Technical difficulties....

...please stand by...

Nah, not really, but Microsoft did one of those OS upgrades last week and I expected the worst. Took forever. Still, when I consider how many people use MS software, how much crap we all download on our PCs of varied and sundry levels of compatibility and soundness, it's a miracle these upgrades take at all.

My dad could not have fixed a computer, I'm sure. He died before they really became a thing, back when the Internet was barely more than a military concoction and home computers were for people who wanted a thousand-dollar paperweight. I wonder what he would have made of all this.

He was a tool guy, a man who worked with his hands, and he could fix anything. And if he couldn't, because it required more technical expertise outside his field, he could bring in one of his pals. He always knew someone on The Job who could handle what he couldn't, and vice versa. They weren't really social guys, but they'd go to one another's houses when a project needed doing.

Toward the end of his life he told me that he couldn't fix cars anymore, that the computers in them would get messed up if he tried. I was stunned. He had been fixing cars since he was a kid, knew all the parts and what they were for, and he could handle anything that didn't require the engine block to be hauled out. But this is where we are now. Everything is Smart, which is rendering us dumb. I'm lucky if I know what hole to pour the wiper fluid in.

I know a few guys who tinker on their vehicles, guys like my dad who could probably build one from scratch if they had the right tools and the time (what American boy hasn't dreamed of building his own Centaur -- although it would be illegal now in most states to take it one the road, I'm sure). But all of them work on pre-1980 vehicles. There will always be car guys tinkering on cars, but I expect eventually all those cars will be Theseus's ships, philosophical conundrums with no original parts.

Among many things I would do differently were I to live this life again, though, would be to pay attention to my dad when he was doing home projects. He was a terrible teacher but I was the absolute worst student. Now I'm paying for it. Oh, sure, I can get a PC to work ("Here's the start button!"), but fix a lamp? Dude, better get one of those Radio Shack nerds in.

Happy Father's Day to all the dads. My heart was busted when my dad died. My car, my computer, and my heart are still the only things around here he couldn't fix.

Raise a glass.

I was very surprised to see Original New York Seltzer back in the stores here. It looked just the way I remember seeing it when I was a youth, thirty years ago, in the little glass bottles. It's a fine family of beverages. The only complaints with Original New York Seltzer are, it's not original, it's not from New York, and it isn't seltzer. 

Aside from that it's great. 

Let's first look at what it isn't. It's not original in any New York seltzery way I can determine. The name would seem to indicate that the soda comes from someplace that made seltzer back in the days of lunch counters and bicarb and bottomless coffee cups on every block in Manhattan, but it's no such thing. It's not from New York, even; the company is from California, where it originated in 1981. It folded in the 1990s, and is now being revived, again in California. And that's not a bad thing, it just has nothing to do with New York. 

Nor is it seltzer, in the sense of seltzer as a carbonated water to which no other ingredients have been added. ONYS (as they style it) does not make a "2 cents plain," although they have introduced cans of sparkling water. One of them is technically seltzer, but even that is billed as "sparkling water" on the can. Above you see the cream soda I bought -- calling that seltzer is like calling Coke or Pepsi seltzer. 

So it isn't anything like what the company says it is. What it is, however, is a really good soda. It's got sugar -- none of their classic line comes as sugar-free, at least per the Web site -- but they're cute little 10-oz. bottles, sold in 4-packs. It's an occasional treat, then. Where else do you find blueberry soda? And the sodas were always clear, which was a thing back in the day, at least until Tab Clear killed Crystal Pepsi. 

One other thing I wanted to point out, though. I suspected that there'd been a change to the design of the original label, which has always shown a fanciful version of the Manhattan skyline, as drawn by someone who'd never seen the real thing. Except for ol' Lady Liberty, the structures are not exact depictions; there's a sort of Woolworth Building and a kinda Citicorp. But online I found the original Original cans, and you can see another structure, or rather a pair of them, that would have represented something on the skyline in 1988 but not in 2018. 

All the way on the left.

Yep. Always something there to remind me. 

Bob the Mage, ch. 8.

[Author's note: Fiction Friday! once again, with chapter eight of our novel, Bob the Mage, which I wrote some time back and have edited into better shape to share with you. When last we saw Bob, our fantasy adventure hero, he had washed up on a desert island where he met Astercam, a scholar formerly in the employ of the evil Morwor Mordrun Mormor (thunder sfx) at Castle Terror, and Bourbon the Unintelligible Barbarian. Bob believes that his princess, Suzy, for whom he has fallen like a sack of anvils, was killed in their shipwreck. But he has promised to help his new friends to make a vessel to escape the island.

Previous chapters can be found at these links:
chapter 7, chapter 6, chapter 5, chapter 4, chapter 3, chapter 2, chapter 1
And remember, if you're enjoying the book, tell a friend! If you're hating the book, let it be our little secret! And if you're undecided, get a second opinion! Here's one: It's great!]

Bob the Mage

By Frederick Key

Chapter 8

We set to work that very afternoon. True to his word, Astercam knocked off some rough blueprints for a sturdy raft to be made with the local weak, splintery wood; the boards would be woven together and reinforced with vines that, when treated with my heat spell, would give us a strong construction that retained flexibility. I don’t know if Astercam was a genius, but he sure knew a lot of things, which he used mainly to bore me on our work breaks in subsequent days.

“Did you know that the Grumbus plant, Fernus gilliganius, of the southern islands can have as many as seventeen points on its leaves? Most plants of that climate in that genus have no more than ten. Isn’t that fascinating?”

“Grunt.”

“I once mentioned that to my friend Passole, the composer. Have you heard of him? I suppose not. Fond of plants, he is. Does a lot of atonal stuff, wonderful. Sounds like machinery grinding to a halt. He was heavily influenced by the famed Magnelli.”

“Speaking of music, I think Bourbon is serenading me again.”

“Such an awful row. Perhaps he’s just hurt himself.”

“We can hope, but no, he’s smiling.”

As the days passed it grew more apparent that Bourbon was either playing for the other team, as it were, or just desperate. Either way, while Astercam was not his cup of tea, it seemed that I was.

“Don’t knock it,” said Astercam. “I think he’s trying to impress you. Have you seen how fast he cut down all that lumber? A mighty man is he.”

“But he’s just not my type.”

“Relax. We’ll be on our way soon. Did I tell you about the paper I wrote on human sexuality? Now there’s a subject. My paper was on the occurrence of same as related to the phases of the moon.”

“Oh?”

“Yes. They aren’t related. It was rather a failure, actually. Perhaps if I’d had a bigger grant I’d have done good work in the field. Did you know—”

“No. Let’s get back to work.”

In a week, thanks to Astercam’s planning, my spells, and Bourbon’s mighty labor, we had completed the raft. I realized with some pride that it would have been impossible without me, as my heat spell, lame as it was, was able to dry and tighten the vines we used in a way mere fire could not. And Astercam cleverly used my glue spell, which never did glue things in place as expected, to turn the mud he had composed into actual pitch. The boat would never have been sturdy enough without my magic. As it was, the thing groaned and squealed and threatened to split as we hauled it to the beach. The question was, would it float?

No.

We pulled it back on shore, dried ourselves off, and examined the problem further.

“Everything about the pitch was terrific,” said Astercam, “except it was water soluble.”

Having determined that my spell was not the issue, he turned back to mixing more saps and minerals and juices to try to get something that would not dissolve on contact with the ocean. After three dull days he had nothing.

On the morning of the fourth day I sauntered up behind him and said, “I think you’re in luck, Astercam. I think Bourbon’s lost interest in me and is starting to look at you.”

We were ready to sail that afternoon.

Astercam had made a chart and crude compass, and Bourbon loaded the raft with dried fruit and gourds of freshwater. I had replenished my magic supplies as best I could from the local flora. I was eager to get off the island. If it meant we would drown, I could accept that, but I couldn’t bear living in solitude, haunted by the memory of Suzy, by the dread feeling that if she had not cared for me she might have stayed on the Tegoran ship and lived.

I found out quickly that a couple of weeks on land had robbed me of my sealegs. Forty feet from shore I felt queasy; by fifty I was letting ’er rip over the side.

Our progress was slow at first, for our simple sail couldn’t catch a breeze, but eventually one began to kick up and we were on our way.

I don’t think we’d made it much more than ten miles from the island when Bourbon gasped in terror. Astercam screamed.

I turned my greenish face forward to see what had scared them.

Seven enormous black clouds were converging over us, bunching like the sky’s own fist. The thunder, when it boomed, sounded like sinister laughter.

“It's Mormor! He’s been waiting for this moment!” Astercam cried. “And now he’s going to destroy us!”

“Whatever,” I said, and heaved again.

Bourbon leaped up, clutching the tiller with one hand, screaming some macho threat in his awful language at the storm while waving his ax with the other hand. I doubted Mormor would be given to second thoughts over that display.

The storm played with us for a while, as I puked and the others howled. The sail was ripped from the mast; the tiller was useless against the waves that batted us back and forth. Rain crashed down, just as it had on Suzy and me in our little boat, and similarly there came a burst of lightning, and then I was once more floating in the ocean—there’s an awful lot of ocean, isn’t there? too much—and clinging to a piece of raft, my companions nowhere in sight. Déjà vu.

I could have drowned from the rain alone, but the waves were fighting for the privilege. I feel certain I shouted Suzy’s name several times, but I don’t know why. Somehow I managed to hold on to the planks, although I was losing my grip on consciousness.

Then I opened my eyes and noticed something very strange.

I was surfing.

The sky above was still black, but the rain had slowed and there was a strong wind at my back. I was perched on my bit of raft, riding the crest of a fast wave. How I got in that position I did not know.

But I had my suspicions.

Ahead of me was nothing but water, until a small blot of black appeared on the horizon. It grew in size as I drew nearer, and it grew quickly. I was moving faster than I ever had by any means before. The island was craggy and dark, apparently barren and made of jutting rock. High atop the highest jut was a cold gray castle in the shape of a human skull. The towers looked like femurs and the walls, assorted tibia. If that’s not Castle Terror, I thought, I’d hate to see what is.

A more pressing matter at the moment was that I was racing at forty knots right for the sharp rocks that ringed the island. Unless I wanted to end life as a red smear, I had to do something. I dived off the wood into the wave, fighting against the wave’s power as hard as I could with my pathetic muscles. Bourbon couldn’t have broken free of that wave, so I had no chance, but I did change direction slightly. While the planks of the raft shattered on the rocks, I shot between two of them and into a cove. I was shoved up on a beach made of onyx sand.

I lay there for a while, orienting myself with some constructive whimpering and a good session of trembling, and then I got up to look around.

The whole island seemed to be made of coal and obsidian, which seemed to suck the light out of the air. I saw not one clam or crab on the beach, nor the slightest wisp of green. I thought that whatever landed on this beach died immediately, and had to pinch myself to make sure I was still alive.

I had to assume this Mormor character wasn’t done playing with me. But why? We’d never met. I hadn’t even had a chance to offend him yet. And if I had, he certainly could have finished me off in the water, as I assumed he had Astercam and Bourbon.

By now I was too tired to be scared anymore, so I started up the rocky path to the castle. If Mormor wanted me for some reason, perhaps he’d tell me if I asked. Not like there was anything else to do around that place.

I did want to make myself presentable—good luck with that, I know. My clothes were rags, my hat long lost to the sea. The rain finally stopped, though, so I decided to use my heat spell to dry myself off a little. You have to be careful with that spell not to use the concentrated form (the difference is a pinkie twaddle); done right, you can dry off quickly, but done wrong you can shoot yourself a blister.

So armed with my new blister I approached the castle. It didn’t have a moat, but then, the whole ocean acted as one. The stones from which the edifice was built were cut in the very size and shape of skulls--human, elf, dwarf, pixie, troll, you name it. I sensed a motif here. The front doors were iron, twenty feet high. One had a keyhole shaped like a screaming mouth. Both had gigantic iron rings, five feet in diameter. An actual giant could pull on them or use them as knockers, but I didn’t even try. I just rapped on the door with my fist.

Incredibly, words in the common tongue appeared in red, fading into existence in the air before me: Servants’ entrance in rear.

“I’m not a servant,” I said. “I am… Bob.”

The words vanished. Then, with a squeal, the doors opened outward, slowly, creaking and howling every inch of the way.

When they stopped moving I stepped inside, into darkness. By themselves the doors slammed shut behind me. I hate when that happens. I wandered forward, my eyes refusing to adjust to the darkness. It stretched as far as the eye could not see. I grew sentimental for the frying pan I’d been in, but it was too late for regrets about the fire now. I pressed on.

After a time I saw a little square of light, so I headed toward it. Did it flicker like a dying man’s spirit? Can’t say. At least it broke up the monotony. And as I approached I smelled food. Wonderful food. Beef roasting. Pork sizzling. Bread baking. Beer pouring. Corn popping. Shrimp frying. No slop, gruel, hardtack, or underripe fruit. Just the real stuff. I left a trail of drool like a slug down the hall.

The light was a doorway that opened up into an opulent dining hall. It was done in high fashion, with elegant bright-burning chandeliers, rococo wall carvings, softly cushioned high-back chairs, everything gilded. Somewhere an invisible string quartet played. I’d been in a couple of great halls before, usually trying for the silverware, but I’d never seen anything like this. The endless table was laden with all the foods I’d smelled, and many I hadn’t, and several that I’d never tried but surely wanted to.

And then I saw, at the table, wearing a delicate white dress, a tasteful tiara on her brow, my princess Suzy.

“Suzy! Is it really you?” I cried.

“Bob!” she cried back, knocking over her wine goblet.

I stretched my arms to her and she to me, and we started one of those runs alongside the table that seem to be in slow motion, when suddenly another figure stepped in between us. I almost kissed him by mistake.

He was not as tall as me, although he looked healthier by a country mile, slender and sinewy, with short curly hair and a neat pointed goatee. His robes were plain dark gray, but a glance told me I had never felt such a soft and fine fabric. He wore a black tunic beneath that covered him all the way to the neck. He smiled, his wide green eyes looking kindly, and stopped my forward motion with a hand clasped gently but firmly on my shoulder. In a smooth, soft voice, he said, “Welcome to my home, mage Bob. I apologize for any inconveniences you may have suffered, but I am so pleased you could join us at last. You know the lady, I see, but I believe I must be rude enough to introduce myself.”

“No need, I’m sure,” I stammered.

“But I must. My name is Morwor Mordrun Mormor, but my friends call me Zippy. Do join us, I insist.”

💀

[Uh-oh! Can't you hear the ominous music? Or is that just Bob's empty stomach rumbling? What will happen now? Is that really Suzy? If she's alive, maybe Astercam and Bourbon are too! No, probably not. Why does a nice guy like Zippy seem to be so into skulls? Come back next Friday for chapter 9!]

Fredding season.

MEN! You all know how hard it is to make real-live friends these days. But maybe that hasn't stopped you from finding that special someone who has roped you into marriage. Now you have to get your act together and produce groomsmen! Here it is, wedding season, and your only male friend is your cat, and he's been neutered! What to do?

Let Rent-A-Fred be your solution.

Yes, boys, for a reasonable and nonnegotiable fee, you can have Fred appear as a groomsman in your wedding, swearing that he has known you for years. You'll need to provide the rental clothes, of course, but don't worry! Fred cleans up real good. And he doesn't care what kind of monkey suit the bride picked out for your party.

Your rental friend Fred will retain a quiet dignity with a wry sense of humor throughout the proceedings. He will assure the bride's family that she isn't marrying a dodo -- look at his classy friends! -- but will never make them think she should have married Fred instead. He knows which fork to use at dinner, will praise every aspect of the meal, won't get drunk and hit on the bridesmaids, and will be friendly to your family and hers. At no added cost, Fred will Chicken Dance and Macarena and Electric Slide and Hokey Pokey on an as-needed basis.

Studies show* that wedding parties that include Fred get 35% to 38% higher collection on the dollar dance. He practically pays for himself!

Upgrade to our Gold Key Package and have Fred as your best man! Fred will arrange your bachelor party so you can have all kinds of stories to tell later, even if it's just you and him and your neutered cat. Don't worry; we'll come up with something.** At the rehearsal dinner, Fred will make a heartfelt toast to the happy couple that will bring laughs and maybe a little tear to the eyes of the wedding party.*** And he will be extra careful not to tread on the feet of the maid of honor, even if she wears size 13 gumboots and dances like a rhinoceros.

So remember, sad friendless male, for a nominal fee you can have turn your Wedding into a Fredding. You can't afford not to!

* Studies from the F.K. Institute of Marriage Sciences.

** You'll have stories, we promise.

*** Charming fictional slide show of our friendship included at additional cost.

Character?

[NB: This was an entry I had written for the old, defunct Blog.com blog five or more years ago. I came across it on my hard drive and didn't know why I'd saved a copy. But I think it still holds up.]

While reading an article about social media and the oversharing generation behind mine, I thought about how many of the youngsters will come to regret their youthful exuberance, having written too much about themselves in public, and the impact it had on careers and relationships.

And I thought about their possible response to that proposition, as the kind of thing I would have thought in my youth: This is who I am, we’re different from you old guys, I find this right and proper and so I will never have to change my opinion, etc.

The ability to take up big gestures and poses is important for the youth, even over frivolous things. And although they won’t believe it, their opinions about these things may change, and possibly a sickly regret will sink in—even shame. The problem is the important things they stand for also may be revised.

It’s not a problem because they change their minds about taste or politics or best practices or even ethics or religion; any thinking person is entitled and expected to be able to do so. The permanent record of the Internet makes it harder to change direction; no one wants to look like a waffler. And yet that can be overcome if one finds that truth has dispelled his illusions (or, it should be said, vice versa).

The real problem is when they abandon principles because of frustrated expectations.

When you’re young you think you’ll do great things and be thought of highly by many, and so you may be willing to pay a high price for some decisions, certain you’ll be proved right in the end. The career passed by for love of something unremunerative; the marriage straight out of high school; the protest movement or general strike or even act of violence; even the rebellion against those closest to you have the romantic tinge that whispers of future justification. It may reflect great depths of character to do some of these things, or at least appear to.

(You may note I left joining the military off the list; for one, it’s something of unquestionable nobility, so I do not dispute that; for another thing, it brings with it all the rewards of discipline and honor that I hope make it an unregrettable decision.)

But when the great gesture does not work out? When the acting career derails, the protest is ignored, the marriage sags into misery, and no one around really cares? Is it like the tattoo that one gets more out of emotion than reason and comes to regret? The harmony of romanticism ends, and the dream dies hard, and (here’s the rub) takes the character down with it.

Or was it even character?

How many young people would choose to do something grand if no one would ever know about it? There’s always a sense of playing to the audience. The old definition of character remains: doing the right thing when no one is watching. If your dream fails and you turn bitter, cynical, even angry, then it’s hard to say it was character at all. Just youthful ego. It’s like being someone who is bound to fight for justice, then taking a hard punch, and, while on the ground, wondering if justice is all that important after all. (Which is why a good punch is always helpful for developing humility. People without any humility are, as a rule of thumb, jerks.) You may decide that, although you were right all along, the world has treated you badly and so you deserve whatever you can swipe from it. So there, world!

But what about old-timers who survive success or failure or both and retain a good outlook and a desire to do things right? They have character, and it is solid. Those people can be counted upon to do right.

So young people must be distrusted until they prove that their character outlasts their romanticism. You can’t trust the character of someone who’s never taken a punch.

Never trust anyone under forty. As for people forty and over, you can tell which ones are bastards—the angry people and the people who have never had to endure failure at all—and distribute your trust accordingly.

What did I eat?

When you were a kid, did you ever play that game with your brain-damaged kid friends where one of you gets blindfolded and has to guess what food he's been given? No, me neither.

Some people must do it, because there are companies that want us to guess what we just put in our mouths.

Airheads is one of those candies that I believe was designed by the American Dental Association. It serves two purposes for them -- it layers a sticky shellac of enamel-decaying sugar on kids' teeth that leads to fillings, and it yanks those same fillings out years later when sentimental adults try the candy of their childhood. Those tooth guys got you coming and going.

But for our purposes today, the question is, what is the white Airheads supposed to be?

Pictured above is a spinoff candy, Airheads Bites, that I think are a little less sticky than regular Airheads bars and have the same fruit flavors. Except they both have a candy called White Mystery, a secret undisclosed flavor about which we can only guess. And guess we have.

The flavor is probably not Sasquatch.

Guesses include things like Watermelon, Blueberry, Pineapple, Cherry, Grape -- of course meaning the candy chimera versions of these flavors, not the flavors of actual fruits. People have said that the Airheads people change the mystery flavor, or that it's a combination of all the other flavors. Personally, I found the White Airheads Bite to not have a fruity flavor at all; it seemed like a combination of marshmallow and something else, maybe coconut. The mystery continues.

And in fact it gets more complex, as Talking Rain, home of the Sparkling Ice sodas, is running its own mystery flavor -- or, as they semi-crassly put it, What The Flavor?

"Mystery Fruit Flavor" says the bottle, and they've tied it to a sweepstakes. Not a contest, so you don't have to get the answer right to win. You could guess Sasquatch and have as much chance of winning as anybody. But what is the flavor?

Okay, I'll bite -- or sip.

I thought this one might be like Fresca, Coke's beloved (or behated) grapefruit soda, but it isn't. Really, I don't know what it is. Tastes citrusy, but who knows. Mangosteen? Does anyone really know what mangosteen tastes like? Sparking Ice is a lot better than Airheads at replicating fruit flavors, but there's no way to tell. Could be a combo, like their Kiwi Strawberry. Maybe it's Dragonfruit Mangosteen. Let's go with that. It sounds like a steampunk anime villain.

These companies are asking a lot of me. "Here, try this! Never mind what it is! It's a mystery! Put it in your mouth!" You wouldn't allow that with your bar pals. These outfits know I trust them because their other flavors are not horrible. But of course, the American Dental Association? Can't trust those guys at all.

MWM Seeking SCQ (single closed quote).

When you work in the editorial game, as they used to say back when "game" was used as a breezy word for "business," certain things irk you. A colleague of mine used to get so frustrated by errors in signage around town (like a pizzeria that promised "Its The Best" and offered "Hero's," for example) that she would have nightmares. Once she dreamed she was on a subway platform trying to correct textual errors on a scrolling message board. She had to leave the city eventually.

As you may know, I get irked too. So many awful errors. And "aw" leads me to one of them. I think autocorrect may be to blame for this, because I didn't used to see it around, but now it's everywhere: people expressing sentiment with "Awe" when they mean "Aw" (or, if the kitten is really cute, "Awwwww"). "Awe" is wonder and amazement. "Aw" is "Isn't that SWEET!" "Awwwe" is nothing at all.

And yet that is not my main complaint today. The thing is, most people who are communication professionals know that this and many other common mistakes are mistakes, and that's great. Someone was paying attention in class. And yet they make this fisticuffs-provoking error of punctuation without a thought:

From Levi's, once a manly man's company but no longer.

From Arby's, still pretty manly.

You see it there, right? Yes, of course -- the single open quote (a.k.a. single left quotation mark) when a single closed quote (or single right quote) is needed.

IT MAKES ME SO CRAZY THAT I REACH FOR THE CAPS.

Here's what the Chicago Manual of Style's 17th edition has to say about this:

Owing to the limitations of conventional keyboards and many software programs, the apostrophe continues to be one of the most abused marks in punctuation. There are two common pitfalls: using the "default" unidirectional mark ('), on the one hand, and using the left single quotation mark, on the other. The latter usage in particular should always be construed as an error. Some software programs automatically turn a typed apostrophe into a left single quotation mark; authors and editors need to be vigilant in overriding such automation to produce the correct mark.... (section 6.117)

The examples they give below that (which I'm blowing up for visibility) are: ’90s (not ‘90s), get ’em (not get ‘em), and rock ’n’ roll (not rock ‘n’ roll).

As they point out, the apostrophe key on an old-time typewriter and on modern Internet software both render the apostrophe as a single hash mark, or prime. I had to jump through Blogger hoops to render the marks faithfully in the paragraph above. Too often a close or open quote, also called a directional or smart quote, were considered special characters, and would resolve online in weird ways if at all.

We've come a long way in the last 20 years on the special character problem -- and now we're going out there and picking the wrong special character. As CMoS says, when you write on Word, MS will helpfully curl that apostrophe the wrong way, as if you're a British person using a single quotation mark to mark dialogue or the like. But that is not what we want in the examples I've shown. We have to make the effort to fix it, because Word won't do it for us.

You may be a designer or an ad writer on a Web site for a pants place or burger joint, but millions may see your work, far more than will ever read most novels. You have to get it right.

(Fred can help for a reasonable fee, by the way. Remember my slogan: I'm not here to make you feel as if you're dumb, I'm here to make you look as if you're smart.)

Modern computing makes us lazy, the way self-driving cars probably will; we assume they will be right, and are caught napping when they're wrong. This is why people drive into lakes following GPS. The Internet can fill you with awe, but it mostly fills me with aw, as in Aw, damn it, they screwed up the single close quote again. Aw, shucks.