I'm Off

Things may (or may not -- I'm bringing the MacBook) get a little quiet around here for a couple of days.

I'm going to attend my 25th class reunion at Kenyon Kollege, traveling tomorrow, coming home Sunday. I'm going alone; when I broached the topic of attendance with Wonder Woman (an alumna; we met and fell in love there), she pointed out that the kiddoes have their final exams this week, and that somebody needs to crack the whip on that. With no detectable malice in her voice, she waved and said, "Have a good time!"

Fellow Chump of Choice Will Divide (hey! Guess what! That's not his real name!) is a fraternity brother, although I've never met him -- he graduated the year I matriculated. He'll be there, and I'm very much looking forward to finally meeting him.

I checked the list of my classmates who've registered. One name in particular stood out -- somebody I've always wished I'd smashed his lights out back in 1978, '79, and again in 1981. I will have a very hard time being in the same room with him, having relived the memory over and again of the casual assholery he was wont to display. (JC, remember TW?)

As an adult, I've become rather less fearless than I was as a callow youth. I'm now far more willing to call an asshole an asshole. I do hope our paths don't cross.

Other than that, I'm rather looking forward to this. I may post some photos of the campus -- it is unspeakably pretty.

That photo above is of Old Kenyon, a building I was privileged to occupy for two years. There is an acoustic tile ceiling in the third-floor bathroom that, if pushed, affords access to the ordinarily locked bell-tower. A tale that still makes me laugh 26 years later is inherent in that fact. There are two people in the world who will laugh with me at that observation, and at least one of them is registered for this reunion.

That's why I'm looking forward to this.

Chicken of the Sea for Horses of the Meadow

A haymeadow near my home (click photo to enlarge). I think it's a wonderfully surreal sight, all these cans of tuna strewn higgledy-piggledy about this bucolic landscape.

I've never been able to take a photo of Short Hill that makes it look as big as it actually is.

One

This summary is not available. Please click here to view the post.

Why We Always Keep Our Shovel Collection Up to Date

Been a bit of a deathy year chez Jingo.

Not only did we lose Wonder Woman's dad, but BB the budgie and Zippy the guinea pig also went the way of all flesh, within a few weeks of each other this winter.

The deaths of these pets were not exactly earth-shattering. You don't get much love back from a guinea pig or a caged bird. Zippy lost most of my affection when he bit me repeatedly years ago while I was holding him and trying to make friends. The kids, whose pets these originally were, didn't take care of them, and the task of feeding them and changing their cages fell to Wonder Woman, who, I think, mainly regarded them as a minor pain in the ass.

BB was the first to go. He'd had a tumor under his wing, and it was only a matter of time. Now, when a budgie shuffles off this mortal coil, custom dictates that one gather the family at the graveside, say a few words of remembrance, perhaps a few (in our case) secular ceremonial words, and shovel the dirt back into the hole. This is, I suppose, in aid of attaining what the funeral industry is pleased to call closure.

Now, I think that if one of our dogs had died, we -- and the surviving dog -- would have been absolutely gutted. I'm typing this now on our bed, Wondie is napping next to me, and both pups are curled up between us. They are without question beloved members of our family, as much our children as our human offspring.

But BB and Zippy -- not so much. So these burial rituals were, how to put it, deferred. It was cold out, the ground was hard, and we had more pressing things to attend to. Wonder Woman respectfully wrapped their corpses in old towels, and preserved the mortal remains as they do at any morgue -- she put them in the freezer, to be taken out and buried with full honors when the weather warmed.

Now it's not our kitchen freezer she put them in. Please understand this. That would be gross. No, she put them in our second freezer, which we have in the garage. We keep no food in there, only extra ice and a bottle or two of medicinal vodka. I do use the freezer to store the summer's crop of fruits, but it's all bagged and sealed shut. No corpse/cherry contact took place.

In the lower part of the unit, the refrigerator section, we keep bottled water, extra milk, and beer. Last week, I noticed that a beer (a Sam Adams Summer Ale for those keeping score) that I'd brought in to have with dinner was not nearly as cold as I'd like it to be. Semi-tepid, 's what it was. Next I noticed that the cherries, which I'd pitted and frozen with sugar-syrup for use in pies and the like, had begun to show signs of thawing. A few days ago, when I opened the freezer to consult that bottle of vodka (I had a bad case of the dropsy, accompanied with the blistering marthambles, and any practitioner of medicine would have prescribed the very same thing), I noticed...a smell.

Oh. Dear. God.

Now you remember that broken shovel from earlier this week? That was my only tool for breaking ground; the next best thing I have is a gardening trowel, and it would be like trying to pole-vault with a toothpick to try to dig a grave with it. So today found me at the hardware store replacing that shovel. The instant I returned home, I raced with the new shovel to the orchard, picked a nice shady spot, and dug two holes a foot or two deep. Then I donned latex gloves, took the soggy packages out of the now nearly completely moribund freezer, walked quickly but calmly to the graves, and performed the Sacred Ritual: "GoodbyeBBandZippyyouwerenicefriends and I'M REALLY SORRY!"

So that's why, when your shovel breaks, you replace it immediately. One of life's lessons.

We're also shopping for a new fridge. Anybody know where I can get a flamethrower to sterilize the old one?

A Moral Dilemma Presents Itself

Weirdest thing happened this afternoon.

I'm sitting at my desk, squirreling away at some technical documentation. My cell phone rings.

This pretty much never happens. The cell is for emergencies and for telling Wonder Woman
I'm going to be late for dinner. I've given my cell number to about four people outside my immediate family. I've always detested the idea that I can be immediately reachable at any moment. One values one's privacy.

The display shows an unfamiliar but local number. I answer.

A recording begins:

"You have a collect call from [at this point a burst of unintelligible static is played] at the Loudoun County Jail. To accept this call, press one. To hear the fee for accepting this call, press two."

Whaaa...?

Somebody who has my cell phone number is in jail?

I ran down the list of people who know my number. The likelihood of any of them being in chokey at two o'clock on a Thursday afternoon is vanishingly small.

What to do? What to do? If the caller had been a little more clear in identifying himself (the voice was, if garbled, at least definitely male), I might have been able to make an informed decision.

I pressed two, to hear what accepting the call would set me back. Fifty cents, according to the recording.

So I was faced with the dilemma: Four bits to tell some hapless miscreant he'd called the wrong number -- perhaps even wasted the one phone call Hollywood has convinced us is all you get when you're busted? Or hang up?

And if I hung up, would the goober at the other end think that whoever he thought he was dialing wouldn't even accept the piddling charge it took to inform the Outside World that he'd been nabbed by John Law?

After a moment's consideration, I hung up. I reckoned that if the Hapless M. really needed to talk to me, he'd call back.

The phone didn't ring again.

Later edit: Scam. Thanks, J.

Why Yes, I Am Checking Out Your Ass, Part II

Weekend Fashion Advice for the Ladies from the Heterosexual Male

As we steam into Memorial Day Weekend and the official start of summer, it's time to make the following pronouncement, as an act of Public Service:

No woman -- that's no woman in all of human history -- has ever looked bad in a flouncy knee-length flower-print skirt and strappy wedge-heeled rope-soled sandals.

Not a single one. You can look it up.

There She Goes

This is the image I have set as my desktop on my monitor in my little recording studio. When you're working on a particularly tricky guitar part, or trying sing something in tune, it's great to look up and find Johnny Cash expressing his admiration for your efforts right in your face.

Johnny's digit was particularly erect last night as I was putting the finishing touches on a new recording. I've mentioned having borrowed a Rickenbacker 360-12 from a neighbor, and I'd wanted to do some serious jangling in a hurry. I wasted a couple of weeks on a version of XTC's "Mayor of Simpleton," but became unimpressed with my bass playing and knocked it on the head. Maybe I'll pick it back up again, maybe not.

A few days ago in the grocery store, the house PA squirted out a favorite old chestnut that I hadn't heard in eons. (Yes, I get most of my music-appreciation done while shopping for milk and bread these days.) It immediately became blisteringly self-evident that this was the perfect Tribute to the 12-String Rick and decided then and there to work it up.

A few years ago I was in a band, Scooby Don't, that covered this song. The drummer (who occasionally pops his head in here as Xtcfan) sang the lead part, and it will become apparent why -- the melody rather sadistically concentrates itself at exactly that point where a natural baritone such as myself has to break and go into head-voice. On the first pass, I tried to simply sing it an octave lower, but the result made Johnny especially affectionate. I looked up while mixing it and said, "Johnny, you couldn't be righter."

You're gonna hear a wobble or two in there. You snickering baritones -- you try singing it!

Another amusing thing: I discovered that I'd been playing the riff wrong in Scooby Don't. Sorry, former bandmates.

Ladies and gentlemen, from those glorious Late Eighties, the Era of Jangle and Wonderment, I give you the incomparable La's There She Goes!

Slightly later edit: Next up, The Monkees' "What Am I Doing Hanging 'Round?" That'd be a great jangle number.

Tagged? What's That?

One finds oneself tagged.

1. What's in your pocket?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

2. Is the pork ready?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

3. Have you ever had to rock to and fro to make your poopie go?

Make my poopie go what? Bang? Home? Vroom-vroom? Honestly, the question is shamefully vague.

4. Do you like onions?

Better than getting smacked in the face with a garden rake, but not as well as breaking shovels over peoples' heads.

5. So, how big is it?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

6. Budweiser or real beer?

I prefer imaginary beer, made from virgins' milk and the hops that grow on the banks of the River Alph. Lightly hopped, with an unpretentious nose, an insouciant aftertaste, and a redolence of summer afternoons spent playing croquet on professionally sun-dappled lawns.

7. What do you feel about your nose?

It's pretentious as hell. With a souciant aftertaste.

8. Children: Baked or broiled?

They're very good braised with shallots and a white-wine sauce.

9. Do you like it when I do this?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

10. Do you like the sound of chickens?

Cluckity-cluckity-cluck, all the livelong day. How do they amuse themselves so?

11. Would Beyonce clip her own toenails?

Izzat some kind of filthy euphemism the kids are using these days? 'Cos if it is, I'd like to watch.

12. Do you like pork?

I refuse to answer on the grounds that it may tend to discriminate me.

13. If the butter is soft, does the bus arrive on time?

Another euphemism, I make me no doubt. Let's see -- butter, bus... Yep. Euphemism.

14. When do you get up?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

15. How did you survive childhood?

By reaching on in there and finding out.

16. What do you do before bed?

I reach on in there and find out.

17. What are your hidden charges?

Well, if I told you, they wouldn't be hidden, now, would they? You'll find out soon enough.

18. Who's behind you?

That's a bit of a paranoid question, isn't it? Oh, all right: The Bavarian Illuminati. Happy now?

19. Why don't people go to the bathroom on TV?

Because of the hideous expense of replacing your set all the time.

20. What's a soylent green popsicle?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

21. What does it taste like?

Why don't you just reach on in there and find out?

22. Why doesn't Consumer Reports rate hookers?

Apparently you missed last month's ish: "We Test 14 Women Willing to Reach On In There and Find Out for $300."

23. Does George Bush replace the toilet paper tube?

Does a ripping good job of it, too -- only thing he's ever done right. He's a little bulky in the wall-sconce, but once you get all the paper wrapped around him he rotates real nice.

One finds oneself wondering how Bobby Lightfoot would respond to the questionnaire. And GlueBirl.

This, My Friends...

I stand before you a motherfucking gardener!

Those goddamned tomatoes never knew what hit 'em.

The fine print on that shovel's handle sez "Safety Sleeve^TM is guaranteed to prevent fiberglass from splitting."

Guess Safety Sleeve^TM never came up against Short Hill rocks and Neddie Jingo willpower.

You talkin' to me, shovel? You talkin' to me? Well I'm the only one here. Who the fuck do you think you're talking to?

The Assault on Reason

I tried to read this excerpt from Al Gore's upcoming book, but I got bored and gave up.

(Kidding! -- I devoured it like a starveling given a croque-monsieur.)

In describing the empty chamber the way he did, [Sen. Robert] Byrd invited a specific version of the same general question millions of us have been asking: "Why do reason, logic and truth seem to play a sharply diminished role in the way America now makes important decisions?" The persistent and sustained reliance on falsehoods as the basis of policy, even in the face of massive and well-understood evidence to the contrary, seems to many Americans to have reached levels that were previously unimaginable....

It is too easy—and too partisan—to simply place the blame on the policies of President George W. Bush. We are all responsible for the decisions our country makes. We have a Congress. We have an independent judiciary. We have checks and balances. We are a nation of laws. We have free speech. We have a free press. Have they all failed us? Why has America's public discourse become less focused and clear, less reasoned? Faith in the power of reason—the belief that free citizens can govern themselves wisely and fairly by resorting to logical debate on the basis of the best evidence available, instead of raw power—remains the central premise of American democracy. This premise is now under assault.

Jingo/Berlitz Industries translates for the attention-impaired: "We are rapidly drowning in our own loathsome bullshit." It's profoundly distressing, I suppose, that this needs to be said at all.

Run, Al, run!

In Which I Go All Sideshow Bob

Well, this is a new one for me.

Came home a little early to get the tomatoes, canteloupes and cukes into the ground. Brilliant day for it, sunny but not hot -- who's going to grudge me a couple of hours?

Did the work -- compost, mulch, water. Satisfied, I picked up my tools, dumped them into the wheelbarrow, humped the whole package to the shed. Inside, I was restoring the shovel to its customary place --

-- And stepped on the tines of a garden rake that leaned against the shed wall. Whack! the handle smacked me right across the eye. Glasses went flying, gloves, trowel and watering can hit the floor, and a single syllable of rage escaped my lips.


This is what we are reduced to, isn't it. You think it's pretty funny -- until it happens to you.

I can't tell yet if I'm going to get a shiner. The orbit of my right eye hurts pretty good. The floor of the shed is gravel, and I couldn't find my glasses for the longest time -- groping around on my hands and knees, muttering dark imprecations against an inanimate object that I myself had placed in ambush last week. Goddamned stupid rake.

Goddamned stupid gardener.

(Hey -- I can't remember who it was that suggested the Newspaper Method for keeping down weeds, but it's a peach. Reduced my workload enormously. Once I learned to put down four or five sheets instead of just one or two, not a single bit of unwanted vegetation dares to show its face.)

It's a Small World After All!

I don't quite know why this amuses me so much, but it does...

Ne Di Chin Go in Chinese!


Néddie J'ingo in French!


Nedwart von Jingo in German!


Neddolino Gingoni in Italian!


Neddie Jingão in Portugese!


Neddovich Jingonotovski in Russian!


Al-Ned bin Jingo in Arabic!


Nedro de Xingado in Spanish!

Those Who Get It Will Get It

Trust me to spend several days of studio time back in 2003 committing a musical joke that will be understood by approximately 3% of its listeners.

Low-Rent Nixon (The Lord Said Dammit) (pops).

Graphic designers will fall about. For the rest of you, here's a clue.

Apologizing in Advance..

I have absolutely no idea whatsoever what prompted this little thing to creep into my head this morning at Freddie's footie game. One minute you're all in the game, cheering your head off at the heroics being played out on the field of battle, the next you're thinking up rhymes for "uterine wall."

Dysmenorreah, it fails to enthrall
Water retention is casting its pall
That egg won't stick to the uterine wall
That's why the lady has a cramp!

She's got that bloa-ted fee-ling again!
Follicular phase --
Just one of those days!
Feels like her gut's in a toolmaker's clamp
That's why the lady has a cramp!

Take it, boys!

Think Facility's Not Reading Your Mail?

I have occasionally played around with paranoia as a subject for humor, but this one ain't very funny at all.

Barba de Chiva, who blogs at Phronesisiacal, wrote a post back in 2005 about being routinely stopped by the Border Patrol in Laredo, where he lives. The BP agents have actually mentioned knowing about the blog to him during these stops, although they seem to have said or done nothing overtly menacing about it.

Now, last night, an anonymous BP agent dropped a comment on the two-year-old post that, in its way, is as chilling a thing as you're likely to read:

Myself, I have spoken to you on several occasions, as you drive North to Encinal. In the red VW; as a passenger in a silver VW; in a small black convertible; an old Ford; and, and older tan Chevy, as well. I have a fantastic memory and recall to boot...

No shit.

Note how the aggrieved officer reads things into Barba de Chiva's post that were not originally there, in particular the perceived accusation that the BP agents are "knuckle-draggers." Chiva calls them "suspicious," "officious," and (sarcastically) "stalwart defenders of our nation's borders," but nowhere does he imply that they're stupid. That's their reading. Barba is a professor of English; the officer's purpose in his self-aggrandizing recitation of his own educational C.V. appears to be an attempt to legitimize his power, to justify his authority; in fact the effect is just menacing.

Duty Discharged

What an anticlimax. Got to the courthouse, spiffy in Bidness Casual. Went through the security checkpoint, setting off a metal-detector with my new bionic hip -- a new experience for me. Ankled up to the Jury Waiting Room, registered, got a badge. A woman gives a lecture -- no talking about the trial, even with fellow jurors, lunch is at noon, yadda yadda. They call out the jurors in alphabetical order; my meatspace surname is deep in the alphabet, so I'm not called. The first half of the alphabet troops out of the room, presumably for voir-dire, or perhaps it was estoppel, or tenure by serjaunty -- anyway, one of those comical Medieval French terms those lawyer johnnies throw around to earn the big bucks.

The rest of us, we superior souls with the good taste and discretion to have surnames beginning with N-Z, wait.

And wait.

And wait.

Two hours, we wait. Periodically, the woman in charge pops her head in to assure us we haven't been forgotten. Just a little while longer, thanks for your patience.

Then, at 10:30, she pops in again. The trial we'd been awaiting has been postponed. We are free to go, and our jury-duty obligations have been discharged, and we're regular citizens again.

Ah, well. Better than a day at the coal-face.

The Duty

I've got the Jury Duty tomorrow.

I will of course perform my civic duty to the best of my natural ability. That is to say, I will show up.

But as an enthusiastic and experienced sinner, I am deeply reluctant to sit in judgment of my fellow man. I understand there are strategies to, how you say, avoid being chosen for a jury (and thus get released from the Courthouse with perhaps something of the day to spare). I suppose I could show up dressed as Tarquin Fin-tim-lin-bin-whin-bim-lim-bus- stop-F'tang-F'tang-Olé-Biscuitbarrel of the Silly Party and announce to a breathless courtroom that I'm a pinko atheist sheepfucker, but I would imagine there are less wardrobe-intensive tactics.

Any of you lawyer types got better suggestions?

See, This Is Why I Have a Blog

Go check out the last comment on this post.

(And please, ya maroons, don't add a comment so your comment becomes the last comment. Duh.)

Ain't that neat? A person who actually saw The Bunny Man? Apparently, he'd Googled "Bunny Man Legend Fairfax County" and came chez moi.

This kind of thing keeps happening when you broadcast yourself on the Net. I've avoided talking about certain things, because, you know, from your lips to Google's ears. But the most marvelously serendipitous things keep popping up. Serendippity-doo. Sarah Ann Dippity-Doo.

SuperJoel Tornabene's brother. A guy who knew somebody in the Snobs.

I got an email some while ago from a guy who'd lived at the farm where John Mobberly was killed -- his ancestors were living there during the Civil War, had things stolen by him. The guy told me some family anecdotes about him. (All in good time, kids.)

All this interconnection. People I knew in college pop up. People from high-school. People from old jobs.

I'm going to try something. Guy I knew in college seems to have dropped off the face of the earth -- Googling his name produces only a few results, and they hint at a life about as weird as it gets. (Link arguably NSFW.) Seeing as how he appears to fancy himself something of a King Wizard, with this Aleister Crowley goober, I'm gonna try conjuring him up:

Pasq Wilson, I summon thee! I summon thee! I summon thee!

(Everybody from Kenyon is readin' this an' thinkin', Dude -- do you really want to do this? Cat was a mite . . . chaotic.)

I'll take my chances. See what happens. I'm betting he's here inside two weeks.

Next day edit:
Heh-heh-heh...

Please Kill Me

I have taken a radical step.

Last night, in a fog of rage at the wateriness of Porcupine Tree's Fear of a Blank Planet, I collected together every album and CD I possess by King Crimson, Marillion, Yes, The Mars Volta, Jethro Tull, Mike Keneally, Genesis, Can, the Soft Machine, and the Moody Blues, opened my second-story window, and heaved the whole stinking lot of them into the flowerbed below.

This event will henceforth be known at Jingo Acres as The Defenestration of Prog.

Why Yes, I Am Checking Out Your Ass

Weekend Fashion Advice for the Ladies

As the weather turns warm, won't it just be delightful to slip into a lovely pair of loose, cottony cargo capri pants? The kind with a drawstring top -- roomy and comfy, that lets cool air circulate deliciously around your skin? Not low-rise ones -- yuck! -- but the ones that cinch at the waist, flattering the derriere and emphasizing your delectable hourglass figure, making your every graceful step an encomium to the glory of the female body?

You'll do that, won't you?

Please?

With an Armed Guard Marching Ahead

God help me, I've been watching the first season of Deadwood on DVD again. Last night, I fell asleep in front of the TV just as Al Swearengen was busting the mercy-kill on the poor, mad Reverend Smith. I slept a troubled slumber, full of half-glimpsed visions of Wu's pigs and Alma Garret's graceful neck. When I awoke in the gray light of a joyless dawn, the room smelled of cat-piss and bourbon, and on the table in front of me I found a note scribbled in an unsteady hand....

Fuckin' Wolfowitz.

Fuckin' ethics committees' schoolmarmly fingerwagging notwithstanding, I can't leave go unsaid my envy of the brass balls on the cocksucker.

Your time is not particularly noteworthy for its Christly adherence to principles of personal accountability, is it. Second Fuckin' Gilded Age, is what you're living through. Fuckin' Attorney General sits like a pastry on a pillow, flinging offal at passersby in the thoroughfare as his piss-stained employer, stupid as mud, smiles like a seraph. Washington cocksuckers who planned your own disastrous war on the Dirt-Worshippers, what do they get? Corner offices on K Street, editorial space in the papers to declare the flawlessness of their wisdom, book contracts, regular visits from painted massage therapists.

(And when your own Joanie Stubbs opens her fuckin' yap, exposing the gorgeous hypocrisy of a hosannah-moaning Christer at State -- and potentially ten thousand other miserable hoopleheads -- the town lifts its skirts and emits a yowl of outraged propriety. I give even money that Deborah Jean Palfrey meets an untimely end before Friday.)

But this Wolfowitz. Fucked up right into the presidency of the World Bank -- a capital grifter's license. Cocksucker hits on the sovereign scheme of givin' the world's poor a helping hand -- one girlfriend at a time.

Gotta admire that. A bunco artist is nothing without a pair of ironclad balls, and Wolfie's clang together like churchbells when he walks. See something you want, you fuckin' take it -- let the rabblement wave their arms and gibber at your effrontery. Such exercise is capital for the fuckin' constitution. When the gentry look askance at your appropriation, you reply calmly and with clear-eyed honesty that the fault, dear Brutus, is not with us but with the cocksuckers who want to stand between your mighty office and blessed relief for the world's starving.

This is the awful genius of the grift: the World Bank's fuckin' charter is to spread the money around to the masses -- any fuckin' hooplehead in a blue suit could be its presiding Solon. Wolfie's spent his career conning bone-stupid cocksuckers into belief in his infallible wisdom, despite ample evidence to the contrary; it's how he got the fuckin' job in the first place. To claim that your intellectual endowments are so fuckin' magisterial that a casual con should be posthaste overlooked is an act of audacity that takes balls the size of fuckin' watermelons. He probably has to carry them around in a wheelbarrow, with an armed guard marching ahead to shoo away stunned onlookers.

Can't say that's a bad way to make a living.

May Day

The Internationale

Arise ye workers from your slumbers
Arise ye prisoners of want
For reason in revolt now thunders
And at last ends the age of cant.
Away with all your superstitions
Servile masses arise, arise
We'll change henceforth the old tradition
And spurn the dust to win the prize.

So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.
So comrades, come rally
And the last fight let us face
The Internationale unites the human race.

No more deluded by reaction
On tyrants only we'll make war
The soldiers too will take strike action
They'll break ranks and fight no more
And if those cannibals keep trying
To sacrifice us to their pride
They soon shall hear the bullets flying
We'll shoot the generals on our own side.

No savior from on high delivers
No faith have we in prince or peer
Our own right hand the chains must shiver
Chains of hatred, greed and fear
E'er the thieves will out with their booty
And give to all a happier lot.
Each at the forge must do their duty
And we'll strike while the iron is hot!

(Love that rhyme in the first verse: "want/cant"... One of those words has to be mispronounced for it to work -- I vote for "cant.")