TO REFLECT IS HUMAN, TO SHINE IS DIVINE

America can be brutal, a little bit of Gitmo in all of us and waiting around every corner. This morning was a good example. It’s never fun being awoken at 6am by bangings on the door and bargings on in by what sound like Israeli storm troopers. It’s small consolation that it’s only (?!) the landlord, doing his job without proxy nor finesse. Such are the trials of renting, or rather sub-leasing, an apartment, borrowing a piece of the rock rather than buying it. That’s the problem with cheap hotels also, not the funkiness itself which can be lovable, but the funky attitudes of your neighbors, who can be self-centered and petty, no matter how politically correct. You can hardly blame the landlord being pissed at irregularities in his complexes, though the methods may be a bit heavy-handed. For all he knows I may be cooking up meth in the bathtub, our modern alternative to gin. There’s more than one way to beat Depression. Myself I feel like the junkie whose life revolves around that one all-consuming fix, whether good or bad, in this case my wife, something of a soup Nazi herself on bad days. If she has a bad day, then so do I; she’ll make sure of that. She’s perennially concerned that my minimalistic lifestyle vis a vis possessions, or lack thereof, is basically a smokescreen for the fact that I’m a loser and she’ll end up penniless and faceless. She may be right. Financial statements mean nothing to her. Actually I feel like my main accomplishment in life is that I’ve been at least marginally successful without becoming the victim of it all, possessed by my possessions. How do you explain that to a Buddhist? It should be easy. It’s not. Shacking up in Hollywood I feel literally like a kid with his first apartment. At my age that’s cool….

Right now might be a good time to thank you, my faithful readers, who heeded my call to subscribe, for what I promised would be a thrill-a-minute through the wacky ways of Thailand and assorted arcane geographic locations. How did I know that the visa papers for my wife would show up at the door in Thailand all of a sudden calling her to interview? A few short months later, here we are, far from Thailand and even farther from the open road and open skies of travel. Actually if you consider LA the 77^th province of Thailand, then I guess we aren’t so far away after all, for what that’s worth, on the surface probably not much. By reputation that’s all there is, surface. LA loses itself, or finds itself, in chockablock development, strip mall after car lot after weenie palace after homeless hovel, 1056 shades of nothingness all somehow blending itself into something quintessentially American and marketing itself to the world as ‘the dream.’ Go figure. So here I’m stuck in superficial LA, the epitome of everything I’ve ever held useless, all the while wishing it cared about me more than I cared about it. It’s a love/hate relationship you see, the fact that I’ve never been very successful here defining the logic by which I fail to see its benefit, that and the fact that it can be one goddawful lonely place. That’s what Tang’s here for. She thinks I’m here for her. After all Thailand gives superficiality a good name, or at least a better one. They love it here and in Las Vegas, the more mindless the better. So as we dig our heels in here, sketchy at best are my goals for this blog because there’s no mo’ Thailand in the immediate future nor more travel either. My God! I’m stuck! So far from God, so close to Mexico! I’ll find other writing projects. That’s why I started this blog anyway; I was doing so much travel and had no other current writing projects. So what do I do here now? If you wanted to hear ruminations on individual pasts and collective futures, you’d be reading the other blog. You’re not.

It’s funny, not this blog or the other one either, but the fact that this blog has more subscribers, mostly friends, but hardly any comment. My friends are like that. The other ‘time travel blog’ has more comment, especially whenever I talk about Guatemala. They’re different from Thailand’s fans. I don’t want a forum anyway, so illiterate is the general populace, and I wouldn’t have the heart to tell people to learn how to spell before sending in comments. So what do I do now, talk about Obama? If life is partially defined by those moments of epiphany when you realize ‘I’m not alone,’ then Barack’s ascension has yielded one. I was always skeptical of his halo effect, unsure whether it was naturally settling upon him every time he spoke or whether he was consciously invoking it, or whether like lightning on its way to the ground, a spark leaps up to greet it, a mutuality confirmable only in slow motion. I still don’t know, but others have also noticed. In the ‘Onion,’ an LA-based humor rag, it’s current headline reads, “Obama Practices Looking off into Future Pose,” going into detail about his 54-degree chin tilt, his 1.43cm eye aperture and his head rotated 37 degrees to the left. “When you look to the future, you look to the left.” It’s hilarious. Considering that my previous moments of epiphany with artistic media included the songs “Positively Fourth Street” by Bob Dylan and “Waiting ‘Round to Die” by Townes Van Zandt, I guess I’m mellowing out in my old age, though many people miss the close connection between horror and humor.

So where does that leave us? Still looking for a theme for this blog I guess. Ads for single Thai girls still pop up, so I guess that’s a cosmological constant. Frankly I’m not sure why they’re such a hot commodity, given the generally pathetic level of their English and their suitors’ Thai language skills. Here’s a hint-- actually that’s a help, not a hindrance. They’re out of their minds. Fortunately they’re into their bodies. But others are getting into the game fast. Colombia’s got some girls on the market guaranteed to melt your hardened heart or money back. Just take your pick: doctor, lawyer, or architect; brunette, brunette or brunette; Cali, Bogota’ or a smaller city called Manizales that seems to have little else to distinguish itself. We’re not talking about funky TJ border-town behemoths cheaper-by-the-kilo, either, but some forty-five kilo cuties that could charm the pants off a diplomat. So where does this blog stand in the rankings now? Well, we’re averaging fifteen to twenty subscribers according to Feedburner (I don’t know why it should fluctuate, but it does) and somewhere in the lower 600,000’s in the Technorati ‘authority’ rankings (hey, we started in the lower nine millions), so that says something. If you Google the words ‘Thailand’ and ‘Timbuktu’ together, then I’ll still come up number one, for what that’s worth. Perhaps more importantly, these blogs do get picked up by other websites for use, kind of like a poor man’s syndicated column. You shop XYZ’s website for underwear and below there’s the first few lines of my blog selected by one of their, uh, selectors. If you like then you click and voila!, you’re back here with the guy in his over-the-pub compartment out by Heathrow with planes flying over and pretending it’s his own private 9-11 mini-moment. It might as well be LA.

So I’ll still do this blog when the inspiration strikes, though its goals are now murky. I’ll do the other already-written blog every day regardless. Sound sketchy? Lit’s a wide-open ballgame now, the publishing business following the lead of the recording industry, or lack thereof, MySpace-type sites for writers springing up like mushrooms in cow shit. When I can not only publish my own stuff, but get it listed and sold on Amazon made-to-order, why wait a year for a return to my query letter from some agent who’s overworked and underpaid already? There’s food for thought. Publishing companies themselves haven’t read new work in years. But in the meantime I think I’ll do a blog on world music. Though I’m not really qualified (who is?), I can certainly review the many shows scheduled for California Plaza here in LA this summer- including Seun Kuti, Tcheka, Son de Madera, and Ricardo Lemvo, one big world music festival scattered throughout the summer, and all for free. The opening show, ‘Miles from India,’ featuring the music of Miles Davis played by a combination of Jazz and Indian musicians, was incredible. Stay tuned. There’s more.

WiFi Addicts Just Want Your Current, not Your Currency

Airports in America these days are starting to look like something out of The Matrix or Naked Lunch or something, fleshy mugwumps attached to triple-pronged sockets, sucking the black meat of power through long black cables. You can see them coming, eyes lowered to about a foot above floor level, scanning the walls back and forth looking for open sockets. They’ve got that look in their eyes, the psychological need for a plug-in. The longer they have to look, the worse it gets, eyes dilated, pulse throbbing, veins bulging with anticipation. These are about equally divided between computer laptop users and cell phone chargers. Of course laptop users are usually looking for a wi-fi signal too, and those usually aren’t free in airports, though Phoenix and Taipei are notable exceptions. JFK has free data ports, but how many people carry wires with them these days? You can cop a freebie in BKK down on the mezzanine level across from the airline offices. Don’t try this in Europe btw. Even if you can find a wi-fi signal, you’re not likely to find a socket to plug in to, even in places advertising ‘free wi-fi,’ of which there aren’t many. That’s not a bad idea actually, since many wi-fiers abuse the privilege and act like they have ancient rights. Some places limit the time allowed, but that can get messy if the user doesn’t voluntarily comply. Some have a code and use programming that counts your time down, but that requires a program. Limit the user to the charge capacity of their battery and you’ve solved most of the problem.

Of course a café doesn’t have to offer the service in the first place but it is a way to attract customers in a crowded coffee market until all your competitors do it also, and then you have to do it just to remain competitive. It’s a good deal for everyone as long as it’s not abused, because anybody who really wants a signal free can just walk or drive around until he finds one unlocked, not too hard in any country I’ve been in. ‘Wi-fi cafés’ are distinguished between those who offer the service free (w/ purchase) and those who don’t, but the former can be found in Mexico, Guatemala, Spain, Canada, and I presume many other countries in addition to the US. The latter can piss off. Why would anyone pay for two or three usages of anything that he could get at home for a month? Yeah, right, I forgot, stupid question. Europe is way behind on this, in both signals and plugs. Part of the reason is just that space is more dear in Europe, as in New York, and places frequently charge extra to sit down to drink that coffee rather than just standing at the bar. This is contrary to the spirit of wi-fi, which wants you to sit down and hang out, which in turn draws others, which in turn creates a dynamic pub-style entertainment, all in broad daylight without alcohol. The mullahs okayed coffee long ago, after much deliberation, to keep us awake during our long prayer sessions. Uh huh.

Still in New York you pay more to sit down at a table and listen to jazz than you do to sit at the bar, so prospects there are dim, though I did find it at the whole foods store down in Soho. Food was expensive; coffee was cheap. The situation with electric outlets is worse. They just don’t exist in public places in Europe, and sometimes not even in the cheapest hotel rooms. When they do, they may very well have locks on them. That’s right, locks on electrical outlets. I found one in the train station in Barcelona and guarded it with my life, not because I was afraid someone else would take it, but that someone would come charge me or tell me to de-plug. In America they’re frequently all taken even when widely available, even where the wi-fi isn’t free. When I was wi-fiing in the park in Barcelona, people seemed genuinely surprised at such a rare display, for while America was going bonkers over Internet, the rest of the world was going bonkers over cell phones. And while America is now catching up on the ultimate democracy of ‘one man one phone’ the rest of the world is still way behind on the net-head way of life. Maybe it’s better that way. Isn’t the sight of grown men and women attached by electric lines to the grid a bit of a scary sci-fi scenario anyway? It’s truly scary. I love it. It’s ironic. Not many years ago my supreme goal was to get off the grid. Now my goal is to get on.

Traveling with a laptop is a revolution and a revelation. What it adds in its own weight, it reduces in the weight of any books you might be tempted to travel with, if you’re so inclined. A 100GB hard drive can hold many books in memory, especially if you don’t need pictures. If you’ve got access to a wi-fi signal, then you’ll need even less, as you can get live up-to-date info all along, reserving rooms and flights as you go. While wi-fi cafes are certainly not universal, nor wi-fi hotels either, the signals themselves are, and many places don’t bother to lock them. Getting a cheap hotel next to a more expensive one is not a bad tactic, nor is getting upper rooms capable of receiving signals from many directions. You might find them easier at one time of day or the other. In countries where TV is scarce or negligible, this adds a whole new dimension to entertainment, also. If you’re actually going to watch DVD’s on your laptop, then a larger screen is preferable, but the novelty of that seems to be wearing off, and laptop sizes seem to be down-sizing accordingly after an earlier bump-up. I personally couldn’t imagine doing much Internet surfing from a telephone-size screen, but that’s just me. When traveling you’re carrying bags anyway, so that’s not an issue, and I personally prefer about a page-size laptop with accordingly light weight for most flexibility. This is a music machine also, but that doesn’t take much space. Of course you can burn or rip CD’s in addition to just playing them with a laptop, not to mention downloading if you’ve got a fast enough signal. In Europe many bands now have a laptop on stage, doing just what I’m not sure of, probably adding the trance-like effects so popular there.

Bottom line for me is that I write, so that’s the crucial size determinant, and a box too small is just not comfortable for that. Personally I don’t see much future for desktop computers regardless, considering their unattractiveness and the fact that those towers enclose mostly empty space. It’s just a matter of cost really. If laptop size is pretty well defined by its keyboard, then once components are small enough that that seems big by comparison, you shouldn’t have to pay a premium in cost or lack of quality any more. That day shouldn’t be far off, depending on which direction computers take in the coming era. Convergence of all media and communications- TV, radio, film, telephone-- into one Internet-accessible-and-dependent format-- is a likely guess since it’s already happening. At that point size is the only thing that matters, maybe a large box for the living room, smaller ones for remote locations and briefcase-size portability, and pocket-size one for constant access. Beyond that it’s anybody’s guess. Integration into personal adornment and even one’s body is not out of the question. At that point the Holy Grail of computerization, virtual reality, may be ready for a comeback, its previous incarnation but a wet spot on the bed of creativity and its true future only you-know-who knows how many years away. How far it will go and what it means to us as a species is another question. It sounds better than gene-splicing in any case. If we’re here for nothing more than to play with ourselves, let’s experiment with something we ourselves created, (self-) consciousness, and leave DNA alone. That’s not ours to mess with; we’re its. For now I’ll just keep slinking through the shadows of lightly-traveled streets looking for a rogue wi-fi signal so I can keep sending these messages in bottles to remote corners of scattered universes. My battery’s getting weak with age, but maybe I can find shore power somewhere. I may not be a star, but that’s not because I’m not shooting.

I Had a Blog Dream... and a Pyramid Scheme

No, I’m not some modern-day MLK emerging from the barracks, positioning myself at the right hand of God and the left wing of the voting populace. No, I had a bad dream. I dreamed that I paid John Chow $450 to review my blog, and all he could say was, “that’s not blogging; that’s typing.” My nemesis in Thailand has said as much already, heckling me and my blogs, informing me that Jack Kerouac’s ‘automatic writing’ died even before Kerouac himself. Cool… I can live with that. With enemies like this, who needs friends? If the man is trying to diminish me by comparing me to Jack Kerouac, then I’ll take that as a back-handed compliment. The thing hack writers don’t understand about Kerouac is that he was essentially a poet, writing novels. They don’t call it the ‘Jack Kerouac School of Disembodied Narrative’ now, do they? Poetry relies on spontaneity and inspiration to be effective. There is no such thing as a ‘poetic essay.’ That’s a contradiction in terms. Unfortunately there’s little point of reference for poetry, since most is scarcely compelling, much even repelling, though not repulsive. It’s just too boring to be repulsive. The journals and slams are full of ‘rhymin’ Simons and their fellow-traveling Garfunkels on one hand, and poetry professors and professionals on the other, making self-conscious references in a secret palace language that only they can understand. Modern poetry is so lame that I doubt even one percent of us can name the current US poet laureate. I know I can’t, though I might recognize her (his?) name if I heard it. It’s hard to even say what poetry really is since pop music stole it’s thunder, like fine art being liberated by the camera. It’s not rhyme; that’s lyrics. It’s not meaning; that’s philosophy. It’s not narrative; that’s a story. Any ideas? As Allen Ginsberg himself claimed, Bob Dylan is the poet of our era, not the guys in the textbooks.

Of course the quote in question was Truman Capote’s about Jack Kerouac. Now there’s a world of difference between Truman Capote and Jack Kerouac, not the least of which is writing style. Truman may have played the late night talkies to his own advantage or certainly to his increased celebrity, but he never had a moment like Kerouac reading to Steve Allen’s piano. You can’t book that, though McClure and Manzarek give it their best shot. Give it a listen, but don’t wait too long. The Beat poets are showing their age. Kerouac self-destructed and Burroughs and Ginsberg are now long gone. The next generation looks to Patti Smith for inspiration and elder statesmanship, she having bridged the gap between poetry and rock, but heirs are few and airs are many. The MySpace generation can barely spell their words, much less cast a spell, and whatever hip-hop is, it ain’t poetry. Naropa Institute in the early 80’s was a revelation and an inspiration even then, that the Beat poets were still alive and howling twenty-plus years after we all added –niks to our knacks. There was Gregory Corso next door literally screaming drunk and A.G. himself wrote me a poem for a buck to support the cause of learning, now long lost among a nomad’s middens. Still the fire burns, somehow somewhere. If Kerouac, Ginsberg, and Burroughs were channeling Rimbaud, Whitman, and Joyce, then who was Truman Capote channeling? At best he may have evoked F. Scott Fitzgerald, and there’s plenty of talent there, but enough to dismiss the Beats? Naah…. As Oliver Stone said of Tarantino, he’s “making movies about movies.” It’s the difference between art and artifice, the ‘real thing’ or its derivative bastard offspring clones, capable of standing and working, but not reproducing. ‘Non-fiction’ novels are fine, but they both did that. Does that place Capote’s journalism above Kerouac’s poetry? I doubt it, but time will tell.

Blogs are the same, or more so, maybe the quintessence of literary nothingness. For those of you who don’t know, John Chow is a self-proclaimed blogosphere ‘mogul’. Disregarding his Asian features and possible Mongolian ancestry, I think he means to claim himself king of the hill, Mr. Blogger par excellence. Now I don’t know how he or anyone else defines ‘mogul’, but six figures doesn’t usually do it, certainly not in Mr. Gates’ dot.com world, not even in hyper-hyped Hollywood. I think that says more about the ‘blogosphere’ itself than anything else. I’m sure Mr. Chow is a nice guy; it’s just that he doesn’t really offer a product in return for the money he promises to make you online. That’s the definition of a pyramid scheme. He got into trouble by trying to scam Google and promote himself by offering ‘back-links’ to anyone who’ll mention him in the same breath as “making money online.” So basically he’s building his ad-revenue potential by biting the hand that feeds him. Now I won’t malign his Asian character by referring to the historical precedents of Chinese wanting to control the medium of currency; I’ll just say that he threatens to bring down the very system that sustains him, i.e. biting the hand, etc. Now that’s OK as long as you have something creative to add, but apparently he doesn’t. Aside from a few references to cars and fine dining, he only blogs about blogs, and “making money online.” So he makes money online by telling people how much money he makes online. He’s not the only one, only the most brazen. Now he’s charging $450 just to review other people’s blogs, hyping the hype, and getting it. I’d like to say that’s not American, but it is. Look at the robber barons. Look at Bill Gates. But it shouldn’t be that way. The glass is half full, not half empty. There’s always room for new ideas. So Google in retribution has diminished him in the search rankings, but the war’s still on. This is the new webocracy, bloggers plowing the field whose harvest that mostly others will reap, personalizing the impersonal net. Let’s keep the playing field level.

So this is probably why Google suspended my ads after the ‘Thai women are digital’ blog. After I exposed their inner workings, they responded by pulling my ads. That’s okay; I don’t exactly depend on ad income to support myself and my habits. You guys aren’t exactly ad-clickers now, are you? No, me neither. When they start putting public service ads on your site, though, you know you’re in trouble. Maybe they thought I was spamming and scamming, promoting my own ads to promote my own income. A quick reading might make you think so. I may have even clicked a few of them myself. Some of them are interesting. I can always use a cheaper flight to Thailand. So now it’s either travel insurance or nothing, or gulf hurricane relief. Which gulf? Which hurricane? Sounds like a business with a future. If I do a blog on Thai girls, then they pull all the Thai girl ads. I guess that makes sense. I suppose this is all supposed to be transparent and subliminal. You read a blog and see an ad, so then click on it without thinking, as if it were an extension of the blog itself. It may work on consummate consumers, but you guys are too smart for that, aren’t you? Judging by my Google Adsense revenue, you are. So any self-reference to the system itself could be a scam. Only a human would know. Spiders and bots only count and categorize. So now I’ve got search ranking but no ads. Not that I had income from them, but I like their spontaneity. Well, the Google ad fairies, spiders, and bots must be scratching their heads over me now, or scratching something, at least. We’ll see what they do next. At least they function according to reason. That’s better than a nemesis would do. What’s the protocol with a nemesis? I’ve never had one before. I’ve always prided myself in never having burned bridges, but I guess there’s a first time for everything.

Future Blogs

Hi! I'm back! That moment of silence lasted over a year, didn't it? I just wasn't ready I guess. Seems the blogosphere has changed since those first tentative efforts. For one thing, the word 'blogosphere' exists now. For another, everyone wants to make money on it now. How? Advertising, of course. Cool. So I get to be the viral vector hanging ad sheets on your virtual doorknob instead of the usual bulk e-mails. I reckon my canned ham is better than that spam. Of course the blogs getting the most traffic are the ones talking about blogging itself, as if newspaper columnists might be commenting on the future of editorializing, or appropriate lengths and widths of columns, or circulation estimates, or maybe the cost of Mississippi pulpwood. They don't, of course. They talk about politics and religion and social issues and entertainment. But the blogosphere is still that wild wild West where anyone with a gun and guts has got a job, ultimate payoff at the end of the trail. Chaos slowly but inexorably organizes itself and the true professionals will rise to the surface as they must if the medium is to survive and thrive as more than yellow journalism or a mutual admiration society of conspiracy buffs or post-grad jornalistas hesitant to get a 'real job'. For now the medium is neither rare nor especially well done, and alarms bells go off when the saying 'it must be true; I read it on the Internet' becomes de rigeur sarcasm.

Drink deep. The medium is no longer the message. The message is the message. Before diving back in, I researched to see who was doing what with blogs to see where I might make a contribution. Now my main blogging interests are travel, Thailand, and music, especially world music, and I expected them to be fairly equally blogged. I was wrong. Music is weak, as if writing and music were mutually exclusive activities. Travel is off the charts, with probably more blogging networks than music has individual blogs. These may be largely temporary, of course, as travelers blog their trip and then go back to 'real life', happy to have blogged 'for free' while earning ad revenue for their sponsors and filling hotel rooms and tour vans for their advertisers. Thailand had quite a few, quite natural considering the trials and tribulations of expatriation and the need to establish contacts beyond one's neighborhood to find acquaintances with mutual interests. This may be the Net's saving grace actually, for though it may not foster up-front social skills and may create a few more Nerds than might otherwise be the case, at least now those Nerds have a place to go for mutual succor and enlightenment, and the school quarterback may the odd man out now. The real surprise is the number and quality of scientific blogs, giving the lie to those who think that the Internet is only for losers and social misfits incapable of talking to a real live girl, or about much of anything else except the Net itself.

Me, I just want to write. I got my poetic license and I want to write. I've done the research and the groundwork, connected with Google, Adsense, andFeedburner, got Pay Per Post, Linkworth, and Technorati on the back burner, even learned a little HTML, and now I just want to write. If I was burned out a year ago after countless poems, screenplays, and novels, all 'in turnaround', now I'm not. Now my brain is atrophying from lack of stimulation. Of course most people don't come to Thailand for intellectual stimulation, but I do. Unless you've got a university gig, then the only way to pursue intellectual interests is to simply allow yourself the time and economic space to do so. No, this is not an ex-pat blog with typical thinly researched cultural conclusions masquerading as matters of world importance, nor the worldly concerns of visas and entry requirements, though Thailand certainly has plenty of those at the moment. Nor will I issue opinions on how to deal with your Thai wife, and certainly nothing of ladyboys, demimondaines, courtesans, and farangs, though my wife assures me that this is what people really want. Of course my wife watches Thai soap operas as if they were the true path of Buddhist enlightenment, so... okay, maybe a little of that, but only in the abstract. The pleasure centers do reside in consciousness, right?

This will be a travel blog, of a sort, in space and in time. I do have thirty years experience, so any revisits will be a comparison with what it was like before as much as a comparison with what it's like in the US or elsewhere. How can you do a full-time travel blog, you ask? Easy. Practice. Seems the older I get the more feverish the travel bug, as if it could all come to a precipitous end. Uh huh. This year alone I've been to the Brazilian coast, Guatemala (after many years), Cambodia, and the Canadian provinces of Alberta and the North West Territories, not to mention my home base and safe havens of Thailand, US, and Mexico. Last year I was in Alaska, South America, Spain, Morocco, and the Canaries. Next year Mali and Iceland are on the agenda for January, same trip, so you get the idea. Frivolous frolics, you say, only for the idle and wealthy? Hardly, since I'm neither. Much occurs in the way of research for my world music interests, and the rest is kill-time while waiting for US projects to bear fruit. Anyway, all my travel and costs of living in Thailand certainly add up to no more than what it would cost to live in the US full time, far less Europe, so why not? Yeah, you know. It's a way of life. Please stay tuned. When I'm not traveling, I'll do the ex-pat thing, and when I've got nothing better, I'll include excerpts from my book Rivers of Consciousness. Of course the best trips can only be told in past tense anyway, since the real outback has few, if any, Internet connections, and hardly the time for it. Actually, what I'd really like to do is maybe write the first Internet book about the Internet, kinda' like Kramer's coffee tables, and for those without Internet or maybe with extra bucks, it might even come in the form of a cheapo little laptop or something. Yeah, I like that, so stay tuned. Welcome to my nervous system.
p.s. I'll leave the old stuff on, for now at least, sorta' like junk DNA, the kind in your double helices, not your bedsheets, just so you'll know where I'm coming from.