Military Brats And Shoe Shines

A good shoe shine isn’t easy to pull off. You have to do a preliminary cleaning of the shoe first: a removal of the dust and grime that has accumulated on the shoe’s precious leather exterior, perhaps with a cloth or with a spare brush. Then, you apply the polish itself with another small brush with dense, closely packed bristles. Not the one you just used for dusting; that will still have some dirt on it which will stick to the greasy polish and will be transferred back to the shoe. (If you’ve been careful in your storage of the polish, that is, you’ve kept the can carefully closed, the polish will not have dried up and become useless.) This initial application done, the actual shine can begin. A larger brush with broader, softer bristles should be used. The last touch–one only used by those who desire the kind of gleam in their shoes that you could check your reflection in–is to use a soft cotton rag to deliver one final buffing. (Incidentally, while some shoe shine kits come with such rags, I’ve found old undershirts work best.)

As this description of the shoe shine process should indicate, I have some familiarity with it. And I continue to take pride in stepping out for the day wearing a well-polished pair of boots. Over the past twenty years or so, I’ve worn Doc Martens, Blundstones and Dickies boots; I think I’m justified in explaining their long lives–several years for each pair–on my feet as being partly due to not just their sturdy manufacture, but also my diligent care of their exteriors.

This attitude of mine is, in large part, due to the fact that I am a military brat, the offspring of an air force pilot, someone who took acute care to make sure his precious flying boots looked ready for action every time he stepped into an aircraft cockpit. This attention to appearance, this external manifestation of an inner discipline, he sought to convey to his sons, teaching them that to look sloppy and slovenly in manner and dress was to be sloppy and slovenly in other aspects of our lives too (and perhaps in our minds too). A school uniform was not one if its wearer sported dusty and dirty shoes. My father taught us how to spit and shine, how to make sure we stepped out in style, taking pride in  pair of well-shined shoes. This was not preening or strutting; this was simple self-esteem made manifest.

Over the years, I let many of my father’s lessons about dress and decorum fade away. I grew my hair long, I got tattoos, I wore jeans and shirts with holes in them; I disdained ties and never learned to knot one; I own only one suit, purchased twenty-fours ago, which I trot out for weddings; I walked around in shorts and sandals; I was often sloppy and unkempt.

But somehow, I never reconciled myself to wearing dusty, beat-up shoes that looked like they hadn’t been shined in months.

On Not Watching Gaspar Noé’s Irréversible

A dozen or so years ago, my now-wife-and-then-girlfriend’s roommate, a young woman who worked as a community organizer, told me that she had recently seen Gaspar Noé‘s recently released Irréversible. She really liked it: it was a disturbing movie, hard to watch because of that notorious eight-minute rape scene and all the other violence, but I, a supposedly serious fan of the movies, should still see it. It was good, challenging movie–well-made and cleverly constructed, an innovative deployment of the cinematic medium. I listened carefully to her descriptions of the movie and said I would check it out. A little while later, once I got my Netflix account, I placed it on my DVD queue, and then later, my ‘Watch Instantly’ list.

I have still not seen Irréversible. It sits there on my queue, waiting to be selected.

I asked my wife whether she was interested in watching Irréversible. She admitted  she was not terribly enthusiastic about the prospect of sitting through an extended violent rape scene.  So I waited for a suitable opportunity to watch the movie by myself.

I kept waiting. Irréversible is still on my queue, but whenever the opportunity to watch it arises, I blow past it and pick some other movie.

I know my reactions are not unique; Irreversible evoked similar responses from many who saw the movie and critiqued it. Its violence, directed against gay men and women, was easily accused of being gratuitous, misogynistic and homophobic, of pandering to those who sought titillation in violence.

But I was not making a straightforwardly political statement of disapproval by not hitting ‘play.’ Rather, I was simply owning up to an intense emotional and aesthetic discomfort. Some kinds of violence have simply become too hard to watch on the screen. (The torture porn of modern horror movies is another example.) Perhaps I have gone old, perhaps I have gone ‘soft.’

Modern cinema revels in the ‘unflinching look’ – all the better to rip of the mask off previously sanitized examinations of mankind’s cruelty to itself. These perspectives–the protracted sequences of beating someone’s face to pulp, the close-ups of missing limbs, the lingering over terrifying torture and disfigurement–are supposed to work by persuading us that we condone the presence of violence when we refuse to reckon with its grim reality.

But I am long persuaded. I am disgusted and appalled; I am left nauseated and sleepless. I do not need to be told anymore that there is nothing remotely sexual in rape, that it is an act of violence, brutal and unsparing in the damage it inflicts on its victims. My movie-watching over the years has not made me numb to cinematic depictions of violence; instead, I have been broken down. My stomach is not as strong as it used to be–if it ever was. Another eight minutes of persuasion will do me no good. Their rhetorical pressure will be unbearable.

Irréversible still sits on my queue; I leave it there as a reminder that my tastes in cinema have changed.

The Trials Of Muhammad Ali

We all know the story:

In 1967, three years after winning the heavyweight title, [Muhammad] Ali refused to be conscripted into the U.S. military, citing his religious beliefs and opposition to American involvement in the Vietnam War. The U.S. government declined to recognize him as a conscientious objector, however, because Ali declared that he would fight in a war if directed to do so by Allah or his messenger (Elijah Muhammad). He was eventually arrested and found guilty on draft evasion charges and stripped of his boxing title. He did not fight again for nearly four years—losing a time of peak performance in an athlete’s career. Ali’s appeal worked its way up to the U.S. Supreme Court, where in 1971 his conviction was overturned. The Supreme Court held that, since the appeals board gave no reason for the denial of a conscientious objector exemption to petitioner, it was impossible to determine on which of the three grounds offered in the Justice Department’s letter that board had relied. Ali’s actions as a conscientious objector to the war made him an icon for the larger counterculture generation.

But even if you do, or think you do, you should still go see Bill Siegel‘s The Trials of Muhammad Ali. Because it is almost inconceivable, in this day and age, to think that a professional sportsman at the prime of his career, would take on, and steadfastly stay true to, a political and moral stance that was quite as unpopular as Ali’s was in his time.

Muhammad Ali was not just a black man in 1960s America; he was a black Muslim. But he was not just a black Muslim, he was a vocal and visible one, who made it clear his faith was not just a matter of personal spirituality but a political statement too. He did not keep his allegiance to the Nation of Islam and its radical theoretical commitments and pronouncements a secret, and he insisted that he be called by his adopted name, punishing those, like Ernie Terrell, who refused to respect this new identity.

Many found Ali’s commitment to the Nation of Islam problematic, and indeed, some of his echoing of that group’s most polarizing statements are still discomfiting. But it is precisely his unapologetic statement of those beliefs that provides The Trials of Muhammad Ali one of its strongest moments. In a television interview–on the David Frost show–Ali is asked for reassurance that he does not really believe that ‘the white man is the devil’ as Elijah Muhammad says (“That’s not really true, is it?”). Much to Frost’s surprise, Ali does not back down. Instead, he passionately affirms his beliefs all over again; he believes in every word Elijah preaches.  As he points out to Frost, he’s given up his title, he’s ready to go to jail, he’s given up many dollars of earnings; these actions which made him, a black man, even more unpopular, and also cost him his livelihood were made possible by the strength of his faith in a man who he considered to have shown him the light. Given that, why would Frost expect Ali to disown him on national television?

Ali’s words can be viewed as evidence of an unintelligent bullheadedness. but they are also admirable. He could have thrown Elijah under the bus for the sake of an easy and cheap popularity with a mainstream national audience, and then, when questioned about his turncoat words by his friends and other followers of the Nation of Islam, he could have performed another backpedal, claiming his words had been ‘taken out of context.’ A slither here, a slide there, and Ali could have deftly wiggled between the cracks, keeping everyone happy.

But Ali kept it simple. He was standing on his feet, and he didn’t intend to sink to his knees again.

My Favorite Reader

For as long as I have been married, my wife has been my favorite reader. She reads and offers comments on almost everything I write, from the brief posts here (and at The Cordon) to my books.  She reads my angry emails, my applications for various academic offerings–nothing is too long or too short or trivial to not be read by her. She patiently puts up with a never-ending stream of requests from me: “Can you read this today? Can you read this by tomorrow? Can you tell me whether this makes any sense? Do you think I’m clear enough here? Is this just trivial bullshit? Are you sure this isn’t complete crap?” And on and on. Once I’m reassured by her that everything is a ‘go’, I can press ‘send’ or ‘publish.’ (Early on, in my academic writing, I established a simple standard: it had to be comprehensible to my wife, an educated non-academic. That glove has to fit, or it’s a no-go.)

Writers are a sensitive lot, of course, and so I don’t take too kindly to some of the criticism sent my way–even from folks whom I’ve asked for critique. There are times when my wife and I sit down to discuss her comments on a draft of mine, and our conversation becomes edgy and just a little contentious. My writing is limpid and clear; how could it possibly be ambiguous or confusing? Surely, this aside that I’ve just made here is not an irrelevant distraction but a valuable and useful supplement to the central thread of discussion? Of course, this sentence stands on its own, and my elaboration here, to you, will not be needed by the reader. There are times, indeed, when my wife will terminate a debriefing session with a brief and exasperated, “Look, those are my comments as a reader; do what you want with them.”

And I do. Even if I’m defensive and stubborn at times, too much in love with my transient creations.

The hardest suggestions to take on board are inevitably, deletions. Last week, I argued–with some vigor–in favor of retaining a particular tiny sliver of my writing: a sentence that ended a paragraph by hearkening back to a previous chapter. I thought the backwards reference worked and strenuously resisted the suggestion that it be deleted. I finally walked away, irate,  in a huff, saying “That sentence stays.” The next morning, on waking up, before I even made my morning coffee, I walked over to my desk, opened up the manuscript file, turned to the right page, and deleted the offending sentence. My wife had been right; it had to go. And what a relief it was to see it disappear off the page.

I’ve written many co-authored works and I’m grateful to all my collaborators on those projects for their expenditures of creative and intellectual energy in making my writing better. I can see their impress in every word that has finally made it to the printed page. But along with them, my favorite reader is also present.

The author includes the reader too.

Schwitzgebel On Our Moral Duties To Artificial Intelligences

Eric Schwitzgebel asks an interesting question:

Suppose that we someday create artificial beings similar to us in their conscious experience, in their intelligence, in their range of emotions. What moral duties would we have to them?

Schwitzgebel’s stipulations are quite extensive, for these beings are “similar to us in their conscious experience, in their intelligence, in their range of emotions.” Thus, one straightforward response to the question might be, “The same duties that we take ourselves to have to other conscious, intelligent, sentient beings–for which our moral theories provide us adequate guidance.” But the question that Schwitzgebel raises is challenging because our relationship to these artificial beings is of a special kind: we have created, initialized, programmed, parametrized, customized and traine them. We are, somehow, responsible for them. (Schwitzgebel considers and rejects two other approaches to reckoning our duties towards AIs: first, that we are justified in simply disregarding any such obligations because of our species’ distance from them, and second, that the very fact of having granted these beings existence–which is presumably infinitely better than non-existence–absolves me of any further duties toward them.) This is how Schwitzgebel addresses the question of our duties to them–with some deft consideration of the complications introduced by this responsibility and the autonomy of the artificial beings in question–and goes on to conclude:

If the AI’s desires are not appropriate — for example, if it desires things contrary to its flourishing — I’m probably at least partly to blame, and I am obliged to do some mitigation that I would probably not be obliged to do in the case of a fellow human being….On the general principle that one has a special obligation to clean up messes that one has had a hand in creating, I would argue that we have a special obligation to ensure the well-being of any artificial intelligences we create.

The analogy with children that Schwitzgebel correctly invokes can be made to do a little more work. Our children’s moral failures vex us more than those of others do; they prompt more extensive corrective interventions by us precisely because our assessments of their actions are just a little more severe. As such, when we encounter artificial beings of the kind noted above, we will find our reckonings of our duties toward them significantly impinged on by whether ‘our children’ have, for instance, disappointed or pleased us. Artificial intelligences will not have been created without some conception of their intended ends; their failures or successes in attaining them will influence a consideration of our appropriate duties to them and will make more difficult a recognition and determination of the boundaries we should not transgress in our ‘mitigation’ of their actions and in our ensuring their ‘well-being.’ After all, parents are more tempted to extensively intervene in their child’s life when they perceive a deviation from a path they believe their children should take in order to achieve an objective the parent deems desirable.

By requiring respect and consideration for their autonomous moral natures, children exercise our moral senses acutely. We should not be surprised to be similarly examined by the artificial intelligences we create and set loose upon the world.

Flirting With Perfection: Spelling It Out

We often dream of perfection, but we rarely, if ever, achieve it. There was one exceedingly minor business, in one all too brief period,  in which I did attain such heights: my spelling prowess in my early school grades. I do not know if I ever attained the competency levels of those who excel at the national spelling bees that continue to enthrall so many folks every year, but there was no doubt I was a contender. Classroom testing of spelling prowess was carried out by dint of the dreaded ‘dictation test’: our teacher would read out loud, first, a list of words to be spelled out, and then, a short passage. We listened and wrote.

Through, I think, the fifth grade, (after which such ‘dictation tests’ ceased), I maintained a perfect record in my spelling examinations. I did not spell a single word wrong. (I also never suffered a single spelling correction in any of my essay assignments–this record ran through my high school years.) Indeed, I was often puzzled by the fact that my classmates did not score similar grades. What was the problem–did they not know what the word looked in question like? My spelling prowess was not a secret; word of my never-ending stream of perfect scores in these tests was not slow in spreading among my mates–we were a nerdy bunch. Needless to say, I lapped up the ensuing admiration.

Interestingly enough, I only encountered spelling difficulties–of a kind–once I began using word processors. My physical connection with the medium of writing changed, rewiring my linkages to the written word. I was bemused by the number of typos I generated in my writing assignments in graduate school. (I had written with a fountain pen till my undergraduate days; something about writing with that implement had required a certain deliberateness which militated against the introduction of spelling errors.) Identifying and correcting these added labors to my writing that I was unfamiliar with.

The differences between the two modes of writing were many–perhaps too many to list here. Some were immediately relevant to my spelling difficulties, to the business of orthographic errors. In writing with a word processor, I interacted with a keyboard; my fingers found keys and transferred letters to the screen. In writing with a pen, I traced out the shapes of the letters, my hands pressing directly upon the surface of writing. A word processor always produced a printed draft that I read and corrected before handing in the final version; perhaps I grew careless, trusting myself to remove spelling mistakes from the final version. A fountain pen produced a near-final version in ink that was not easily or cleanly corrected; the tracings of my pen were infected with this awareness. (The introduction of spelling and grammar checkers in word processors might have made things worse for some folks, tempted now to plunge ahead and correct later as the offending words are flagged in rude highlights.)

The valorization of spelling prowess seems, for some reason, a curiously old-fashioned affectation. I’m not sure why. A misspelled word still seems an abomination of sorts.

Mark Bennett Is A Sexist Tool

Over at the blog Defending People, Mark Bennett, a Houston-based criminal defense lawyer, writes a long, technical, closely argued post critiquing Danielle Citron‘s putative rebuttals of arguments–based on First Amendment concerns–against her proposals for ‘revenge porn’ laws.  Bennett titles his post ‘F**ing Danielle Citron’ and at the end signs off thusly:

P.S. “F**king” is fisking. Sicko.

That was very witty. Chuckle, guffaw, chortle, snicker. I hope you got it and appreciated the joke, otherwise, Bennett is going to think you are one square, stodgy dude. I’m playing it safe, and issuing a few preemptive cackles.

It’s no surprise, of course, that a male blogger–a brave defender of free speech!–should have chosen such a title and chosen to express his wit in such puerile fashion. He is, after all, writing a post that aims to ‘fisk’, to ‘take apart’ arguments made by a woman. So why not invoke, for the amusement and entertainment of his male readers¹, the kind of aggressive language many men–academic or otherwise–like to attach to the art and practice of argumentation. Like, “I tore him a new asshole”, “I wiped the floor with him”, “I shut him the fuck up” and many others. So if you’re refuting someone’s arguments, you’re fucking them. Argumentation is a contact sport, innit?

Such language is almost exactly the precise converse of another kind that men are inordinately fond of. As I wrote in a post last year commenting on a “culture, local and global, of sexual harassment, ogling, [and] innuendo”:

[M]en when talking about sex, cannot drop the language of conquest and domination, of conflating sex and violence (‘Dude, I fucked the shit out of her’ or ‘I was banging her all night’), who imagine sex to be a variant of rough-and-tumble sport (‘scoring touchdowns’), who associate weakness with womanhood (‘Don’t be a pussy’ ‘Man up’ ‘Put your pants on’).

In his self-exalted mind, Bennett intended to ‘eviscerate’ the arguments mounted by Citron; he was really going to lower the boom; Citron was going to get some rough rhetorical treatment. So why not analogize–in that dazzlingly witty style above–that forensic analysis to, you know, sex? And for even better measure, why not stick your interlocutor’s name in the title? Citron does write about the harassment of women online, by–among other things–hate speech and revenge porn,  so it would only be appropriate that her name feature in such a title. I bet that would make her squirm just a bit. Why not just let your dick flag flutter proudly? I’m sure some of his male readers–perhaps some drenched-in-testosterone male law school students and bloggers–are passing around Bennett’s post and chuckling over how ‘Bennett gave Citron a good bitch-slapping.’ (Incidentally, the tweet that led me to Bennett’s post said that it ‘just filets open and guts pernicious Danielle Citron+MaryAnne Franks revenge porn laws.’)

I’ve given up being amazed or appalled by the sexism of smart men.  Male power is well-entrenched and defiant, but it is embodied in some very insecure folks.

Note #1: I doubt Bennett thought any of his female readers would find that title amusing.

PS: Bennett’s arguments are well-worth a read. Even sexist tools can be good First Amendment analysts.

An Officer’s View On The NYPD Protests: Still Blinkered

Steve Osborne, proudly standing with his back to the Mayor and the city of New York, comes to tell us why the New York City Police Department has been throwing an extended tantrum that would put a toddler to shame. (Interestingly enough, the NYPD has given itself a ‘time-out’ and like harried parents everywhere, we are oh-so relieved and wondering if the offender should stay in there just a little longer.)

Osborne’s Op-Ed is not much more than Pat Lynch Lite:

Mr. de Blasio is more than any other public figure in this city responsible for feelings of demoralization among the police. It did not help to tell the world about instructing his son, Dante, who is biracial, to be wary of the police, or to publicly signal support of anti-police protesters (for instance, by standing alongside the Rev. Al Sharpton, a staunch backer of the protests). If there is any self-pity involved, which I doubt, it is only because we lack respect from our elected officials and parts of the media.

Quick question for Osborne: Did you read my piece about the ‘deadly self-pity of the police’? You really should. You might be able to rent a clue if you did so.

Osborne writes one sensible, revealing, paragraph:

Most cops I know feel tired of being pushed to do more and more, and then even more. More police productivity has meant far less crime, but at a certain point New York began to feel like, yes, a police state, and the police don’t like it any more than you do. Tremendous successes were achieved in battling crime and making this city a much better place to live and work in and visit. But the time has probably come for the Police Department to ease up on the low-level “broken-windows” stuff while re-evaluating the impact it may or may not have on real, serious crime. No one will welcome this more than the average cop on the beat, who has been pressed to find crime where so much less of it exists.

As the NYPD’s ‘strike’, its refusal to arrest anyone ‘unless absolutely necessary’, has shown, the sky has not fallen on our heads while the police have decided to kick back just for a bit and ease up on the usual ‘up against the wall’ nonsense. (The police seem to not have studied the history of strikes: they are meant to show you are indispensable, not the other way around.)

As for the rest: Spare us this incessant whining, this invocation of weeping, anxious women waiting at home for their soldier men to return from the front after doing battle. I’ve met many men who fought in real wars, and they never went on and on like this self-absorbed lot who can’t get it through their heads that their methods might have something to do with the lack of ‘respect’ sent their way. Stop asking for respect, and start showing some for the citizens you police. You might be surprised with what comes your way.

Kill All The Cartoonists; God Will Sort Them Out

You read or view a satirical piece or a cartoon in a newspaper or a magazine. It offends you; you are enraged; your deepest sensibilities–personal, religious–have been ravaged and injured. Unable to assuage your feelings by acknowledging the abstract free speech rights of those who have so insulted you, and still caught up in a maelstrom of rage, you fantasize about doing terrible injury to them.

For some folks, matters end right here. Revenge remains at the level of fantasy; resentment smolders but then fades away, to be replaced by some other pressing concern. Perhaps a dull smart remains, one that occasionally flares up if a similar offense is committed in the future.

But some folks resolve to teach their offenders a lesson. Perhaps by causing them material damage, perhaps by doing them injury.  And then, after being initially fueled by an inchoate rage, they act deliberately and cold-bloodedly to bring about these effects.

The gap between these two sensibilities can seem, varying upon your particular sympathies and inclinations, either very large or very small. Perhaps the former demographic can turn into the latter if injury and insult are repeated, or if social, economic, and personal circumstances change; perhaps the latter are so pathologically unsound in the intellectual and ethical dimensions that such mergers need not be feared.

I do not doubt that if a dedicated cartoonist or poison-pen wielder were to get to work, they could produce a cartoon or an essay that would eviscerate all I hold near and dear, for after all, at the fringes of humor lurk its darker precincts: humiliation and ridicule. Perhaps they could draw cruel, offensive, grotesque, hurtful, caricatures of my long-dead parents, perhaps of my beloved wife and daughter, perhaps they could write a long stand-up routine that took accurate aim at my many, many shortcomings and vulnerabilities and evoked howls of laughter from strangers who were not invested in my being protective of my sensibilities.

I wonder how I would react. I could, and would, rage and rage, and dream and fantasize about punching the crap out of the offenders, but I suspect ultimately, I would back down and slink away to smolder, hoping time and new experiences would assuage this shame. Perhaps, because I write myself, I would compose a long screed in response–trying to return fire with fire. I have often been insulted and abused in online exchanges and have sometimes retaliated, but these, if they undergo repeat iterations, very quickly tire me out and leave me feeling worse than when I started.

I wonder what, if anything, would make me seek out a violent solution to my crisis, a violent release to my angst. Perhaps if I was a psychopath or sociopath–poorly understood terms, I know–that found some dispassionate pleasure in the act of killing. Or perhaps, more plausibly,  perhaps if I could be persuaded that it would bring about a larger, more dramatic, desired change–political or economic–elsewhere; perhaps if I could be persuaded that such an action would set wheels rolling that would bring me closer to some destination much more important than a relief station for anger. Perhaps then, I might consider such an option a little more seriously. Perhaps then, I might not rest content with mere figurative retaliation.

Wishful Dreaming And Running On Cold Mornings

Last night, my preparations for bed included a little collection of running gear: tights, shorts, gloves, hat, an inner layer, and finally, an outer sweatshirt. I was planning to make a return to a running routine after having been diverted and distracted back in December. I had checked in with my running partner to see if he was going for his usual morning run, and it was on. With a slight caveat: it was, after all, going to be twenty degrees in the morning. Did I still want to go? With some measure of apprehension, I confirmed my intentions to brave the cold. My spirits were considerably bolstered by my wife, who assured me I would warm up once I began moving. Still, as I turned in for the night, I was not looking forward to stepping out of my heated building, out onto a still-dark morn and a deserted icy sidewalk swept clean by a chilly wind. The sensible folks would either still be in bed, or only venturing out with far more apparel than I would be. Wasn’t I too old for this shit?

An indeterminate number of hours later, I found myself stepping out of my co-op building. It was warm, almost balmy. All around me, on my street and its sidewalks, I could see people, my neighbors, standing around, talking, laughing, making merry. I walked down the street bemused and pleasantly surprised; this was so much more tolerable than I had anticipated. I could live with this late spring vibe, I thought.

And then I woke up.

Ah yes, wishful dreaming. A most interesting phenomenon. In my high school and college days, I would sometimes find myself dreaming about my latest crush and her willing acceptance of my charming conversation and sparkling repartee; she would join me for a walk, look deep into my eyes, perhaps even hold my hand. (These romantic reveries were invariably quite chaste; there was no question of rounding the bases in them; perhaps a few halting steps away from home plate at best.) And then, I would wake up and spend the next day gazing at her from afar, cursing the waking hours that had removed that wondrous nocturnal proximity we had enjoyed a few hours before.

As last night’s slumbers and many others in the intervening years have taught me, wishing for magical interventions never quite goes away, especially in our unconscious states. Sometimes stubborn obstacles to personal and professional success disappear; sometimes long-missed companions grace me with their presence; sometimes I have already begun a long-awaited vacation. And many others, of course.

We retain, it seems, in this dimension at least, some measure of the child we once were.

Note: Oh, and this morning? It was twenty-one degrees with a wind chill of seventeen degrees. I ran about three and a half miles. My fingertips and toes got a little numb, but that was about it. Motion did keep me warm, and I returned exhilarated. I plan to go out Friday morning. I don’t think I’ll have the same dream on Thursday night.