Recently in Writing Category

Just because I'm too responsible about language and narrative to stay quiet, I have to say something about context. And context is important - if you want examples of that, all you have to do is look to the world of comedy. Jokes work because there's a setup before the punchline. In order for people to laugh, there has to be groundwork laid so people understand what is going on - who is doing what. So. 

Knock knock.

Who's there?

Interrupting lawyer.

Interrupting lawyer wh--

--I object!

But not only does that joke function on the level of setup and punchline within the joke itself, it relies on a cultural context where we understand this about trial lawyers from all the films and TV show about trial lawyers - they object in court to improper lines of questioning, or sometimes just because it's Tuesday.

Now, if you watch the film The Aristocrats, about that particularly filthy joke, you realise that at the core of it is the story of Gilbert Gottfried. He had tried to tell a joke at the roast of Hugh Hefner on Comedy Central. More importantly, he was doing it not that long after 9/11 2001. The joke he had planned to tell was a joke about 9/11, but the crowd stopped him, shouting "too soon" - and it was that response that got him to tell The Aristocrats instead.

So if people want to talk about context, then we should talk about context. Yes, in the context of the speech, the remark about lipstick on a pig is at best unremarkable. He had probably used the line before. However, in the context where people laughed when he said, it, the audience in the room reacting, in the context of Sarah Palin's remarks only a week earlier and since about lipstick, the cultural context placed lipstick in that odd category of something that's funny now that wasn't funny last week.

So just as Lincoln's assassination demonstrates that comedy=tragedy+time, and that it's just started being funny again after it abruptly stopped for a while, the lipstick line was funny - and well beyond why it would have been anyway (oh those hilariously lipsticked pigs). If we're talking about context, it's clear that the line was intented to be an applause line in the speech, to be a subtle or not so subtle jab at the candidate for VP, given her recent remarks. Whether it was meant to mock the idea that she represents any real kind of change is probably open to interpretation. But in a cultural context where Shakespeare, our linguistic forefather writes so scathingly about makeup as pretence and shallowness and deception, the use of makeup in the context of a female politician does have sexist connotations.

Does that make Obama a sexist? Please. With the extent to which he's whipped? He might laugh about it secretly while watching 2.5 Men in a house full of women, but not in public, not consciously. Though that's insidious as well. Let's put it this way. African Americans rightly say that given the context of American history, there are words that are "their word", and in the context of anyone else using that word, it's offensive. And perhaps because of how our linguistic cliches are set up, amongst other things, sexism against women it also all too easy in the context - evidence Hillary Clinton.

Anyway, I propose a replacement phrase, suggested by 2.5 Men. You can toll a turd in powdered sugar, doesn't make it a jelly doughnut.

Why are Democrats in sequence so bumfuzzled and then so smug and soft-headed? There's just never the sense with them that they can simply make a decision, establish a conviction, and then follow it through. Always there is the handwringing and the worry, asking themselves "oh, is this a good idea". And when they get what they want, all they can do is be smug - feel good about themselves. They're like an Alzheimers patient in a whorehouse. Every 4 years the same things happen - they constantly get screwed, and they don't want to pay for it. They wake up the day after the election and wonder to their self-righteous selves, "how did this happen?" "Somehow the evil Republicans stole the electon from us with their evil evil evil-doing."

They can never imagine how they are wrong. They can never admit that the ideals they put forward are in some way fundamentally, and unequivocally, flawed. It may make them feel all warm and fuzzy to say that jobs must stay in America and not be outsourced, but that doesn't make their conviction in any way right or in any way justified. And when they get uppity about tolerance for other people, they seem to have no notion of how much people are tired of being called racist or predjudiced just for getting up in the morning. As long as Democrats think they are constantly on the brightest white side of Good, and the Republicans are somehow inherently evil, they will never have the muddy pragmatic realism to win with people who don't give themselves the luxury of being too good to come in first.

Obama can preach his gospel all he wants, but as long as his oratory is used to serve the base crassness of decieving yourself as right in order to play on the irrational fears of populist sentiment, he can take his "new politics" and shove it up his ass. You are not being "right" when you insist still on not telling the truth about how things are. And to pretend that you are telling the truth while lying and distorting is surely a larger sin than simple pandering. If you're going to pander at least have some shame in it. Hillary and McCain are held back a little each time they have to push out crap in order to get themselves elected. It doesn't mean they're not going to do it, but at least they don't seem so proud of themselves having done it.

Say what you want about McCain on the attack - he is always principled enough to sign his name at the end of everything he does. He has at least that much pride. Obama has taken to being shy and hiding his ownership of his negative attacks. McCain tags all his ads at the end, so that even after the knife is stuck in, you know who did it. Obama's been doing it up front, so that by the end, you're not sure who did what. And know who does what is the fundamental step you follow in language and in narrative in order to be honest to how things are. If you're going to attack, you can't be shy about soiling your lily white hem with your opponent's blood. Stop pretending to be self-righteous and admit you're playing the same game everyone else is, rather than pretending to stand above it all. You are not a fucking saint. Your party is not a party of saints. At least Republicans have no shame in being who they are.

Decrying the politics of personal destruction, and still playing the gotcha game (saying McCain thinks people aren't rich till their income is $5 million) is fine if you're a normal politician - but not when you think you're the second coming of Christ. No one is better than the game. If you can play, then you surrender yourself to the compromises you have to make. Acting better than how you are is the real presumptuosness.

As for the speech, I've seen this movie before. It worked the first time. But fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me. If you're not willing to offer realistic, substantive, concrete ideas devoid of hyperbole and outsize rhetoric, you are not being honest to the people you're talking to. Let your ideas be dramatic, rather than the way you couch it. Say you want affirmative action to be based on economic status rather than race. Admit that allowing people to invest their private savings accounts rather than paying into a failed Social Security system is not "gambling your money on the stockmarket", but rather ensuring for themselves a higher rate of return than the opportunity cost of capital.

Barack Obama is fundamentally irresponsible. These are the most fundamental things I taught my students when I taught them writing: 1) Be clear on who is doing what. Do not obfuscate the agency of a given action. 2) Do not exhalt with melodrama something that is paltry. If something is important, all the more it should be presented in the clarity of prose so that the emergency of what is happening can be appreciated for what it is, rather than exaggerated beyond any accurate of realistic sense.

Barack Obama is fundamentally irresponsible.

Jaimy Gordon said something particularly memorable to me once. She was rightfully reacting to my frequent and strenuous complaints about sentimentality in the writing we were reading for workshop. She described a New Yorker cartoon in which a man is reading a book. As the panels progress, he gets more and more engaged, more and more distraught, more and more moved by what he's reading. But as we get to the last panel, we see him sitting in front of a typewriter, stoney faced with a ballon showing what he's typing - "what a load of sentimental bullshit" - or something similar.

I very much sympathise with that cartoon, because it's a process I find myself repeating very often. I remember even when I was much younger, when I watched Titanic in the cinema, how I wept while watching it - though to be accurate to what went on, there were personal aspects that led up to that event. Once it was over, of course I felt completely manipulated by filmmaking that's the equivalent of pushing an elevator button. Of course over the years I've come to understand at least in part how the percolation of a Marxian perspective very much assists in creating this odd sentiment. This dictates that we should always strive to be able to understand what is going on by looking at it from the outside rather than from the inside (to put it rather simplistically) - not inhabiting the emotion, but rather questioning why that emotion is evinced. This does not necessarily undercut the sincerity of all emotion per se - but it curses us to always question the nature of our being affected by something we watch or observe.

If we were to do a practical criticism, a close analysis, of why we are affected by the ending of great expectations - especially when we are in the courtroom with pip and magwitch and we understand there to be no "help or pity in all the world" - we would perhaps dissect with awe the way dickens constructs scene, uses language etc.

In a political context though, when the sentiments you have to put forward have to be repeatable (in a stump speech) or reproducible (in the sentimental medium that is television) or is in fact the translation and repetition of affections past - it is no less able to bring about emotion. But in the context of such a direct appeal to persuasion - to vote one way or another, rather than to simply nudge people towards a more nuanced understanding of how things are or a particularly focused world view - you question whether it really should be about emotion as a means of persuasion.

The more I think about it, the more I think persuasion should be about facts. About rationality. If you want to help poor people, the question is not how do we make people feel for poor people, it is what are the best policies to lift those people out of poverty. And unfortunately sometimes those policies can seem counterintuitive - like taxing the rich less. It might not make any conventional or emotional sense - certainly not as much as giving the poor money (though that's a good idea too, via the EITC) - but if it's borne out by the facts, how it feels shouldn't make a difference.

But I'm a sucker, whether Adeena would believe it or not, and I'm a sucker for a reality distortion field. That's why I'm emotionally entertained by Steve Jobs, and why I can't help but be emotionally entertained by Michelle Obama's speech.

But so what if you feel the pain of the common people? So what if you are "like them"? Will it stop you from enacting policies simply because you think they'll work and hope they'll work, rather than counterintuitive policies that smart people can measurably and verifiably tell you will work? Because I can never help but worry that Democrats are too soft-headed not to damn the people they are trying to help, just because they can't help themselves from giving in to what people want rather than standing up for what is in those people's long term best interests. You can try and protect people all you want from the pain of free trade and lost industry, but all you're doing is delaying and magnifying the inevitable, rather than doing the hard and radical work required to create a situation where the impact of these changes would be minimised.

Jaimy also helpfully points out that people have every right to be surprised when they find out I'm not an only child.

Much has been said, not least in the popular media and even in intelligent literate writing, that decries the goal of profit maximisation as the stated goal of industry. Just off the top of my head, I think of Michael Moore's Roger and Me, where he rails against the fact that profitable industries are still closing plants and moving manufacturing to countries other than the US in the 80s and 90s (a process that, as far as I'm aware is largely complete nowadays). But even more recently The Wire - or more specifically the introduction the the 5th season - talks about how with journalism and the funding of newsrooms, it wasn't that they weren't making profits, it's just that they weren't making enough profits.

I've come to realise this to be true: that profit maximisation indeed is not a sufficient means of defining what companies should strive for. But of course my objection has little to do with agreeing with the discourse I've cited, and more to do with explaining exactly why "profitable" companies still desire to make sometimes large and drastic changes.

Much of this has to do with my having been contacted by The Christman Group, an investment bank that has an internship opening that I'm hoping to fill. But the less said about that the better, I'm sure - I don't have unrealistic expectations. Suffice to say between recieving an e-mail that expressed interest in me and arranging a phone interview, I decided to do what any responsible job-seeker would - find out as much as possible about my potential employer. Aside from reading their President Richard Jackim's very accessible book "The $10 Trillion Opportunity," (I bought the e-book online) about their company's focus on Exit Planning for mostly privately held middle market companies, I was also looking at what seems to be the beginners bible of MBA finance, Brealey-Myers' Principles of Corporate Finance. 

Brealey-Myers makes an intriguing and really rather stunning assertion about the brief managers should recieve from shareholders - exactly that profit maximisation is not the most appropriate objective of professional managers. This is in part because profit maximisation as a principle is needlessly vague - it is not time specific, it does not say for what period profit is being maximised - whether this year, next year or 5 years hence, each perhaps at the expense of the other, or of other longer term periods of profit. It makes no sense to have one year have the largest profits imaginable at the expense of profits for the next ten years. Similarly owners do not want to sacrifice profits for the next ten years in the hope that at the end of that period there will be one year of huge profits.

The answer is Net Present Value. I find it a little difficult to explain in totality the concept of Net Present Value except mathematically, and I don't wish to go into too much detail - you can read the wikipedia article on it, and download a copy of Brealey-Meyers (isn't piracy grand?). But suffice it to say it is the beginners holy grail of corporate finance. The maximisation of Net Present Value argues that given the same level of risk, the return on investment of a given amount of capital must exceed what that same capital would earn through the capital markets (buying govenment securities or shares of similar risk as the investment), or else the investment cannot be justified since it does not create more value than the opportunity cost of capital.

I'll try and make that a little more concrete. When you have a given amount of money, and you don't do anything with it other than stuff it under your mattress, you are losing money. Not just because of inflation, that makes your money less valuable, but because you are not investing it in order to create more wealth. This investment is not "funny money" - on the contrary it is very real. Whenever you put money into capital markets, that is the money that business users borrow to fund their businesses - to make more and better widgets. It's the money that people borrow to buy a house or car. These are things those people couldn't otherwise do, and you are allowing them to get those things done, for which they are paying you back your investment plus interest. That return on investment is the base level at which someone who doesn't stuff their money under the mattress operates. If you have $100 and you do nothing with it, at the end of one year you have $100 (before inflation). If you put that $100 towards buying government securities that give a 7% return at the end of one year, at the end of one year, you have $107.

What maximising NPV argues is that if you are investing in something at the same level of risk as a govenment security, it needs to provide a return of more than 7% in order to be a rational decision. Otherwise you are not making as much money as you can given the level of risk. Put another way, you are taking on too much risk for too little reward - when the going rate of that risk is lower than that of your investment.

This brings me back to the beginning of this post, about why "profitable" companies may still move factories or streamline newsrooms. Because if you are only making the amount of profit equal or less than the amount of profit you could be making by investing in capital markets, you are not making a rational decision. For the level of risk of your endeavour, you need to be making more profit than you would otherwise be making, or you're putting in all that effort and still losing money compared to investing it.

Of course in the real world this becomes more and more complicated as more variables come in, but in general this is a useful guide in terms of how to make rational decisions regarding the allocation of capital. And the efficient allocation of capital is a good thing. Me saying why that is will have to wait for another post, but suffice to say anything less is just irrational.

Part of me just doesn't know where to begin. Just because I've become a Craigslist junkie looking for jobs, I stumbled on to this bullshit: 

Motivated Creative Solution Based Blogger

We're looking for motivated Blogger/partners with fresh ideas. We're well funded and will compensate. So feel free to explore www.bluegoosenews.com set up a profile. 

Before you send your resume please take some time and preview our site. Tell us how you can help take us to the next level. 

Thanks www.bluegoosenews.com

If you can't smell the horseshit yet, look around the site, realize how aimless and directionless it is, like any other cooperative farce, then realize why when you look at the meandering written-by-a-child "about" page:

Blue Goose is the town meeting of the digital age. It's an interactive warehouse of user-generated news and solutions where responsible citizens collaborate globally for a better tomorrow. Blue Goose creates the ultimate neighborhood one community at a time. It's where responsible citizens of the world share and discover the most powerful tool of all--collective common sense.

I'm sorry, but if you can manage to be several magnitudes less vague, Barack Obama can use you as a speechwriter. My only response to that (and especially their rather bizarre quoting of David Brooks, of all people), is this:

"Give me that which I want, and you shall have this which you want, is the meaning of every such offer; and it is in this manner that we obtain from one another the far greater part of those good offices which we stand in need of. It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker, that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest." 

"By pursuing his own interest, he frequently promotes that of the society more effectually than when he really intends to promote it. I have never known much good done by those who affected to trade for the public good."

Adam Smith, The Wealth of Nations.

I really don't know from where these garment-rending, cheeto-eating air-heads come from.

Getting things done requires direction. And I don't just say that because I'm a former Infantry Officer, but I am, and I'm right. But not only do these people not have any kind of direction other than a faffy notion of random do-goodery, they seem incapable of even categorizing a useful sense of the problems they wish to address. They have no heft in terms of having already attracted the mentorship or aegis of an existing useful organization, and they have no bonafides at all other than to have set up in their grandmother's basement somewhere.

Worse than that, the best they've been able to come up with is some odd kind of online panhandling, where people have "tipjars" - aside from the fact that "social entrepreneurs" should not be the equivalent of the guy behind the counter at a Starbucks, I fail to see the revenue model in hitting people up for money on the basis of hot air.

More to the point, these people are such amateurs and baseless nothings that they seem to have no notion at all about how professional their endeavour could be. This is how adults handle serious things, by actually bringing together people who know shit about shit. By which I mean something like the Copenhagen Consensus. Their about page is simple, direct and communicative, and their purpose is urgent, directive and practical:

The idea is simple, yet often neglected; when financial resources are limited, you need to prioritize the effort. Everyday policymakers to business leaders at all levels prioritize by investing in one project instead of another. However, instead of being based on facts, science, and calculations, the decisions are often made from political motives or the possibility of media coverage. The Copenhagen Consensus approach improves knowledge and gives an overview of research and facts within a given problem, which means that the prioritization is based on evidence.

Put simply, they identify what will do the most good for the least amount of money. Right now they argue that the thing to do is this:

Providing micronutrients for 80% of the 140 million children who lack essential vitamins in the form of vitamin A capsules and a course of zinc supplements would cost just $60 million per year, according to the analysis. More importantly, this action holds yearly benefits of more than $1 billion.

That is how you have the tiniest amount of effort perform an enormous amount of good. Rather than brushing cheeto-dust off your T-shirt and then taking a nap after. If they want a social network to show the good that is being done, then let them show the good of getting a return on investment that is unheard of in any other sector.

What annoys me the most is that they claim to be well funded. If someone sincerely wants to do some real good to some real effect, you don't have to look far to find the best ways to get it done. You want something to energize you? I've just given you one. Do something about it. But no, you'd rather whine and set up a talking shop of no use or consequence. I have no problem with entrepreneurial capital being wasted in pursuit of whatever, but to have it masquerade as wanting to do good is just in bad taste.

Somehow someone somewhere has to realise that the most successful of open-source efforts comes from a) having a clear mandate and direction as to principles and goals b) the engagement of people who know what the fuck they're doing, rather than the "there but for the grace of god" crowd of dilettantes who have nothing better to do than clasp at their chests as if anyone gave a damn.

Who funds this crap? No doubt voyeurs who love to watch other people masturbate - since that's what this is. Enough of a solution for you?

And so the weekend has really been a sort of lull. Any number of things that I could expand on, but we'll see if that happens. I think I'm going to have a moratorium on the writing plan. I just want to have some time not to think about it.

Just been watching more and more of Jon and Kate, which was initially traumatic, but which is now quite compelling. The hourlong format can be a little taxing. Planet Green has similarly been fun watching. A much more palatable form of remodelling shows.

Went to watch Wall-E. I with the crap bits weren't paired with some otherwise rather lovely filmaking. So much was so leaden.

Tomorrow is back to getting car bits looked at. But it'll be nice once my locks work again and my front squirter works. The MCA was fantastic and Jeff Koons was good fun.Will go to the smart home some time next week.

We bought a Fat Cell. Called Anna.

Still feeling some anxiety about the fact that my OPT card still hasn't arrived. If it's not here or there by tomorrow, it's going to get annoying. Also having to wait on parts for my car, which means waiting on how much it's all going to cost. Planning to go to the Jeff Koons exhibit at the MCA today. We'll see if it happens.

Cable modem got swapped out yesterday, hopefully that fixes things. I suppose there's a chance it could be the router, but then the phone would still work.

Was hoping to get interested in Wimbledon, but just found out Sharapova's been ousted. Ivanovic looks interesting though. Politics has been more boring than usual, if that's possible.

Cookie monster on Colbert was hilarious.

Can't seem to get past watching Family Guy, just downloaded Back to the Future in case I decide to watch it. Am halfway through Rosemary's Baby. Must find/queue up more features to watch. Tempted to watch Star Wars and Star Trek. But the discs are buried somewhere and I'm not in a digging mood. Feel silly downloading them again.

Am finding ways to make peace with utorrent's auto upload limit feature. Can't be bothered with links or pictures with this post, but may change my mind later. The anonymous online lit mag sounds interesting.

Now when I watch the Hulk (2003), I can't help but think of Kellie Wells (who I still secretly want to be my new best friend). If only because I mentioned it was my favorite Ang Lee film, and really how he would never make a film that was better than that. I stand by that, having watched it again.

I will say that James Schamus should just do Ang Lee the biggest favour and stop pretending he's any kind of a screenwriter. Some of his writing is so leaden it's not even true. That said, almost every other aspect of the film exudes a sense of detail and attention that is always synonymous with good cinema. The use of wipes and the editing between shots I must say is particularly well done, and the sense of rage you get from the Hulk is magnificent.

I remember reading how Ang Lee had to step in and take Eric Bana's place when modelling for the animatronics guys, so that it would come out right. There's nothing quite like the look of bliss on the Hulk's face when it's flying free through the air. Similarly him falling out of the sky when the F16 takes him up so high. It's as if the travesty that is Crouching Tiger never happened.

In comparison Iron Man is just the epitome of popcorn sales. Enough depth not to be entirely shallow, but no real rhetorical force whatsoever. Stuff in it is cool, but that is the extent of the experience. No ambition, no depth. With the Hulk, the psychological drama literally plays out as such. And if it weren't for James Schamus, it would have done so in a way that was much more subtle and pleasing, rather than being so very leaden at points. Oy with the expositional dialogue already.

I've said before, that if it's a film about family and responsibility, it's an Ang Lee film, and not always in a good way. But with the Hulk, all the heaviness of the subject matter seemed to dissipate, so that the treatment of family was pitch perfect rather than heavy handed. Nick Nolte is particularly good, and especially funny when he does his little mock jerking as if he were the Hulk in the final denouemont. The allegory of family in the film just plays out so much better than it does in say The Ice Storm (which I don't mind so much) or The Wedding Banquet (which is awful).

Oh, and Jennifer Connolly is lovely beyond measure. monkey and I used to refer to certain women as "nummy", but Jennifer Connolly we always talked about as "marriage material". Sigh. And I don't care what she says about Career Opportunities being the nadir of her career, I think it's a good film, and she's lovely in it.

So. Yes. That's why I'm not going near the new Hulk with a ten foot pole.

And at some time while I was posting my last few posts, I managed to join BlogBurst: 

I suppose I should be writing about the passing of Tim Russert, but instead I'm going to mention how much fun Million Dollar Password is. I've been liking Moment of Truth, but it's fun having celebrities and just the joy of winning money. Rachel Ray was fun, as was NPH (Neil Patrick Harris). Betty White was surprisingly good fun. But hearing how damaged people are is also okay.

I'd love to go on that show and just not give a fuck about what's revealed - similarly with whoever's in the audience. You're fine as long as you can stand the boos of the (oddly judgemental) crowd. And as long as you know how polygraphs work. Though they seem to be less keen on tripping people up this season with ambiguous questions. 

Whenever I'm productive in some way, I always think about Dead Like Me (now cancelled, though apparently there's to be a straight to DVD movie), Delores Herbig (as in, Her Big Brown Eyes), and "Getting Things Done". That Millie was too much a laggard to stay on. Went to Target and exchanged the trash bags for the ones without odorshield, since it comes (apparently) with some kind of dusty residue. Got more Diet Root Beer via A&W. I wish I could get vats from The Port Drive-In, but some other time perhaps.

It's all about having gotten the wonderful Jokari Soda Dispenser, that makes 2 liter bottles fun again. As long as when you first get the dispenser you flatten it out so it doesn't curl up. I put it under a wooden chopping board.

Since I was at Target, I went to get water from Costco and had hot dogs and a churro. Also moved over to new shampoo, body wash and facial cleanser in an effort to get these things in a convenient yet reliable supply. I also like being able to buy off the shelf, rather than having to special order these things. Luckily Cetaphil sells a scentless facial cleanser.

Since I was up north, I went to the post office and mailed the remote control to Marty, the Interfolio thing to the Transcript clerk at Western and the disc for Digital Imaging Suite to Mark. Though I maintain that he's probably better off with the (absolutely free) Irfanview if he wants to view and do simple editing of images.

Since I was there, I went to Dinkels and bought pastries, Since I was driving back from Dinkels, I bought Boston Market for monkey. I have to plan ways not to get back till 3pm, since that's when permit parking starts. Otherwise there's not a spot for me and I get cranky.

So. Yes. This is what I'm doing instead of any kind of useful writing. I'm tempted to start on something just for it not to be what I'm currently working on.

Internet connection being fixed is a wonderful thing. I should try and max it out when I'm back from Kalamazoo. Me and my clandestine mission.

Turns out the digital camera that I thought had been stolen from my car? That I could have sworn I had brought to Singapore? Opened my luggage just now, there it is. Win already.

Opera has a new default skin. I wasn't so sure about it, but it's very much a Vista default skin, which works out find on the desktop. I think I'm going to stick with a native Windows skin on my laptop.

Sent my lovely IKEA ergonomic chair to have the fabric fixed up. May be going to that dry cleaners significantly more. I should find something to put underneath my printer to the paper tray doesn't drag on the carpet.

Once Arnie's letter gets to my Folio service, I can go apply for the Wright College adjunct thing. For a moment I wondered if economies of scale demanded I teach at least 2 sections, but then it struck me that I would then have to mark for 2 sections. We'll see.

Finally bit the bullet and installed SP1 on my Dell. All seems fine, as far as I can tell. Don't really want to think about packing in any significant way. I'm sure we'll make leaving by one. I should give the Port Drive-In a call to make sure they're open.

Added another Vertical Skyscraper Ad to my secondary column. When you have a history of posts stretching down to the bottom, there's just not a reason not to. Am going to have to return to Target and exhange the trash bags for those without Odorshield.