real human elements in the shots. In one photo, a rat looks more human than the human technician, who appears to be more of a component of the technology than a person.

Of course, the visuals, along with Daisy Hildyard’s commentary, got me thinking. The aim of transhumanists, generally, is immortality, to live forever. To me, this seems like a totally worthless, empty goal.

First, consider the practicalities of immortality. If you can make the body and the mind durable enough to last forever, you had better not be the only one to do so. To be the sole immortal would be to isolate you from the rest of humanity in unimaginable ways. Unimaginable in that no one would understand you and you would understand no one because neither you nor the rest of humanity could imagine what it is like to be the other.

The opposite situation, where everyone is immortal, would be scarcely better. The person you most detest would be around, forever. There would be no escape. The same would be true for other fates: they would last forever.

Then, of course, there is the absurd conclusion to a life that never ends, outliving the earth itself. (I know, I know, we’ll inhabit other worlds.)

A more subtle problem also arises. Anyone with a moderate understanding of mathematics knows quite well what an inverse relationship is. The relevance of this is that the worth we attach to things, how much we value them, what they really mean to us, is inversely related to how often they occur and how long they last. What if you were to only hear your favorite song one more time in your life? Wouldn’t you listen to it more intensely than ever? And wouldn’t it be memorable? Conversely, if you were going to hear that same song an infinite number of times, the joy of each listening would shrink to zero, and, no matter how many zeros you add end to end, you still have zero. Your very most favorite song would become worthless.

Same for your best friend. In fact, you would have no friends because you would attach zero worth to any time you spent with any of them because, after all, that time you eventually spend with them over the course of eternity would be infinite and the inverse of infinite is: zero.

The only escape from this infinite morass of absurd meaninglessness would be, of course, death. The irony there is that, after spending all one’s energy and time and resources on living forever and, ultimately, missing out on really living at all, one would throw in the towel.

I’m in no rush, but when it’s time for me to go, I’ll just go.

I write software for a living. Throughout a diverse succession of software projects, I have programmed in dozens of different languages on an array of computing platforms. Outside of my work life, I read books, a variety of books, including novels, classics, history, technical and scientific works, biography, philosophy. I also read software, which is not as crazy as it might sound. Sometimes there is some helpful information contained in software that I use and, occasionally, in software that I have written. Most software, of course, does not make for as interesting of reading as does most books. On the other hand, some software is highly entertaining.

Over the years (decades, actually) something has gradually worked its way into my consciousness. I have become aware that software and fiction share many similarities. In fact, in several respects, a short story might resemble a short program more than it might resemble another work of fiction.

The first way in which software resembles fiction is setting. A story has to have some context, some setting. That setting might involve place. It might also have a time aspect to it, when the story occurs. Language might also be a part of the setting. So, too, for software. Software also happens (or executes in the parlance of the computing world) in a setting, a setting both of circumstance and of time. It, too, is written in a language, a language often (but not always) suited to the circumstance and time of its execution. Different programming languages have different nuances which suit them to different types of programming. Regardless of the language or nuance, though, each program occupies some problem space, some domain, and that domain plays a huge role in what happens in the program.

Fiction also has characters. Some of the most memorable fiction has the most memorable characters. Think of some of your favorites. Software is full of characters, too. Those characters are called different things in different programming paradigms, but they are there and each one has, well, it has character. Sometimes these characters are called variables or objects or entities or whatever, but they all have some presence. They all have a role and they all behave in certain ways, although sometimes those ways are obscure and mysterious. Each one is there for some specific purpose, if it is well written software. Sometimes, though, in some not so well written software, just as in some not so well written fiction, there are some useless supernumeraries, extras, entities that tend to obscure rather than clarify the story at hand.

Of course, what would a story be without a plot, a sequence of events that transpire. Ditto for software. Software that does nothing is not really software.

Finally, setting, characters, and plot are all directed toward a purpose, both in fiction and in software. After all, a story must have a point of some sort and not just meander about aimlessly, although some fiction seems to do just that. At the bottom of it all, the function of software and of fiction is resolution of some problem or some conflict, something that needs to be set right. What might be needed is to deliver a message nearly instantaneously or it might be the hero in a novel making sense of her life, whatever. Both have to move a narrative toward a resolution. That’s what software and fiction do.

Years ago, when I was much younger, in high school and before that, my mom had this bothersome desire to frequently rearrange the plants in our yard.  Not just bulbs and mums and small manageable plants, but bushes, hedges, and even trees.  Big ones, sometimes.  Of course, fulfillment of these wishes fell on my shoulders.  Literally.

This penchant for moving plants of all sizes continued even after I went off to college and our yard had become her yard (somehow Dad escaped having to participate in all of this and I never found out how he managed that.)  Over time, her plant movings became more ambitious.  On one trip home from college I was handed a shovel and directed to a twenty foot tall pine tree in the back yard that “would look better in front of the house.”

After Mom passed away back in January, I thought that my days of moving Mom’s plants were over.

Silly me.

Before she left us, long before she left us, about fifteen years ago, when Mary, the kids, Rusty, and I lived at 8618, Mom gave us a rose bush which we planted near a front corner of the house.  The bush flourished, to say the least, and, despite trimming by us and the new owners of 8618 after we moved, the outer edge of that rose bush pushed out pretty wide and quite high.  It had become a huge, flowering presence.

That changed, as I witnessed on my walk with Ryan last week, when we saw all the plants trimmed down to almost the ground.  A brief chat with one of the workers on the site informed me that the plants were to be removed completely in short order.  I related the history of the rose bush to him, and without me even needing to ask, he offered to save the rose bush for me.  He warned me, though, that, although he would set the bush aside with his backhoe, it would likely not remain there very long and that the day I saw it, I should take it while I could.

I agreed, happily, and a few days later, as I drove home a bit late from work, I saw the uprooted rose bush and its ball of dirt.

Later that same night, I returned to 8618 and grabbed the plant and its root ball to bring to our house.  I was glad to see that the light rain that day had kept the whole thing damp.    I held it firmly by the base and lifted.

It did not budge.  Not one bit.  I suddenly realized that it outweighed me by a considerable amount.

“She got me, again,” was all I could think.

I eventually knocked enough dirt off the roots so that I could wrestle the rest into the wheelbarrow I had brought with me and which, on the way home seemed to creak as if this would be its last trip.  The bush stub and root ball still weighed about as much as me but somehow I was able to hoist it into the wheelbarrow and deposit it in our current back yard, which will be its final home, I can assure you.

Addendum Postscript: Happened to meet the new owner of 8618, the wife in the wife and husband couple who bought the house from the people who bought the house from us. She said that they bought the house to rebuild and sell and that they would likely not keep any of what was there.

Oh, well.  Time to move on.

I had occasion today to stop by our old house at 8618, which we moved out of just over ten years ago. The occasion for stopping there was that I was out walking our golden retriever, Ryan, which I do every day, and, in fact, I pretty much walk by our old house every day, since we only moved across the street and just a few houses up the road. This occasion was different, though. While much of the inside of the house had already been surreptitiously gutted in the past week, this morning empty eye sockets stared out mournfully where only yesterday windows had remained. The azaleas and rose bush were cut off just above the ground, as were all the daffodils and whatever else had pushed up in this nascent spring. The shorn plants and the lonely sight of all those windowless gaps pulled me in for a closer inspection. Ryan followed patiently.

I would have expected the sight of the recently gutted interior of 8618 exposed in that way to have upset me but, strangely, it did not. Sadness did not prevail but instead curiosity took hold of me. I peeked inside, admiring the brick-and-block sturdiness and all the other hidden details, suddenly revealed, which made the house so rock solid. As I peered inside, I noticed that care had been taken to ensure that whatever was not to be removed was left intact and undamaged. The house is not to be torn down but redone on the inside and, perhaps, added to, as well. I felt an unanticipated sense of comfort with the less-than demolition of the house. It was not to be discarded but reborn. The fact that I was comfortable with the change made me smile.

Contrast that with the fact that, just three houses further down the road is the first house we occupied in this neighborhood, or, I should say was the first house we occupied in this neighborhood. 8612 was torn down to make way for a new, much larger house of far less character. That exchange of houses upset me as it seemed to be nothing more than an attempt to fill as much width and depth and height as the local zoning ordinances would allow. Square footage replaced a warm, welcoming home. Seeing 8612 discarded saddened me.

Now, I associate wonderful memories with each of those two homes. The first we lived in, 8612, was where we lived when Marie was born and where Liam watched through the front door as epically lousy basketball games were played for hours on end in the park across the street. The house even had a name, “The Blue House,” even though the only blue part of the house was the door.

8618 held a very special place in the hearts of the whole family. It was the home where we brought Rusty, our first golden retriever, a rescue, from a shelter down in Virginia. Over time, Rusty became so attached to 8618 that after we moved up the street he would try to sneak out of our new house and run away to go back home. It was also the place where Mary and the kids watched out the bedroom window as Dad donned a hooded sweatshirt and a Darth Vader mask to do battle with a nest of hornets and the place where youngsters awoke before dawn on Christmas morning.

And so it is sometimes with memories that they outlive the places where they happened. 8612 is gone and 8618 is about to have a fresh new life but both of them will live on in our memories.

Despite the fondness of the memories, though, it is tomorrow that really matters, our next step is more important and more interesting than the step before it.

Ryan and I had a walk to finish and that’s just what we did.

People often tout such things as “teamwork” and “sacrificing the individual for the greater good” and “overcoming adversity” as benefits of playing sports.  Like bad tasting medicine, the things that sports can teach you are often portrayed as something to be endured on the path to learning some tough lessons.

There are other, less painful things that sports (and a good coach) can teach.

The first of these is Focus.

Focus is an interesting subject.  It involves something called attentional field.  Attentional field is made up of everything on which you could focus.  Attentional field includes all those things that are subjective, inside of you, such as thoughts, emotions, and physical responses, plus those things that are objective, outside of you, including sights and sounds.  Focus is the ability to attend to internal and external cues in your attentional field (see here for details.) Focus is not just something that you have or do not have, it is something which can be taught, developed, and nurtured. Focus, or attention, can be subjective (internal) or objective (external) or a blend of both. A good coach will recognize the particular type of focus best suited to each individual athlete she or he coaches.

We have all seen coaches who, after an athlete has made a mistake, refocus that athlete on what is coming up, not allowing the athlete to be defeated by the mistake but rather to intensify their efforts towards what comes next. For other athletes, the reverse is needed. After they do something, good of bad, they need to be directed back to it to review it and to internalize the lesson which can be learned from it.

For some athletes it’s internal focus and for some it’s external focus.  A good coach can nurture either.

Whether internal focus or external focus, the focus must be tuned toward what needs to be done in any given situation.

Some time ago, I was watching on during a session at the Michael Jordan Flight School camp in which campers picked at random were given the opportunity to win a pair of Air Jordans by sinking a free throw in front of the whole crowd of campers and onlookers with the condition that if they missed the free throw they had to do some number of push-ups.  For most of the young kids, it was a daunting pressure-packed free throw.  One camper, however, displayed a bit of cockiness and upped the ante.  Make the shot and his whole team would win a pair of shoes.  Michael responded without missing a beat, “And if you miss, the whole team does push-ups.”  The camper, after first checking with his teammates, agreed.  Before shooting the free-throw, he confirmed with MJ the terms, “The whole team gets shoes.”  And MJ confirmed, “Or the whole team does push-ups.”

The young man missed the free-throw, which provided Michael the opportunity for a teaching point.  “You missed the free-throw because you were focused on the reward and the consequence.  You should have focused on your shot.”

Preparation is the second thing sports can teach us. Preparation serves as a strong aid in developing focus.

Preparation, though, is not simply creating a script to follow come game time. It is the actual process of getting ready that prepares more than any tangible plan that might come from that preparation. As Eisenhower once said “Plans are worthless, but planning is everything.” Or, as someone once told me, “A well-prepared person expects nothing and is prepared for anything.”

As one advances to new skill levels and moves through higher and higher arenas of competition, one spends more time, proportionally, preparing than performing. This holds true as one progresses from youth sports to high school sports and on to the collegiate level. Finally, at the highest levels of competition, the amount of time spent in preparation grows to hours for each minute of game time. This is something lost on most fans. All of this preparation feeds the athlete’s ability to focus and provides the confidence needed to succeed.

Focus and preparation would be meaningless, however, without Purpose.  Purpose engenders the motivation to focus and to prepare, not just in the larger sense of purpose, on the grand scale, but also in all those day to day situations.  Life, in general and the season as a whole are not the only things that demand purpose, but each practice and each workout along the way do, too.  When asked, with all that he had accomplished in his career, what more did he still wish to accomplish, Hall of Fame bound coach Bill Belichick replied “I’d like to go out and have a good practice today. That would be at the top of the list right now.”

Which is why he is headed for the Hall of Fame.

Yesterday was my birthday. But it was not just any birthday, it was my Golden Birthday. I turned 59 years old and I was born in ’59.

I know, I know. Golden Birthdays are supposed to be when your age is the same as the day of the month of your birthday.

Those are wasted if you’re born in the first few days of the month, such as I was, on a day you do not enjoy and cannot remember.

For me, though, my Golden 59th Birthday was one I enjoyed and one I will remember. It started with a dream I had in which I was taking a nap and in my dream I awoke to find my family there and I enjoyed it so much and it felt so good just to have them around. And then, later in the day we all got together to celebrate MY birthday at dinner.

It was, literally, a dream come true.

Another good thing about my 59th birthday was that I realized so much more now than when I was three how much I have to be thankful for. My wife, my kids, my mom and dad and brother and sisters, all the people around me through the years, all the blessings and all the good fortune, most of it unearned by anything I did.

So, for this, my real Golden Birthday, I am thankful. And I’m glad it didn’t show up until I was old enough to appreciate it.

My kids, born in ’94 and ’98, have something to look forward to.

For a long time.

I’m a Roman Catholic. For Catholics and others, the Lenten season is a time of self-denial. Often Catholics give up something for Lent, with chocolate being the typical choice, it seems. This custom, like other customs, has value in it. Customs or rituals provide a framework, a familiar pattern to follow that takes us outside of our mundane every day lives and allows us to be a part of the larger community. But Lent is different in that it is personal. The idea is (or should be) for us to challenge ourselves in some way that results in us needing God’s help. The best Lent is not one in which we have persevered on our own, but one in which we have sought, and received, God’s help. That is, to pray.

So it is with fasting. A successful fast (if you can call it that) is not one of self-achievement, but one in which you seek, and are given, a helping hand.

Further, the purpose of fasting is not self-denial or self-punishment. Consider Isaiah 58:5-9.

5. “Is this the kind of fast I have chosen,
   only a day for people to humble themselves?
   Is it only for bowing one’s head like a reed
   and for lying in sackcloth and ashes?
   Is that what you call a fast,
   a day acceptable to the Lord?
6. Is not this the kind of fasting I have chosen:
   to loose the chains of injustice
   and untie the cords of the yoke,
   to set the oppressed free
   and break every yoke?
7. Is it not to share your food with the hungry
   and to provide the poor wanderer with shelter—
   when you see the naked, to clothe them,
   and not to turn away from your own flesh and blood?
8. Then your light will break forth like the dawn,
   and your healing will quickly appear;
   then your righteousness will go before you,
   and the glory of the Lord will be your rear guard.
9. Then you will call, and the Lord will answer;
   you will cry for help, and he will say: Here am I.”

Let’s take Isaiah’s words to heart this Lenten season.

P.S. This would have been Dad’s 88^th birthday. Happy Birthday Dad!

Sunday has got to be the saddest day of the week.

Why is that?

Perhaps it is because the end of Sunday marks the end of the end of the end, or at least the end of the weekend. Another week in the books, so to speak. One more week closer to the grave.

One of the saddest songs written, in my opinion, is Kris Kristofferson’s “Sunday Morning Coming Down.” It’s a poignant look at what a man can miss when he makes the wrong choices in his life.

Well I woke up Sunday morning
With no way to hold my head, that didn’t hurt
And the beer I had for breakfast wasn’t bad
So I had one more for dessert
Then I fumbled in my closet through my clothes
And found my cleanest dirty shirt
Then I washed my face and combed my hair
And stumbled down the stairs to meet the day

I’d smoked my mind the night before
With cigarettes and the songs I’d been pickin’
But I lit my first and watched a small kid
Cussin’ at a can that he was kicking
Then I walked across the street
And caught the Sunday smell of someone fryin’ chicken
And Lord, it took me back to somethin’
That I’d lost somewhere, somehow along the way

On a Sunday morning sidewalk
I’m wishing Lord that I was stoned
‘Cause there’s something in a Sunday
That makes a body feel alone
And there’s nothin’ short of dyin’
That’s half as lonesome as the sound
Of the sleepin’ city sidewalk
And Sunday mornin’ comin’ down

In the park I saw a daddy
With a laughin’ little girl that he was swingin’
And I stopped beside a Sunday school
And listened to the songs they were singin’
Then I headed down the street
And somewhere far away a lonely bell was ringin’
And it echoed through the canyon
Like the disappearin’ dreams of yesterday

Maybe it’s the look back at the week and at how life has gone up until that point and the regrets that go along with such reflection that makes Sundays so sad.

For some, perhaps it’s because the work week is about to begin and the fun times are over, I don’t know.

It brings me down just thinking about it.

What do you think?