This Entitlement's Got Me Feeling So Worthy

I wonder if kids in the past assumed they would make anything of themselves, or even if all kids today assume that. Entitlement should be a problem, the given consensus is that children who think that one day they'll be successful in their chosen field will be lazy and wait for that success to come to then. It's not just in the careers either, it's in personal life. Whatever "love" is I think many of us have an assumption that one day we'll feel that way about someone and we don't have to work at it. Maybe that's true. I wouldn't know.

I do know that I suffer from the affliction of entitlement. I'm a relatively modest person. Relatively because I'm immodest enough to say that I'm modest. Someone truly modest wouldn't consider themselves modest. But if people give me compliments I'm always very shy about receiving them, I suppose this is more out of discomfort than modesty. The point is that I don't walk around thinking I'm the dogs bollocks most of the time. But if someone wants to take me on at Madden, Basketball, or a having-awesome-hair contest I fancy my chances. On top of that I'm pretty confident that I'm good enough at what I like doing to get a well-paid job doing something I enjoy. That's some immodest entitlement right there.

     This is post-modern irony.                  Not this.

Does that attitude make you a bad person though? Where is the line between confidence and arrogance? I think it's as thin as the line of irony. When you go around ironically saying things that start with the phrase "I'm not a racist but..." or you use the word "faggot" in a post-modern fashion you're very close to the line of irony. If you don't think carefully about where you're stepping you'll trip into bigotry. I think that's the same about confidence and arrogance. The one redeeming thing about being me is that I'm never guilty of vanity. I may be horrendously arrogant at times about my mental characteristics but I've never been one to blow my own trumpet about my outer layer. Mostly because that trumpet is out of tune and rusty. Ewww...rusty. Don't think too much about that metaphor, it's not directly comparable.

I've not spoken much about my time working at a secondary school because the funny things are gross. But I will say this: when you're a young member of staff you're going to get unwanted attention from the students. Aside from how embarrassing this is for everyone involved, especially when colleagues point it out at every available opportunity, it's also very peculiar to accept. For someone like me it conflicts with everything you've learnt from personal experience. You must remember that you're in an arena where the other options for a young person's attention are immature students and members of staff who are...how do I say this...vintage? I'll go with vintage.

Vintage...like fine wine. It's a compliment...

That conflict of input could make one slightly vain. Thankfully, like I said there's not a chance of that for me. I'm just drawing on one particular time in my life when I got attention rather than sitting in the corner making sarcastic comments at gaps in conversations. Anyway, back to the main track: entitlement. If you develop a sense of vanity then you're going to feel entitled, something I don't envy about the attractive. The other thing is if you're flawless then you don't get the advantage of us commoners: that is if someone finds us plebs attractive despite our flaws then they must really see something special. This is part of the reason why I've always been a bit down on cosmetic improvements, because you're never quite sure if someone finds you attractive or just the veneer. But then I realised that sounds like I've got a downer on anyone who wears make-up. Which I don't. So I figured there must be something to all this cosmetic improvement lark. So I called the orthodontist. Who needs money when you can blow it all and spend the rest of your life questioning whether people would've listened to you talk for any significant period of time if they'd met you before you had the work done. At least I know I won't be feeling vain any time soon.

TV Has Inserted These Thoughts Into My Head

When you can't think of anything to write about because your brain is sleep deprived and exhausted from 12 hours of Magic: The Gathering (what is wrong with me?) there's only one thing you can do. Write lots of unconnected things with lots of paragraph spaces so that it looks like you've written more than you really have. Then hope you do or see something cringey that you can write about next weekend. With that in mind here's a load of bollocks which you'll read inside a minute and then feel ridiculously cheated. Commence lazy writing.

Firstly there's a few things that the BBC should do. I'm reading Brian Cox's book about the solar system and the universe and stuff. It's based on that series he did where he looked at the sky in various different incredibly hard to reach places around the world. This cost a fair bit of money. I'm guessing it didn't cost as much as the rights and logistics of putting on the Formula 1 Racing this year. So here's what the BBC should do: have faith in the public to pay attention to the sciencey bits without a pretty landscape in the background. You could use images of space instead of flying Cox to Peru to explain how Saturn's moon Titan is a methane version of Earth. I think that would be cheaper and then you can use the budget that you save on crap sports and ostentatious science programs to make more science programs. They don't all have to be about space, you could do more about animals and plants and stuff. Alternatively you could use the money to make BBC News 24 less shit. Like making them research their facts and have some foreign reporters who cover an area smaller than an entire continent. The other day I heard someone refer to Al-Zarqawi as a former Al-Qaeda member and they weren't even corrected. He had no links to Al-Qaeda and was in fact a rival of theirs. Check your facts.

Incidentally, what's up with the obsession with Al-Qaeda? Aren't they fractured enough for us not to care about them anymore. I've already expressed my views about the killing of Bin-Laden: dick move. celebrating it was even dickier. Reminding us that he was killed extra-judicially in your campaign video: that's the dickiest. I know that these special forces people aren't used to arresting people, but it's not that hard.

Speaking of people being arrested, Rebekah Brooks getting arrested was unfortunate, mostly because it detracted from her statements to the Leveson Enquiry where she emphasised that she couldn't go into further detail about text messages and phone conversations with Prime Ministers because they were "private conversations". Fucking irony. I mean seriously. Are you taking the piss? Also, spelling the name Rebekah? I'm going to pronounce that "Reeb-ka". Just name your child what you want and if you don't know how to spell it then look it up. Don't use the birth certificate as your guessing ground.

I got annoyed with someone else today as well, Charlie Brooker was being really mean about superhero films: Thor and Marvel Avengers specifically. Then he admitted checking e-mails during the latter. I know cinema's aren't theatres, but seriously, it's tough to take your criticisms seriously when you're not even watching the film. While you might say that the only reason you'd check your phone is because the film isn't engaging you, you're not really giving it a chance to engage you if you're always thinking about checking your phone. Turn it off. We're all too contactable these days. If you're setting aside some time to do something simple like going to the pictures then actually do that. Whether you're going to the cinema with people or alone, enjoy that experience, and enjoy it with the people you're actually physically next to. 

I can't concentrate on a TV show when I'm also looking at my laptop, so you've got to stop trying to multi-task. I know that summer TV audiences are smaller than in winter, but did every American show I like have to disappear in the space of two weeks? 50 points goes to the person who can identify three of the four that have left me (Hint: look up four lines).

Well that was crap, and frequently sweary. I'm sincerely sorry, I'm like those internet people who make a few funny videos and then become shit and repetitive. But soon I'll find something cringey to write about.

Ground Kontrol to Lieutenant Dan

Clubbing has always been slightly alien to me, perhaps it's that I don't like the odds of groping (either being the victim or accidentally the perpetrator when a shape is thrown in the wrong direction), or maybe it's that the only time I'm in the vicinity of "feeling comfortable" while dancing is when conducting an Elvis impersonation. Either way I much prefer to sit on a couch and feel the vibrations. I like a lot of what I presume gets played in clubs. That is: I like dubstep. Not all dubstep tracks obviously, but a lot of it goes down pretty well. There's something else I like too: video games. Don't worry, it's not one of those blogs. I've got a website on which to rant about that nonsense.

For those of you that read all of my stuff while I was in America I have to apologise. Not for the shite quality of my writing. Well, yes for that, but not specifically for that. For not making enough of a deal out of a place called Ground Kontrol. Portland is an incredibly hipstery place, and aside from the personal development and incredibly cool people I met there (especially an Aussie called Luke), I didn't much like the place. You see I'm not that keen on living in the 90s and listening exclusively to music by unsigned bands. But I will give the place some credit. When it comes to alternative bars they hit the nail on the head with Ground Kontrol.

It has old arcade video games machines including the classics you'll find at your bowling alley (the ones where you sit in a racing seat and crash after 10 seconds), it also has a huge mix of newer and older video games as well as a vast array pinball machines. Some of the highlights include: Arkanoid, Asteroids, Burgertime, Donkey Kong, Double Dragon II, Dr. Mario, Galaga, Marvel Vs. Capcom 2, Tetris, Mario Bros, Tekken Tag, Paperboy, Super Street Fighter II Turbo. Essentially a buttload of awesome games. The greatest by far was Pac Man Battle Royale in which 4 Pac Men must compete to eat the other 3 while avoiding the ghosts. While researching this now I realise I never saw, so never got the chance to play, Bad Dudes Vs. Dragon Ninja in which I surely would have proved I was a bad enough dude to save the President. The President in question being Ronald Reagan. I would've saved him and then killed him myself just because.

So this was all very fun, but with some ear melting dubstep in the background and a can of beer or fizzy drink in one hand and a joystick in the other I must say it's pure bliss. Incidentally "fizzy drink" will gain you mockery from Americans, try soda instead, or they'll ask you if you call a steak a "cooky-wooky moo-cow". The experience is made all the sweeter by the constant noise of 8 and 16 bit punches, jumps, and blocks falling. Especially when the dubstep providing the atmosphere happens to be a Tetris or Mario remix.

I do not know if this exists in England, but London, I beg you, if you ever want to see me out on the town after nine, please provide me with a dubstep-arcade-gaming bar. Then ship me to the nearest hermit hole because my student loan will have been squandered. (If anyone from my uni or the student loans company is reading this I'm totally definitely kidding. Please give me the money, I'll be responsible I promise.)

Thanks Hulk...Thulk

It's rare in this short life of ours that we get to take advice from The Incredible Hulk, well not advice as such, that would involve committing to a level of "smashing" that I doubt anyone has the stamina for. But ol' Hulkie did make me reflect on something which I've neglected for some time. I'm going to spoil the movie for you if you've not seen it, so make sure you either don't care, read this later, or already know everything about the Hulk. His big secret which means he can change into the Hulk at will: "I'm always angry". A very useful trick if you've lots of self-control and more Gamma radiation than a Ukrainian politician who has just had lunch with a KGB agent.

Being angry all the time is not healthy if you live in the real world, and odd as it is, the Avengers movie reminded me of what I used to be like. When I was a teenager I was angry all the time. Maybe that's the way teenagers are meant to be. Either way it took the Hulk to remind me of it. I suppose that shows I'm over it if I don't think about it until literally the angriest man in fiction talks about anger. I had reason to be angry but it wasn't a healthy way to live. If you don't already know I had an unhappy time at secondary school, as most kids do, but teenagers are very self-involved creatures so I didn't consider everyone else's similar experiences. I don't believe that time is a healer, I think it's the events and conversations you have which help you get over things and grow as a person, and time is merely a coincidence, or rather a necessary background force. Because of the people I've met and the things I've done I'm not angry anymore. Or rather, I'm seldom angry, compared to how I used to be anyway. If I were to watch the latest Star Trek film for the first time now I could say "Wow, that sucked" and move on. Less funny for everyone else, but more healthy for me.

The thing is I look at my music collection and it shows someone different to who I am now. My music collection implies a metalhead, and I'm not that guy anymore. I still appreciate metal music, but there's never a situation where I want to put it on. It's the small parts of my collection which tell you who I am. It's the fact I have every Death Cab for Cutie album. It's the ribbon of Pop-Punk running through my MP3 Player that reflects me. My brick shaped MP3 Player that devours headphones at a wallet-busting rate gets far more plays of Midtown, New Found Glory, Blink-182, Me Vs. Hero, and Kids Can't Fly than it does Metallica, Bring Me The Horizon, or The Arusha Accord.

Yesterday my dad asked me how I'd characterise my style. Well for a start I don't have style. I have clothes that I attempt to wear with some sort of logical consistency. But while I was fumbling around phrases like "slightly rocky" and "nerdy" I realised that my black hi-top Converses tell you all you need to know. I still don't wear a whole lot of colour, but I think I look like less of a douche now. I was a twatty looking teenager. The problem was that I was trying to look cool, got it all wrong, realised I wasn't comfortable in what I was wearing, and overcompensated completely. I started wearing shirts and cut my hair short. I now realise that there's a middle ground, a middle ground with amazing hair. Yeah bitch, my hair's better than yours. It may not be styled but you know you wish you had it. Interestingly more females are jealous of my hair than males. That should tell me something but I'm not listening.

On the post-it note of ideas for this blog I have a sentence about apologising for all the dumb shit I did when I was a fearful and angry teenager. Now that it comes to writing about it I realise that it doesn't feel right. I'm a different person now. That guy did all the stupid shit, not me. But I am genuinely sorry for lots of things that I did, however alien it feels, it was still me that did them. So I'm sorry to all those people who knew me back then for yelling all the time, for bailing out of perfectly good friendships, and for dumb little things like not taking my best friend to prom. That's one of those events that the masochistic recesses of your brain will remind you of just as you're about to go to sleep. Just to say "Hey, I know you were planning on having a nice dream, but I thought you should know how much of an arsehole you are".

Yeah, that. Exactly that.

The post-it note doesn't say anything about how I'm a happy person who only gets angry at politicians and badly written sitcoms. Alright, so maybe I get angry at more than that. But I'm still happy. The post-it note was right not to say that. It doesn't say that because I thought it would sound smug. It does. It sounds like those people who mention how maverick they are with social conventions while breaking them: "Like hey, I just wanted to say how cool you look, like way cool, I know it's not 'cool' or whatever to just tell some stranger how cool they are but like I'm not insecure at all so I don't worry about that." You know what, the only reason you're mentioning how not insecure you are is that you're insecure that the other person's going to think you're a freak, but if they know you're just super confident they might find you're "lack of insecurity" attractive. But what do I know? I'm just so not insecure that I mention how I'm not one of those people who says they're not insecure to cover up how insecure they are. Then I mention how not insecure I am about not being insecure about mentioning how I'm not one of those people who says they're not insecure to cover up how insecure they are. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

2 Broke Girls and the Reluctant Fan

Sometimes you set standards which are too hard to match, so I'm not going to try. Instead I'm going to tell you about when I was on my gap yah jahney through Amahricah. I watched a lot of American Football (pronounced "Fuhbaw") and when those games were on CBS the adverts (aside for those which showed off the new Ford's dismally low fuel efficiency and bragged about it) were constantly pushing The Big Bang Theory and 2 Broke Girls. I already watch TBBT, and to be honest I don't know why. Like Friends it has gotten to the point where the audience is invested in the characters so they'll watch regardless of whether the show is any good or not. Every time I watch it I'm infuriated by Sheldon's character: he's not longer socially awkward, he's just psychopathic (as in completely without empathy).

As for the other show, well, the trailers seemed to imply that this was a canned laughter filled bunch of shit. The jokes seemed forced and unfunny so I wrote it off as another bland American sitcom and decided to ignore it. Recently it has been picked up in the UK by E4, so I thought I'd watch the pilot and see if it was worth bringing over. What I don't get is why CBS totally misrepresented the show in those trailers. It's genuinely funny, and while the canned laughter is tremendously grating and the lines are terribly forced it actually works. I can't think of a female led sitcom which was actually funny (and yes I'm remembering Sex and the City), so it's a relief that the comedy world is finally catching up with the rest of society. For too long women have been pushed out of the business, with TV writers focusing on the male perspective, but this show is honest and funny.

If you'll allow me to get a little cringey: for a long time sitcoms have made jokes about sex, but the refreshing thing about 2 Broke Girls is that it doesn't get all squirmy about previously taboo topics like female masturbation, it just treats it as normal. Maybe because it's normal. There are places for men in the show too: the pervy one-liners from Oleg (Jonathan Kite) are worth a chuckle, and Earl (Garrett Morris)cracks wise every now and then, but really it's Max (Kat Dennings) who steals the show. With her dry misanthropy, nobody on the show is safe. The clever trick here is that, while she could come off as a bully (like Sheldon in TBBT), because she puts almost everyone down it becomes a funny world view rather than a mean streak against hipsters.

Now I'm not saying every line is a keeper, when cutting down some hipsters Max says "I wear knit hats when it's cold out. You wear knit hats cos of Coldplay." So yeah, they're not all killers, but the brutal honesty and the interaction between misanthropic Max and relentless optimist Caroline (Beth Behrs) more than make up for the odd tumbleweed. The show also has a few nice touches: each episode closes with a running total of how much money the girls have made in their attempts to gain enough cash to start a business, and it's definitely a one-step forward, two-steps back situation. It serves as a nice main quest, keeping the show and the audience focused while other problems come and go.

I think the show benefits from its premise. Having the girls being broke means that the writers are relatively grounded in what they can do. There's not really anything too outlandish, so the audience hasn't become frustrated with the incremental increase in their disbelief suspension. Perhaps this is because it's only the first season and they haven't yet run out of ideas, but hopefully, with some harder thinking, they'll keep managing to come up with fresh ideas which don't involve sending one of them into space, or the North Pole.

Oh, and there's a horse in the show. Deal with it.

Lastly, I should come clean, Kat Dennings as a straight female misanthrope. Well, that's a character after my own heart, it's like they had a meeting to design me a "waifu". Yeah, I learnt some more Weeaboo this week, and what? So I'm sorry I failed to live up to last week's height, but you need to have the bad to appreciate the good, and to be honest I'm not mentally capable of coming up with topics of that standard on a weekly basis. But I hope the pictures made up for it. I think I'll continue doing that for the aesthetics.

If You Touch It, You Bought It

My parents read this blog. If I'm honest that's probably why I've been writing less embarrassing personal revelations and more political bollocks. Well today it's a return to the old days. I'll start off by sharing with you one line from a phone conversation I had with a family member. A family member.

"You need to go out there and have some sex."

Yep. Totally cool. Not inappropriate or uncomfortable in the slightest. I'm going to focus on the word "some". They didn't say "more". They said "some". I admit that I'm not the most virile person out there, but I don't have a problem with that. I feel as if there's a fair amount of pity coming my way which I don't deserve. Let me put it this way, you wouldn't pity a tribe member in the remotest parts of Papua New Guinea for not being able to use an iPod. He has no use for it, and even if he did there's no electricity to recharge it. Basically, what I'm saying is, you learn to live with your lot. Especially if, like me, there's a disconnect between how appealing you are on the surface compared to your brain. Your mind sets standards higher than is reasonable because it realises that, as far as brains go, it's a bit of a looker. If you've not got the exterior to match you end up with a Venn Diagram with the central portion having a very low population:

Additionally that central portion becomes ever smaller when you use Venn diagrams to explain your sex life.

Now watch me segue into what I really wanted to talk about.

For me that whole area of my life has been severely hindered by the fact that I've never really been good with personal contact. It's not that I dislike it or anything, it's just that when you're a teenager racked with insecurities, afraid of making mistakes, and you don't already understand the rules, it's much safer to just stay well away from that whole realm for fear of making an arse of yourself. Now that I'm older it's the next step in personal development. All I need now is someone to teach me the rules.

You see I already understand that formal situations and first meetings call for handshakes. I don't get personal contact, but I'm still British. It's anything above handshakes, high-fives, and fist-bumps where I'm stepping into the murky swamp of social awkwardness. By now I've learned that if you know someone for a half-decent amount of time you're free to hug them when you meet and when you part ways. Although this is usually preceded by the rigmarole of the "Do I get a hug?" conversation, or in extreme circumstances the third party "Come on, you guys, hug each other" intervention.

However, there are situations where people hug when they are neither arriving or leaving, and that is where I stutter. When someone is sad you should hug them, but I always worry that I might accidentally give the wrong type of hug. This is the level of paranoia and ignorance I have. I, probably wrongly, think there are different types of hugs. This confusion stems from seeing people hug when they've already done the arrival hug, they are yet to do the leaving hug, nobody is crying, no gifts have been given, nobody has succeeded in something, and I'm left to witness the mystery hug. I know the gift hug and the celebration hug but there seems to be a random hug. Is it an "I'm happy you're here" hug?

That's not all, there's so many other ways in which I need this detailed for me. What is a head on a shoulder? What's an arm lock? (You know that thing where you intertwine your arms at the elbow?) I'm sure there's more but I'll stop for fear I'll start accidentally naming sexual positions. I think the problem lies in the ambiguity. I understand personal contact when it either belongs in the friend, family, and acquaintance zone or when it belongs in the relationship zone. I'm about to give an example of what I mean but I don't want to break the embarrassment meter so I'm going to say something that makes me sound like I'm twelve instead of using a more awkward example...like "grinding". That pinging sound is the tensile spring in the embarrassment meter breaking. Now there's nothing supporting the torsion nut, and the crank bolt is bent out of shape. You're better off just buying a new one. Okay, the metaphor has been taken too far, but I needed that gap to make you forget about me sounding twelve which is going to happen now.

Handshakes belong in the friend, family, and acquaintance zone; hand-holding belongs in the relationship zone. But there are so many variations of personal contact which are acceptable in both the friend and relationship dynamic. These overlapping ambiguous bastards require a Venn diagram but I'm so angry at them that I'm not going to give them the satisfaction. Also I think I've safely proven that my skills in Microsoft Paint are a solid "D-, could do better if he only applied himself". So with that last quote we've come full circle (that'll be a pun in a minute) and linked back to the start of the blog when we were talking about sex. I'm kidding. "D-"?! More like "U" for doing his coursework but not turning up to sit all of his exams.

Yeah I just compared sex to sitting an exam (don't read too much into the details of the metaphor: "coursework" doesn't mean anything). One day I'm going to be a professional writer and you can remember what I just did and think "What a jammy untalented bastard."

P.S. Seriously someone needs to explain the exact rules of personal contact with me otherwise I'm going to go my whole life with people crying, unhugged, in front of me.

It's Just Not Cricket

Sport is normally a field for fun and jokes, but recently a few bad things have happened. Firstly there was (and similar things have happened in the past) Fabrice Muamba and Piermario Morosini suffering cardiac arrests in the middle of football matches. Thankfully the former survived, but sadly Morosini died. Not much can be done about this as they would have had the same circumstances regardless of their career, though obviously the physical exertion is the trigger so it would have happened while they  were running for a bus or something. Anyway, this is all rather morbid and depressing so let me move on to the issue that we can do something about: the Grand National. Two horses died this year. Horses die often in the Grand National. Obviously it's a race, not a horse killing festival, but why do we think this is okay?

For sporting events we conduct cost-benefit analyses. With football, we recognise that legs can get broken, and that there is a very small chance that the physical exertion will trigger previously existing heart conditions, but in because of the incredibly low risk of death we consider these negative possibilities acceptable. Even if your leg gets broken you can play again after it heals. To cite an opposite example we look at cock fighting and realise that one of the contestants is likely going to die. It is almost a certainty. Therefore the probability of an unacceptable outcome means that the costs outweigh the benefits. On a side note: what are the benefits of cock fighting, dog fighting, hare coursing, bull fighting, bear baiting, and fox "hunting"? The argument for fox hunting and hare coursing is that they're pests that eat livestock and crops respectively. Despite my emotional reaction to the two I understand the general principle of pest extermination but why would you choose to make a sport of it? What enjoyment is there? Incidentally hare coursing uses already trapped hares so there's fuck all point to that. I think if pests really do need to be killed a swift pullet to the brain is a nicer option. Or you could just accept that some chickens and lettuce is going to be eaten. Either way, don't make a sport out of killing them. It's not fun and it's just cruel.

Unfortunately I've reached my conclusion on animals in sport before all the other things I was going to say. Never mind. Soldier on. Where was I? Ah, horse racing. In the cost-benefit analysis for horse racing it seems that death has become part of the acceptable norm. That doesn't seem right to me. Also, hitting them with whips seems mean too. Greyhound racing doesn't have either of those. As for the sport itself, what's interesting about animals racing? I get it with humans, it seems an impressive feat because I can look at Usain Bolt and say "Directly comparing that to my own sprinting ability I can see that his superior speed is admirable" although I'd probably shorten that to "Wow, he's fast". What I mean is that I can be impressed by a human being faster than me because it's comparable. Their athleticism is admirable because it seems remotely achievable.

Horses however are much faster than me. So much faster that putting Usain Bolt against Kauto Star seems unfair, let alone me. So when I see horses or greyhounds racing all I can say is that they're all quicker than me with the unfair advantage of having more legs and (probably) a better power to weight ratio. There's no enjoyment in it. I can't appreciate their athleticism because it's unachievable. If you need to put money on it to make it enjoyable then it's probably not an interesting sport. Money should only ever add to a pre-existing interest in the outcome of a sporting event; not create interest where before there was none. If animals are dying in your sport on a routine basis you should probably re-examine your cost-benefit analysis and see if there's a way to keep doing it without all the death. If not then stop doing the sport. If your sport is bull fighting or fox hunting then you're wrong. That's not a sport. That's animal cruelty. If you need foxes off your farm buy a gun and finish it quickly without all the bleeding to death. As for bull fighting, well there's no argument for that. If that's part of your cultural heritage then that part of your culture is stupid and so are you for defending it. I think I'm correct in remembering Stephen Fry say that cock fighting was once England's national sport (but I'm struggling to find proof of that). Either way it was once very popular in England and therefore part of my national cultural heritage. But it's cruel and stupid so I'm not going to defend it just because people used to do it. People used to have Bubonic Plague but I'm not going to go around licking rats for their fleas.