Tonight has not yet happened. 2010 has not yet happened. But this is what might have happened:
At the stroke of midnight I was nowhere near a girl and nowhere near mistletoe. I was at the other end of the roof terrace, vomiting over a railing. No one saw me doing it, and I didn’t tell anyone I did it. It was the first time I had puked in a long time, and I blame it on cigarettes.
I only smoke cigarettes when I’m really drunk. I hate them otherwise. Granted, I HAVE smoked cigarettes sober before, but it’s different when I’m sober. It’s a calculated decision. It’s me saying, “OK, I’m bored as fuck right now, so I’m going to smoke a cigarette. I know it’s going to make me feel like shit, but I don’t care — I want to get high.”
On Mina’s roof terrace I must have smoked at least 10 cigarettes. It was Rachel’s fault. The Marb Lights appeared before me as if on a conveyor belt, and I kept sucking them down. We weren’t really even talking — in fact, I think 50 percent of the time she had her back to me, but she still kept handing me cigarettes. This was after I had just gotten done chugging a bottle of champagne by myself in the bathroom. Why I brought it into the bathroom is a mystery. Why I decided to chug it is not.
It has always been assumed that if any kissing is going to happen on New Year’s Eve it’s going to happen at the stroke of midnight. This was not the case for me. I ended up kissing a girl named Cassandra (or rather she kissed me) at 9:30pm. I did not want to kiss her. She was not attractive and had a personality that reminded me of the face of a pug. Her laugh — high pitched followed by a guttural guffaw — sounded like a zebra getting punched in the stomach. She would also yelp and say, “Oh my God, I know exactly what you’re talking about!” after everything anyone said. At one point I ventured that I had been extremely constipated the week before just to see if she would say, “Oh my God I know exactly what you’re talking about!” but she was too busy paying attention to another conversation, one which involved the return policy of leather boots at Nordstrom.
When I walked out on the balcony to have my first cigarette of the night, Cassandra followed me. She had on a short black dress displaying pasty calves. The upper part of the dress had some lace that was less than flattering and reminded me of my Grandmother’s funeral. Before I could take a drag off the cigarette, she pulled me towards her and pressed her large red lips against my face. Not my lips. My face. Her lips were big enough to cover a decent portion of my face, and after she was done kissing me she tugged thoughtfully on my scarf and scampered back inside. It was the last time I would see her that night, though I would acutely remember the feeling of her lips on the area just beneath my nose when I vomited over the balcony railing a few hours later.
After vomiting, I made my way down to the street. It was 12:05 am, the fifth minute of 2010. I walked along Broadway in the general direction of my house, and vaguely wondered why I had gone to the party in the first place. I had talked to practically no one, drunk entirely too much, and gotten kissed by a girl who reminded me of a dog. The highlight of the night — by far — was walking home: knowing that it was over, knowing that my bed awaited me, and knowing that tomorrow, or rather today, I could start to forget my last night of 2009.
This entry was written by , posted on December 31, 2009 at 8:42 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, alcohol, master cleanse and tagged 2010, alcohol, bars, Capitol Hill, drinking, new year's eve, nightlife, partying, seattle, sex. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I didn’t see a polar bear. And I didn’t see the northern lights. Actually, that’s not true: on Alaska Airlines flight 52 from Barrow to Fairbanks I saw a thin band of glowing light out the window somewhere around Anaktuvak Pass that I think were the northern lights, albeit in a muted form. I am back in Seattle now. It is warm. I can go outside and pee on things and my wiener will not fall off. Praise Jesus.
Some photos from my last day in Barrow:
Home away from home, sweet home.
View from in front of the Airport Inn facing south.
Air conditioning.
Hypothermia ain’t shit when you got myrrh.
You know when you go to go down the slide and you realize your ass cheeks are literally frozen together? Special feeling.
Chukchi Sea. Miles and miles of desolate wasteland.
A few minutes with the ice scraper and she should be good to drive.
Frozen Chukchi bluffs.
This entry was written by , posted on December 23, 2009 at 8:18 pm, filed under Alaska, Chipotle, Ravenna, alcohol and tagged ak, Alaska, barrow, norther lights. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
Written last night:
Tonight is no night to be walking around Barrow, Alaska. Tonight is cold. Windy and cold. I just walked back from Pepe’s North of the Border Mexican food and the only part of me that was exposed was the area just around my eyes, and that area felt like it was about to fall off by the time I got back to the hotel. It stung, and I was briefly afraid my corneas might freeze.
Pepe’s was, well, an experience. I’m convinced they have two seating areas: one for locals, and one for tourists. I was in a room that looked like it doubled as a storage area but that also had a nice warm fire place and plenty of bull fighters and other typical “Mexican” decor to give it a lively atmosphere. My server was interesting. He sort of reminded me of the guy from the Scary Movie movies who sticks his fingers in the food. He was lanky and wiry with ear-length hair and a red sweatshirt that said something to the effect of, “My doctor recommended I walk a mile a day for exercise. Looks like I need to get another doctor.”
I ordered a beef burrito doused in chili and cheese with a side of sour cream that tasted like it was about two months expired. All around the bottom of the burrito was an 1/8th of an inch layer of grease that gave the whole meal the desired “gut bomb” effect you want when eating “traditional” Mexican cuisine. It was good, though. Don’t want to knock it too hard. I wanted a hearty, filling burrito and that’s exactly what I got. It cost $15.50.
My waiter, the dude with the sweatshirt, told me he was from Auburn but that he hadn’t been back there since the Kingdome got built. I asked him why he came to Barrow and he gave me a response that he was obviously sick of repeating, “Came up here in 1975 wanting to see an igloo and a polar bear. Plane got fogged in and I never left.”
He mentioned somewhat innocuously that a bear and her cubs was sighted yesterday out by the football field four miles down the road. This piqued my interest. He said often times when the wind is blowing out towards the ocean they smell food and come wandering in close to town. Apparently a few years back one actually came INTO town and wandered through the parking lot near the restaurant and walked by a bunch of guys off-loading freight. I guess this is maybe why people don’t walk around. Either that or because it’s fucking freezing.
We also talked about alcohol. He explained to me that Barrow is neither a wet or damp or dry town, but a “restricted” town where you need a personal permit, kind of like a drivers’ license, to be able to buy alcohol. To get one of these you need to live here and you can only use it to buy and consume alcohol yourself; you can’t buy for other people even if they’re 21. Once you have one of these you can go down to the Barrow Distribution Center and buy alcohol that’s been shipped in from Fairbanks for your own personal use. You have to pay taxes and freight and probably a bunch of other fees that make it more or less prohibitively expensive.
It was good to get out tonight and have some human interaction, albeit with a dude that scared me. There’s only so much I can take of sitting in this chair watching Dexter and listening to music. Tomorrow is another day in Barrow, another day of splendor. Maybe I’ll see a polar bear. Or maybe I’ll see a polar bear drinking Jack Daniels. With a permit, of course.
Update: So far it HAS been another day of splendor. Today I walked to the grocery store and the wind was blowing so hard into my face across the frozen lake where I was walking that my right actually almost froze shut. It was fucking terrifying. I stopped in the post office for refuge after I got across the lake even though there was absolutely nothing I needed to do in the post office.
Have I mentioned, people, that it’s cold here?
This entry was written by , posted on December 21, 2009 at 7:25 pm, filed under Alaska, alcohol and tagged Alaska, alcohol, barrow, barrow distribution center, jack daniels, north slope, polar bears. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
I have long longed to photograph the stairs by my apartment that lead up to Capitol Hill. These are symbolic stairs; they symbolize the transition between the normal world and the hipster world, two worlds I sometimes find myself caught between. You see: I wear flannel. I wear Vans. I ride my bike places. I sometimes smoke cigarettes.
But I fucking hate hipsters.
This entry was written by , posted on December 15, 2009 at 9:41 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, Travels, alcohol, the boot and tagged Capitol Hill, eastlake, hipster, howe. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
The first way you’ll notice Trent’s drunk is that he staggers. It’s not a big stagger, but it’s definitely an, “I’ve been drinking whiskey — and lots of it” stagger. This happens at least every other night. The second way you’ll notice he’s drunk is that he becomes considerably more talkative. If the conversation turns towards the brewpub he wants to open one day where he brews his own beer and serves his own food, he’s probably drunk. The third way you’ll notice he’s drunk is if he passes out on a picnic table.
Someone passed out tonight, but that someone wasn’t Trent. That someone was a girl, and a small part of me seriously fears for her safety right now. This girl is not a light weight; she could go head-to-head in a drinking contest with a grizzly bear and hold her own. Especially if she and the grizzly bear were drinking whiskey. But tonight the whiskey got the better of her. She was bent over the dryer, and she was vomiting. It took a squadron of three ladies to wheel her up to her room, where she is now undoubtedly passed out, hopefully breathing, and most likely face down surrounded by a head of extremely disheveled hair.
And then there’s Tyler. Tyler was dancing up a storm. Tyler is always dancing up a storm. But today Michael Jackson died, so the storm was a category five tornado taking dead aim on a trailer park in the panhandle of Oklahoma. A week ago there was a dance party and Tyler danced for what must have been four straight hours. Shortly afterward he was seen sitting down abruptly into a plastic chair, which then broke under his weight and sent him tumbling down a hill. He did not remember the incident.
So this is a night in Brown Town. It’s not a typical night, but it’s not far off. In the lower rec people are playing ping pong and surfing Facebook. In the upper rec people are searching for movies on TV and slowly digging their ways through 18-packs of Natural Light. And down in downtown Brown Town…well, it’s always a party in Brown Town.
This entry was written by , posted on June 26, 2009 at 3:30 am, filed under Alaska, alcohol and tagged brown town, canadian mist, cecil rhode, cooper landing, kenai. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
For today’s post we continue to cover “Wetzler’s Alcoholic History,” this time skipping a large swath of time (the UW years) to cover India Pale Ales and Pale Ales and the current conundrum he faces trying to move on from these two types beer. We join our intrepid narrator mid-paragraph….
India Pale Ale is sort of like the Led Zeppelin of beers. Just as every guy will at some point in his life go through a Led Zeppelin phase, every guy will at some point in his life be convinced that IPA is the only beer truly worth drinking. When in the IPA phase, its tough to imagine that a better beer could exist. IPA is heavy and thrilling and has an alcohol content that makes you feel badass. Plus it weeds out the people with only a cursory knowledge of beer, as they often won’t know what IPA stands for, just as people with a cursory knowledge of music won’t have listened to anything by Led Zeppelin except “Stairway to Heaven.” But just as we all outgrow our Zep phase, we all outgrow our IPA phase. However, just as Zep will always sound good and you won’t change it when “Black Dog” comes on the radio, IPA will always taste amazing and you’ll never turn down a pint of hoppy goodness when offered.
Logically, Pale Ale would precede one’s India Pale Ale phase, but that’s not how it went for me. My Pale Ale phase came AFTER my IPA phase, and though I wish I could say I have no idea why this is, I know exactly why this is: It’s because of American Pie. If you’ve seen the movie American Pie you might recall a certain scene in which Tara Reid performs a certain service on a certain guy named “Kevin” who may or may not be the actor who played the kid in “Rookie of the Year” who breaks his arm and who, when healed, is able to throw fastballs that make J.J. Putz’s heater look like Jamie Moyer’s changeup. Anyway, much like a Putz wild pitch, in the movie Kevin “closes” erratically into a nearby keg cup which contains a medium amount of beer. At some point later in the party someone (Sitfler, I think) drinks said beer, is made fun of, and promptly pukes. The most cutting remark during the whole fiasco is: “Hey Stifler, how’s the Pale Ale?”
Now, there’s no reason this semi-unremarkable scene from a wholly ridiculous movie should have made me leary of drinking Pale Ale for the next six or so years, but that’s exactly what it did. Some part of my subconscious decided that Pale Ale either (a) tasted like sperm or (b) was only be drunk by guys who liked the taste of sperm. Even after I started drinking India Pale Ale, I still held on to this association. I assumed the two beers were only loosely related. Then, at some point, I gave Pale Ale a try, and much to my delight (and relief) found it didn’t taste like sperm, but merely like a tamer version of IPA. Indeed, Pale Ale is sort of like India Pale Ale’s mild-mannered cousin. Whereas IPA is the guy in the bathroom getting a blowjob from the school’s only goth chick, Pale Ale is the guy on the couch making of fun of people that listen to Linkin Park but who will most likely will go home without so much as a make out sesh. I can be the guy on the couch, but I can’t and don’t even really want to be the guy in the bathroom, as much as it is sometimes to fun to romanticize “letting loose” and going “completely bat-shit crazy.” I am more of a pale Ale guy, which is why I now drink Manny’s almost exclusively. The other day I was at Contour and I drank a pint of Manny’s followed by a pint of Pilsner Urquell. When drinking the Manny’s, before every sip I would inhale deeply and compulsively, much like a crack addict, to sample its fruity bouquet. When it came time for the Pilsner I did the same thing and instantly regretted it. The Pilsner smelled like a bottle of liquid flatulence.
However, I am finally coming out of my Pale Ale phase, which means I must find a new beer to become obsessed with. As far as I’m concerned, the options are limited. I can’t be a lager guy. I mean, let’s be real: Who actually sits down to ENJOY a lager? When I meet people and they tell me they “love” Heineken I automatically assume the person (a) is a douche bag or (b) has a large tub of hair gel sitting on the counter of his bathroom (which would make him a douche bag). Lager is good for getting drunk, but it’s not GOOD beer. It’s not something you buy when you want something to savor while you watch the sun set.
I could drink Stout, but I’m not a big stout fan. Porter is OK but they all seem the same to me. Hefeweizen? I actually am going to try to delve a little deeper into this genre after realizing this fall in Germany that white beer extended beyond Widmer and Pyramid’s versions of Hefeweizen, both of which turned me off before I could really experience what weissbiers had to offer. Then there are your winter ales, your spring ales, your summer ales, your ambers…. Blah blah blah. Same shit, different companies. I want something I can latch onto! something I can love as much as I have IPAs and Pale Ales!
I guess the only way to do this is to drink tons of different kinds of beers, pretty much all of the time.
Happy hour tomorrow?
This entry was written by , posted on April 15, 2009 at 2:04 pm, filed under alcohol and tagged bridgeport, budweiser, deschutes, india pale ale, ipa, port townsend brewery. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
CHAPTER 1: ARIZONA STATE
I was not a very discerning drinker in college; I would basically ingest anything as long as it contained ethanol. This led to (a) bad grades (b) some very interesting run-ins with the RA’s and (c) some encounters with girls that definitely would not have happened otherwise. I am not going to delve too deep into this last category, as (a) there’s actually not that much to tell and (b) it could only result in embarrassment for the parties involved, i.e. me. [Readers note: I vow to stop using this (a) (b) (c) construction soon, but for now it’s very useful].
As you may know from reading past blogs, I attended Arizona State University for my freshman year of college. When I tell people this, their first reaction is, “Whoa, you must’ve partied a ton.” The truth is, I didn’t party a ton. I partied a little. And sometimes I partied a lot. I probably partied as much as any normal kid living in the dorms, and possibly slightly more. I probably drank more cheap vodka than the average kid in the dorms, and I probably mixed more of said cheap vodka with Gatorade than the average kid in the dorms, but that’s about it. The overall mass of my partying from Arizona State definitely did not equal a ton; it probably equaled about 566 pounds.
One of the reasons I didn’t party a TON was because I was in the honors dorms. This is not because I was an honors student, but because the honors dorms were used as sort of overflow dorms for kids that didn’t get into their first choice of dorms. It turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because I heard the other dorms – some of which were high rises over thirty stories – were absolute cesspools. In the honors dorms academics were at least a small priority for some of the students, whereas in the other dorms the only priority seemed to be spreading sexually transmitted disease.
But anyway, getting back to alcohol: As I said before, I drank a lot of cheap vodka. There is a brand of alcohol in Arizona called “Winners Cup” that sells for six-dollars a fifth. It is a generic brand and you can buy it at Safeway. I drank A LOT of winners cup; it was the brand of vodka most used to mix with Gatorade to make a drink that I think is popular only amongst poor college kids and racist senior citizens from Florida. One night I drank several glasses of “Vaderade” while watching Top Gun with a girl named Sarah Meyer on a 13’’ screen. Sarah later dropped out of school to join the army.
College was the height of my liquor-drinking career, because liquor can be stored in your dorm for long periods of time and takes up less space than beer. I basically only drank beer at frat parties, and I didn’t go to very many frat parties. Plus, the beer available at frat parties was almost always horrible (see: Keystone Light), which didn’t exactly push me down the road of beer connoisseur-dom. The most awesome spectacle involving liquor from my college days involved my friend Nick. Nick’s ancestry is Russian, so he can drink like an ox. One time he came to visit me in Arizona shortly after I had returned from Rocky Point, Mexico for a weekend of “legal” drinking and peeing on stop signs. Rocky Point is basically the Rosarito for kids that go to Arizona schools. Anyway, I brought back from Rocky Point what was left from a gallon of clear tequila that I had purchased for $7.50, and it was the first thing Nick saw when he showed up to visit me. I was kind of sick when Nick showed up (I thought I had the flu but it later turned out to be mono; the dorms are fucking awful) so I didn’t really want to drink. Nick, on the other hand, did. He really wanted to drink. And he drank what was left in the gallon jug (probably about a 1/5th) in about two minutes. He literally just poured it into the back of his throat. I had (and have) never seen anything like it. Several minutes later he was running up and down the halls banging on people’s doors and screaming like an angry warthog.
I left Arizona State in the winter of 2003, but my drinking did not really decline. If anything, it increased…
This entry was written by , posted on April 13, 2009 at 8:58 pm, filed under alcohol and tagged arizona state, cartels, drug war, hayden hall, mexico, party, spring break, sun devils, ucla, wildcats. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
PART ONE: GROWING UP TALL BOY
I don’t remember who first discovered “ice” beer, but it would forever change our lives. One day we were oblivious and happy and naive, drinking tall cans in of Busch Lite in a friend’s kitchen. Then, seemingly overnight, they Busch tall boys changed into tall boys of Keystone Ice. The “Stone,” we called it. The “Stone” was “Key.” We were young and confused.
We pretty much drank any ice beer we could get our hands on, and had nicknames for most of them: The Beast (Milwaukee’s Best Ice), The Stone (Keystone Ice), Natty Ice (Natural Ice). We frowned upon drinking Bud Ice because it was lower in alcohol; At 5.5% to the others’ 5.9%, it was a waste of time.
Tall boys of “5.9″ soon became our obsession. They were all we talked about, all we drank. And they were disgusting. We didn’t know it at the time, but we were drinking some of the most vile liquid man had ever created. And we loved it. We couldn’t get enough. Like I said, we were young and confused. And optimistic.
The “tall boys of ice” phase lasted for several years but slowly started to die off as we made our ways to separate colleges. What had once been the resin solidifying the epoxy bond of our friendships became corrupted by new college experiences with new people in new places. Luckily, we came home from our first years at college and The Ice was still there, waiting. It was just like old times. But by the second summer things began to change. People didn’t come back from college; they stayed the summers to work in places like “Southern California” and “Oregon.” By the third summer tall boys of Ice were but a distant memory, mementos of a happier time.
For several years after the Ice beer phase the tall boys stayed tall but were replaced by brands like Pabst and Rainier. Sometimes Olympia. I craved the tall can but not the liquid regret that came with The Ice. But deep down, part of me did crave The Ice. I could drink a six pack of tall boys of Rainier and still feel happy. I wanted to hate myself.
I have since moved on from tall boys more or less all together, though some vestiges of this particular epoch will always remain. Even now when I go to the supermarket I find myself drifting past the “nice” beer — the Fat Tire and the Bridgeport and the Corona — towards the “shitty” beer at the end of the aisle, where I eventually find myself face to face with a six-pack of tall boys. I watch my hand lift up and slide its fingers into the plastic rings, and I feel the familiar weight of 96oz. ounces of liquid refreshment. And I smile.
But sadly, this is happening less and less, and I fear one day it will cease to happen all together. This will probably come in conjunction with my wedding day, when all remnants of my youth are erased for good. When this does happen, the part of my soul given over to tall boys will be forced to lie dormant. Dormant until one day when I’m 82 and I find myself in Safeway. I’ll have rheumatoid arthritis and I’ll walk with a cane. I’ll be at the end of the beer aisle and I’ll have no idea how I got there. But I’ll be smiling, dumbly. And my shaking hands will reach up.
-Wetzler
Song of the Day: “Veridis Quo” — Daft Punk
This entry was written by , posted on at 3:59 pm, filed under alcohol and tagged alcohol, binge drinking, busch ice, college, dorms, house parties, ice beer, tall boys. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
everyone — a quick word about St. Patrick’s day:
First off, I want you all to be safe. Drinking green beer is fun, but do you know what they use to make the green beer green? Formaldehyde. And mercury. Also, when you’re doing Irish car bombs tonight, make sure you don’t tip your pint glasses up too quickly because the shot glass might slide up and chip your teeth. I’ve heard of them actually being banned in places for this reason. Also, don’t drink and drive. Or drink and ride busses. Or drink and walk really fast. If you’re going to drink and indulge in any form of transportation, make sure it’s either walking slowly or tiptoeing. If I see a bunch of you tiptoeing down the AVE later I’ll know you got this memo in time.
Secondly, if you should find yourself talking to a member of the opposite sex tonight and he/she is not wearing green and you want to pinch him/her to be flirty but aren’t really sure if you should do it — definitely do it! Nothing bad can come of it, and a night of gratuitous sex possibly can. Remember: Love is blind, but not color blind.
Thirdly, and this isn’t really my recommendation but more of a recommendation from the Seattle Police Department: Do not drink in public. However, since you’re going to anyway, let me tell you a good place to go. Down by Portage Bay just south of the Health Sciences buildings in the University of Washington there is a rock retaining wall that has about three feet of beach between it and the waters of Portage Bay. I went there two days ago with a friend and we sat wedged up against the wall and drank beer we had recently purchased at a convenience store while we felt the breeze come off the water and watched boats go by. It was uncomfortable, it was cold, and I’m 25-years-old. However, the day I stop drinking in public is the day I move to Provo, Utah and become a eunuch. The deviance felt while drinking in public is the only reason to do it. If they ever legalize it and do away with the $38 dollar tickets they currently give out if you got caught I’m sure I’d never do it again. Except maybe at Madison Park. In the summer.
Fourthly, don’t go to Kells tonight. That place is so fucking lame. They’re charging $20 bucks to get in to watch some shitty “Irish” bands play shitty Irish “folk” music, and all you get for the $20 is some shitty t-shirt, overpriced drinks, the company of Neanderthals, and, like I just explained, the opportunity to listen to shitty music.
Fifthly, I’m sort of just rambling right now so I can get up to saying “seventhly” and “eighthly.”
Sixthly, you probably shouldn’t go to Fado, either. That place is lame.
Seventhly, yes, saying “seventhly” was pretty satisfying, but I have a feeling saying “eighthly” will be even better.
Eighthly, I was right.
Have fun!
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on March 17, 2009 at 4:31 pm, filed under alcohol and tagged bars, beer, nightlife, party, seattle, st. patrick's day. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.
1) Rainier beer — I love Rainer. Rainer is my homey. But I can’t drink it anymore. It’s bad beer. It makes my hangovers worse.
2) The Cha Cha Lounge — The Cha Cha lounge makes up for it’s sewer-like lighting and and abundance of messenger bag-toting hipsters by selling massive pitchers of Rainer for six dollars. Because it makes my hangovers worse, I’m a fool to drink Rainer. But at six dollars a pitcher, I’m a way bigger fool not to.
3) Shredded beef nachos — Was that second order absolutely necessary?
4) Mixing alcohol — Started with a margarita, then a 22oz. of Fat Tire, then an Irish coffee, and finally a night cap that consisted of several pitchers of Rainier and Manny’s. Should’ve just drank Manny’s the whole time. Discipline, Mark.
5) Chase Budinger — I hate Chase Budinger. So much. Still, I think Arizona, if both Satan—I mean Budinger—and Jordan Hill play well, have a chance to fuck shit up in the NCAA tournament (and by “shit” I mean “Utah”).
6) Barry’s Mustache
Better take it easy tonight to be in top form for tomorrow. Lee Brown’s first ever footsteps in the United States of America in t-minus one hour!
-Wetzler
This entry was written by , posted on March 16, 2009 at 5:51 pm, filed under Capitol Hill, alcohol and tagged hangover, seattle nightlife. Leave a comment or view the discussion at the permalink.