I think that's a chamber pot. Happy anniversary.
Buck is firmly committed to small mugs. He's particular about beverage temperature, so a big mug means reheating mid-drink.
Anyway, I'm drinking coffee from a 16 ounce mug. We don't have smaller mugs. We do have regular coffee cups, but we rarely use them.
We just use drinking horns for everything.
I saw some beautiful mugs at goodwill yesterday, and left them there because they were 8 oz. Also there were a bunch of Japanese wooden bowls, and I thought "These are perfect for kids!" because they're hard to break but also not ugly. I got them home and realized they're probably not dishwasher safe. Damn.
I might go back for the mugs, though. I've got some 8 oz mugs I don't like very much, so I could just swap them out. Save them for when Buck comes to visit.
The coffee/tea drinkers here use 8-12 oz. mugs. I drink a fair bit of water and diet soda and usually out of something 24 oz or even more. They are disgustingly large, even when it is just water. Plus now on a diuretic for BP--not sure how well it is doing on the BP, but the diuretic part works well and quickly.
As long as you are peeing frequently.
I use 8oz. cups at home, when I have a pot of tea or coffee.
When making myself a cup of tea, I tend to use a slightly bigger mug.
But the 8oz. cups are helpful for coffee portion control. (Two days in a row with a cup of coffee, or one day with more than 8oz., and I go through withdrawal the next day.)
I just measured our mugs. They are 12oz. I have a big stupid pink plastic water cup that is probably 24oz. At work I have a little 6oz mug for the nespresso. Anybody who needs more detail about my drinking vessel situation just let me know.
What's wrong with coffee withdrawal? Get yourself some coffee. Listen, addictions feel great when they're sustainable.
I just drank the whole pot of coffee. I have to be careful not to drink more until after lunch.
I'm always irritated by the "all your ills are due to insufficient hydration!" drumbeat of women's health advocates, but aside from that, I drink tons of water (only when I'm THIRSTY which is often) and always have. Especially while eating. There's a drought mandate that includes that restaurants are not supposed to supply water unless the customer asks for it, so I've become more aware that plenty of people do not ask for water with their meal, let alone getting it re-filled several times.
12: I like being able to get a boost from coffee, which gies away if I develop a tolerance. And I don't like having to remember to have coffee every day, it turns it into a chore.
It's not a chore. It's just something I have to do to avoid a headache.
Small mugs provide more occasions to get up and walk to the coffee pot, which is how I do my thinking. But a big mug -- especially a big coffee mug -- is more satisfying.
Our collection of 12oz mugs has suffered attrition over the years,and nobody here seems to sell them any more, which is infuriating. I blame austerity and George Osborne.
2: I'm kind of with Buck. I tend to grab the big mugs usually, but I get distracted or whatever about halfway through like 83% of the time and end up dumping out half the mug. Using the smaller cups would be so much more sensible for me.
I've never gone in for alma mater tat but the only thing I value that I got out of my PhD program at a certain Ivy other than my master's degree (and thank the gods for that) is an enormous mug. I'm not sure how large it is but it substitutes for a cereal bowl in the morning after my coffee and as a soup bowl when I'm having soup at home - the handle is, well, handy. As I drink vast quantities of coffee in the morning with a lot of soy milk in it mostly to cool it down, if I just had a normal size mug I'd be standing at the kitchen counter in front of the coffee maker all morning. And when I do have to drink out of a normal size mug it feels like I'm doing shots.
Hey, they gave us a stupid novelty mug as part of orientation for my PhD program. I guess maybe it's sort of a consolation prize if you don't finish. That could definitely be.
You mean you haven't had drinking cups fashioned from the skulls of your enemies?
Now that would be a hardcore anniversary gift.
What I'd like is some mugs of the standard shape in a 16-20oz size that were super durable ceramic and did not heat up too much in the microwave, for making soup in and drinking tea from etc. Using an 8-12 oz mug for tea always seems wasteful, as one tea bag can enflavorate a lot more hot water than that. Speaking of which, I should really make a special trip over to the snooty tea shop one of these days and stock up for the winter. I had this Jasmine white tea at the tea house in Harvard Square a few years ago that was so amazing, but I never got the exact name/varietal. Oh well.
2: I'm kind of with Buck. I tend to grab the big mugs usually, but I get distracted or whatever about halfway through like 83% of the time and end up dumping out half the mug.
I've always liked big mugs, but I've come to appreciate that sometimes I only want 8-10oz of tea, so I now occasionally use smaller mugs.
Dat's a pretty mug youse got, shame if sumthin' wuz to happen to it
I sort of want a smallish cup for coffee, but a quart-sized bucket for tea. Coffee is a treat, so the smaller the cup size, the more times I can think "Hmm, maybe I'll have one more cup." If I drink it by the vat, then I have fewer moments of getting another cup of coffee.
Tea, on the other hand, is rehydration. If I'm drinking tea, I want my head to fit inside the cup.
12 oz mugs
I'll gulp the first, but sip the rest. I'll let it get ice-cold and drink it. I drink yesterday's coffee, 24 hours old.
I made a giant cup of tea this morning, but then the child in crisis poured coffee grounds in it and tried to break the mug, succeeding with the plastic one Lee uses. I can't wait until they are in their rooms and I can curl up and sob. This has been a rough week.
A 20 oz Tasmanian Devil (Warner Bros. version) mug is my standard for my morning tea (with milk). Yeah, it's more like a tea pot in size. But I want my head to fit inside the cup.
I can't believe I just measured my usual mugs, but hey, I was puttering around in the kitchen anyway.
It's 8 oz. for coffee, 12 oz. for tea. The temperature-control thing is really it: the coffee's just going to become too cool by the end of a 12 oz. mug, but for tea, 12 oz. is just right.
26: Using an 8-12 oz mug for tea always seems wasteful, as one tea bag can enflavorate a lot more hot water than that.
Mm. I don't know. Somewhere along the line I encountered a guide to how long various kinds of tea should steep, and with what temperature of water. As I recall, green tea does not want boiling hot water (let the water cool a bit before pouring), and doesn't want to be steeped for more than ... 3 minutes, was it? 'tis a gentle, take it easy for heaven's sake, type of tea. My routine cup (12 oz.) of green tea each morning tastes much, much better now. I speculate that trying to make much more than, say, 16 oz. with one tea bag would require too-long steeping, which would be bad.
I should find that guide to tea-making temperatures and times: black teas differed from green differed from herbal, from fruity, from whatever you'd call something like anise tea, and so on.
33: Oh, honey, it'll get better. I'm so sorry you're having a hard time.
33: yes, sympathy and well wishes from here, too.
On coffee: I have just discovered the aeropress and it is quite astonishing at getting flavour out of coffee. I make the same stuff up in a cafetiere (the fuck android doesn't know that word!) And the difference is astounding. On the other hand, the aeropress makes nearly espresso strength coffee, so I have to drink a little less. Worth it though. And fantastically cheap by coffee nerd standards.
Oh, I know everything will be fine eventually. It's a bad day for both big girls and the baby is just a baby. It's just frustrating to have to juggle three tantrums at once while wanting to throw my own. And I know it could have been much worse, but I'm ready for it to be better and think we'll still have to wait a while for that.
39: Added sympathy. It's hard wrangling so many little ones. I hope they all manage to wear themselves out and give you some peace and quiet.
My usual mugs appear to be 10, 12, and 16oz. I definitely prefer the 16oz, because I'm usually making exactly one cup of coffee with a filter cone that sits right on the mug, and I like not having to worry about overflowing.
They're doing fine now, though Mara's dad is currently standing her up and I foresee hysterical sobbing and fury at bedtime.
I did get called a bitch by a child who assured me she knows "all the cuss words," which was hilarious though heartfelt on her part. I could only reply, "I'm sure you do. You have a strong brain and know so many things. It really impresses me!" I guess that was annoying enough that I didn't get to hear any more of the cuss list.
43: You should also have told her how proud you are of her extensive vocabulary. Poor Mara.
I drink very strong tea (>1:1 leaves to water by volume). Even a standard 8 oz mug is too large to be practical for this purpose. In general, I agree that appropriate mug size is a function of cooling, and thus drinking speed. For me drinking coffee, it's 10 oz. I could see eight being functional for some people.
P.S. I endorse Aeropress, and condemn teabags.
46: I drink very strong tea (>1:1 leaves to water by volume).
Gah? Is this black tea or what? Aren't you going to burn out your insides doing that?
I only steep for 1.5 seconds initially, and then an extra second per steep. Depending on the tea, you can get 7+ steeps out of one pot this way, with better flavor.
You have my sympathy and best wishes, Thorn.
My sympathies, Thorn. That sounds incredibly exhausting.
Since I take this to be the nattering thread, I had a really strange dream last night. Bear with me.
The general environment involved boating. Water. Groups of people were navigating about via boat to various places they knew to navigate to, where people they knew were. (Forgive my hasty grammar.) I was a stranger to this set of communities, but it was clear that it was very complicated, and people knew what they were doing. There was some longish thing having to do with whether I and the people I was with could handle a medium-sized single-mast sailboat, or needed to be downgraded to a outboard motor putt-putt thing, like a metal rowboat but with an outboard motor. There was tension, as the sailboat about to launch was valuable to the community, and you can't board it if you can't handle it; I had to access my inner self.
[long segue that I don't remember] Bear with me.
Later, it became clear that that network community I'd been getting to know was one among many, and these communities were highly segregated but knew well of one another. It reminded me of ... I'm not sure.
At some point I heard about the principal other community, and visited with them. At this point I was freaked out and didn't understand how things operated. A woman carefully explained and showed that if you wanted to know of the communities, you had to go here: "here" being a kind of index showing which page, and live launch date, and codes to get in, which she explained to me.
Turned out there was a new community launch due shortly, which everyone knew about. I figured out how to see their whereabouts, using the index, and ventured there, and someone else was there who had no idea what the circumstances around here were. I started to explain, while pointing: "This place is Furlough. This here, contiguous, is Occupy." A guy from the new community leered at me and snorted, "This isn't Furlough. Don't be an idiot. This is"
I don't remember what he said it was, but I was chagrined.
So.
My, I don't wish to be stepping over Thorn's circumstances. Best wishes for some relaxation time on that front.
My German host family in Hamburg has the smaller mugs. They definitely think of the 12-oz ones as being American.
My dad has a mixture of both and usually uses the smaller ones. He drinks his coffee black; I wonder if that has anything to do with it? It's a little more annoying to pour myself coffee that much more often when I also am getting the milk out of the fridge each time.
To finish, though: that Furlough and Occupy would be the names of these contiguous yet competing and not-talking-to-each-other communities was just, upon waking, really surprising. My dream self doesn't usually serve up political messages.
I think the third community might have been something like Anarchy. Maybe not. They were cavorters, tricksters.
But some people called them Maurice.
Bear with me.
Better with you than against you.
Only tangentially related, but I was gifted some old (1950s) wine glasses recently and they are so small compared to today's massive bowls-on-stems. At first I was like, 'these are tiny!' but I've since realized that they are completely the reasonable size for a single serving of wine. Some not-unusual contemporary wine glasses can actually fit *an entire bottle of wine* in a single pour with room to spare at the top.
Yeah, I have some of those tiny-seeming wine glasses; they come across as wine glasses for hobbits or something, but they have a charm in their way.
I think the idea is that you should already have let the wine breathe before you're pouring it, so you don't need a freakin' bowl as a glass. If we're talking about red wine, that is.
Small mugs provide more occasions to get up and walk to the coffee pot, which is how I do my thinking. But a big mug -- especially a big coffee mug -- is more satisfying.
This is how I feel too. I use a big mug at home and a smaller (though still bigger than 8 oz) one at work. That wasn't explicitly for this reason, but it's nice that it's worked out that way.
53 may be on to something. When I drink black coffee, I never finish it. Maybe I should go git me some 8 oz mugs.
I also use an aeropress. Morning coffee at home tends to be in an ~13oz mug, although not completely full. At work though it's a smaller mug. I'd guess maybe ~8oz. I much prefer the latter size for tea, and it's fine ( better?) for coffee too if I remember to use slightly less ground coffee.
I generally dislike giant mugs. 8-12 oz suits me nicely. I'm kind of a camel though.
Aeropress really ought to cover some of Unfogged's server costs. Them and Rancho Gordo.
|| Maryland has a state cat. That is so weird. |>
It's a breed of cats. It would be weirder if the state cat was just on specific cat.
Although I suppose the state governor is just one specific person, not the class of centrifugal governors or something.
65: Next meetup should incorporate both! Aeropress some pre-soaked rancho gordo beans to make some kind of poisonous lectin tea.
Since not only my team, but my brother-in-law's team, are not in contention, I'm not focused on baseball.
Instead, I'm sitting here exultant because I just tracked down a federal document that is the jackpot for a statistic I need.
Boy oh boy are these guys going to regret the day they told me to give them a "metrics" and a "target" to hit. Thank you, Department of Justice! Thank you, American taxpayers! Thank you, Internet!
HOT DAMN.
Rob the Masshole, LET'S DO THIS!
It would be weirder if the state cat was just on specific cat.
Yeah, that sort of thing only really works at the municipal level.
75: her relatives gave Zardoz Cardinals gear but it's all much too big for her. This bodes well, I think.
Not everyone is impressed with the cat mayor thing, of course.
FUCKIN A PENNANT WOOOO! Red Sox Nation welcomes Halford!
My morning cup is a two scoops of beans Aeropress 8 oz cup, with a saucer because I'm civilized. My afternoon cup is a one scoop of beans Aeropress in a 6 oz cup with a saucer. Some times I switch it up and drink my morning cup out of this fellow, whom I quite like.
My Aeropress is a gift from Kraab and M/lls, who found it too ugly to use.
||
So, costume parties aren't all bad.
|>
The one thing that makes me feel American is how much I drink. In every foreign country I've spent time living with a family (5 countries on 3 continents), I've been shocked by how little liquids people drink. In china I'm the only one gulping down those shot glasses of tea you get at a meal (I'm also, somewhat embarrassingly, the only one peeing every half an hour). But if I drink the same amount as "the natives," I'm dying of thirst. Do other people just see mild dehydration as a way of life? Are Americans brainwashed into thinking we need much more water than we really do?
FYI, I drink my coffee out of a 12 oz mug normally, and sometimes an 8 oz mug at my mother's. if I drink 12 oz I normally don't get seconds, but I do with 8 oz so I actually end up drinking more with a smaller cup.
80: I'm appalled by your restraint. I have drunk four aeropress scoops already and its only 8:10 am
OK, I've been up for two hours.
Do other people just see mild dehydration as a way of life? Are Americans brainwashed into thinking we need much more water than we really do?
I've heard that the body's thirst response is pretty sensitive to the amount of water it typically receives, so if you habitually drink more water than strictly necessary physiologically your body will adjust and become thirsty if you don't get that much. I don't know how true this is, but it certainly seems to match your observations of cross-cultural differences.
I'm not sure how big an 8oz or 12oz mug is supposed to be, but I use what I would call a normal mug size, which I assume is what you guys mean by the smaller one. It's what we have at work and most of what I have at home. I have a bigger mug too, but it doesn't get much use. Partly for heat retention reasons, but also because it has a really small handle which is uncomfortable to hold.
8 ounces is apparently 236.59 mL, if that helps.
82 gets it right. I'm remembering dinners in Italy with eight or ten Americans where we ask for water for the table and they bring us, like, a liter bottle of sparkling water or something and assume it's going to be enough, and we spend two-thirds of the meal trying to get someone's attention so we can ask for more water.
Americans aren't fat, they're just over hydrated.
re: 85
I had to check by filling a mug last night with water and weighing it. But yeah, 8 oz is what I'd think of as ordinary mug-sized, and 12-14oz as a big but not over-sized one. The standard chunky big 'Whittards' mugs we have are about 13.
Hey, so, local moms apparently have this one weird trick for deodorizing spaces, to wit, putting coffee grounds in a nylon stocking, which supposedly absorbs odors. I'm wondering if this would work at work, when there is residual offgassing from our floor, which was refinished 6 weeks ago. One of our contractors is allegedly hypersensitive to "chemicals" and refuses to work there now. Thoughts? The space is only about 15,000 cubic feet, and for the first several weeks I had windows open and a big fan or two going to try to rid the place of fumes, which was largely effective.
150 feet by 100 feet with a one foot high ceiling?
91: 100' tall 5x3 vertical shaft.
But, no, coffee would be useless in dealing with a gas like that where you aren't just worried about the smell.
If you leave a bag potatoes hidden in some forgotten corner, eventually you can make the room smell really bad in a different way.
It's possible that you could just burn off the excess gas; set all the wastebaskets on fire and then leave for a while.
We've been mopping the floor with vinegar & water, but I was wondering if a baking soda + Water solution would work better.
100' tall 5x3 vertical shaft
...Laydeez.
Or bleach and ammonia, right before you do the wastebasket thing.
The best part is that the contractor who is complaining is a smoker.
I'd just yell at the contractor more, but I don't know what he could do to fix it.
90: Activated carbon/activated charcoal is better than coffee grounds or baking soda, but I'm not sure how much you'd need to keep your space from smelling like VOC. The smell is probably not something that water-based cleaning would help much. Vinegar or ammonia will neutralize acidic or basic volatiles, but not neutral organics.
I was wondering if the coffee grounds thing was because the grounds have a little bit of charcoal in them, from the roasting, and they're free.
So if I just bought some aquarium filter activated carbon, would I spread it around on the floor and sweep it up or what?
104: Yep, that's right. You could certainly give it a shot, but activated charcoal is pretty cheap and works better. I'm seeing big jars for $40 at Petsmart. Maybe the contractor would be willing to buy it?
Oh, sorry, didn't see 105. I'd try to get a a big jar and put out some bowls/saucers/trays of it around the room. It doesn't need to go on the floor itself, but try to have a big surface area. I can't tell about whether the jar linked is a powder or pebbles, but if it's powder, I'd cover it with cloth or tissue to keep dust down since it's messy to clean up.
Hmm, well, now the question is how much do I need -- prices seem to vary widely, esp for various quantities. $82 for 25 lbs sounds like a pretty good deal, would that be enough? Too much?
Spread it on a tarp or drop cloth maybe?
How do you deactivate it when you're done?
It's kind of hard to guess, honestly. I'd just buy something big. It works well in shared fridges/freezers, too, so it's not like the extra would be wasted. I'd guess 25 lbs should be plenty for your purposes, but I use it in smaller spaces that you would (for a closet-sized room, I put out two 1/2 pound trays and change once a week or so until it smells OK).
111: Right on. I will probably order the 25lb bag then.
Oh, also, cheap is fine - pricey is probably not any better quality. You will probably want to keep it out for several weeks since the floor will keep outgassing for a while. Tarp or dropcloth would work well if it wouldn't make a mess while it's out. Good luck!
110: Bleach, ammonia, AND fire.
Carbon ordered! Watch out, Solo!
I use a smaller mug for tea than I do for coffee, because I always make a 2-cup (Chatsgord "cup"-- don't remember how many ounces that is) pot of tea with loose tea and pour out the 2nd cup after I drink the first.
116: If you really want to go full-out, mopping with dilute bleach would also help, but it's not as long-lasting a solution, is harder on the floor, and doesn't help clean what's already in the air. Sorry for the serial comments.
Does purportedly "activated" carbon (how activated can you be if you are a goddamn inanimate object) help to get rid of the cat pee smell? Certain areas of my home want to know. My chemistry by intuition tells me that cat pee is a volatile organic compound, but what do I know.
Activated = reactive in chemistry land. It depends on the source of the smell. If it's a litterbox, put baking soda in the litter. You can put activated charcoal nearby, and it will help, but putting it in the litter will give you black kitty prints. If it's outside the box (floor or carpet), Nature's Miracle enzyme cleaner. If you don't know, you need a blacklight.
For the record, with both activated carbon filters and baking soda in the litter, if we haven't totally changed out litter in a while my apartment smells like cat pee.
Oh, and the smell is ammonia, caused by breakdown of urea. Not organic.
In Germany there's a good solution to the liquids problem: alcohol-free hefeweizen. Cheaper than water, served by the half-liter, and available basically everywhere. But that's Germany specific.
Water is free and has lower carbs.
Water is not free in Germany, at restaurants.
Confidential to the producers of Beywheelz: you've not just ignored the usual advice to "show, not tell," but murdered it, dismembered its corpse, and shat on it.
Didn't the de-Nazification people do a thorough job.
If you know how to ask and you're in a large party where other people are ordering drinks, sometimes you can talk them into bringing you free water. Quantity would still be laughably small though, and the degree of difficulty is high.
Spider plants and aspidistra might also help with the VOCs.
Seriously though, if there's still that much gas coming off after six weeks, it seems to be that maybe something wasn't done right. Make the guy come and look at it.
We have been in communication with him. It was the cut-rate, "friend" price option, about 20% of what other people wanted to charge us. So yeah, it's probably some kind of hyper-toxic polyurethane-dioxin blend you can only get in Estonia and North Korea, long since banned from international trade.
124: Not even if you explicitly ask for tap water? In France if you ask for water without qualifying they'll assume you want bottled, but you can always ask for tap and it'll be free.
I guess I actually don't know about that.
Great. Escargot and ketchup, here I come.
Fries with butter, garlic, and parsley taste good.
Fries with ketchup taste good.
Escargot is basically a butter/garlic delivery system, as I understand it.
So, I imagine that escargot with ketchup would be fine.
By that logic-
Bread with ketchup?
Pasta with ketchup?
Scallops with ketchup?
I'm not saying it's a perfect system.
The set of things which facilitate anal sex is not closed under addition, or maybe I want to say something about nonmonotonicity. Butter yes (or anyway I'm willing to stipulate to that); add garlic and I think it flips to no.
141: Certainly for vampires, I would guess.
When people aren't hydrated, they get grouchy. When they get grouchy, they get angry. When they get angry they start invading France and killing Jews.
Eh, lots of Germans drink tap water at home. And I'm pretty sure that in the places that bring you a little glass of water on the tray with your coffee, that's not bottled water. Though it is truly a little bitty glass.
I do think the only-bottled-water thing is perhaps more true in the western parts of Germany. Lots of things are more uptight there.
I'm very sick of socializing. Party-commenting.
||
Marcella Hazan has very sound ideas about how to cope with an unexpected gift of bluefish. I should have bought a cookbook of hers years ago.
|>
Do you have an unexpected gift of bluefish? Lucky you.
Yeah I feel like I would need no help dealing with an unexpected gift of bluefish.
There appear to be a lot of folk reasons for shoving garlic up one's ass.
One fish, two fish. Garlic ass, blue fish.
Shoving garlic up the bluefish's ass is a not-unpromising start to dealing with the unexpected gift. Probably easier just to gut the poor bastard and place it in there, though.
Anyhow, bluefish aren't that big and don't have hands. I feel like their ability to wield melee weapons is probably limited enough that I have little to fear.
153: People->Horses, Garlic->Onions
Horses & Cows->Eating hay, Chickens->Not knowing how
||
Has no one linked to this here yet? It made me think of this blog. I can't imagine why.
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I wouldn't be at all surprised if it had been discussed here and I just missed it. If so, sorry about that.
160: It's very striking that there are such cruel norms about the expected structure of a marriage, which destroy so many people's lives, which have nothing to do with any religious traditions.
Ned wants to ruin his relationships the old fashioned way.
I think Bob brought it up.
That kind of thing, I find myself thinking that as biological drives go, sex really isn't all that powerful. If you make it socially difficult and unpleasant enough, lots of people will just give up on the whole idea.
Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadows let the winds throng.
Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.
Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters,
wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when leaves are blown.
Sure, if masturbation isn't stigmatized, just do that. Certainly less stress and awkwardness.
And yet, somehow, a terrible substitute.
Everything that is less stressful is a terrible substitute for something stressful.
OH, I DON'T EVEN NEED TO SAY IT, DO I?
Even if rubbing one's stomach could satisfy one's hunger, I'd probably want to eat, anyway.
149: I got an unexpected gift of bluefish this summer. We went out on a fishing boat for a kid's birthday party and the boy caught four of them. We were as usual very happy with them, even without the Hazan recipe, though it does look good.
In the interest of science and seeing that I won't wake up to piss at 6:30, I'm going to bed thirsty.
Even a negative result is still a result, Moby.
I tried it again, and it still didn't work, except for the science part.
Whose interest did you do it in the second time?
I think the policy of this blog is to not accept comments describing negative results.
I'll just delete the 3,000 words I had drafted about my urination habits. Your loss.
They turned the Caribou Coffee into a Peet's Coffee and now all the customers are homely men. Was that intentional?