Tag Archives: mansized tuber

Want to hear a song? That makes four of us.

2000 Years to Christmas

What man can stand the stress of being torn asunder then thrust back together? Who amongst us can quarter him/herself like a piece of fruit for the sake of a single song? What fool would throw his lot in with a madman who finds joy only in the fulfillment of his twisted vision? This guy, folks. This guy right here.

Yeah, I think it’s fair to say I’ve gotten the itch to perform. What can you expect after years of being cooped up in this abandoned hammer mill, miles from civilization? Not a living hell, I will admit, but clearly a living heck. It’s been years since we struck out on tour. (I blame all that striking out.) But we live in an age of miracles, my friends. Musicians now perform from the comfort of their own homes, thanks to the advent of the internet machine.

Labor action at the abandoned mill

Trouble is, when I raised the question of Big Green virtual performances, the response was less than encouraging. Yes, Marvin (my personal robot assistant) was game. Antimatter Lincoln offered to play gut bucket (though frankly very few of our songs call for that rustic instrument). The mansized tuber volunteered a few of his smaller shoots to the enterprise. As for the actual band members, well …. not so much.

Can’t blame them, really. This is the busy time of year. Matt is taken up with his Peregrine Falcon project. (He’s gone big this time around, watching them from the deck of the star ship U.S.S. Enterprise.) John is doing his thing (if he didn’t have that, he’d have to get another thing). So that leaves me in kind of a spot. I mean, I can’t play four parts at once …. or CAN I?

Hell, this band looks damned familiar.

Crypto cloning to the rescue

It seems that our mad science advisor has been working on a little experiment of late. I thought I heard some strange noises coming from the north end of the mill. (That was just before it exploded, too. Coincidence, that.) Anyway, Mitch developed something he calls “crypto cloning.” The “crypto” piece is strictly about marketing – Mitch is keen to monetize this new technology.

Here’s how it works: A subject steps into the cloning device, and s/he is cloned four ways. That’s a big step up from making two of the same thing, Mitch tells me. (Twice as good.) The thing is, the cloning only lasts a couple of hours. At that point, your quadruplegangers hustle back into the protoplasmic host from which they sprang. It’s a kind of reverse-amoeba effect, if you know what I mean.

The quadruplegangers ride again

Before you ask, yes, I did let him test it on me. But only just long enough for the four of me to record one of Matt’s songs – a classic number called Going To Andromeda. Check it out on our YouTube channel or our new Instagram account. (Note: one of my clones came out with a mustache. Strange mutation.)

Everything but the bathroom sink

2000 Years to Christmas

Damn it, what’s the temperature out there again? Fifty-seven and windy? Mother of pearl. This is an effing roller coaster, man. Tubey was frozen to the ground last night, now he’s sprouting corn flowers. It’s insane!

Oh … hi, friends. I know you probably don’t think of the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill (our adopted home) as ground zero in the climate crisis that’s underway. In fact, you probably don’t think of the Cheney Hammer Mill at all, right? That’s a shame, because like Xanadu, the mill doesn’t exist unless you believe in it. (Is that how Xanadu works, or am I thinking of Brigadoon? I can’t keep these mythical paradise worlds straight.)

Weather or not

Got a news flash for you: this place ain’t insulated. The fact is, it barely even has window glass. That’s not our fault, people. Those nasty kids from up the street keep chucking rocks through our windows. Purely coincidentally, it tends to happen when we’re rehearsing. Whatever the cause may be, the weather blows into this place like a landlord on the first of the month.

Of course, it’s even worse than it sounds. The ne’er do wells in our neighborhood have been climbing in through those broken windows and walking out with our stuff. That’s right – shoplifters! Morning Joe warned me about this, and I didn’t listen because, well, I never listen to that ass clown. Of course, last month they took everything but the kitchen sink. This month, it was everything but the bathroom sink. Rapscallions!

Doing something about this shit

Well, we decided we needed more security around this dump, so we deputized Marvin (my personal robot assistant) and commanded him to patrol the area during the wee hours of the morning. That worked great, until it didn’t, and a few mornings ago I woke up to a blank, discolored wall where the bathroom sink used to hang. THEY FINALLY DID IT.

I was ready to read Marvin the riot act, but it seemed strange that our mad science advisor, Mitch Macaphee, had been unusually quiet on his invention’s failure to prevent burglary. When I dropped by his quarters earlier this week, I discovered why – our missing stuff was stacked in pile in Mitch’s laboratory. Apparently HE had been the rapscallion, the ne’er do well. But why?

Making it (not) rain

Well, it turns out that Mitch has been working on some kind of weather control machine, and he needed all that junk to produce fuel for his smoke-belching behemoth. There he was, shoveling plumbing fixtures, old electronics, and broken furniture into the hatch. Kind of hard to criticize a man when he’s working that hard, right? Who needs a bathroom sink, after all.

Incidentally … Mitch is also causing a lot of the bad weather. That and shoplifting. So I apologize in advance. The weather sucks and it’s all his effing fault.

Another day, another blizzard.

2000 Years to Christmas

I know it’s not the 20th anniversary any more. Stop reminding me! We’re practically at the 23-year mark, for crying out loud. I’m just too damn lazy to change the promo. Mea culpa, okay? MEA CULPA, GODDAMMIT!

Whoops, sorry. Was a bit on edge just then. I was talking to our advertising manager, otherwise known as Marvin (my personal robot assistant). He keeps telling me that I left the 2000 Years To Christmas billboard up too long. The suggestion is ludicrous. Accurate, but ludicrous. I didn’t program him to tell me the truth. (To tell the truth, I actually didn’t program him at all.)

Incremental sales … without the increments

It actually doesn’t much matter whether or not we advertise, frankly. We don’t sell a lot of units, which may be a function of the fact that we don’t put out a lot of new material. I am being generous, of course – we haven’t put out a new album in nine freaking years. Where did that time go? Same place all time goes – into the hole, after the sun. (What does that mean? Well, I had an explanation, but I dropped that into the hole as well.)

Hey, it’s not like you can’t find our albums on the internets. They’re out there. If you look around for 2000 Years To Christmas, you’ll find it in a boatload of places, including many I’ve never heard of, and some destinations I’ve never been to. In fact, that album is on so many outlets, you’d think we would be selling them left and right just by osmosis … or inertia … or some other physical principle. You know what I mean – you toss your album out into the street, and eventually someone will come by and pick it up. (We’re still eagerly awaiting that day.)

With an effing vengeance

It’s not like we couldn’t use a little extra scratch. Winter is descending upon us like a frozen shroud. Or a great frozen wall, dropped by the ice gods. Or some other metaphor I can’t think of because I’m too damn cold. What the hell, do you want me to draw you a picture? There’s white stuff falling from the clouds. It’s snowing in New York. Hal-lah-freaking-loo-yah.

Of course, the mansized tuber is taking necessary precautions, moving in from the courtyard and squeezing into a planter for the duration. Marvin is avoiding the out of doors, which is a little hard to do, as we are officially out of doors. (We broke one last week, and we don’t have any spares.) The rest of us are just huddling around stoves and registers, waiting for it all to be over. So, in other words, a really productive week around the abandoned hammer mill.

Nice place to spend the winter.

Modern insensibilities

One thing I hadn’t counted on with the onset of global warming is the degree to which people’s expectations about winter weather would dramatically change. There’s going to be 10 to 16 inches of new snow on the ground when this week is over, and they talk about it like it’s a natural disaster. Back twenty years ago or so, we used to call that Tuesday. Or Tuesday and Friday.

Hell, we had a method back then for telling how bad the snowstorm is. It was called looking out the window. In other words, if you could look out the window and see something, anything other than white, it wasn’t that bad. The whole mill was like one of those measuring sticks. If the drifts meet the top of the second story windows, well …. it will have snowed a bit.

There’s a little tip to take home with you – no charge.

Making perfect stock for kindling wood

2000 Years to Christmas

Cold as hell in here. Haven’t you got that fire going yet? Put some of that kindling around the bottom and let’s see if that catches. Okay, okay – nice. Hey … why does that kindling have an F-hole. MARVIN!!

Hello, friends. Well, winter is upon us again. This is the time of year when Big Green most deeply regrets squatting in an abandoned hammer mill. (Sounds like a good album name: Big Green most deeply regrets …. or not.) Squatters don’t get energy hookups. They just flat out ignore us, man. It’s like we’re not even here …. which is good if they’re the cops, but not so much if they’re delivering pizzas. (If cops start carrying pizzas, we’re all in trouble.)

The ghost of El Kabong

Okay, so we rely on Marvin (my personal robot) for many things. This week, it’s tending the fire. So I told him to go get some kindling wood so he could get the damn fireplace started. He came back with an odd but acceptable assortment of maple, rosewood, and birch fragments. I thought, “Hey, what the hell – maybe he’s not such a fuck up.”

Well, now I have to eat my epithets. I had pictured Marvin rooting through the neighborhood, picking up discarded pieces of wood. Turns out, he just made his way into our rehearsal space, smashed up some of our instruments like El Kabong, and brought the remains in to be incinerated. Okay, so … let me say that again. My robot assistant smashed an old guitar and a violin so he could have kindling for a fire.

You get the kindling. I'll just go over here for a while.

For the greater good

Hell, you know, this reminds me of a song. It’s called Greater Good, one of them there Big Green songs from the 1980s. I played a live version of it on our podcast THIS IS BIG GREEN a couple of years ago. Anyhow, there’s part of the lyric that goes something like this:

There’s something lurking there behind your eyes
It sees in me perfect stock for kindling wood

It’s sentimental for those bad old days
when sinners were murdered for the greater good
It wants to burn me for the greater good

Ironically, I think the guitar Marvin smashed up may have been the one I wrote that song on. Somehow he was trying to make the metaphor come true. That’s not something I strongly recommend when it comes to rock songs. Such a practice could make life even more confusing than it is now, and damn it, life is confusing enough!

What is the plan, man?

While we’re trying to keep warm over here in upstate New York, I imagine you are making plans for your holiday revelries. We are doing the same, in our own fashion, bit by bit. I’m still planning a holiday nano concert – just you wait and see. Marvin is looking forward to his annual gift of light machine oil. Mansized tuber is hoping for some more plant food. Lincoln, well …. reinstatement, perhaps, in true Trumpian fashion.

Got interesting yuletide plans? Share them with us on Facebook, Twitter, whatever. Get them to me early enough, and I’ll write a lame song about one of them, chosen randomly. Because that’s the way we roll.

Can Christmas be that far behind?

2000 Years to Christmas

I don’t think that’s the right box, man. I keep the glass bulbs in the box marked “winter gloves” and the tinsel in the box marked “soup can collection”. That box is marked “Christmas decorations”, and that’s where I keep my soup can collection. And my winter gloves.

Oh, hey. I hear you knocking, but you can’t come in. No, I’m not being anti social. I just don’t want to spoil the surprise. We’re working on our Christmas pageant, and we’re hoping that no one will guess this year’s theme before we finish our parade floats. I’ve had Marvin (my personal robot assistant) run out for some more plaster of Paris. What’s that, Anti-Lincoln? Are you sure? Damn. Marvin went to Paris.

What’s in a theme?

I can tell you what the theme won’t be this year. Anti Lincoln wanted to do a reconstruction-themed Christmas. I told him that we simply couldn’t do it justice. Also, our crazy neighbors upstairs would come at us with torches for advancing what they’ve been calling Critical Race Theory. Much as I like the idea of pissing them off, I think we’ll let that one rest.

Then there was the mansized tuber’s idea. Do you really want to hear it? It’s kind of predictable. He had some goofy notion that you could find a fir tree, chop it down, haul it through the snow and back to the Mill, then poke the trunk into a base so that it stands upright. What then? According to tubey, you hang little baubles and lights from the carcass, and when you wake up Christmas morning, they’ll be a surprise under the dead tree. Crazy shit.

Living in Christmas past

Hey, in all honesty, we’re getting older. And when you get on in years, there’s a tendency to look back a bit. We’ve got a kind of storied Christmas past, which is to say that we’ve got a lot of stories about it. Of course, there’s 2000 Years To Christmas, our first album. Then there’s all those Xmas episodes we did on THIS IS BIG GREEN. And don’t forget the fractured carols we sing when we’re drunk, in any season.

Yeah. That costume's a bit much.

Suffice to say, we’ve got a lot of material. If we actually opt for a pageant this year, there will be singing. No dancing, though – unless you count what Marvin does when he updates his operating system. Will there be a full band performance? Well …. not likely. But you may see me sitting in front of a cheap camera, strumming hesitantly on a guitar.

Our pledge to you, dear listener

One promise: I won’t play any Cowboy Scat songs. That’s final. That wouldn’t be Christmas-y. (If you want more promises, I’m taking requests – just use the comment form, below.)

Trying to overcome the rule of thumb

2000 Years to Christmas

Step back a little bit further – you’re out of frame. Okay, now take a step to the right. That’s it. That’s … no, that’s too far. Go back to the left. LEFT! You know, the side your left hand is on. Oh, Jesus!

Oh, hi. Well, once again I’m called upon to do something that I have zero aptitude for. Namely, that’s taking pictures of our band. We do not have an official photographer, which is a shame … because we had a professional photographer before we even had a drummer. (In fact, he sat in on one of our photo sessions as our drummer.) Then we had a drummer, but no guitar player. But I digress.

Bad self portaits

That said, I’m not averse to learning new skills. Neither am I skilled at learning a new verse. The thing is, I am singularly bad at photography. Ask anybody I’ve taken a picture of. I’m always giving them portrait orientation when they want landscape, and vice versa. (Turns out a lot of people prefer portrait – it’s more slimming.)

There’s another thing, too. I think it’s because of these damn camera phones. Back in MY day (get off my lawn!), camera’s were big, bulky things with a massive lens and hard metal shutter buttons. Now, you hold your dumb-ass phone out in front of you, accidentally pressing three or four soft-touch buttons, and next thing you know you’ve essentially butt-dialed Madagascar.

Thumbs up, baby

Then there’s my honking thumb. The sucker keeps getting in the way of the lens. I spend half an hour setting up a shot, getting all the folks together, polishing Marvin (my personal robot assistant) to a high gloss, trimming the root-mesh off of the mansized tuber’s strange protuberances, and so on. Then I take the shot …. and my MF thumb is taking up a third of the frame.

Me and my thumb

See, this is why I’m not filthy rich. If I was a shameless capitalist opportunist, I would promote this as my distinctive style, an aesthetic flourish, a unique take on the world. A little hot air can go a long way, my friends. Soon my thumb-obscured photos would hang in galleries and museums all over Europe, and I would have many imitators. But alas, like my clumsy thumb, the money-making gene skipped my generation of Perry. Them’s the breaks.

Xmas greetings ahead

Now, I know we’ve been doing nothing but repeats these past few Christmases. This year will be different …. I hope. Stay tuned. I’m thinking another nano concert is in order. Think of it as our Christmas Pageant. I’ll be the third reindeer on the left.

This is not the sort of thing I meant

2000 Years to Christmas

Okay, back it up a little further. That’s it. Little more. Little more. That’s great, stop there. I said stop. STOP, DAMN IT! Bloody hell!

Yeah, hey, everybody. Just attempting to wave a shipment of widgets into the loading dock here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. I have to say, it’s not working out very well. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) volunteered to drive the truck. Need I say more? (We’ll be needing to put a tarp over the loading dock, now that he’s punched a truck-shaped hole in the garage door.)

What kind of widgets are we receiving? Not sure. This wasn’t my gig. Actually, Anti-Lincoln had the bright idea of getting an assembly line going here in the old mill. He is from the mid 19th century, and so a hammer mill from the 1890s looks quite modern to his eyes, particularly when he’s had some of his beloved absinthe.

Unintended consequences

So, I’m pretty sure I’m partly to blame for Anti-Lincoln’s new project. I told him to do something constructive with his time. It was just an effort at mild criticism. Frankly, the guy sits around the mill sulking most of the time, wishing he were made of positrons instead of pure anti-neutrons (absolutely pure!). I got sick of his whining. And his wining. (He likes wine as much as Kavanaugh likes beer. Do YOU like beer?)

Anyway, next thing I knew, Anti-Lincoln was rebuilding the works in the assembly room. I thought little of that until the shipments started coming. Ball bearings arrived first, then aluminum brackets. Next came long spools of rattan string. God only knows how he’s paying for this stuff! But aside from that, what the hell is he building in there? WHAT HAVE I DONE?

Newton without the figs

Okay, so I have a theory. I don’t know if you remember this, but there was a popular gadget back in the 1970s called the Newtonian Demonstrator. My notion is that Anti-Lincoln is planning to corner the market on these things. It’s just a hunch, but in a way it makes sense. Brackets, ball bearings, string … what the hell else is he going to do with it?

Then, of course, there’s the question of who the customers might be. Are Newtonian Demonstrators a hot item these days? I didn’t think so, but again …. I have to consider Anti-Lincoln’s 19th Century perspective on this. Newtonian physics was really coming into its own when he was reaching adulthood in anti-matter Kentucky. It’s possible he doesn’t know that these gadgets went out with the Whole Earth Catalog.

THIS is the get rich quick scheme?

Stopping the line

Now, as you know, Anti-Lincoln has done a lot of crazy shit in his time. And it’s likely that he’ll do a lot of crazy shit in the future. But when he set up an actual assembly line and press ganged Marvin and the man-sized tuber into pulling double shifts, he clearly went too far.

Now, I’m a pretty reasonable guy. I put up with a lot of nonsense. But when you start exploiting the living crap out of my entourage, you’re crossing a line. I pulled the plug on the assembly line and encouraged Marvin and tubey to start a job action. We shut that sucker down and started picketing our own hammer mill. That’s how serious we are, friends. STRIKE! STRIKE! STRIKE! Send pizzas! Anti-Lincoln is a corporate snake!

Putting bread (or perhaps toast) upon the water.

2000 Years to Christmas

Well, blown me down. I appear to be talking like a pirate today. Why? Damned if I know. Maybe it’s the weather. Or maybe it’s that scurvy crew who’s planning to make off with my booty. (That’s treasure, by the way, not some part of my anatomy).

Well, as you know, Big Green has never been the best pirate ship on the high seas. We have scuttled very few corsairs over our time, whatever the hell THAT means. I guess what I’m saying is that, well, we are somewhat remuneratively challenged. In other words …. we are a freaking financial flop, full stop. (Take that, full stop twitter bot!)

A balance lower than whale shit

There was a time in our early years when we sought some advice on how to manage our finances. We were putting the cart before the horse, in a sense, as we didn’t HAVE any finances at the time. But like most bands, we expected riches to fall from the sky. Our fear was that, if such riches came in the form of gold or silver pieces, we might be crushed by these great falling projectiles. That would never do!

So we went to the local financial advisor and asked him (and yes, it was a him) what we should do if we ever came into some cash. He asked to see our bank account, and when we showed him the passbook that we had kept from grammar school, his face went white (I should say whiter, actually). That was when we were ushered out. No, really – an usher showed us out, and he was kind of large.

Giving it all away

So what do you do with an asset that has no value? Well, friends, it’s simple – you give it away. That’s what we started to do with our music, and damn it, it caught on. Now bands all around the world give their music away for nothing. True, almost none of them are famous bands. And also true, we’ve had zero influence over them on this. But we’re all on the same page – that’s what counts.

A few weeks ago I talked about the interstellar lengths we’ve gone chasing a few stray quatloos. And I realize that this creates a false impression that we’re merely affecting to be non-commercial. Well, nothing could be farther from the truth. Just because we’re chasing money, doesn’t mean we’ve sold out. After all … to sell out, you need something to sell. I rest my case.

Seems a little large, doesn't it, Abe?

Raise the big blue flag

Of course you’ve all heard of Perry’s flag, right? Don’t give up the ship! Well, like any good pirate, we would never give her up, not to some low-down scum of a tugboat operator. And while that flag which bears our name also seems to stand opposed to our principle of giving things away, that doesn’t bother us too much. Anything written on a flag couldn’t be all wrong.

So we will continue pushing out content for no compensation. That’s just how we roll around here. Marvin (my personal robot assistant) does everything HE does for free. Mansized tuber never asks for compensation of any kind. It wouldn’t be right for us to ignore their good example, wouldn’t you agree?

So, look out, opposite shore – here comes some soggy bread!

Social media killed the radio star.

2000 Years to Christmas

I spy with my little eye … a chair! Right, that’s the one. Now your turn. Well now … you can’t say chair, because I just did and there’s only one in the room. Pick something else, damn it!

Sheesh – that’s the trouble with playing parlor games here in the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill. For one thing, there’s no parlor. Even worse, it seems no one in our entourage has ever played a game before. Not even Parcheesi! We are creatures of the road, my friends, driven by eternal wanderlust. Except, of course, for most of the last twenty-five years, during which we’ve been nailed in one spot.

Sure, I know – if we’ve got all this time on our hands, why the hell aren’t we recording? Why aren’t we putting out new episodes of THIS IS BIG GREEN or NED TREK? Well, that’s a good question. I would add that to our list of Freakishly Unanswerable Questions, but then that dude would call me a “dink” again, and then I couldn’t show my face in my fifth grade classroom should 1970 ever return.

Turn it down, the radio

They say video killed the radio star. Well, we never were radio stars, but we got killed none the less – not by video, though. No, sir – social media killed us. It wore us down to a nub. Just look at what it did to Marvin (my personal robot assistant)! His hands are mere claws. And the mansized tuber – he is now a helpless Facebook addict, scrolling and scrolling his life away. Pathetic!

Not like that, you idiot! Use the hockey stick.

As official spokesperson for Big Green, I do spend a little time on Facebook, Twitter, and … uh …. some other stuff. But I’m not living on that shit. And frankly, it’s the podcasts that took it out of us. At its peak, THIS IS BIG GREEN was posting 12 shows a year, half of them musicals, which meant five, six, sometimes eight new songs recorded and finished in time to post, along with an hour-long episode of Ned Trek. Holy mother – I get tired just THINKING about it.

Hammock time, geezers

Now, don’t get me wrong. I’m not saying we’re retiring. For one thing, we can’t afford to. For another thing, we’ve barely even started. We’re like the Elias Sandoval of indie music. “We could have made this planet into a garden!” (It’s from classic Star Trek. Ask your mother. Or better yet, you’re moron father.)

Will we do more episodes of TIBG? Probably, but we are definitely on hiatus. Those buzzards circling over the mill, they’re just waiting on a friend. Then it’s off to the rookery. As for us, we should probably switch to backgammon. I think even Marvin could figure THAT out.

Climbing the ladder up into the basement

2000 Years to Christmas

Nobody knows the troubles we’ve seen, Tubey. Nobody knows but Marvin (my personal robot assistant). Nobody knows the trouble we’ve seen …..

Oh, hey, there. Just singing a mournful little tune to the mansized tuber, now reachable on Facebook. Lord knows, we don’t like to complain here at the abandoned Cheney Hammer Mill – the fact is, we LOVE to complain, particularly anti-matter Lincoln (or A-Link as his friends now call him), who’s been complaining about the war since …. well, since the war. (He’s not specific about which war, but I think it was one of the badder ones.)

Hey, look … everybody has their bumps coming up the ladder. As the saying goes, be nice to everyone you meet on the way up the ladder, because they’ll be the same people you meet on your way down. What is the relevance of that statement? I have no idea. We’ve never been anywhere near that damn ladder. Couldn’t say if it’s wood or aluminum. That’s the kind of complaining I’m talking about.

Changing Pre-History

Now, I know we’ve spun a few tales about our origin story, but like any band, we needed to have an interesting back story, and I’m not saying it’s not true, but …. we may have embellished one or two details here and there. That’s as far as I’ll go, but bear this in mind – the Freakishly Unanswerable Questions are as true as the day is long. And the day is long, my friends.

Well, anyway … that’s the band’s story. Our individual stories are a bit more complicated. Take mine (please!). Back when we were concerned with making something like a living, we all had side gigs to support our Big Green habit. Mine were mostly playing in other bands, as I had no other skills and no inclination to develop any more.

The Bad Side Of Massachusetts

Here’s an anecdote. One band I played in with one of the co-founders of Big Green, Ned Danison, was an almost total waste of time. I remember a gig we had in Western Mass, an awful town whose name I won’t mention (North Adams) where we played a hotel gig, five nights a week for a couple of weeks at a time. The place has probably improved since four decades ago, I imagine, but back then …. hoo boy. The lodgings were adequate, but the money was crap, the music was awful, and the place was full of crazy people.

Did anything happen of interest? No. Ned and I worked on some songs that never saw the light of day. Was it a stepping stone to greater things? No. It was just another crappy gig. Not the first, and certainly not the last.

Don’t Listen To Me!

This is my way of saying, don’t follow my example. Don’t listen to anything that I say! If you’re reading this now, STOP WHILE YOU STILL CAN. Or start a band. Up to you, really. Don’t let me influence you.