Friday, December 21, 2012

Arming our educators to educate ourselves


If teachers had been armed when I was a kid, I’d never have made it out of 8th grade and Mr. Nee would still be serving life for murdering a 14-year-old.

See, it’s against the law to murder even obnoxious kids.

I have great admiration for our elementary school teachers, even more now that we’re considering asking them to be proficient with lethal weapons while simultaneously ensuring the cookies Timmy and Suzy get are gluten free.

Just this summer Wayne LaPierre of the NRA terrified gun lovers on the Mayan-sounding prediction that the re-election of Barack Obama “will fundamentally change America as we know it.”

I heard that and, thought, hallelujah.

On the issue of guns, America needs fundamental change and I believe it’s coming.

I believe we’re about to break the lethal all-guns/no guns deadlock that’s been killing us in vast numbers for the past 20 years.

I think armed teachers will be part of it.

A teacher with a gun in a room full of darling first graders -- and I’ve got one of those -- could be the template for how we move forward to pragmatic solutions to so much bloodshed.

Because, as parents, none of us would want a teacher with a loaded gun in a room without taking sensible precautions.

The teacher would need to take safety classes before being issued a weapon. He or she would need to have a trigger lock on the weapon. He or she would need to maintain a certificate that he or she was licensed to carry the weapon.

He or she would need to comply with the “well-regulated” stipulation that for some reason is disregarded by those who revere the 2nd Amendment.

In short, he or she would need to know about 90 percent more about gun ownership than your average gun owner.

And therein lies the problem.

I know hundreds of them.

Their guns define them. They believe if everyone owned guns there would be a lot less killing. They believe guns are essential to homestead safety.

They have yet to come up with an answer why having such a handy arsenal didn’t save the life of Adam Lanza’s mother, but give them time. 

These men are more like Joseph V. Loughrey than my late father. My old man died in 2004 at the age of 76 having never fired a gun much less owned one.

I don’t remember asking him about it but I know he thought guns were dangerous. He loved his family and would have done anything in his power to protect us.

That, I guess, is why he never owned a gun. He was satisfied the odds of him needing a gun to protect his loved ones were far lower than the odds of a gun mishap killing him or one of us.

In that respect, I guess he was vastly different from the aforementioned Loughrey.

I sense Loughrey was one of these gun hombres who are still contending even common sense gun legislation will result in a slippery slope and end with that Muslim tourist in the White House confiscating everything but their slingshots.

Loughrey, 44, on December 8 killed his 7-year-old son, Craig, outside a Mercer, Pennsylvania, gun shop with what I call an oops bullet.

He thought the 9 mm pistol was empty. It wasn’t. It fired a chambered bullet right through his son’s chest, killing him in his car seat.

Oops.

I doubt Loughrey had the kind of training that would be mandatory with armed teachers, but I’ll bet, man, he sure loved guns.

You’ve probably never heard of Loughrey or of Beatle assassin Michael Abrams.

Many of you have forgotten, but Mark David Chapman wasn’t the only man obsessed with killing a Beatle.

Abrams on December 30, 1999, broke into Harrison’s English manor and spent 15 minutes savagely trying to kill him.

It’s not that he was a really lousy shot. It’s that he was armed with a knife, instead of gun.

It took just four seconds for Chapman to kill Lennon.

Nothing kills like guns and the proliferation and deification of them is killing us all.

That’s why I’m hoping our first grade teachers, people upon whom we rely to educate so many on the little common sense civilities that are the glue of a healthy society, can lead the way on educating gun mad America about sensible gun regulation.

Who better than the people who remind our children to say please and thank you to help us to stop looking for so many answers to so many problems with so many guns.



Related . . .


Wednesday, December 19, 2012

We . . . all . . . needs . . . some . . . space


This                  is                   how                sentences              would             appear              if               spaces             were           approximately             as            long            as             space              bars.

Kinda          cool,            huh.

We all know how difficult reading is today, what with spaces being so stingy that sentences goose step along in martial fashion. Left! Right! Left!

It’s so much easier to sit and watch something on a glowing screen until warm drool puddles the pillows beneath our weary heads.

That’s why I’m advocating extending spaces from one anorexic character to about five or six. It’ll give the eyeball a little breather before it has to tackle the challenge of puzzling out how to spell yet another tedious word.

I adore my space bar, almost as much as the bars that over-serve me alcoholic refreshments until my behavior becomes what can best be described as spacey.

It’s just so big and commanding, a veritable aircraft carrier stabilizing a dainty fleet of dinghys. I especially like the one on my smart phone that lets me with just two taps add both a period and a space. That’s very ingenious and, I’m guessing, just the start. Pretty soon, three taps will add an exclamation point; four a question mark and so on until about a dozen taps will add a winking little emoticon  ;-)

Plus, the space bar has mystical powers.

It is capable of taking one of the worst things in the world -- a kidnapping -- and with one quick bang of the thumb turning it into one of the best -- a kid napping.

I also admire the space bar for its ability to do so much with so little. Like the human brain, we all use less than 10 percent of the space bar’s full potential.

Pause to take a look at yours. If it is at all like mine, the right fifth of the key is shiny and worn from use. That’s the sweet spot.

But the rest of it is in near pristine condition.

That’s because most of us type with only nine digits.

During all our typing commotion, our left thumbs do nothing, not ever even hitting the space bar. They just kind of hover there like aloof supervisors too prissy to get their hands dirty.

Yes, when it comes to typing, our left thumbs never lift a finger.

In our digitally obsessed world, I was surprised to find there was only one club that invokes space bar in its name. It’s in downtown Boise, Idaho.

It’s an adult arcade -- they do craft beer and wine -- but the focus seems to be on arcade games. It has 30 coin-operated pinball machines and games including nostalgic favorites like Tron, Galaga, Asteroids, Centipede, Donkey Kong, Pac-Man, Frogger and Donkey Kong. The club offers drink specials for high scorers

(Note: Be sure to someday check out from 2007 “The King of Kong: A Fistful of Quarters” about obsessive Donkey Kong champions; hilarious with 96 percent fresh on Rotten Tomatoes.)

But they’ve botched the concept. First of all, the name is Spacebar Arcade.

How you can name a place Spacebar and not include a space between space and bar? It makes no sense and is an affront to the space bar’s dignity.

Plus, where as the keyboard space bar provides a relaxing moment between words, the Boise Spacebar, with its cacophony of noises and blinking lights, seems designed to make you insane. Pleasant conversation must be nigh impossible.

Even shouting would likely be futile.

In the Spacebar, no one can hear you scream.

If I had the bucks, I’d open a true Space Bar. It would be large, roomy -- you could call it spacious.

It would be a place where singles tired of rejection could come without fear of being humiliated. The whole point of Space Bar would be preventing anyone from coming together.

It would be a place where, especially during these tumultuous times, we could be out and still be alone.

Because in these days when social media brings every aspect of our lives into claustrophobic focus, space is once again the final frontier.

And we all need a little space.



Related . . . 


Monday, December 17, 2012

I cry, I fart; more on Newtown


The two most frequently asked questions of me are, “Daddy, are you crying?” and “Daddy, did you just fart?”

I don’t know why, but the questions almost always provoke a lie. I’ll say, “Why, no (sniff), I’m not crying.” Or, “I did not fart. Must have been your mother.”

I guess I lie because they can’t handle the truth.

In fact, I cry and fart all the time.

I don’t know why I fart so much, but I do.

Some people fart after consuming a big spicy meal.

Me, I fart after eating one raisin.

It’s always made me popular with the guys who think Barney Rubble’s a great actor (“Night Shift”), but it makes me in a house of three refined ladies a real stinker in every sense of the word.

The crying’s more complicated.

Something happens at least once a day that brings tears to the surface. Understand, I’m not talking blubbering.

I’m not a weepy guy. But I am emotional and full clear up to my eyes, it seems, with an endless reservoir of tears.

Here’s some examples of recent moments that left me choked up.

• Gettysburg -- I was overcome with emotion when my daughter, Josie, was with me as we saw so many historic moments during our trip there last month. It was one of the best weekends I’ve ever had in this fatherhood gig and sentimental tears dampened my eyes the whole time.

• Jack Nicholson -- Josie and I were watching “As Good As it Gets,” the hilarious 1997 movie in which Nicholson plays the most misanthropic character since Archie Bunker. But the movie features many elegant moments where the Helen Hunt character, a single mother who waitresses to earn her meager living, deals with a chronically sick child. I cry when I see fellow human beings struggle and I cry when I see fellow human beings overcome struggles.

• Mail -- I’m cleaning up the office in preparation for my big party Friday and I found an old letter from my late father. It’s nothing special, just a note about how much fun he had golfing with me the previous day. Being a father makes me cry. So does being a son.

Am I missing anything?

Oh, yeah.

I cried when I heard the news. I cried when I saw Barack Obama cry. I cried when I saw pictures of bereaved families. I cried when the children sang “Silent Night” during the SNL opening.

I’m crying now.

So next time one of my daughters ask me if I’m crying I should respond the way another Nicholson character responded when the Tom Cruise character asked him if he ordered the Code Red.

You’re goddamned right I’m crying.

In fact, the question shouldn’t be, “Daddy, are you crying?” These days the salient question should be, “Daddy, why aren’t you crying?”

We’re being slaughtered in malls, in movie theaters and in places where being a real meanie used to have a more innocent definition.

To paraphrase an alcoholic tweet of mine last week, “It’s not surprising we cry. It’s surprising we ever stop crying.”

Now, it’s been four days and people are wondering if it’s okay to laugh again. Yes, by all means.

What else can we do? 

Because our rivers of tears have proven to be utterly meaningless. We’ve all cried before. We cried at Columbine. We cried at Blacksburg and none of it did any good. We still had to cry all over again Friday at Newtown.

We need to get on with our lives and laugh long and hard. We need to celebrate every moment we have. We need to party, to love and to fully enjoy this Christmas season like it might be our last.

Because everyone knows the way things are right now that’s just what it might turn out to be.

And that’s a crying shame.

It stinks.



Related . . .


Sunday, December 16, 2012

Re-run Sunday: A heartwarming tale of Christmas woe



Last night Val and I attended the annual party that inspired this one, a story so filled with woe for me that people enjoy hearing it year after year. Happened again last night. And, as always, they get the key facts wrong. Here it is again, the story of one of the worst nights of my life.

And I say that with the sheepish understanding that none of my days are all that bad when compared with so many others.

Pray for peace on earth, my friends. Heck, even a decent Christmas break from hell would be nice.


I was in the concluding hours of one of those low-grade bad days. Stuck in traffic, work unproductive, loved ones ridiculed my haircut.

So my mood was grim as I sat down in the auditorium to watch the 5th grade Christmas assembly.

But as fate would have it, my day was destined to improve. I sat down next to a guy whose day was worse than mine. Malfunctioning car needed towed, crabby customers at work and then to top it all off he came home to learn the stupid dog got skunked.

I wish no ill on my fellow man, but if it has to happen I hope it happens on a day when they wind up sitting next to me. I left that assembly with all my Christmas cheer restored.

Nothing warms the downtrodden like hearing some other hapless mope is enduring a worse cosmic screwing.

Today is the 10th anniversary of what was until the 2004 death of my father the worst day of my life.

Thus, it is the most popular story I’ve ever told. It is among my friends becoming a Christmas tradition for them to gather ‘round and ask me over and over “Please! Please, tell the car story! Please!”

It’s like the scene from “The Waltons” where all the kids goad Grandpa into telling the story of the time he wrestled presents from Santa.

A friend of mine persuaded me to share it here, even though the telling of it will take almost twice as long as usual. I rarely take requests, but I recognize the value of vicarious woe. Plus it is the season of giving . . .


It was a dark a stormy night. Honest. It was snowing like crazy. I was happily ensconced in my bar enjoying boozy fellowship.

It had been, for me, a flush year, enough so that I’d splurged on some fancy new duds, including a $375 Ibiza sports coat. It was worth more than all the combined garments worn by the 20 or so patrons, worth more even than several of the duct-taped jalopies in the bar parking lot.

And this I pointed out multiple times to everyone there as I asked if they wanted to touch it.

Paul was there. He’s always there. He refused several offers to touch me and my jacket and seemed put off that I’d shown up in anything besides my standard flannel over a 1983 Molly Hatchet concert T-shirt.

If he wasn’t liking the fancy new me, well, tough. I told him he’d better get used to it.

Our wives showed up to drive us to the party. It was in a friend’s new house about 20 minutes away. We’d never been there. It was dark and snowing like crazy with about two-inches on the already damp ground.

This is the part of the story everyone forgets: I wasn’t driving. Val was. Paul and his wife were trailing us.

When I told Val to turn left she was confused by the snow-camouflaged landscape. I don’t blame her for all that happened next while stipulating if I’d have been driving none of it would have ever happened at all.

Instead of turning on the Westview Court, she turned the 2000 Chevy Cavalier into an adjacent steep and unplowed driveway. Paul and Patti did not. They turned down the road and stopped after recognizing our error.

And we got stuck. Bad. She’d overshot the darkened driveway and wound up in the yard below the vacant house.

Paul and I would need to try and push the car back onto the driveway and up the slope.

Looking back, I don’t know why I didn’t think to take sartorial precautions. The ground was wet beneath the snow as we gave the car a mighty shove.

And I don’t know why what happened when Val gunned the accelerator only happened on the side I was pushing and not Paul’s.

It was like somebody had dipped a big paint brush and did one of those wrist flings that sprayed a two-inch-wide racing stripe of muddy grit from my knees, across my new jacket, clear up to my ears.

I remember looking up at Paul and seeing an expression of pure joy. It was like he was a kid on Christmas morning who’d just spied a big red wagon behind the tree.

Now, distraught, I’d need to go home and change. I told the three of them to go on without me. I’d meet them there later.

It was the first of three colossal mistakes. First, they’d get to the party without me. Everyone would ask where I was. They’d be free to embellish the story as they saw fit.

Second, there was no way I was going to get the car back up onto the road.

Third, I eventually told them everything that happened, inadvertently unloosing a legend.

The lay of the land made it look like I was 20 yards from a secondary road leading to an isolated house. In those pre-cell phone days, I thought I could drift the car backwards about 200 feet, find a friendly face and call for a tow.

I made it about 2/3 of the way there when the car drifted into a shag of bushes.

Emerging from the car was the moment I lost it because I immediately became ensnarled in jagger bushes. Dozens of needle-sharp barbs began snagging my pricey new jacket and tearing tiny cuts in my mud-splattered face.

It was the first time I’d ever engaged in fisticuffs with vegetation.

It wasn’t until I got free that I heard the barking dogs. I ignored the “Beware of Dog” signs on the fence and crept up to a beaten door with NRA and “No Solicitors” stickers in the windows.

I’m not ashamed to admit it, I was scared to death. The dogs sounded like starved Rottweilers and the cinder block structure looked isolated enough to make a dandy meth lab.

And here I was peeking through the window with a face streaked with blood and mud. I felt knocking might risk gun fire without warning.

So I crept back to the car, crawled in the passenger side and decided to take my chances drifting backwards. The car began sliding and I immediately lost all control.

I can’t say I thought I was going to die, but I did think my night was going to end with trauma surgeons scissoring off my fancy sports coat to assess the damage to my vital organs.

Because in mid-flight, the passing scenery proved I was wrong about my surroundings. This wasn’t a secondary road at all. I was picking up speed drifting backward through a string of about a dozen backyards about 1/4 of a mile long.

That I didn’t hit a fence, a tree, a swing set, a tool shed, a swimming pool or other immovable object was to me the greatest Christmas miracle since the Savior’s birth.

The last 20 yards were down a steep embankment that dropped me spinning onto a residential street where I was fortunate no cars were coming.

I remember thinking, man, it’s too bad none of my friends didn’t see that ‘cause that would have looked pretty cool.

My heart-pounding, I shoved the car in gear and drove home murmuring ceaseless prayers of gratitude I’d survived and that the day would not get any worse by having me get partially consumed by a flesh-eating bacteria I’d picked up outside the meth chef’s house.

It’s been 10 years since I spun out of that hilly hell.

And in those 10 years, the story of one of the worst nights of my life, a night of unrelenting pain, fear and humiliation, has brought nothing but joy and laughter to the hearts of friends who revel in the misfortunes of others. I’m sure I’ll hear it all again tonight as we return to that same neighborhood for that annual party.

Know what I have to say to that?

Merry Christmas!

And be careful making that sharp left onto Westview.

Saturday, December 15, 2012

What do tiny coffins cost?


I wonder if coffin makers charge by the foot. It would stand to reason a coffin measuring 4-feet long would cost less than one measuring seven.

I know nothing about coffin construction -- it’s probably done mostly by machine these days -- but if I was a coffin maker I’d be unnerved by the sight of shoe box-like coffins rolling up for finishing touches.

The very idea is grotesque. We should never be putting unfinished lives in finished coffins. When we bury our children we are burying our future.

It would take a really thoughtful carpenter to conversationally engage the topic.

And by really thoughtful carpenter, I’m talking Jesus Christ.

And so this is Christmas.

And in one New England community where they should filling stockings that’d been hung by the chimney with care, they will instead be filling 20 tiny coffins.

Many of you know The Pond, the neighborhood tavern where I do all of my drinking and much of my thinking, flatters me by promoting my tweets on the bar electronic chalk board.

The one that’s been up for the last week is, I think, a dandy, particularly for a place where some patrons sometimes wonder if they’ve got a problem with over-consumption.

“It’s not surprising we drink. It’s surprising we ever stop drinking.”

I’ve used that line for years to defend the many happy hours I spend at so many Happy Hours taking an alcoholic break from an often grim reality.

But, my God, it’s not at its heart facetious at all.

We’re at the point where being a sentient adult who cares about topical matters requires general anesthesia.

Today in Connecticut there are now scores of grandparents who will never smile again for as long as they live.

Having an elementary school child in your life -- and we’ve got two -- is maybe life’s greatest pleasure.

They are formed enough to have their own delightful personalities. They have their own dreams. It’s an innocent age when even their sass can be described as cute. And there is nothing on the planet more joyfully exuberant than kneeling down and bracing yourself for a hug from a charging child.

So, naturally, this is the most heinous crime we can conceive.

And today I sit here and wonder where and when it’ll happen next.

Who dares dispute me when I say it’s just a matter of time?

America’s gun madness must be an inspiration or at least a handy punchline to Al Qaeda devotees who certainly chortle at our near daily barbarity. We kill ourselves and our souls with more efficiency than they could ever dream.

Remember, it was just two weeks ago Bob Costas caught hell for having the temerity to mention a high-profile crime that in the wake of Newtown seems like just a drop in the bloody bucket.

I tried to think what I’d do today if I were Wayne LaPierre, the most visible face of a movement that will certainly contend the answer isn’t to ban guns, that if only our kindergarten teachers were packing this never would have happened.

I think I’d have to put a bullet in my head, an ironic response to too much gun violence. I honestly don’t know how he can live with himself.

And the complicity of our conservative gun nut culture is pervasive.

If you today are contending a necessary host of common sense gun laws would impinge on your freedoms then you today are part of the problem.

For God’s sake, we’re past the point where anyone should be allowed into the argument if they say the slaughter of 20 elementary school children is exactly as the Founders intended.

The situation is now too dire, too grave.

Because today, instead of holiday cheer, we as a nation must face the reality of filling too many small graves with too many small coffins.


Related . . .


Friday, December 14, 2012

Safety lessons from spree killers, again


I’m re-posting, as I always do after most headline-making rampages, my 2009 piece about what we’ve learned from spree killers.

I’ve been doing this at least once a year for the past three years. The only thing that ever changes is the body counts.

So there’s nothing new here. Feel free to skip if it starts to sound redundant. After all, the ever-numbing news of spree killers has become all too redundant, as well.


Safety Lessons from Spree Killers

What we’ve learned from recent spree killers:
• It’s unsafe exercising in places dedicated to strengthening and prolonging life (George Sodini, LA/Fittness, Pittsburgh, August 4; three dead).
• It’s unsafe to be an armed, on-duty police officer responding to routine calls (Richard Poplawski, Pittsburgh residence, April 4; three dead).
• It’s unsafe to be an aspiring American, an immigrant drawn to our shores by the promise of a better life (Jiverly Wong, American Civic Association, Binghamton, N.Y., April 3; 13 dead).
• It’s unsafe to want to live out your golden years at a remote retirement home (Robert Stewart, Pinelake Health and Rehab, Carthage, N.C., March 29; eight dead).
• It’s unsafe to attend a place of worship (Terry Ratzman, Living Church of God, Brookfield, Wisconsin, March 12, 2005; seven dead).
• It’s unsafe to shop (Robert Hawkins, Von Maur Department Store, Dec. 5, 2007; eight dead).
• It is unsafe, for the love of God, to be an Amish schoolgirl (Charles Carl Roberts IV, West Nickel Mines Amish School, Bart Township, Pennsylvania, Oct. 2, 2006; five dead).
All told, the random teachers listed here killed 47 people they’d never met and wounded hundreds more. The anecdotal tally could be higher if we included the dead who learned too late it is unsafe to go to places like work or school, but we already knew that.
None of these other-wise law-abiding individuals committed a single crime until the second they pulled the triggers on their legally purchased semi-automatic weapons.
Want to be safe?
Get a job in the U.S. Capitol.
It is there that each and every one of the more than three million annual visitors gets marched through state-of-the-art magnetometers before being allowed entry.
Want to be less safe?
Continue to live without complaint amidst the carnage and under the laws our elected officials continue to pass.

2012 office party & you're invited!

FYI: Spirit Airlines offers flights from Myrtle Beach and Fort Lauderdale direct to Latrobe’s Arnold Palmer Regional Airport. So that’s my best route for anyone wishing to attend my office Christmas party next Friday from, I think, 7 p.m. till whenever a.m.

That means confirmed readers in places like Cote d’Ivoire, Guernsey, Aland Islands, Fiji and Sri Lanka will need to seek an alternative.

Preferably something other than Greyhound.

Can you believe this blog has readers from places like that?
It’s true. In fact, my stats page tells me I’m closing in on representatives of 150 nations who’ve stumbled onto my musings.

Talk about your Christmas miracles.

Besides the above mentioned obscurities, the blog’s also registered readers from Macau, Gabon, Liechtenstein, Nevis & St. Kitt, and the Northern Mariana Islands.

It’s a veritable Coalition of the Too Much Time on Their Hands.

Just last week, records showed someone from Isle of Man in the Manx Sea between Scotland and Ireland checked in to read the story about my mustache.

Of course, they did. Certainly no one from the Isle of WoMan would care to read about lip hair.

Nor would anyone, I suppose, from the Isle of Misfit Toys.

I was looking at this list of tiny countries and wondering how many of their armed forces could be defeated by the Greater Latrobe Wildcats 2-7 varsity football team. It might be competitive.

But that’s only sporting speculation unbecoming of a holiday renown for peace and goodwill toward blog readers.

I should offer an incentive for anyone from these distant countries to make the difficult trek to Latrobe to attend my party -- like a free “Use All the Crayons!” to whomever travels the farthest.

But I fear that would mean teams of drivers would be checking odometers driving back and forth from Dave’s house in Lloydsville and Todd’s house in Derry to determine precisely who wins and that might tempt Dave or Todd to cheat.

I’m excited about hosting the party, the first holiday gathering since 2009.

Here’s the flyer from that inaugural. It read in festive fonts:

Merry Christmas!

POND OFFICE PARTY

4-6 p.m., Apt. 2

All Friends and Honest Strangers Welcome!

Games, prizes . . . smokers welcome!

Come for the Fun! Come for the Pizza!

Come hear Bob Dylan sing your favorite Christmas Songs!

Come and enjoy my new haircut!


As you can surmise, I thought the big draws would be the opportunity to hear the new Dylan album, “Christmas in the Heart,” a collection of songs where a Jewish troubador -- a Jewbador? -- sings popular songs about a Christian holiday, and the chance to see my new haircut.

Apparently, I was suffering from delusions of Beiber.

What people seemed to enjoy was the opportunity to see a truly unconventional work place where little conventional work ever gets done. Most of the faces of my guests bore the same wondrous expression you see on children when they visit a zoo.

So people enjoyed themselves, never more so than when our daughter, Josie, then 9, drilled me right in the chestnuts with a juggling bag.

They probably heard my pained yelp clear in Cote d’Ivoire.

People have asked about the party the last three years and I always told them I wouldn’t have another because the first turned out so Christmas wholesome, and I found that appalling.

But this year’s been truly wonderful. I’ve been overwhelmed by the reaction to my book.

People love it and have gone out of their way to support its success. I was at the Greensburg Barnes & Noble just yesterday and learned they’d sold 78 copies in six weeks. They had just two copies left. We’ll hit a hundred before Christmas, I’m sure.

So now’s the perfect time to host a festive party where we can celebrate our friendship, our hopes for a better future and everyone can enjoy watching me get drilled in the balls again.

What I won’t do for holiday tradition.



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