King me

I don't know why this iconic character has such an effect on me. I read a study on BK's King, and the gist of it was that it conveyed a sassy and bold, humorous and vivid image that appealed across demographics.









There are some of these commercials that just wig me out, like Waking up with the King. Others are mildly amusing and do not traumatize me psychologically.






The King is so popular that Halloween masks have been made in his likeness. Websites adore him and sell his merchandise. I have reported sightings of him on billboards, buses, television, etc...

I even have a bobble head of him in my office.

I wonder what it says about our culture that we find this character so... so... interesting? curiously engaging? off-beat and hip? What IS it about the King?

I don't know that I've referenced this site here at MPark, but I've shared it with many people through the years. I find it more-than-amazing, whatever that might be. It's so very boggling to me just how many bizarre things are submitted for patent. Take a tour through the site--you will NOT believe it!
Patently Silly - The Humor of Invention - presented by Daniel Wright

Sleep Calculus

I am of the belief that one hour of sleep before midnight is worth two hours after. That sure holds true in my lifestyle. If I sleep 9-midnight, I'm energized for the day--really! Typically I'll stay in bed and rest longer, but sometimes (about this time of year with hellish grading expectations) I sleep less and less.

When I was in college, I would visit my best friend in Hays, and he would not entertain the idea of sleep until nearly dawn (about when I typically get up). He would not let me sleep, either, until he was good and ready. Those visits about killed me.

Chalk it up to Ben Franklin (or whomever truly said it): Early to bed, early to rise, makes a man healthy, wealthy and wise. (I'd agree with healthy, anyway!)

Toward a more perfect Union

So I've been at this institution for about four years now. In this course of time I've been lucky enough to participate in the planning of this new student union, which had a ribbon cutting/grand opening today! My role was tiny, just conducting surveys in classes and offering input and doing a few walk throughs along the way...but actually being inside it today, full of folk--priceless!

I was reflecting with a colleague on how some of our finest memories of our college years were spent at the Union. It was a time to really get to know a professor as a person, to sometimes dive deep, sometimes go off the charts entirely. It was a place of fellowship and (for me, all too often) intense study.

I also must confess I spent my entire student loan there on pinball.

Today, I am feeling all warm and fuzzy, happy from head to toe, for I think this facility is just what this college needed at this site. I am going to hold a number of my office hours over there, and I hope to have some moments with my students like I once had with my profs.

Oh, and for the grand opening, they had some great finger food, too! I never missed any college function serving food, back in the day, and I've never been disappointed at the food served at this college, ever!

Well? Tell me!

I truly enjoy answering the "why" questions that my 3 sons throw at me constantly. I find it challenging to offer answers (and fun to make up answers, too). I looked forward to it from the time the oldest first began (and has never-since stopped) talking, and I will relish it as the last installment (due out in May) offers his questions, too.

Lately, however, the eldest has been asking real puzzlers. He has evolved to a new, very interesting, level of thinking.

Just this month he has asked me, while watching a video on firefighting, "Daddy, what happens if a firehouse catches on fire?" When I returned from the doctor the other day, "Daddy, what if the doctor gets sick?"

Soon he'll be posing really challenging conundrums. I'd better brace myself!

What's it all Mean?

I find teaching poetry in Intro to Lit to be liberating, for I am of the mind that most good poetry is more about experiencing the work than walking away with a single meaning. This, of course, drives some students mad. What does it matter, what it's all about?

I've long wondered why the Hokey Pokey espoused such self-importance.

What was the answer to the meaning of life in Monty Python?

Damning Recreation

This illustrates what NOT to do if you are a public figure.

The oldest man in the boat is my former Dean. I'll call him "Dean", here, to preserve whatever may be left of his reputation.

Once Dean had sat me down and lectured me forwards and back on how it was improper to have young college girls over to my house at all hours of the night. He made this claim after having observed my home through a privacy fence and about 100 yards that separated our properties. He said he was just looking out for me, but that I should not ever be seen w/students off the clock, especially at odd hours, especially at night, etc. It was quite the sermon. (At the time, I was just taken aback that he would be "spying" on me so much, that I was even a person of interest.)

Dean went on from my humble school to become President at another. His school became embroiled in the workstudy/college athlete scandal, but eventually after much gray hair and wrinkling, he emerged from that debacle okay.

Then, in August, this photo of him emerged, was published, and eventually led to his resignation. I wonder what happened to Dean's common sense, dignity, and sense of impropriety? I wonder what happens now to him, sans six-figure income?

That must have been one hell of a fun time to have cost him so very much.

Then again, why did it?

And for that matter, what was so improper about me having young ladies to my house back in the day? Maybe we were grant writing.

We are not clergy, not really of any office that should demand some kind of holier-than-thou lifestyle, right? Was pouring a drink for some young lass, off the clock, on the lake, such a crime? I would not have fired him for such an action, even if the whole crew of said boat were underage (which, in all likelihood, they were). So he wasn't a model of clean living at that moment. Maybe he wasn't living by his own advice...but so what?!

In this age, where cameras are ubiquitous, how can anyone expect to always be captured in a Norman Rockwellian moment? Who among us may occasionally sigh, "Whew, glad that wasn't on camera!"

I'm not proud of Dean getting caught with his shirt off there. I'm sure worse pictures of me are floating around (photoshopped, of course!)...and I know there are many moments of my life I'm not proud of, overall.

But really, morality police, get over it!

Fax me an iPod, will ya?

Rapid Prototyping has intrigued me for some time. I think I first saw a fictional version of it in action in the movie "Small Soldiers." In the film, Chip Hazard and other characters are formed with a laser-looking thing that squirts their image into 3-D.


I saw similar technology employed in Mission Impossible, when Tom Cruise has a mask made so he can infiltrate the bad guys' camp. Basically, it's a technology that builds up layer after layer of goop into a shape designed by a computer aided drafting/drawing (CAD) system. It's called "additive fabrication," for it builds by building on itself, one tiny layer at a time. Primitive versions of this actually use old ink jet printer technology, so renaming Rapid Prototyping "3-D printing" seems to be a good idea to me.

I've seen footage of an iPod case being manufactured via rapid prototyping. It reminded me of a monster-making kit I had when I was a kid, a "fright factory!"



I've read that in short order parts can be ordered via computer over long distances and then just "printed" at your location. This will require one to have the hardware, of course, but imagine if this were to catch on!? It could reduce transportation costs, eliminate the middle men, and generally speaking be pretty darn cool! From what I understand, as this technology evolves and is coupled with nanotechnology, even computer components will be "manufactured" by pouring substances as per advanced CAD directives. One may actually, someday, be able to order something like an iPod to be built on site, on demand!

I believe in Anxiety

I believe in anxiety, that is, I believe it is okay to be anxious, to embrace anxiety and squeeze the power from it. I have learned that painful uneasiness pushes me to perform. For all manner of things even remotely within my sphere of influence, anxiety has proven to be rocket fuel for my soul.

I was once self conscious of my anxiety. I would rarely confess it to anyone else, for I thought to be at all troubled was to be weak. The first time I learned that performance anxiety was not my own issue was when I shared my fear with a preacher. He sat me down on the edge of the stage and patted my shoulder. “Mark, if I were ever to take that pulpit and not be a little queasy, I’d flop.” It was a revelation to me. This man seemed so very charismatic, so large and in charge, so natural from the microphone (authentic, just like at that moment on the steps). He seemed strong and courageous, like there was nothing he could not talk about intelligently and forcefully.

I began to watch him closely. I started to notice the fidgeting leg as he sat waiting to take the pulpit after the choir. I watched him in his rituals, just like a major league ball player. First he would lay his bible on the pulpit, then smile at the crowd, then stroke the cover with an open palm. Every week he would do this same thing, and I could tell that somewhere in that ritual, he was finding his energy to combat his anxieties.

In college, it took me a while to harness the power of anxiety. I would flit from class to class, assignment to assignment, willy-nilly. I would never grapple with a calendar, what was due when…instead; I would constantly be surprised by deadlines, overwhelmed with homework. I would pull all-nighters and turn work in late. (This did, I suppose, help me with creativity, for I was able to manufacture some of the best excuses for late work I have ever heard!)

Finally, in my fifth year of college, I became an adrenaline junkie. I was doing my “teaching block” in a public school, and I had to ride the wave of anxiety daily. It would crest when I went into the classroom, and like my preacher, I had to grab it and pin it down for myself. I was able to learn to turn anxiousness to enthusiasm. Sure, I never knew how a class period would work out, and yes, some flopped. What happened, though, was that I was able to convert dread into power, failure into motive to do better.

Overtime, I became Mr. J, a persona of wild passion and caustic wit. I excised my anxiety by moving and by channeling it into charismatic delivery. I really have been able to burn white hot in class, and that’s likely why every day after class, I am exhausted.

Fly Naked

This image is from here which recently ran an article on Virtual Strip Search (backscatter) technology. A student brought this to my attention in a research paper, though x-ray searches have gone on since 9/11 in airports and even longer, so the articles say, in prisons.

The controversies surrounding this range from invasion of privacy to invasive technology, from kiddie "porn" to physical side effects. I've seen this in sci-fi movies for decades, and until I really thought about it, the whole thing seemed pretty cool.

My biology buddy even tells me the technology can detect drug running mules, seeing actually inside the body! Talk about invasive! I might not want my breast implants, colostomy bag, penile extensions, dirty laundry, etc. to be viewed by anyone w/o my express, immediate and intimate interest in them. I might not want my kids' neked images bandied about.

Thanks to terrorism scares, the Patriot Act, and the sheep that bleat consent at every legislative gesture, these days the technology is coming into the common place. My kids won't even balk at it, much like I don't think twice about being known by my social security number (something my father thought was a mark of the beast!)

I never knew I was so conservative until I started paying attention to just how many things are legislated for us, taken for granted. Privacy is no longer good form.

I think next time I fly I will cover myself in aluminum foil before going to the airport, you know, under my clothes, just to see what happens.

Hitler Youth to Brownshirts; Painted Babies to Beauty Queens

TLC premiered the pageant documentaries Painted Babies at 17 and Toddlers & Tiaras in September. I don't watch much TV, so I missed them.
I did, however, just watch this clip, and it makes me shudder. Kids are so very responsive to parent/guardian praise and punishment. They are so very eager to earn praise and to do good. I don't know if any other beastie in the animal kingdom is so hardwired for positive reinforcement. I do know that this kind of behavior on the part of a parent is deplorable.

Boys are far from immune, either. I've witnessed hapless youth manipulated into daddy's little (fill in the blank--mini-me). It was nationalized by the Germans when the Hitler Youth came into being, but it is widespread everywhere, even here in Kansas, today. Sporting events are the most obvious. I've seen parents at ballgames behaving in ways that would make even the Fuhrer embarrassed! I know of one daddy who drives his kids so very hard with insults that I have come close to intervening. It reminds me of an article I read last year about some parents pitting their kids against one another in a street fight, just to "toughen them up." I wouldn't be surprised if those same parents may have been taking side bets on the victor.

To me, it all goes back to letting kids be kids. Let them be little. Give them time to grow into whomever they are inclined to become. I hope I do not put too much of my direction on the shoulders of my little ones!

Reflections

*sap alert*

It's the end of October, a time of year my Trick or Treat bag is stuffed with jawbreakers, deal-busters, heart ache and mirror-shattering reflection. Irrevocable errors happened here, this date in history, events occurred in haunted houses now bull-dozed away (some of them literally).

Death haunts me in this season, when I feel the chill in the air and curse the ice to be scraped, when I mourn the loss of leaves and stare bleakly at the cold gray days—I remember vividly the last heart-to-heart I had with my late father. I return to that ghastly first Thanksgiving without him, and the funeral just days later. It’s the time of year things happen for a reason: rediscovering the ring my uncle pulled from my dad’s dead fingers and put into my palm, finding an old file box with journal entries from that first year without him. I feel the cold indifference and harsh wind of western Kansas, always pushing against me.

I revisited the campus and office and mentor of SLC, these three letters meaningless to any reader, though forever emblazoned on my soul. It was Service Learning Central, a cause I mistakenly gave my very life’s blood for a decade. I had no life to speak of, and I drove so many people so hard it’s a wonder I have any friends from that era. We did many great things, but the motive is always dubious in my memory and the blinding zeal I once had for it will never return. (Here, anyone who endured that with me is happy!)

It was bizarre to be back in that place at this time, almost five years since I left. I was working early in the morning on the first day of Thanksgiving break when a sheriff called me in the office to give me the bad news about my father. From there it was a whirlwind of decisions, of doors closing, of leaving and moving and mourning not only my loss of my father but also the shattering of my spiritual compass, my driving force. I was without rudder, without a soul it seemed, for the better part of a year.

To stand again in my old office, the birthplace of many great ideas, the forge which burned white hot so often with enthusiasm unbounded…to be me, now, unplugged, in that place that had once been more my home than my house…it was so very odd. I was just in an office, an old paneled and painted humble basement office. Very little of the original furnishings, photos, etc. remained—just enough to bring back a resonance I was not too sure I wanted to feel. I was all at once haunted, then relieved. My wife and three kids were with me there, and I was quickly able to distance myself from myself, to regain my traction and healthy perspective that I’ve worked at for these last few years.

The end of October also screams shrilly of the end of the semester, a time one should be relieved, a time to enjoy some vacation time. I tend (typically) to balloon up with regret and sorrow. I begin, about now, to miss the students I’ve just come to know. I start listing, last week in fact, my many shortcomings this fall that I would like to improve upon for next term (late return of work, not enough emphasis on textbook…). At the turn of the year, I do this same thing with my own self improvement inventory.

I know it’s football season, that it’s the time of scarecrows and bonfires and pumpkin carving fun. I love the color, the crispness, the upcoming Turkey feast! I like nesting for the winter some, not having to mow for a few months. I even like the challenge of getting from point A to point B in the snow, against the elements. Hopefully, whenever I am in the shadow of all the darker memories of this season I can find a focus to celebrate now and then.

Otherwise, it’s pretty grim!

' Verse

We may have lost the battle...okay, even the war...but you STILL can't take the sky from me. You can't even take my patriotism away. Like it or not, thousands of veterans pressed for this monument, our last stand, oddly enough a place I'd never visit (but love to know is there).

I could so easily get drawn into RPG's. Long ago, there was a little game we played on the big floppies called ZORG. It required one to have several disks on hand, to swap them out on command. It was purely a monochromatic screen with interactive text, but it wowed me at the time. I worked my way through a series of levels of that game, and had it not been for a computer failure, I might still be at it to this day--absorbing.

I do not know what it is that makes one so susceptible to such gaming, where one takes on a persona, lives and breathes in-character. Maybe it's a sort of frustrated acting urge. Maybe it's some dissatisfaction with real life (RL). In my case, it isn't either.

I think in my case it's that I like fiction. I really like being immersed in a good read, and for me, one step further is being interactive with a fiction. That's likely what the springboard has been that's stimulated my interest in Virtual Worlds, namely, currently, Second Life.

I am going to do some research on this whole thing, from RPG's to VW's overall.

Meanwhile, an update: I have now discovered how troubling it can be when one's avatar goes bad. Well, it was no one's doing but my own, of course, but it seems my avatar is forever changed. I was tinkering with various "looks" and now cannot return (without a great deal of rework and time) to his look of over a year. (I should have saved his likeness in-world, in my inventory, I now know.) Anyway, I'd read of how people became attached to their avatars, how they even developed relationships of a kind with them. When one finds too much of his/her identity in a cartoon (as my skeptical friends call them)likeness, something is, indeed, amiss. I would not say that I am mourning Gawain's lost appearance, but I am disturbed by it. This, too, would be a great area to research and report on: self-image and avatars.

For now, I will close with a thought (redundant for anyone who is a regular reader, I fear, or anyone who is a meatspace friend) on corporate greed. I have a deep, abiding dislike for corporate ownership, franchising, branding, naming...the works. I wish everything were mom and pop operations.

How refreshing to encounter, say, variations in our food at fast food restaurants. How great it would be to stumble upon the unexpected gem among greasy spoon cafes. I love to do this, but I am always out-voted in my family; they favor eating food in paper wrappings in a laminated environment that is likely cleaned with a garden hose.

Already advertising creeps into our every pore and pixel, and that is the first wave of corporate branding. Already some parents whore out their children to be branded by major corporations, models of theirs, sponsored by x, y, z company. The exchange is that the kid wears company gear, talks the company talk, etc. Already space launches have been sponsored by corporations--space, the final frontier! Space above countries is "owned" you know, and there are already lawyers who work exclusively on issues of air space and space law.

Some companies are so vast we are not commonly aware of them. They have ownership and market controls of everything from food products to auto parts, from pencils to porn (I'm just speculating on the porn). Altria, PepsiCo, Sony...

In my 'verse, there's an even bigger corporate presence, Blue Sun.

Music--so Interesting!

I thought I had a good grasp of music, that I knew what I liked, until I began twiddling around with online tools that give me free access like Seeqpod and now Pandora. I've used iTunes and LastFM and LimeWire for various purposes, and I have surfed my way into some very interesting music at such spots...but Pandora, part of the "Music Genome Project" is my favorite musical tool online. Through it, I have found bone-wracking interest in Ska, some Punk, and a broad variety of Electronica that I would never have paid for upfront w/o a listen.

Right now I'm listening to LostProphets and Reel Big Fish. Earlier, I was on my own channel for Irish instrumental music of Tempest and Runrig. First thing this morning, I started the day with some interesting "surf revival" music from my friends, "Man-or Astroman." and Hellecasters.

I've quadrupled my musical horizons, if one could measure such a thing, in just a few months. I've made some very unique playlists, and if only I had time, there's a great deal I'd like to do with some of the music I've discovered, from using it for podcast sound beds to making overlapping mixes and such...even to just do something artistic (shadowbox, sculpt in clay, weld) to some of this music would be very liberating and fun!

The radio is so boring by comparison.

What is it?

I'm mechanical, and I like this site, "What is it?"
I frequent the site and am constantly challenged. See what you think!

The Jag-Wolves Pack

Grass growing high,
Vultures laying low.
Wolves laying on their left side;
Jaguars laying on their right side.
Footprints washing away
Rain swooping down with hail.
Bears hibernating.
Dingoes off for their evening fish hike.
Lions off for their evening dingo talk.
Tigers off for their talk about the city.
Cheetahs talking with alligators about the tiger plan.

A poem by Jaxson Jarvis, age 5

CLICK

I've written of this repeatedly, so I guess it's a theme now. I so wish I could stop time, like in the movie, Click. I was just recalling a special effect of the Matrix series, in which one could zoom 360 around an action scene slowed to a stop...I wish I could do that.

Ever been in a car wreck? There is a moment of, "Oh, boy!" when you tend to know you're wrecking, when your car is upside down or your head's penetrating the windshield--and you stop time then.

A car wreck also leaves me with that terrible feeling that things are out of control, that I cannot reverse course now but must instead ride it out. Things are churning, chaotic, and chitty.

Such is this moment in my life, when everything from personal finances to national elections seems out of control. It's a time when I am away from my family so much it grieves my soul (even though I'm with them far more than most fathers get to be).

I am on a gut-wrenching merry-go-round, and I'm about to puke.

Usually, I'm pretty handy at fixing things. That's just it. Give me a plugged up toilet or a dead car, and I'm ready to go to work. Give me my personal life, and I don't even know where to begin. I need a therapist with some really innovative approaches to fix this broken machine, someone like MacGyver...

Haunting

YESTERDAY, my family made scarecrows. It was a great bonding experience, though we did have meltdowns, feuds, and some discussion over artistic license. Just as I was warming up, seeing scarecrow potential in everything from rakes to scoop shovels, trunk lids to tomato stands--we were done. (I made another one, later that day, just because!)

There is something in me that seeks expression in the crafting of beings--not my kids, here--scarecrows, sandsculptures, effigies, stick people...I do not know why this is a tendency I have. I don't remember anything profound from my childhood.

Deeper, I also find I am very good at crafting "scares" for others. This has some roots in April Fool's pranks, but it goes farther and farther from center. I operated a haunted house for two or three years, giving MONTHS of my life to its success. It consumed me. I was part of something large-scale scary, so much so that I could not tour my own haunt w/o screaming like a little girl. I was engaged in online chats with the operators of haunts in St. Louis, Salt Lake City, and on the outskirts of Hollywood. I toured a factory in Greeley, Colorado, makers of those life-like, life-sized creepy robotic things. We literally bought out a haunted house in Topeka, and 8 of us and a semi-tractor trailer hauled it back and adapted it to our purposes.

Now, for any new readers, I am not into the occult nor black arts. I don't even like Black Sabbath. (I don't even like the color black, if you really care.) There were no pentagrams nor strange worship services at our haunt.

A pinnacle, however, was the larger-than-life Grim Reaper we crafted. It was shockingly realistic (though, how could a mythic figure be realistic?). I hope I still have photos of it somewhere.

Building scarecrows reminded me of building that Grim Reaper. I could populate my whole 11 acres with such things and invite the public, but I don't think my family would like it much.

I still don't know why it gives me such a charge.

There be monsters...

I waffle on this, for to acknowledge anything beyond flesh and into the supernatural opens opportunity and responsibility to reckon with all things ethereal. While I have been at the deep end of the pool on this before, of late I've been treading water.

That said, I find the theory that kids see into this beyond to be a very engaging theory, one that I have had a good deal of exposure to and one that my kids evidence regularly (without being prompted, coached, educated, etc. in this).

My wife chronicles this often in her blog. One kid or another over the years has sighted, had conversations with, is afraid of...someone who is not tangibly present. I'm not writing of your typical "imaginary friend" here, but someone who can cause a boy to stop in his tracks and wet himself in fear. These are the invisible visitors that may make a five year old (or a toddler) weep, cling to a parent, etc.

Sure, they have been inclined to put blame on these "ghosts" for their own misbehavior at times, and (even though we do our best to regard their notices of visitors as just another conversation) they might have mentioned a hobgoblin for attention sometime or another. All three do have very vivid imaginations and all three do have (readily acknowledged) imaginary friends and episodes of monologues (and dialogues) which would lead any outside observer to question their their perceptions of reality if not their sanity.

But none of their imaginary friends, Nobody, Jeff, etc...even the one legged man with the hat--none of these regular "folk" cause the reactions that other, more sinister apparitions seem to.

Many argue that we limit our perceptions as we grow older. It is said that this is vital to our coping with all the sensory overload we increasingly-encounter. We also are very responsive to social conditioning that tells us what is real and true, what is accepted behavior (even observation). We are beaten over the head with, "That's just pretend" and "You're making that up," and other conditioning that (so they say) numbs us to potential supernatural perception.

I intend to make this an object of study beyond my own kids. I wonder if most young children have such sightings. I want to find out! Meanwhile, we continue to listen to our kids express themselves (with as little judgement, coercion, etc... as we can) to better understand what it is they may see that we cannot.

An ignorant voice on the Bail Out

See the title? I admit I know virtually nothing about this. Established? Good.

I do know that when politicians and the media begin shifting semantics and spinning euphemisms that it is time to be wary. What began as a bailout has become a rescue plan. By the time it is signed, sealed and delivered, it will likely be further blurred to "The Financial Support" law or something equally non-descript.

I do know that when farmers were going through bankruptcy there was no bail out from the feds. Any good farmer would have rejected it anyway, on principle, but too many of us had already sold out our principles to the FHA to stay in business. Remember farmers, those folk who feed you? Not some sneely, squirmy, white collar criminals shuffling paper all day.

I know that, under whatever pretense, once the government "owns" most business, industry, enterprise, etc...that we're in deep dip. All we need now is some charismatic hero to raise the homeland to new heights. Then all the predictions of my professor regarding fascism shall come to pass in my lifetime, as he would daily rant to us over 20 years ago.

I know that I am not yet at the point of self-sufficiency, self-reliance and self-defense that I need to be. I may have seeds, arms, skills, etc...but dependants in my household are also drug dependent. We have no stockpile of fuel (well, wood I guess).

Which, while I'm ranting, gets me to dependency in general. I have shaken the chains of tobacco and television. I gave up culinary delights and would just-as-soon eat cornbread every day for the rest of my life. (mmmmmm....cornbread!) I have escaped a prescription mood enhancing drug (...the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention looked at 2.4 billion drugs prescribed in visits to doctors and hospitals in 2005. Of those, 118 million were for antidepressants.) I guess I'm ready as I'll ever be for financial ruination. Bring down the grid. Let weeds grow in the cracks of our highways. Let freedom ring...oh, but...what about my Internet. I can't live without that!

Stop the press and let me vote. I'll not be without my Internet!

This, I think, models what we need to do for all of voting age. Drill down. (Not like JMc and Palin, per se.) Drill down to what matters to people, whether it's the daily fix of Dr. Phil or the constant contact of a cell phone. Whether it's (gov't supported) Meals on Wheels or (gov't dependent) school sports. Wherever it hurts, we must touch with some catalytic vigor to drive all the sheep to the polls.

Even if they're ignorant, like me.