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Whiplash, Conspiracy Theories and Damn Lies

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Last night the US Navy responded to the atrocities committed by the Syrian government and it’s leader, Bashar Assad, by bombing a Syrian air base.  The reaction from around the country and around the world has been highly varied, as you might expect.

Our two most senior foreign affairs officials – Secretary of State Rex Tillerson and Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley – are probably visiting their chiropractors today, after having their heads spun around in the last week.  On Thursday March 30, she said “Our priority is no longer to sit there and focus on getting Assad out”.  On the same day, Tillerson added “I think the status and the longer-term status of President Assad will be decided by the Syrian people”.  We can’t be sure what they meant, and there was no confirmation from anyone in the government that the policy towards Assad and Syria had or hadn’t changed.  But this retoric certainly made the point that the US was not looking to take actions against the Assad regime.  And this comes against the backdrop of years of tweets and (actual) statements by our fearless leader that the US had no business being engaged in any way, shape or form in the Syrian conflict.

Today’s a new day, I guess.

Actually, this highlights an issue that has been on my mind since Drump first rode down the gilded elevator to launch his assault on democracy in the United States: anyone who votes for him because they think they agree with his position on any issue is letting themselves be conned.  Drump doesn’t have any positions; or more to the point, he is at various times in every side of every issue.  Planned Parenthood?  Support and then not.  Medical coverage for everyone? Support and then not.  Stay out of Syria? Support and then not.  If you believe any given thing that comes out of his mouth (or across his Twitter feed), you are the sucker born today.

In the meantime, the Alt-Right goons who have been having fainting spells from being so excited that they have a nutcase of their own in the White House are up in arms over Drump’s Syrian Adventure.  Mike Chernovich, an alt-right blogger who was recommended for a Pulitzer Price by Beevis, went on a livestream last night.  According to Politico, “Cernovich also expressed his belief that Syrian dictator Bashar Assad had been framed for the chemical attack, though he had not decided by whom. “It was probably ISIS did it to themselves,” he said on the livestream, while also tweeting, “Did McCain give ‘moderate rebels’ (ISIS) in Syria poison gas and Hollywood style film equipment?”

(http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2017/04/trump-alt-right-syria-war-214998)

Which brings us to the question of what happens next.  CNN was reporting earlier today that Pentagon briefers were suggesting that, although they didn’t have all the facts yet, Russia may have been actively involved in the barbaric chemical attack – not just a background supporter and defender of Assad.  If this is true, it would be shocking and disheartening and scary, all at the same time.  So let’s play a mind game: imagine that Sean Spicer announces at his next briefing that he has evidence that the Russians were involved.  Or, that he announces they’ve looked carefully at the evidence and determined that the Russians weren’t involved.

Can we believe him?

Trip planning: we’re not on the ship anymore, Toto

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People like cruises for a number of reasons.  Some enjoy the nightlife.  Some enjoy the on-board activities, like limbo contests on the pool deck or trivia games in the lounge.  Some enjoy the all-inclusive nature of the vacation (1).  Some enjoy being able to see many different places without ever having to pack and change hotels.

This voyage makes stops in 11 ports, including the first and last nights where we overnight on the ship.  That means planning (or not) what to do on each day.  Now, the cruise line, as always, tries to make it easy.  They offer excursions which you can book directly online at their website, and usually have choices for each port.

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Make your choice, April 2017

These are not cheap.  The prices shown are per person, so the third one, for instance, is $69 for a 3.5 hour bus ride.  There is a stop for pictures included.  The second one, at $99, is a four hour bus ride where you get to go shopping at two large markets in Barcelona.  Now, don’t get me wrong – I’ve been there, and the markets are actually quite enjoyable.  But paying that much money for a bus tour is just beyond what we consider a bad value.

So our approach has been to find our own guides and book them ourselves.  As they usually charge by the tour and not by the number of people in your group (2), this can actually be quite economical and much more enjoyable when you’re traveling with another couple.

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A private guide explains, May 2015

So, much like our dining plan, we set about identifying what we intended to do at each stop.  This is much easier these days than in the past; we start by checking travel forums like TripAdvisor to see if there are any local guides or tour companies which have worked well.  Using this technique, we discovered a website – Tours By Locals – which intermediates between independent guides in many locations and potential clients.  This ultimately gave us three tours.  We found another two independent guides in two other ports. We decided to take the cruise bus in one location where it was reasonably priced and all we wanted was transportation to the site.  At one stop we’ll rent a car, which I’ve arranged, and in the remaining four we plan to just wander around, or perhaps take taxis to get to where we want to go.

 

 

(1) If they are looking forward to this, they are likely to be disappointed.  Every cruise I’ve been on has lots of ways to spend extra money after you board, starting with drinks.  On our ship, some of the restaurants have a nominal upcharge which is more than Sally and I usually spend for dinner when we go out.

(2) There is an appropriate charge if the guide needs a larger car or van for a larger group, of course.  But four people plus the guide will fit in pretty much any car that any guide we’ve used has driven.

While we’re talking about dining on the ship

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When you go on a cruise, you spend a lot of time eating on the ship.  Breakfast pretty much every day (although some people skip breakfast), lunch some days, and dinner every evening.  And somehow, somewhere, someone got the great idea that it would be great fun to drag all kinds of formal wear on your vacation so you could play dress up for dinner.  At least sometimes.

Years ago, when Sally and I first took the occassional cruise, you dressed for dinner each night.  Men in a suit and tie, woman in fancy dresses.  One or two nights on each cruise would be “formal”, meaning black tie – tuxedos or the equivalent for men, and ball gowns or other formal dresses with scads of jewelry for woman.  Now, I suppose for some people, this was a dramatic change from their daily lives and therefore welcome.  But I worked at a bank – I got to wear a suit and tie to work every day, and “dressing up” while on vacation was, well, no vacation.  Until 1999, anyway, when the dot-com revolution swept away dress codes at any company that wanted some of that sky-high market valuation (1).

Not to mention that dragging a tuxedo and all of the accoutrements along as well was a pain.  At least we were not luggage-constrained while flying back then.  Ah, the good old days.

Groomsmen

Dining at sea, June 1972

But casual attire eventually invaded cruising as it did most parts of society, and so the need to bring black-tie attire or even a suit faded.

Then Sally and I discovered this fancy cruise line that would really like you to dress every night, in at least a sport coat, and go “formal” – meaning a full monkey suit – twice on this long cruise.  They do offer an escape hatch for the latter; on the formal nights, you can choose to eat in one of the restaurants that won’t be formal.

Being eager to get along with Zelda and Matteo, whom we assumed wanted to observe the formal dress code, we made plans to bring the requisite gear.  Little did we suspect that Zelda and Matteo, being eager to get along with us, were doing exactly the same.  This double dose of niceness came to light last week, when we all had a good laugh and promptly agreed to boycott the formal nights.

 

(1)   As if the worse your employees dressed, the higher your stock price would be.

Trip planning – so far

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We leave for the trip in not too many weeks now.  We spent a good part of a day last week with Zelda and Matteo planning.

We are on the ship for 12 nights.  We need to make 12 dinner reservations.  There are seven restaurants.  Two of the restaurants have upcharges, the other five don’t.  On our last cruise, with the same cruise line, there was a “Restaurant” which didn’t take reservations, and was large enough to accomodate enough of the passangers without too much of a wait.  On this brand new ship they decided that there doesn’t need to be any no-reservation, open seating restaurant.  That means that you need to plan a meal for each night, or risk having to hang around waiting for a seat to open.

Or maybe they have some magic, and they just know that the natural and immutable patterns of passenger dining behavior is such that there will be no conflict, no line, no waiting.

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“Sorry madam, you will have to sit with the crew this evening …”, May 2015

 

Needless to say, but this would not stand.  So Sally and Zelda began strategizing about which nights to eat at which of the seven restaurants.  This involved:

  • analyzing each restaurant and it’s menu
  • checking to see what time we needed to return to the ship each day
  • choosing a time to eat each evening
  • determining which restaurants were worthy of eating at more than once, despite never having eaten at any of them (1)
  • making reservations at the annointed time, using the cruise line’s handy online booking system

Except for a few problems, this worked out okay.  The problems included the system not accepting reservations at one restaurant that the ladies deemed especially desirable, and also not accepting reservations for any restaurant on the first night on the ship.  So 600 people will board that afternoon and immediately run around trying to get a reservation in the restaurant they like.

Or maybe they’re just not as OCD as we are, and are planning to relax on their vacation and take it as it comes.

 

 

(1) Actually, no one has ever eaten at any of these restaurants.  It’s a brand new ship, and we are on the first official sailing.

The Ides of Trump

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Please Mr. Postman look and see

If there’s a letter in your bag, oh yeah, for me

“Please Mr. Postman”, by Georgia Dobbins, William Garrett, Freddie Gorman, Brian Holland, Robert Bateman

I plan to do this. Just an idea posted by my friend, Audrey Cownie.

On March 15th, each of us will mail Donald Trump a postcard or letter that publicly expresses our opposition to him. And we, in vast numbers, from all corners of the world, will overwhelm the man with his unpopularity and failure. And most importantly, we will bury the White House post office in pink slips, all informing Donnie that he’s fired.

Each of us — every protester from every march, each Congress-calling citizen, every boycotter, volunteer, donor, and petition signer — if each of us writes even a single postcard or letter and we put them all in the mail on the same day, March 15th, well: you do the math.

No alternative fact or Russian translation will explain away our record-breaking, officially-verifiable, warehouse-filling flood of fury. Hank Aaron currently holds the record for fan mail, having received 900,000 pieces in a year. We’re setting a new record: over a million pieces in a day, with not a single nice thing to say.

So sharpen your wit, unsheathe your writing implements, and see if your sincerest ill-wishes can pierce Donald’s famously thin skin.

Prepare for March 15th, 2017, a day hereafter to be known as #TheIdesOfTrump

Write one postcard. Write a dozen! Take a picture and post it on social media tagged with #TheIdesOfTrump ! Spread the word! Everyone on Earth should let Donnie know how he’s doing. They can’t build a wall high enough to stop the mail.

Then, on March 15th, mail your messages to:

  So-called President Donald J. Trump

  The White House

  1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW

  Washington, DC 20500

It might just be enough to make him crack.

(Not my original post but someone else’s great idea!  Copy and repost.)

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Another day, another Muslim ban

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… and when they came for me, there was no one left to protest

So late this morning the Drumpster administration announced that the President had signed a new, improved travel ban.  Not that there was ever anything wrong with the old one.  This is, of course, an attempt to run around the various court orders from across the country the stopped implementation of the old Muslim ban.  And no one used the words “Muslim ban” or even “ban” in the announcement, nor in the text of the executive order itself.

I have actually read most of the executive order.

It reads very neutrally, expressing no “opinions” other than the ones required by statute: e.g., that the President “proclaims” that this is all a good idea under various laws.

It gives all kinds of background, including a somewhat accurate history of the orginal order, the history of how the six covered nations were either designated previously as “state sponsors of terrorism” or are currently dangerous places to be.

It describes how caring the DHS will be as it studies whether to grant waivers to special individuals.  At the same time, it justifies suspending “temporarily” all entry to reduce the workload on the poor workers at all of the agencies who would need to do extra investigative work while we “figure out what the hell is going on”.

The order also goes to great lengths to try and cure some of the specific problems that were cited in the various court orders that stopped the original order.  For instance, there’s a long list of exceptions for certain travelers from the six countries: dual citizens of other countries, green card holders, family members of permenant residents of the use, travelers with NATO visas, etc.  It’s quite a long list.  There is no mention of preference to religious minorities having preference.  There’s accomodation for travelers who currently have valid visas.  All in, a naive reader would think this was a clear-headed and rational response to a dangerous world.  Except, of course, we know it’s not that.

We all know that this is born out of the Dumpster’s long standing discriminatory bias against Muslims.  We know because he said it a thousand times throughout the campaign, after his election, and when Ban Classic was introduced.  We know it because one of the chief idiot Drumpettes, Rudy “Lock her up” Guilliani went on television and said he helped craft Ban Classic so it would ban Muslims, but not appear to ban Muslims.

The order suspends all refugees from entering the country for 120 days, and reduces the number that will be accepted in 2017 to 50,000.  I think this is the most problematic part of the entire fiasco.  Refugees are, by definition, people who are fleeing from horrible situations – war, famine, persecution.  They are helpless; they need help to simply survive.  This country has a mixed bag about refugees.

One of our origin stories,  taught to every schoolchild every fall, is that the Pilgrems were refugees: fleeing religious persecution, they traveled to this country, where they found a safe place to live and were helped by the existing denizens.  Every Thanksgiving play in this country features the Native Americans who helped the refugees from England survive.  By the way, most of this is fantasy and didn’t actually happen like that – but the point is that we believe it to be part of our heritage.

Another part of our refugee history is the shameful exclusion of Jewish refugees in the years leading up to World War II.  As a result, an unknown number of people died at the hands of the Nazis.  Why were they excluded?  Well, the private reason almost certainly involved anti-semitism, but the public reason was that they could harbor spies and terrorists amongst them, since they were coming from Germany and other countries they controlled.  Sound familiar?

I accept that in admitting people from a war-torn region where there are many who harbor ill-feelings about the West and the US will probably allow a small number who go on to commit serious acts of violence in our country.  I admit that some people already in this country might very well die as a result.  But I wonder: where is our bravery?  We celebrate those who take risks to save others: police, fire fighters, soldiers, sailors, the man who jumps in the lake to save a drowning child.  We encourage our children to stand up to bullies and support others, even when it means that they may be hurt – physically or emotionally – in the process.  Yet here is an opportunity for all of us to share in the risk – the risk that there might be some harm, while at the same time that we are guaranteed to save the lives of tens of thousands or more. Why is it that we are unwilling to take this small risk?  I find it shameful and cowardly.

Let me be very clear.  I think we need to have secure borders.  I think we need to take care of who is allowed into our country.  I don’t want to die from a terrorist act, nor do I wish my children, grandchildren, friends or anyone to be hurt.   But a policy born out of fear, hatred and bigotry still smells like a pig even after you put new lipstick on it.

We must #Resist the ban.

 

How to plan a trip

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I blogged a couple of years ago about the immense detail involved in planning a ground trip.  We spent a month visiting the national parks out west, and had dozens of pages of planning information: hotel reservations, flights, car rental, sites and locations to see in the parks and elsewhere, backup driving directions in case our GPS failed, etc.

The other extreme is generally perceived to be a cruise.   It’s generally thought that once you get to the ship you generally don’t have to decide anything more important than which flavor martini you want before dinner.  I’m here to tell you that it ain’t so, Joe.

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Dining on board, May 2015

When we go on a cruise, the planning starts as soon as the cruise line opens up the specialty restaurants for reservations.  You see, today’s cruises are all inclusive, except for all the stuff that isn’t actually included.  One of those are the specialty restaurants on board.  Rather than eat in the stuffy old dining room with pretty much unlimited portions of everything on the menu, you are enticed by smaller, more intimate restaurants that (a) require reservations and (b) often have a surcharge. The ship we will be on – the Silver Muse – sports a total of eight restaurants, ranging from Italian to Southeast Asian to seafood to tapas to … well, you get the idea.  And once you have a system where advance reservations are available, and there is a start date when you can make those reservations, it’s starts to look like the next Lady Gaga concert: ticket sales open at 10:00 am Monday, and they are sold out by 10:05.

Well, that might be a slight exageration, but you get the idea.

So you need to decide which restaurants you want to eat in, and which nights.  Simple you say?  Just go down the list and choose Restaurant 1 on Day 1, Restaurant 2 on Day 2, etc.?  Not so simple.

First, you need to map the restaurants against the ports.  For instance, our cruise variously leaves ports at 5:00pm, 6:00pm, 7:00pm and 10:00pm.  If you’re touring that day, you need to find out what time you get back on board (a port where the ship departs at 7:00 will have tours that get you back before that, but not as early as those when the ship departs at 5:00).  So why not just always choose a later time?  Well, then you run into the showtimes in the lounge.  If you eat at the wrong time, you might be eating dinner when the show(s) are on.  And then, some nights are “formal” in the main dining room.  Do you want to ensure you’re there for those formal nights, or do you want to ensure you avoid being there?

All of this gets complicated when you’re traveling with another couple, as we are.  You need to discuss and debate all of these choices, and make sure everyone is happy with the decisions.  And then hope you can actually get reservations when and where you want them.

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The Colosseum, May 2015

The second major planning activity revolves around shore touring and sightseeing.  For many people on cruises,  they simply look at the list of excursions offered by the ship and choose one.  No muss, no fuss, not too much brain strain.  But lots of money.  Example: on our last cruise, the stop at Livorno offered a “tour” to Florence which consisted pretty much of a bus ride from the dock to the bus station in Florence, and the corresponding return trip.  The trip was advertised as about 1 1/2 hours each way, and you would have about 6 hours on your own to explore Florence.  The price? $100 per person.  Tours that actually do something other than provide transportation were even more expensive.  In this case, we elected to rent a car for the four of us for the two days the ship was docked at Livorno, at a cost of less than $200.  We paid another $15 or $20 for parking in Florence, and spent the second day driving to a few smaller towns and villages in Tuscany, including Siena.  We followed this self-tour plan at all of the stops, not taking any of the excursions offered by the ship.

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Siena Piazza del Campo, May 2015

So our instinct is to self-tour at most of the stops this time as well.  We have four stops in “big” cities: Rome(1), Florence(1), Marseilles, Barcelona.  We have 8 stops in smaller places: Monte Carlo, Palma de Mallorca, Trapai, Valletta, Taormina, Amalfi, Sorrento, and Nice.  We need a plan for each one.

Once we have a plan for each one, we can get the dinner reservations squared away.  See how I got back to that?

 

(1) There’s a bit of bait and switch here as well.  As I mentioned, Florence is quite far away from where we actually dock, and Rome is actually even further.  And while the heart of Florence is small enough that you can wander around for six hours and accomplish something, in Rome you need to pick a sight or three that you really want to see and get to them somehow. In both cases, our ship is in port for about 11 hours.

Travel Plans

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I’ve blogged in the past about some trips that I’ve taken with my lovely wife.  This year, we’re planning two major and at least a couple of minor trips.  The major trips are another Mediterrainian cruise, and a safari in Africa.   We also have an out of town wedding, and we’ll be in Vermont some times.

Scenes from the Silver Spirit, May 2015

The Mediterranean cruise is similar to the one I blogged about in 2015 (https://bassman-crusin.blogspot.com/).  Last time we traveled with our good friends Rob & Laura.   This time we’ll be traveling with Zelda & Matteo (don’t ask). The trip is not for a while yet, so I still have adequate time to obsess over planning and packing, and planning for packing.  Actually, I don’t expect any drama with the packing for this trip – I’ll pretty much just drag out the packing list from the last one, update it for new sneakers, etc., and be done.

The safari is a whole new ball of wax.  If you’ve never gone on a safari, or talked to someone who has gone on a safari, you may not be aware that there are a few very strict requirements.

The first is that all of your luggage must weigh 44 lbs. or less.  This includes your checked bag (singular) and any carry-on stuff you may bring.   Related to this, the checked bag apparently must be a soft-sided duffel-type bag with no wheels.  There are other guidelines around what you should or shouldn’t bring as well.  I’ll probably devote a few posts to this issue in the future, as this trip isn’t until much later.  So I have plenty of time to obsess (full disclosure: I started obsessing a couple of months ago when we agreed to make this trip).

I’ll talk a bit about our cruise planning in an upcoming post.

And Trump’s position is …

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I can’t believe I am writing about that critical national issue: which public toilet should people use.  

One of the things I got right during the presidential campaign was that anyone who took the Trumpster’s word for anyone was falling for a con.  The man said any number of things, took many sides of many issues, and often seemed to be channeling the last person he spoke to (is that Steve Bannon I just saw leaving his office?).  Famously, he spoke in favor of “LBGT and Q” rights in his nomination acceptance speech, although it seemed to me at the time that he wasn’t sure what all of the letters meant.  On January 31 (just 3 1/2 weeks ago) he issued the following statement:

“President Donald J. Trump Will Continue to Enforce Executive Order Protecting the Rights of the LGBTQ Community in the Workplace

President Donald J. Trump is determined to protect the rights of all Americans, including the LGBTQ community. President Trump continues to be respectful and supportive of LGBTQ rights, just as he was throughout the election. The President is proud to have been the first ever GOP nominee to mention the LGBTQ community in his nomination acceptance speech, pledging then to protect the community from violence and oppression. The executive order signed in 2014, which protects employees from anti-LGBTQ workplace discrimination while working for federal contractors, will remain intact at the direction of President Donald J. Trump. ”

(https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2017/01/31/president-donald-j-trump-will-continue-enforce-executive-order)

Then, this week, his Education and Justice Departments issued a joint letter rescinded a prior letter issued by those departments under the Obama administration that gave protections to transgender students (the “T” in LGBTQ) in using the bathroom that corresponds to their gender identity.   So we seem to have a case where the Trumpster said one thing during the election, then did another.  This isn’t the first and won’t be the last time, folks. 

Let’s start by noting that the question of which bathroom people can or should use has risen to a national debate.  Which is sad, very sad. But let’s examine the underlying issue and what some people claim they are trying to accomplish.   

It appears to me that some people have a gender identity that is at odds with their external sexual identity at birth.  People born male feel female, and vice versa.  For many reasons, this creates a lot of stress in their lives, and some of them are able to deal with it by switching their public identify from female to male, or male to female, to match what they feel.   One of the most famous in recent times was Caitlyn Jenner, who spend 60 years of her life as Bruce Jenner.   I do recall the Trumpster saying she could use any bathroom she liked in Trumpster Tower.  

So here we have a person, “Kim”, who dresses and looks like a man (or boy), or like a woman (or girl).  Kim needs to use a public toilet.  Which room should they choose?  Door #1, or door #2?  If Kim chooses the door that matches his/her public identity, most likely no one will notice anything unusual.  This would of course violate the inane law in North Carolina.  Or, Kim could follow the NC law and what the proponents of the above Trumpster Letter and choose the door that matches his/her biological or birth identity, and which is contrary to the public identity.  So bystanders would see a woman walking into the Men’s Room, or a man walking into the Woman’s Room.   How well would that go over?

I guess – because I can’t imagine what people are really thinking –  that the supporters of the Trumpster’s latest view on this are worried about one of two things.  

They could be worried about their modesty.  But as I understand it, Woman’s Rooms are 100% stalls (I’ve never been in one myself).  And Kim would most likely choose to use a stall if he went into the Men’s Room.  

Or they could be worried that Kim, who was born a male but is now female, will rapea  “real” woman if she is allowed to use the Woman’s Room.   Now, I could have missed it, but the crime wave of such incidents seems to not exist.  Nor is there any reason to believe that this is the most likely way that a sexual predator who choose to attack their victim.  Because sneaking into the toilet while cross-dressed to commit rape means you assume no one will be there to witness the attack, so why go to the trouble of putting on a costume?  And, if you’re assuming others will be there, are you planning to rape in front of witnesses?   

The whole thing doesn’t make any sense to me.  And by the way, this latest ruling is coming from the administration headed by the man/boy who boasted about sexually assaulting women.  For sure, don’t let him anywhere near the Woman’s Room.   He wouldn’t even wait, he’d just grab’em by the … .

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