My letter in the Mercury…

“Hands up how many of us foresaw the Henry Boot deal falling through and “other less ambitious proposals” being considered, eventually.?
Perhaps I am psychic. I predicted the Mace deal going off the rails and now I have predicted the Henry Boot plans failing. Maybe I should get a job on television, move over Derren Brown.
 
In all seriousness though, what was Mr Ap Rees and his motley crew over in the Council thinking.? Well over a decade of nothing, deadlines being put back again and AGAIN and everything comes crashing down at the end. This whole debacle is the economic equivalent of throwing balls at a coconut that is nailed to a pole, perhaps sense will prevail in the near future and someone will fill the place with water and stick a roof on the top.
 
I am still baffled by the blinkered nature of our mighty leaders with regards to this matter, even my pet rabbit could have seen this result coming. Might I suggest the Council hire a new cleaner, their crystal ball appears to be dusty.”

Fluffy Bunny, News at Ten, Weston-super-Mare

Well it’s hello from me… and hello from him. So nice to have a split personality is it not? Yes? Good, then I have instantly doubled my reader base. Anyway, enough of that shite…

…I have rediscovered two things this week.

Firstly I have been listening to the delightful Brothers In Arms album from one of the all time greats, Mark Knophler and Dire Straits. Released back in 1985 it contained the first CGI video (for the Money for Nothing track) and gave them their highest ever chart hit (Walk of Life). As usual it is the less commercial tracks I focus on and aside from the sublime Brothers in Arms (which almost makes me want to sob for past memories, both my own and imagined, everytime I hear it) it’s Your Latest Trick that bounces in with a wailing saxophone and plenty of soul. Hearing it after a good few years, properly end to end at least, did prick up my ears to a few of the little elements I had never realised were there though. The slap bassline is straight from the mid 80s and familiar to those of you who enjoy the work of Japan (the band not the little dudes blowing up American battleships). Also the unlikely, I think, influence of reggae makes itself known here too…

…maybe that isn’t so odd as the ska movement was just beginning to fade out and reggae was becoming it’s replacement as the 80s moved on.  Regardless of my feelings, if you haven’t heard the album for a while, or ever, then go and bloody well hear it.! Try out the other albums as well, plus his solo work.!

Secondly I rediscovered my love of kippers. Smoked fish is bloody marvellous. Not something to be eaten before going out though, unless you desire smelling like a lesbian with a forty a day habit.

The Tropicana deal has failed. Again.  Hands up who couldn’t see that coming… *looks around* ah Mr Ap Rees and your other fellow “cunt”cillors, well done. Have this award I have suddenly came up with… it is called the David Blunkett Award For Not Seeing Anything. Ever.

COME OOOOOON, I mean, how bloody obvious does it have to be to these esteemed persons.?? I sent a snotty mail to MACE when they pulled out asking why the hell they bothered, no reply came back, I can only assume it was the faeces smeared across the letter in lieu of a signature. I wanted to know why any respectable company would tit a community around for so long. As soon as Henry Boot (wish we had told them to shoe… sorry) arrived on the scene it was like MACE had run off, put on a false moustache and come back again and what happens…?

…the “cunt”cil bends over, lowers it’s trousers and bellows “MORE PLEASE” through gleeful teeth.  How come little old Fluffy Bunny, underpaid, overworked, retail team leader with no real qualifications, can spot the one chilli in the box of chocolates but a group of men and women paid to make decisions and with far more life experience than my tender, young self seem unable to give birth to the concept that a large company that is only interested in filling it’s bulging cheeks with all the nuts in the forest might grab all the nuts and then order a pizza and a curry at the expense of the people “employing” it. I can only assume that the whole band of bloody fools is sat around a table, stoned off their collective tits and the smoke rising from their many reefers, bongs and pipes is obscuring their view. They also seem to forget they are dealing with a development company… and they are generally as honest and truthful as a bag of lawyers covered in a Tony Blair sauce.

It’s bloomin’ crazy.! Maybe now they will build something that WE in Weston actually want and not some 83 story monolithic slab of concrete that would be more at home in Stalingrad during the 1920s that is designed to squeeze out as much revenue as possible for the “cunt”cil like a well baked turd from a dockers backside. Ap Rees (a man who has now taken over the Crockford-Hawley mantra “As welcome as dysentry in a rowing boat”) has said they will now “entertain smaller ideas” in other words ‘I am sorry we couldn’t build a hotel that looked like a multi-story car park, but now we can bulldoze it and replace it with a new building so scag heads and pissed up Londoners who have failed rehab can hang out somewhere new and clear the town centre’.

I am just watching Jeremy Kyle (and talking of the aforementioned ladies who dine at the Y) there is a 17 year old girl who is trapped in a girl’s body and wants to be a boy. I was trapped in a 17 year old’s body once… but a little Vaseline helped me out.

Bye all.!

Saturday the 31st of October marked the end of a special era in Weston. Hobbits, the most homely and friendly nightclub I have ever had the joy to enter, closed for the final time.

It was back in 1995 that myself and a few college mates first popped into the Richmond Street original place (where Liquid Lounge is now, interestingly the former home for the reception office of the transatlantic cable) and got used to the small club, legendary sticky floor and dim lighting. Sounds awful but that was exactly what made it great. Saturday nights were always packed so you had no choice but to meet new people as you brushed up against them in the queue for the bar or to request a song from the DJ (ah the days of Born Slippy, Alanis Morrisette, The Fugees). I spent my 18th birthday in there, mostly so drunk I was sat on the dancefloor trying to get the music out of my head, but it was still brilliant.

At one point we were in there EVERY night it was open (all week save for Monday I think) and it would just be a few of us, dancing like loons to old Britpop numbers. It still felt like home after the few months I didn’t go there during 1999 and the last time I went through those doors and up those stairs back in 2001, two weeks before it closed, it was still home. The music was still great, the people still friendly, the trouble that infested other clubs rare if at all apparent.

So then I was introduced to the new Hobbits thanks to Sexy Dave. I was so fed up of places like Time and Voltz but didn’t know anyone who went to Hobbits anymore. Thankfully Mr Matthews did and one night I appeared, he made me welcome, introduced me to a lot of people and suddenly I was home again. I belonged somewhere.  I wasn’t constantly looking over my shoulder wondering which tracksuited buffoon would wonder if I was looking at his badly tanned, underdressed, whore first. I could dance, drink and be merry among a group of people who were genuinely nice. Was fun to be popular for a bit too.

And now it has ended. Saturday night was great. I have never stayed so late in a club and I was so tired I just missed the last few minutes but I was there for the last time… and it will never be the same. I am glad I have so many photos over the past few years that I didn’t have from the first club, it will be a lasting memory to an important era in my life and so I would like to say thank you… to Hobbits, to that dance floor which I often covered in beer whilst swinging around madly, to that bar where I stood and waved money in return for strong liquer which I saw again later, to those badly lit toilets and doing my eye liner in the reflection in the sink, to the VIG area pre-refurb and watching bad horror films and Saddam’s execution on TV, to the chairs where I stood with Dave and Andy Moss reviewing the people on the dance floor, to the stage which I helped pack away so I could get on with that dancing thing…

to Mark (keep getting better mate, you are doing a wonderful job and thanks for the bat SO much), Mark, Emma W, Helen, Mike, Dom, Magna, Derrik, Baz, Tony, Colin, Paul, Pete, Merv and all the staff who made the place like it was and to all the people I met, let me see how long I can make this list (and in no particular order)…

…Hwang, Chilli, Pouty and Stu, my Dear Brother – Paul, Christina and Rich, Mike and Harry, Ben D, Joe D, Joe A, Carl W, Rose B, , Angel, Jim, Emma D, Giles, Paul, Jade, Monkey, Sexy Dave, Marie, Dave V, Sam U, Beth L, Hally, Stacey, Justine, Kryssa, Andy M, Zoe, Craig, Charlie, Charmian, Chris R, Matt H, Ria, Andy, Kate B, Kate S, Sarah H and Mark P, Nat B and Rich, Russ and Robyn, Mel H, Miss Lily Rogers, Jamie L, Katie B, Mark H and Hannah C, Lemony, Caz, Justin, Matt, Brownie, Blondie (and all her friends), Mr Cheek,  Dory, Alex K, Bluey, Bugsy, Keith and Becca, Jon R, Colin, Kitten, Katie, Lil Oddy, Brem, Emma H, Emma D, Lexi, Danny H, James, Chris and Kate, Chris S, Terri and Terri, Gay Dan, Hannah, Baz, Sam S, Doc Robbins, Thongy, Kev, Dave C and Natalie, Adam W and Ginge, Lorna W, Claire ‘T’, Rachel W, Neil, Del, Flea and Claire, Lindsay T, Gem, Row, Nick, Lovechild, Bob G, Monkey Boy Jim, Seb, Neil, Dan R, Wayne, Sarah H, Stephage, Nay, Pugs and anyone I have missed…

… you all made those times when Hobbits could have been so like everywhere else, like NO WHERE ELSE.

Hobbits, you are not gone, merely closed until “tomorrow”.

They say that in the kingdom of the blind, the one eyed man is king. Well if that is true then I am assuming the old guy who can just about hear what I say to him must be head of the deaf section. Hold on, does that mean Heather Mills would be in command over Douglas Bader.?? That can’t be right.  Mr gran danced with him your know… after he had the fake ones fitted I believe. Brilliant claim to fame there.

Well it is Wednesday, a day when I go home at three in the afternoon having started at seven, a day when I generally share my bus ride home with students from Weston College (oh… yay… brilliant… a bit like sharing a bus with the workforce of The Sun if you follow me) oh half term saved me this week and a day when I normally like to spend the later hours stuffing shrews into little socks so they can sleep warmly through the winter. This afternoon I have, however, been running a slightly squeaky Class 50 backwards and forwards testing the facing sidings on the new layout. All is well so far, operation testing will follow.

Did you all enjoy the blog from yesterday, was one of those that keeps me giggling despite having written it myself. Does make you wonder when you are around town and get a whiff of something that might not be eggs, I certainly had my eyes open and my nostrils flared for trouser gas in the High Street… all I got was that weird pong as I wandered past Poundland. Lovely.

The Halloween costume has now arrived and I shall be wondering for the next two days how I can adorn it… it isn’t scary, unless you are about 5 and rather religious. Hehe. Oooooh, just had an idea… BRILLIANT Fluffy Bunny… BRILLIIAAANNNNT. Ahem, ignore me, I had a suddenly flash of inspiration. We shall see where this goes.

And finally…

Amy Winehouse. New tits. Polishing a turd.? The photos of her look like someone has taken Scooby Doo and stuck two chocolate bombes (what is the ASCII code for an accent on that letter ‘e’?) on the front of the poor mutt. And $35,000 what the hell was she thinking. I could have got a twelve inch cock for half that price. Actually I could get one for free…

…just need to fold mine in half. Bye all.!

Previously on stitchingbastards….

“No, you don’t know me. You are not my mother”… “YES I AM”. (Thanks to Jordan and her dribbling cunt for that excerpt from history).

Now on stitchingbastards, Jeremy Bloody Kyle. New heights have been hit today as “1000 Million Percent” was a phrase repeatedly bandied about. Words fail me, although the massive daughter like blob on stage in the first ten minutes almost made me retch up my spaghetti and things. Whatever next.!?

The world is a slightly colder place thanks to the clocks going back Sunday morning. Was nice to gain the hour, I needed it after all that dirty beer, but gaining three or four hours would have been nicer. I am getting used to leaving work in the pitch black darkness and wondering why I feel like a hooker whilst I stand waiting for a lift home.! Welcome to our humble Bordello Mr Theakston.

Talking about breaking wind in the palaces of the mighty… How come women can get away with dropping a bad ‘un in public and looking sweet and innocent as a green miasma slowly envelopes the room.? Sometimes it is impossible to “keep it all in”, as the Beautiful South once described in rhyme, and allowing that lovely bubble to escape is all the body needs to relax and continue it’s daily deeds. Trouble is, if I am stood in the bank in a queue and last night’s salami and picalilli sandwich decides it wants to reiterate it’s own existence, well who am I to stand in the way with clenched buttocks and sweating face…

… I want to wink at the smug little cunt in the pricey suit who works a fraction as hard as I do for eight times the pay and then drop a daisy cutter that makes his teeth ache AND smells like someone has gutted a fish using a frozen razor sharp dog turd. I want to be able to watch every customer of the Sandwich Bar start retching into their assorted handbags and lunch plates as my bottom plays a brief tattoo and then issues a smell like Ghandi has died and been sieved through a wet horse.

I could never get away with it though. Sitting on a bus and slipping one out behind the cushion would result in me getting an ear full of shopping from some elderly woman with a face like a jar of mincemeat because I am male and as such “a dirty git”. Not true at all, I try very hard to be polite and mannersome with regard to my fellow customers/workers/passengers/people who are trying to see through a fence into a nudist colony. But if I was pretty of face, long of hair, big of bust… oh and female then I could drop my guts with the force of three H-bombs and then look accusingly at the nearest man before tutting with disgust and rolling my eyes and BINGO instant gas transfer and muttered comments as I sit there wallowing in my self-flatulence and savouring the flavour of an air biscuit that resembles someone walking through a marsh whilst eating pickled spinach.

All I want is a little parity. Frequently at work I am on a till and serving a lady who then walks away and leaves behind something that cannot be seen, only smelt (and tasted alarmingly). Now I know who dealt it (despite having smelt it, etc) but the next person who wanders up to my counter and wonders if I have been rebuilding a minature model of a German gas chamber underneath the till, I GET THE BLAME. I cannot then say “sorry, that thing you smell is neither me, nor that wildly haired, trampy chap by the door, it is the feculance of the charming 18 year old currently wandering over to the collection point with the short skirt and bikini top on”. Imagine the looks I would get.!

Besides, the female of the species only admits to farting when they are either drunk or in a long term relationship, the latter being the worst time of course as you find your darling missus turns into the human equivalent of a jet engine fuelled by cows as she sleeps. Having been with a girl who once woke me up as she slept (and woke herself up as well) simply by parping like the horn of a 44tonne truck (and then getting that fruity waft moving in a northerly direction too) I am well used to a sudden change as sleep takes hold.

Ok, enough of the chuffing gags, I am just watching Come Dine With Me (series 4 episode 17) and having an Indian woman whinging about soup on screen at me saying “I like things to be done properly”, apparently it didn’t refer to her learning to talk English properly, I shall leave you there and no she wasn’t Red Indian.

See you all Saturday for the final flourish.!?!

(and thanks to Miss Rogers for today’s title).

Welcome to my day off. Thursday. Just two weekends of Hobbits left. I have to admit I am looking forward to Saturday night, should be interesting and fun, camera at the ready of course.

Despite the rumours I shall not be appearing on Question Time tonight, that is in fact BNP leader, Nick Griffin. Good on the guy, getting on television with his diatribes and ducking eggs, I just think he would be more at home on the Radio. How about as a guest presenter on Radio One Extra… or appearing live on stage with ex 1994 hit makers China Black.

I saw a photo of Mr Gately’s funeral. Obviously Ronan was carrying that coffin on his own, the other three of Boyzone just propping him up as usual. Ahem.

A HUGE well done to a Mr J. Button of Frome, Somerset for his greatly deserved win in a very exciting Brazilian Grand Prix on Sunday. Second Brit F1 champion in two years, a feat last performed in 1965 when Jim Clark took over from John Surtees (actually in the years 1962 to 1965 it was British guys all the way, Graham Hill joining in the fun as well). Compared to last year and the final 35 seconds of the season deciding it all it seemed a little staid and boring, even though it certainly wasn’t. Thanks to a great tussle with Rubino and The Ham it was settled earlier in the race as the Brazilian gained a puncture from an end plate and went from second to eighth in a pit stop.

Can you imagine how annoyed the Brazilians are with Hamilton now.??? He took the championship off a Brazilian in the last half minute of 2008 and then assists another Englander to the championship by accidentally removing ANOTHER Brazilian from a good position in a Brazilian race. Cripes, I wouldn’t have liked to have been driving him to Sao Paulo airport without a bullet proof car. Not Lewis’s fault at all though, great racing all round and a great drive from him to grab third from EIGHTEENTH on that wet qualifying grid.

I am bitterly swallowing the pill from my blog at the start of the year saying just how bad Button was. Bugger, but oh well, this time I am happy to have been so very, very wrong.

On the subject of cars, a new survey shows that kids in deprived areas get run over by vehicles more. I could have told you that without spending a single quid on research. The ones who generally get run over more are the ones with bad parents who are stupid and have passed on those stupid genes to their offspring or who are swaggering chavs who have produced children who are so arrogant that they believe laws don’t apply to them. Unfortunately it is generally the laws of physics which do apply as they are mown down by a passing Ford Fiesta with big plastic bumpers. It’s a bit like that woman and her very lucky baby on that Australian railway station. Too dopey to even concentrate and put the brake on her buggy and he rolled onto the tracks. Well there is natural selection again, doing it’s work.

In the same vein it appears we could save 80 lives a year by not putting the clocks back (oh yes, extra hour of clubbing on Saturday).! I don’t want to save 80 lives a year if they all tend to be cyclists too dumb to apply two small lights to their bikes and obey traffic lights. Fuck ‘em. All of ‘em.

And that is it for today, I am off to reiterate to Weston that shouting PILE ON near a mental home is never a good thing. See you all Saturday one hopes.!

Good evening mein little stoats. What’s going on here then.? Not much I hear you cry.?? Well allow me to change all that and have a good read of my bumblings and fumblings about the world and all it’s contents.

First off.. Mr Gately… awww. Oh well. (Oh come on… a dead, Irish,  gay singer, it just isn’t worth even bothering).

Secondly… Hobbits. My favourite night club and haunt for the best part of 15 years is to close on the 31st of October. Well that is NO good at all. Where in hell can we go now.? The choices are… Cabot (full most Saturdays with the underclass and tossers), Seven (way too pricey and far too mainstream), Density (sic) (oh come on… no way Pedro) and DBs (errr much as I like the idea of Hobbits four years ago in another building, the music is usually awful, it is the nightclub equivalent of Facebook and I detest some of the skanks that visit that corridor of a club). So it would appear, with the loss of Phoenix as well, that there is now no where to go. Bugger. It’s going to be such a sad occasion.!!! So many memories in there. Sigh.

Thirdly, I started writing this about two weeks ago and didn’t get round to it so now read on….

Sat here listening to “This is a Low” from the Blur “Girls and Boys” album has made me wonder something… actually it isn’t just that it was something a mate said at work whilst listening to Genesis bawling out “Invisible Touch”. We both agreed that music no longer has the quality it once did. No longer do you hear songs that blow you away and cause you to leave this world for another… let me explain.

Name a song written in the last decade that has all the elements of a classic bit of music. The nearest I can get is Umbrella by Rihanna (it’s catchy, it has a certain ’soul’ to it, it had the longevity on the chart and still hasn’t pissed me off). Actually throw in Dare by the Gorillaz instead, that is even better, not totally proving my point am I but that is just two songs in the past ten years (well since the end of 1999 as from that year I can think of so many great tracks and from any year before that but it just seems like 2000 was a cut off point where the good music had to relent and the bad stuff floated to the top and just wouldn’t flush).

People are instantly going to read this and go “Ooooh that Fluffy Bunny is getting old, music isn’t the same anymore” but I like to think I am in context here. I can look back at music from 1940 to now and in those 65 years why has the passion disappeared so suddenly from our music. Yes there are plenty of decent bands out there but it seems like no one gives a toss how awful an artist can be and still reside in a career within music when their calling is more obviously in fellating hippos, cleaning the sludge out of sewage pipes or shaving Kerry Katona’s massively fat, cocaine riddled anus.

Oh it is all just bloody awful.  Makes me want to repeatedly bang my head against my desk but I would worry someone from Simon Cowell’s production company would hear it and pop in to offer me a ten album deal and a chance to bum Louis Walsh. Tch.

Oh and the two girls on Monday’s Jeremy Kyle show were possibly two of the UGLIEST slags I have ever clapped eyes on. Imagine if you got a pig… and threw it at great speed into another pig, then set the bleeding, bacon flavoured mess on fire and placed a couple of wigs on the inferno. No, actually picture in your mind a wall. Now picture my good self flinging assorted offal and dog shit at the brickwork whilst constantly projectile vomiting a mixture of Milk of  Magnesia and Danish Blue cheese sauce over it. Now draw a face in it with a stick coated in the daily drippings of Chris Moyles’ pants. There we go.

Well I am off for dinner. Yummy… oooh blue cheese and dogshit on toast. Lovely.

Oh… and the other day I was merrily looking out of my work window down at the street below when two smartly dressed police officers wandered along the pavement towards the High Street. As they happily yabbered between themselves I noticed a mobile phone appeared in one of their hands. Luckily my view included the webpage currently loaded on that phone… Facebook. Brilliant. Imagine the status updates… “PC Brewster is currently shagging a vulnerable woman without telling the Sarge and WPC Latimer is holding his helmet”.

Just a quick one… whilst browsing the remarkably amusing Texts From Last Night website I found this advertising side banner…

So apparently the new autumn look in the USA is dressed like a cunt. Or like a six year old who has suffered a “Lynx advert” style collision with Screech from Saved By The Bell. Surely this guy knows he has been dolled up to look like a complete anus but I await the moment I walk in Hobbits or DBs and SOME tosspot is dressed like this. Was bad enough being in the same room as some guy dressed as bloody Dappy from NDubz the other week.

Flippin’ Heck.!

A quick one… I had to get a train today… can you tell.?

“Dear First ‘Great’ Western
Could you please explain in simple terms why, when I went to Weston-super-Mare station this morning, was I confronted by a train fare of £12.20 for a normal day return ticket to Taunton for the 9am train.? I was informed by a very nice lady behind the glass that if I caught the 09.33 departure then it would only be £6.80, which is weird as the cattle truck class 143 is the same type of unit that runs both services and the journey is not lengthened by 30miles due to a time-space wormhole requiring a detour via Stroud. The nice lady behind the glass also agreed it was ridiculous but unfortunately rules are rules (no matter how stupid and profiteering they maybe).

As it was, the 9am train was late by four minutes so technically was off peak and for this I would like to claim back my difference of £5.40 which I could put to good use using your overpriced bus “Service” around Weston. So I will be invoicing you for that £5.40 difference and also an administrative charge of £10 for having to type this email (as well as the wear on my teeth as they did rather grate together as I typed my PIN into your ticket machine at 08.45). I simply cannot understand why you should throw almost DOUBLE the price on a ticket on top of a fare to make a few more quid just to allow another of your managers to buy another Lexus. 

We are trying to get people to USE public transport but as a company you are almost singlehandedly (in Weston-super-Mare at least) making people buy more cars and stick two fingers up to everything with the word FIRST on the side.

(On the way back I had to stand due to the lack of room on one of Arriva’s overcrowded and pointless Voyagers but that is another email and another day.)

Thanks for listening, the invoice is in the post, along with a small furry rodent which comes free with every awful rail journey I make. You must have quite a collection there by now.!”

Cheers then.!
Fluffy Bunny.

Welcome back to the Really Wild Show. My name is Terry Nutkins and today I will be slipping two fingers in Michaela Strachan and rubbing goose fat into the loins of Chris Packham all whilst pretending to still be on Animal Magic with Jonny Morris.

On the other hand it may be me… Fluffius of Bunnicus with my large ears and bouncy tail bounding into your life to entertain you and talk shite for about ten minutes. Always nice to think I am wasting your life as well as my own.! Now what to waffle about today.?

Well top of the pops has to be the sad demise of Mr Floyd (I won’t be touching on Patrick Swayze, very sad though that is, I was never a fan and I have nowt to say on him). My lasting memory of a great character of our time will always be lying in bed on a Saturday morning in Bath, watching Saturday Kitchen and him swanning around the world, cooking in weird places and always with that bloody glass of red wine. I have cooked some of his recipes and they are totally delicious, the world has lost a fine god of food.

Moving swiftly on… I see the bulldozers are due into the Tropicana sometime in March of 2010. Oh really.? Well this will either go one of two ways obviously. In the first instance the “cunt”cil will allow them to demolish the building and Henry Boot will suddenly disappear into the swirling fog quicker than Jordan chasing after a new book deal. Or those bulldozers won’t actually arrive in the first place and the Tropicana will slowly crumble into the sea and be replaced by sand and a little blue plaque that says “Here once stood the Tropicana, don’t bother remembering it, the “cunt”cil never did”. Tosspots, EVERY ONE OF THEM, and Henry Boot can fuck off as well.

Next on the list comes the Government’s (I can’t work any swearing into that word, someone help me please.!) idea to increase the CRB checking to EVERY SINGLE PERSON who will ever come into contact with a child. So if you drive your child to school and occasionally give his best friend a lift too, then you will be CRB checked. If you aren’t and you are caught then hello five grand fine.

Seriously.! Words fail me. For once there is nothing I need to add to that. Incredible.

I am off to sort out my wood and maybe start laying some track. Enjoy.!