My sister has always tried to convince herself that her real father was actually the postman, or the garbage man, or just some random sloppy joe from the corner pub…. Alas, it is not true….. We both know our real father, we avoided him when we were kids, and we avoid him now that we are adults.

Well he decided to move into a house. He has been living in a nice apartment for a long time bitching about how much it costs to buy a house and how he doesn’t have room for all his stuff where he is at.

Whenever I see him I hear phrases like “I’m so busy”, “It’s such a mess here”, “I took thousands of hours of computer training”, “I’m a lumberjack and I’m ok”. Ok perhaps I don’t hear that last one, but the point is what he says is bullshit. I suppose you could say he is busy perfectly stacking catalogs in exact spaced piles and vacuuming the floor, but if you called that busy how can he say he is busy?

Thousands of hours of computer training my ass, I mean back when he had a job they made him do some training on the computers there, but they were all custom made shell programs that knowledge of seems to serve no purpose outside of that office.

So with all his “computer training” (he still can’t manage to figure out how to check his own email unless he reads it off of a step by step tutorial on a piece of scra paper) he decided to help me out and hire me to “help” him make a postcard.

So he calls me and plays the funny guy pretending to be just some random customer of mine… I mean I think even with a voice disguiser and use of somebody elses phone I would still recognize it as him, but whatever…. He says he wants to hire Computer Jack-of-all-Trades to design a Christmas / Change of Address Postcard.

Fine, I know he is just doing this because he feels bad that I do not have a job right now. He cannot understand the fact that it is by choice…. but whatever, if he wants to give me some money, then fine.

So he tells me exactly what he wants, 3 goofy phrases, one in the top left, one in the center, and one in the lower right corner of the postcard, and his address on the back. That’s it, no pictures no nothing.

Now first off if he was hiring me to design a card I figured I needed to design SOMETHING, so I suggested to get rid of the stupid phrases and let me just make him something nice, well that didn’t fly and then he told me the exact color he wanted the text to be described how he would like the fonts to look.

Well seeming like a complete waste of my time I tell him that I at least need to get a picture of his new house to put on the postcards. He then asks me to make him a printout of all the font choices he had so he could choose which ones to use.

THAT IS NOT DESIGN, well fuck him, I designed a card and told him to like it. So he did. I kept the premise of what he wanted anyways. (you can see them here: http://www.lyngaas.net/temp/)

At any rate I charged him $30 for the design, but I was not going to print them, I am low on ink and the crazy fucker said he needed 50!!!! He doesn’t have 50 friends! He has 1, and that one also doubles as his brother). After you get a couple other relatives who already know his address I count 5. I checked with him to make sure he didn’t misplace that 0 on 50 and then told him I had to take it to Kinko’s.

So I get there and tell them I need 50 double sided 4×6 color postcards, to which they tell me it will be $100 PLUS I would need to print them myself and cut them out. Knowing there was no way in hell that would happen I left and drove to office depot. I called my father and told him that I was going to buy him some cardstock and an extra color Ink cartridge for his very nice printer and that he could just print and cut them himself. Doing that would cost him less than $10.

He tells me
“no, I just don’t have time for that. Unless you want to do that and cut them out and I will pay you for it?”
“Ah, NO I am not going to do that…”
“Fine, then just go to Kinko’s”.
“Are you serious? That is WAY to much for these postcards, If I were you I would cut my losses now and buy 50 postcards for #2.50 at the dollar store”
“I won’t be doing this often, it is just something to do every great now and then”
“Ok…. but I seriously think you are nuts”
“Well, I won’t be doing this very often so it’s ok”
“Fine, bye”
“Wait, are you going to deliver them today?”
“I suppose but I am going to charge you for gas”
“That’s ok, when will you be by?”
“When I can…. gotta go, bye”
“Bye”

Well I still thought that price was insane, so I called around. I talked to some friends who have hookups at printing press’ etc… Well after a bunch of time looking I found that Staples would actually do it cheaper than a printing press.

So I went over there, the girl there told me that she was really busy and couldn’t get them done today…. So I started flirting with her until she changed her tune to “Well most of these projects don’t have any real priority”. She then told me she could put 4 on the page and that it would only be $35 + tax for the whole project. Great, do it.

Well I go to visit a friend and in less than half an hour I get a call from the Staples girl telling me she is done!!!! :) So I go there and she kind of forgot to remove the white bleed (white border) around the postcard that I had put in. Since I had told her to do that while I was still there she gave me another discount and with tax it now cost only $31.67.

I had to go to Fort today anyways to fix a computer for somebody, but while I was there I was debating whether to charge him what he said he would pay for it, or whether to tell him all the work I did to get it for him cheaper.

I was not sure of the answer so I used a lifeline and after some consultation decided for being such a lazy sob that he should have to pay for the whole thing.

So when I see him I still give him a story of getting a discount on the project since they screwed it up and put the left the white borders in. So in total he gave me $30 for creating the card, $5 for gas, $95 for how much I said Kinko’s was and another $5 for shmoozing them into a discount.
Now some of you will probably think I am a lying fuck (I haven’t had one of those in awhile) and a thief, but you are entitled to your own opinion (at least until I win God in the next election).

Still being his only child who still talks to him, I think I should have charged him even more. Like perhaps a minimum $60 delivery charge or something.

I’d bitch more, but you have already been so tolerant to read all the way to the bottom of this post, so here are some courtesy breasts instead:

Ever wake up five minutes before your alarm rings? This mysterious phenomenon isn’t just bizarre coincidence. We are all equipped with our own internal alarm clocks and, best of all, they even have snooze buttons.

Jan Born and fellow researchers at the University of Lubeck in Germany have discovered what may be the first biological evidence for the curious ability to wake up at will. Anticipating the time you want to rise seems to trigger the release of hormones normally secreted by the body in times of stress. About an hour before you’ve planned to get out of bed, these secretions increase in preparation for the “stress” of waking.

In a three-night study, Born and team tucked 15 volunteers into bed at midnight the first night, and told them they would be woken at 6 a.m. on one night and 9 a.m. the other two nights.

When the volunteers knew they would be woken at six, levels of the central stress hormone adrenocorticotropin began rising around 4:30 a.m. But subjects expecting to wake at nine and rudely awakened at six experienced no such hormonal surge. Our bodies, in other words, note the time we hope to begin our day and gradually prepare us for consciousness, not unlike a snooze button.

But how can we set our own wake up calls? “I am convinced that eventually there will be a psychological technique to strengthen the ability to set the internal alarm clock,” Born says. Cognitive self-instruction, in which a person drills himself in his plans for the next day, may wind the alarm, he says. For now, however, hang on to that little dream machine beside your bed.

Ok, I am only going to tell this one once. After this it gets stored strictly in my memory (and the archives, but that’s not the point). I have discovered the recipe for the ultimate drink. I named it Ethereal for the great taste and divine effects.

Ethereal
——–
2 Shots E&J Brandy
1 Shot Turl Absinthe
1 Shot Three Olives Vanilla Vodka
½ Can of Vanilla Coke
1 Splash of Grenadine
½ Packet Poprocks

Prepaired in a Highball over ice, garnished with cherry.

The E&J Brandy is smooth and tends to make you happy and funny (or at least make you think you are funny which is equally good). The one shot of Absinthe is more powerfull than all the rest of the ingredients combined and will relax your body and give you lucid dreams. When the Absinthe is combined with the other stuff it alters the taste and feel drastically. The rest of the ingredients are just for taste, except the poprocks which are to impress women.

Two glasses of this drink and you will get pretty much the same effect as 3 straight shots of Absinthe, only none of that hard to swallow (easy to spit through nose) feel. The entertainment factor alone is enough to try this.

For me I used the divine drink in conjunction with the divine food. Yes that’s right, Mixed Nut Bars. With my mother in town, I was blessed enough to be given two (slightly) oversized Mixed Nut Bars. I will of course share this recipe with you as well, and encourage you to make it often for me (of course that is pending you don’t plan to use it as a form of bribery that allows you to control me)

Use the deluxe mixed nuts with no peanuts and add some extra cashews. Note: The cheap store-brand butterscotch chips work better than Nestles. The Nestles ones don’t melt well. It says to bake 10 min, but might be done after 5, so watch for bubbles and then it’s done.

So today my sister and I had a busy schedule. We were going to Illinois for most of the day, then to Fort Atkinson, then back to the Mad City. Armed with my award winning free-hand cranberry turkey’s and enough alcohol to kill a small hippo we set off for Illinois.

As I am driving, my sister tells me she has always wanted to be a Chinese Chicken Chaser, however since she was not born Chinese she choose not to try to pursue it. I thought that a strange goal, but in the spirit of family I decided that I would help her achieve her dream.

I figured we couldn’t really get the Chinese part but as an American on Thanksgiving a Turkey would be an appropriate substitute, so I pulled off at an earlier exit and proceeded to a nearby Turkey Farm. I nocked on their door and nobody answered, so we just snuck around back.

I tell her that it takes dedicated training to be able to be a CCC, but since we only had a few minutes before somebody noticed us and called the cops, so I changed the methods a bit. Instead of a large area where you chase a chicken around, we would have to cheat it a bit by cornering it in further and further.

She complained that this was to easy and defeated the purpose but I don’t really feel like going to jail on Thanksgiving so she agreed. We took a tarp from their yard and I tied it to the fence on one side and held the other side myself… As she got the turkey in one area I would adjust my position and tighten the tarp to keep it in.

To my surprise this wasn’t even necessary as within 3 seconds she had already caught a turkey. It was yapping and freaking out but she caught it. She dropped it the first time, and the second time I think she would of kept holding on except it bit her. I didn’t think Turkey’s bit, but I was not about to call my sister a liar. She was getting tired, but decided to try one more time to catch it.

Well this time the turkey decided it had enough because it would not be caught, I who lack patience decided it was taking to long and I was cold and worried about cops so I threw the tarp over the turkey and that stopped it good. I was told I was being cruel, but I didn’t think a person who wanted to trap turkey’s had any right to complain about my methods.

We left in a big ass hurry and my sister proceeded to drink some of the hippo tranquilizer err, I mean alcohol. Now that stuff will pretty much wipe your memory clean, so I was kind of jealous being the driver and all, as I didn’t really want to remember this either (thought it was amusing watching the turkey just slip out of her hands and peck at her legs). I advised her that she was pretty good as a turkey trapper, but she just gave me some weird look like I had grown three heads… yes that’s right, the hippo tranq works quick so I dropped it.

We were almost to our destination, when I decided to turn right. Now I didn’t actually have the address of where we were going but I had been there before and it seemed like the place to turn since I was following a person who looked like they knew where they were going. This method rarely gets me to where I am trying to go, but always gets me to where I need to be (thanks Douglas Adams).

In this case the street snaked around and came to a street called Lozenge, finding this absolutely the funniest street name I had heard in awhile I turned there and went all the way to the end of it. To my surprise at the end of the street they were filming something. There were a bunch of people dressed in Swiss outfits and a big green screen.

I stopped the car and got out and asked the person who seemed like the director what they were filming. He told me it was a ricola commercial. I asked why they choose there to film, and the guy said that he to had drove by lozenge street one day and just found it funny, and figured working that into his commercial would make it even funnier.

Still can’t imagine why he would film it on Thanksgiving, but I was not about to ask. I said good luck and went back to the car and proceeded to turn around. My sister who had waited in the car was laughing when I got back in at the sheer audacity of somebody to film a lozenge commercial on lozenge street. This stopped about the time I pulled into a street that for a second I thought might be where we were supposed to go.

It wasn’t, but my sister was confident that one of those houses was the correct house. I informed her that they would of had to paint it and built an addition on for that to be the case. She was not really satisfied with this answer, but I was driving and I did not want to stop and nock on another person’s door today just to have it be the wrong place.

Lucky us, it was wrong because I drove around another couple minutes and found the correct place.

It was fairly boring while we were there and since I have already been running on about the morning, I will just give you highlights: Was told how much taller I am by people who get shorter every year, Drank spiked punch, ate stuffing and turkey (which I found a little funny since the earlier activities but I kept my mouth shut), had discussion on the best places to pirate media (for purely hypothetical reasons of course), Got check for $27.50 from father as well as a “get this monkey off my back for free card”, avoided relatives, ate pie, left…

We left to go to Fort Atkinson to see my Mother and Uncle who were both in town for the weekend. I have not seen either one in a long time. My sister thought I was taking the wrong route but she was unaware of the intergalactic hyperspace bypass that had been put in Janesville a few years back and was still a little sauced up so I again ignored her and took the bypass there.

In Fort my Grandmother (aka The Pusher) kept offering me food that was already on the table in front of my eyes. I mean I am full, if I want something believe me, I will eat it. We were only there for 10 minutes or so since my mother seemed to be in a big hurry to leave.

Now, I won’t tell you that I was sick of driving and that I made my sister drive and ditched her to ride with my mother, because with the way my story has sounded so far you will assume she was drunk and that I was a terrible brother to make her do that. So I won’t tell you that.

I also won’t tell you that if such a scenario were to happen that I would make it to her apartment 5 minutes before her and then would probably break into her apartment and help unload my mom’s junk into the apartment. I won’t tell you that because once again, both of these things would make me a bad brother, and I am OBVIOUSLY not one of those.

Ok so skipping the details of who, what, when, where, why we got to my sisters apartment as I am doing I proceeded to confiscate the mixed nut bars that she was hoarding from me (as a not so funny joke that my mother devised), and then not finding a suitable chair to sit on, I made my home on an exercise ball.

Now sitting on that leads to laying on that, which leads to rolling on that, which leads to rolling off of that, which leads to nocking things over, which leads to goofy kid comments, which leads to me leaving. In any case, I would probably only recommend using an exercise ball as a chair if you life in a giant studio apartment with nothing to kick over.

Was damn cold out all day, when I tried to leave my car wouldn’t start. Now I am prepared for this which is why I put a bottle of premium fuel line deicer in when I had filled up my tank, however it wasn’t doing the trick after several attempts to start the car. So I got out of the car and kicked it, to my delight the next time I tried to start it, it did.

I went home and out of reflex went to go use the hottub, but getting out there I once again realized how bloody windy it was and decided to just call it a night. I gotta say this has been the most original Thanksgiving ever!

New study’s state that The SmartAss DOT Info is good for your health. I am not ready to publish the full study at this time, so you will just have to take my word on how truthful and detailed it is. It was a double blind, placibo test…. yes there were 10% of so subjected to an “alternative smartass” as a control factor.

If you are unable to do that, there are countless old studies that say laughter is good for: the soul, health, energy, mood, etc… So taking these studies (google it, they exist ya bloody fact checkers) as only a single factor of my new study, my website is good for countless positive things.

Here are a few of the statistics I can recall from my new study.
*90% of felt my website improved their overall quality of life
*90% said they tell a friend about my website
*19% felt my website was a complete waste of time, and planned to come back the next day for the very same reason
*32% of study participants felt that my website gave them more sexual machismo
*78% felt an increase of energy after reading one of my blog posts0
*27% said they would vote for thesmartass for GOD in the next election
*6% said that thesmartass should create a suicide hotline
*66% felt euphoric after 2 minutes on my website
*1% felt I needed my own action figure.
*42% felt thesmartass gave them higher self-esteem
*2% planned to name their children after thesmartass (not specified as to if they mean me, or the website)
*7% found this website by searching for either the words grandmother fucker or cock gobbler
*41% believe they would join my cult, err I mean religion once it is created
*90% would call me for tech support
*79% believe my roommate should be hung by the testicles with gator clips
*0.5% believe the lizard people are out to get me
*1% said they would do absolutly anything I commanded them to (grr, why did this have to be double blind study, if you are that 1% I command you to contact me with your identity).
*1% of people have been admitted to rehab for smartass addiction
*3% believe I should go on tour covering Isaac Hayes songs
*11% think I am a mooncalf, but still visit this website anyways.
*65% said they would rather visit my website, than use the bathroom!
*1% prefer thesmartass over sex (ok look you are nuts, not to scoff at the statistics but perhaps you aren’t doing it right and should probably ask for help)
*19% said they have spent more than one Saturday night reading my archives
*9% use me as their only news source
*88% of participants don’t actually recall participating
*9% would trust my judgement over their own
*100% felt that after all the many life improvements thesmartass provided them, there was still no reason to donate.

Those were just some of the statistics I liked the most. There is no reason to give you the rest since the above statistics proved the point that I was trying to make.

Speaking of studies I have done, I have been clean for several months now…. ever since that compelling comparison study I did between the effects of white chocolate and crack, so I might publish that just to help others with their own addiction.

Remember the long and short of it all is that The SmartAss DOT Info is good for every facet of your life (except your career).

So people have been asking how my first day at work went today. Which seems odd to me since I already explained it’s not really work. So I thought I would break it down in easily understandable terms of what I actually do.

My job is contract work. A contract that I wrote, one that says I will be paid to show up, paid extra to actually work, and showing up is optional.

I would consider what I do there to be “Reverse Telecommuting”. I’m sure you all know that telecommuting is getting paid to doing business work from home. So when we reverse it we get a job where you get paid to do personal work at your business.

Still confused huh? Hey don’t worry, it happens to all the mooncalf’s.
Here was what I did today in 10 easy steps.
1) I showed up (according to contract this part is no longer required, but helps if I want to be paid)
2) Got the key from the crazy owner (while trying very hard not to get in discussion about the end of the world)
3) I setup my laptop & plugged in my terabyte (crappy laptop, needs terabyte to compensate)
4) Owner left for court, but as he was leaving he told me I could work on one job that was already there and would apparently be VERY time consuming to fix. (yes I said court…)
5) Got msg from friend asking what I was doing (so I invited him over)
6) Wrote actual contract in notepad (made sure to add part about not needing to show up)
7) Discuss store’s slovenliness (while adding speakers to my laptop for slightly better mp3 quality)
8) Fix all that ails computer (10 mins, fixed all the software problems, still can’t fix the fact that the hardware is an e-machine)
9) Balance checkbook (I’d tell you what it came out to, but the results aren’t really in my favor)
10) 3 hours up, owner back, wrote up daily contract invoice to computer store and left with friend fro lunch (Made $65 today for “3 hours work”)

The rest of my day after work consisted of, Drinking some beer, eating some (beer) brats, watching a movie, playing a videogame, downloading tv shows I did not watch tonight, sitting in hottub, and (soon) going to sleep.

Now that you have read about my “day at work”, I’m sure you will no longer feel the need to ask me how my day went. Doing so will probably only piss you off, as you are not afforded the same luxury of paid sloth.

I am not going in to work again till probably wednesday, where I will probably have more time to work on my website. I would have today but having a friend over for pretty much my entire work day only allowed for me to finish quick tasks like fixing a computer, balancing my checkbook and discussing the end of the world (when the mail lady showed up with army surplus catalogs).

Good Stuff

Ok so you are expecting me to write some post, or at least rip one off, but I decided I would rather link directly to this one since the comments are the funniest part. Especially the one where somebody says they only read that website for the nasty comments!

lol
Jennifer Garner Is Freakin Huge!

Ok so normal people after a long night of drinking come home, go to the bathroom and go to bed. I am not one of those people.

I come home, go to the men’s room (the one that doesn’t make a flushing noise), drink some water and sit down to write blog posts, and perhaps end the night/morning by studying this new porno that just mysteriously appeared in my download directory tonight (for clues as to why it’s there… of course …).

Hmm… WTF????

Is it because I cannot sleep? No, I can pretty much sleep on command so long as it is only one time per day. Is it because I feel sick and dizzy? No, I don’t feel sick OR dizzy.

It is actually fairly time consuming writing these posts, so maybe it’s just that by doing it at 3-4am I had nothing else scheduled except sleep, so by writing posts now I am getting things done without wasting my time tomorrow, since I know I won’t really sleep much longer to compensate for it.

Honestly thought I think the real reason is that I write funnier stuff after I have had a few drinks since I have no reason to not say exactly what I am thinking then. Perhaps it is just an unwritten rule (unwritten, heh) but nobody has ever said “don’t drink and write”, perhaps for the same reason that people don’t say “musicians should not do drugs, it ruins the music”.

Also the posts I write at this hour I tend to not proofread, or spellcheck (since I don’t want the stress of spellcheck =ing grandmotherfucker ever again, see post archives for details)… Which to somebody who actually gives a shit, gives them something to feel smart about. I mean OBVIOUSLY u r smrtr thn m3 2 note-iss gram-err 3rr0r5 and bad spelin.

The beauty of this plan is that even with me blatantly telling you my psychological strategy to make you all into smartass’, you will still without question continue to feel smug everytime you come across one of my fukupz. What’s worse is not that I made it a conscious process you will actually THINK about how smart you are and how you are turning into a smartass! I just can’t loose here!

Well good times, great drinks, 3 posts nailed down for now… I’m off to my next step towards sleep…. ciao!

So the other night I bought some Papa John’s pizza. Now my roommate has a nasy habit of blatently stealing half of my Papa John’s pizza when I bring it home, even if he isn’t home he will come home and steal my leftovers of it. It doesn’t matter how much I protest, that is one item he will not quit stealing.

Now I have not eaten any of his food in a long time now, so I was not about to let him have any of it. The problem this time was how do I hide more than 50% of a large pizza while still keeping it refridgerated. I mean all of the shelves, drawers etc… are all completly transparent, and the only shelves big enough to hold a pizza box are easilly noticed when the fridge is open.

Well I was sick of pizza theft, so I looked really closely at the fridge and the pizza. I decided it needed to stay in the box since there was so much left, and there was only one shelf that was clear enough to fit it without completly rearranging the fridge (which would be noticed).

Ok so I realize this is a lot of hype for just a stupid trick, but it worked so here’s what I did… Above the shelf where I was going to put it is a drawer that is filled with my sandwich meat, cheese etc.. well I slightly rearranged that so that you could not see through the drawer at an angle that a person from 6′ or so would be looking at while standing.

Next I took a tupperware type container that was in the fridge that is roughtly the size of half the space between my shelf and the drawer above it and I stuck that, still in plain sight about 1/3 of the way back, above that I stuck the pizza box turned sideways and shoved it between the top of the container and the bottom of the drawer above.

For a final touch I stuck a jar of strawberry jelly that my roommate actually uses in front of the pizza box on the same shelf since there was enough room for it.

Due to his viewing angle when you open the fridge you can see both the jar of jelly and the tupperware container, but you can not see the entire tupperware container only part of it so you do not notice that there is something wedged above it, and looking down the drawer with meats and cheeses is spread out enough to not be able to see the pizza box through there either.

The pizza lasted me for 2 days worth of leftover meals, the jelly was used and put back on the top shelf where I had made enough room for in case he removed wanted to put something else in the fridge.

The entire pizza box was in the fridge for a couple days without ever being noticed. I am fairly sure I could use this strategy multiple times with the same result UNLESS he orders pizza hut or something (the only local pizza place around here), which would mean he would try to pull things off that shelf and shove them up top to be able to slide his pizza box on the shelf.

Now granted, I have spent 10 times more time explaining the process than it actually took me to think of it and put it into action, but I am sure there is somebody out there with a similar situation who could benefit from the line of site hiding strategy I pioneered.

So I was over at a friends house tonight. We were playing a new videogame I had just bought (yes I said bought…. I do occasionally spend money on those things). My friend warned me that “some annoying, sexist old lady” was coming over to ask him a ton of questions again. I probed as to what for and he said it was a Census Bureau survey.

Now he said she had already been over once and was asking him all sorts of ridiculous questions. Well luckily his wife showed up before the annoying old lady and we were able to keep playing videogames, but I would occasionally hear the questions this lady was asking, and DAMN, what a crock of shit!

Correct me if I am wrong, but isn’t the purpose of the Census to tell what the population is??? Well this lady was asking how much music they download off the internet, how much they spent on a vacation, and how much on gas and meals for that vacation. She asked how much they spend a month on alcohol and the type of alcohol they spent it on.

Now there was a lot more, this lady was there for over an hour, and this was her second time coming over to probe into their personal life. Now my friend believed that this was required by law to complete, which it’s not or he probably wouldn’t have done it. I mean there is a “short form” that only asks like 5 questions or so, that they give people who don’t want to spend the time talking to them, and then most people don’t actually mail those in.

I just have to throw my 2 cents in, if they can go around and talk to total strangers and get the kind of information out of people that they were asking then I believe it to be an ultimate power job. If I were a robber, or an assassin, or a private investigator, irs agent etc… I would simply go to people’s door (or hire somebody else to do it) and say I am with the Census Bureau. I would just get a copy of their bullshit sheets and would then have pretty much every detail about their life.

Hell If I had money I could simply “make friends” with somebody inside the Bureau and get them to provide me with that information.

I am not paranoid by nature (though technically I should be by nurture….), but listening to that lady ask questions that I wouldn’t ask my own family without damn good reason, I became that way. I guess I believe that I am entitled to SOME privacy, and don’t feel that anybody has a right to know some things about the way I choose to live my life and spend my time and money.

Remember kids, just say no to people who ask you probing questions that they have no need to know.