Closer

Yes yes yes, I'm slow and that affects the world how? Well, I have seen bits of it on several seperate occasions, caught the front and missed the rest to Bridge, caught some bits at Jan's, caught some bits in bunk, etc. But I guess that doesn't change the fact that I haven't actually seen it until now, when I'm so bored and that's the only show I have unwatched.

Spoiler Alert! Highlight to see.

About 52 minutes into the movie:

Alice: No one will ever love you as much as I do. Why isn't love enough?

What? You're gonna fuck me for that spoiler? No? Of course no. I put a "Spoiler Alert!", just to prove my point. You still read it. It's not a spoiler, it's a quote. It's too old a movie to be any good of a spoiler anyway. Ok back to my point. BECAUSE NOTHING IS EVER ENOUGH. Humans are never satisfied, whether it's hunger, attention, money, curiosity, love, sex, name it. Well obvious you don't welcome crap like farts and burbs, you can be not satisfied with them when you don't desire them in the first place. Cause and effect, why do I always get back to that? And dear *God let it rain tomorrow, throw in a dash of lightning if you may, and make it heavy.

Yes, Closer is screwing up my mind. It is screwed up, that's why it's a good movie.

Read this for my definition of God.

BBQ

BBQ, a common acronym for barbeque, burning meat on a grill. It's been given a new meaning, now fresh from hell with a touch of Hades himself, literally! A cremation, burning corpse in an oven.

I've spent my past 2 sundays performing at the Mandai Crematorium, a complete waste of time if you ask me. With another one, very very possibly, on it's way, I won't be surprised if I achieve a hat trick in funerals! Now known as a BBQ thanks to some really sadistic people living in the world today.

1 more day to SAFDAY. I hope it rains. It doesn't matter that I went for all the God damned rehersals, got sun burned and shit, not to forget the fatique from all the playing and the complete waste of time travelling. Did I not mention that almost every fucking one of those rehersals require me to stay in because it I have to fall in at 6:15 AM thus rendering me with an inadequate amount of sleep (because there's no air-con in bunk and there're tons of mosquitoes, then there're the PS2 and the X-Box)? Whether I'm down for the actual or not doesn't matter to me. I want it to rain so I don't have to be deployed, simple.

I remember it's about this time last year when there was some commotion because we had to go for the rehersals but didn't get to appear on National Day thanks to the reduction in the NS term. I remember being pretty pissed about it. Stupid. Now it's just another tiring parade. When it comes to parades, the lesser the merrier. There's no glory contrary to popular belief, not when you're at every other one of the parades. That's when it doesn't matter.

The next time someone tells me that I should feel proud to be wearing the No. 1 uniform, I'll slap his testicles so hard it comes out through his mouth, that'll shut him up real fine. I wear that darn uniform every month! It's easily stained, heavy and hot even on a rainy day, then there're those shitty buttons and all those accessories which, as the name suggests, serve no real purpose but to give us extra load in exchange for pseudo beauty. Some people look like shit in No. 1, no amount of accessories will change that.

Steven Mead

I finally got my hands on some of Mead's recordings and I must say, I'm a little disappointed. Don' get me wrong, my decision is not final and is subjected to change if I can hear more of his playing. I haven't heard about Mead until last year, after playing the euphonium for more than 6 years! That's 3 years AFTER I heard of the so called best Trombonist, Christian Lindberg, that's weird considering that I'm a euphonium player.

I had this version of Horovitz euphonium a long long time ago, in fact it's so long ago when I got it that I forgot the source and who the soloist was. I naturally went straight for the Mead version of the piece and it's really kinda disappointing, probably because I expected more of him with all the hype around his playing. I also prefer the interpretation in the old recording I have.

So much for stuff most people wll find boring.

Vittorio Monti
The Italian Vittorio Monti scored the most important success of his professional life with this Hungarian-style Czardas - which was originally composed for either violin or mandolin and piano.

It was soon arranged for all kinds of ensembles, for it epitomises for many people the essence of the old Hungarian dance, with its juxtaposition of fast and slow music. Few people remember Monti today, but everyone will be familiar with his music here - making him a true immortal.

(source)

And here I am nice enough to present you with, non-other than, the euphonium(B.C) score, cause I hate reading eupho scores in T.C. The original one I got was for the Eb Tenor horn and I had to transpose it. I also up it by an octave on certain passages with reference to the trans. by Eric Wilson.

On Higher Moral Grounds

I'm sick of people that write shit like "I'm not judging you but" or "I'm not saying I'm more moral/ethical than you but" etc.

What the hell is wrong with people who say shit like that? When you judge someone or something, you are obviously putting yourself above them so why bother denying it? When you obviously disapprove of the acts of someone, you obviously think lesser of the person, so why bother to play nice, can I even say that it's nice?, and deny that you're judging from a higher moral ground?

The next time I see anyone say shit like that, I'll let my iguana lose on him/her! It will not be pretty. If you want to judge someone, do it right. Hey! You SUCK! There, what can he not understand?

so jan knows...

I've been wanting to write this but I'm bounded by a non-disclosure promise I made. But since Janice already knows, it's now safe for me to write this down. Kenneth passed his driving practical and got his QDL a few days ago, congrats to you and to us all. I'd advice you to buy some insurance for you car if you want to let him drive it. He's not the best.

Being the first passenger in his car, I know better than anyone else how careless he is and even though I haven't actually sat in on Zhihui's driving, I can pretty much safely say she's a better driver. I'm not saying Kenneth is all bad, he's got the reflexes but his carelessness is his bane. He left his lights off at night not once but twice! And he's driving a black Lancer!! To say that he almost ran someone down is a understatement!

Rachel, Kenneth's sister: "Good drivers re able to look out for bad drivers."

Well it's probably true unless the bad driver is driving a black car at night with the lights off.

For those that know us, you probably know about our Top 20 list. We don't actually know exactly who's in it since additions are always made to it. So when we say someone is of Top 20 caliber, you know the person is really really ugly. Everytime we go out, we spot a few Top 20 material but the top few are always the same few and that both no. 1's and no. 2's names begin with "C". When Kenneth went to meet his friend after dinner with The Amazing Caves, his friend have with her another friend who's Top 20 material. That's about all I'll disclose for now, you'll understand it once I post some pics of her here, when I get if from Kenneth that is.

some fuck shit

That's exactly what it is! Fucking A. Something bit my left pinky, at the fucking tip of my left pinky to be exact! And it hurts like a bitch! It doesn't actually hurt if I leave it alone but it gets in the way when I'm typing, I do this a lot in case you haven't already noticed. It's not itchy like a mosquito bite, it just hurts like fuck and it's swelling, but not obviouse cause whatever the size of a swell, it'll always be small on a pinky. Unless of course you decide it's fun to poke me now and I give you an extra segment in you finger which will take some time to heal but when it's done, you'll be one of the few people with more than 3 segments in your fingers. Think of it as a cool thing. Now who wants to poke me now?

You know when you talk shit with everyone, you can't really remember what shit you told who and what fuck conversation you had with who. Happens to me all the time. It's probably a blessing that the shit I talk with people about comes in a various genres so I don't often mix up the stuff you tell me. Then there are some shit that I tell EVERYONE and those are what spawns the most "you already said that".

batman begins

I'll say it's a pretty fine movie and not as good as some of my friends claim it to be. It's a movie to entertain but the writers aren't very smart if you ask me.

So someone decides to create a hallucinogen that induces fear but only works when inhaled. This someone happens to have an ingenius plan to contaminate the city's water supply with said toxin and at the right time, vapourise the entire city's water network and hence causing the entire city to fall into a state of panick. Seemingly impossible? Well apparently batan's company, Wayne Corp., is into weapon R&D and they created a prototype device that will "vapourise the enemy's water supply" and it got stolen! Said device uses microwaves to accelerate water molecules so they boil, wow impressive elementary science here. Let's assume here that it's in fact possible to make the device target only the water in the pipes and not affect the 70% water in the human body. So the toxin's been leaked into the city's water supply for 2 weeks before the actual execution of the plan. Behold! The greatest loop-hole in the plot that's so in plain sight. The water vapourises, boils whatever, and the victims inhale the water vapour causing them to be affected by the toxin. Apparently, no one, not a single person, boiled water for drinking in the past 2 weeks since no one got affected by the toxin until D-day.

Some of you might start yapping about how I should put a spoiler alert yada yada bullshit right about when you read the first sentence. And if you've read this far, here, you would probably have read the entire "spoiler" which makes me question why you continue reading when you know that it's a spoiler, I believe I made it clear enough, and then decide to point out to me that I should in fact put a "spoiler alert" knowing very well that anyone WILL continue reading, probably with more zest, when shown the words "spoiler alert". It's only human nature to be curious and reverse psychology almost always work!

Which is why I think that someday the internet will be flooded not by porn and pictures of naked women you have to pay to view, but by images of really ugly and hideous looking people where you will pay to not see! Take this for example.



Anyway, as we were heading for supper after the movie, we passed by Oriental and there was this Mercedes roadshow kind of thing going on, and that's when Kenneth spotted this.



As everyone knows, Batman's got this shadow play thing that Gordan shines into the clouds whenever he needs to contact batman. That was what inspired the not very nice Tiger beer ad that stereotypes guys and girls into 1 single category, stupidity. Apparently Singapore's got her share of crime fighting crusaders too. Mercedes MAN! I didn't have a digital camera with me so I had to use Kenneth's phone to take the picture. I had to change some settings, Night Mode and increase the exposure time before I managed to get the image on screen.

stopping time

If you haven't already seen this in my sidebar(Firefox) or at the bottom(Internet Explorer), you are probably blind. It's real-time by the way, meaning when you see it say that I'm listening to this and that track, I'm in fact at that point of time when the image got loaded, listening to that song. When I'm not listening to anything it just says I have nothing playing.

Was just watching one episode of Initial D Stage 4 and there's this part in it with some mention of time stopping, or the hope that time stops. It's a fantasy everyone have, to stop time at some point of time in life. A fantasy that cannot be reached. Time is an illusion we all experience, time passes because we pass, it moves because we move. When everything in the entire universe comes to a stop, everything right down to the electrons, photons, the quaks and the possible smaller building units of matter we have yet to discover, when all that comes to a standstill, time stops. Time is not another dimension. Well I thought I read about time being an illusion and how it pass because we pass somewhere, it must have been another of Crichton's books. I think it's Timeline, I love Timeline the novel and I hate Timeline the shitty piece of crap movie.

From since I can remember, I've wanted time to stop on multiple occasions. When I first heard Fantasy Variations - that's when I decided to join band, it's the most beautiful piece in the world. When I got my first 4 valve euphonium. When I first played on the Stork. When we performed on stage at the SYF. When we know that we got Gold. When we got into the Top 5. When we are in Australia, all 14 days of it should be recursive. When I got my P2 266. When I got my P4 2.4. When we spent the night together so many years ago when you first jolted my heart. All the times we walked to school together. When I waited for you. When you waited for me. When I first held you hand. When we first embraced. When we sat at the busstop watching all the busses go, refusing to leave. So much I can't remember. It's weird but it appears that almost everything in the past 8 years of my life revolves around DHSSB, everything I reminisce about that is. Perhaps it's sad that every shard of precious memory of mine I hang on so dearly to will never come back ever again.

like money in my pocket

Mahjiong's a great game, it's a great way to make money for some and for me when I'm in need of cash. Every game you win allows you to lose 3 games without loss assuming you won BIG. Happened to me today, didn't win many games but I still won more than 16 bucks. That's almost the case. It would have been the case in a normal mahjiong game with my usual kahkees but no, this time there's a noob and since she's our friend, we're all obliged to not cheat her off her money, so we played mahjion wrong.

It sucks to know that you could have won so-much money but didn't. Fuck. But nevermind, it was fun anyway. It's also the slowest game of mahjiong ever. 5 hours for 1 round, with only one instance of diao-zeng!! That's just SLOW.

I was playing with 3 girls, mahjiong that is, and for some, it should have been enjoyable. Try sitting in with 3 girls constantly rapping about the hottest gossips in school, who's fucking who, yada yada, and all that you-know-that-hot-guy-i-saw-the-other-day crap. An occasional tinge of intellect in the bimbotic conversation? I think not. Not to forget that one of the 3 was reigning champion for the top 20 list until I saw YunJing. The current throne warmer is Candice. Did I see her at the concert? I try not to.

I went to DHSSB's Rhythm by the way. They are good, I mean REALLY REALLY GOOD! So much for that, there's really nothign much I can comment. Stand by Me is still the last piece to be played, and the nostalgic "3 cheers for BASSES" thing still exists! It was fun. I can almost imagine myself back on that stage playing at my usual seat along with Janice and fatty-short-legs, maybe we should change that to cover-me-up, and all. I want to play there again!! I was just tell Janice how much I miss playing with her a few days ago. Same goes for the rest of the people in my batch of DHSSB graduates.

Adding 2 more Euphonium Solo pieces to my collection, shall source for the scores soon. Now I'll just concentrate on getting blacky's collection of up to 7GB of Band songs in MP3. That's a lot, more than a thousand band music. Fucking insane if you ask me.

Simple Plan - Welcome to My Life

Do you ever feel like breaking down?
Do you ever feel out of place?
Like somehow you just don't belong
And no one understands you

Do you ever want to run away?
Do you lock yourself in your room?
With the radio on turned up so loud
That no one hears you screaming

No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels alright
You don't know what it's like
To be like me

To be hurt, to feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

Do you wanna be somebody else?
Are you sick of feeling so left out?
Are you desperate to find something more
Before your life is over?

Are you stuck inside a world you hate?
Are you sick of everyone around?
With their big fake smiles and stupid lies
While deep inside you're bleeding

No you don't know what it's like
When nothing feels alright
You don't know what it's like
To be like me

To be hurt, to feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

No one ever lied straight to your face
And no one ever stabbed you in the back
You might think I'm happy
But I'm not gonna be ok
Everybody always gave you what you wanted
You never had to work
It was always there
You don't know what it's like
What it's like

To be hurt, to feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked when you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like (what it's like)

To be hurt
To feel lost
To be left out in the dark
To be kicked
When you're down
To feel like you've been pushed around
To be on the edge of breaking down
And no one's there to save you
No you don't know what it's like
Welcome to my life

Welcome to my life
Welcome to my life

Yixian, I know you love them, but this is what you get for trying to get out of filming. Can't you so totally imagine a certain throll we all know singing that? Muahaha~!! It'll be the next big thing after Numa-numa!

SM3.5 or Stork Custom 4

Every month. Every fucking month I find something to buy, to spend my money on. And everytime it's a 1 time buy. I never seem to have trouble finding something I want to buy.

So which will it be? Should I get the Denis Wick SM3.5 or the Stork Custom 4? Fuck. It's like forcing me to choose between a fork and a spoon.

Been pretty busy with various stuff lately. Why is it that all the work comes crashing down on me at the same time?! There's filming, which will probably burn up most of my weekends, SAFDAY rehersals which requires me to stay in and hence wasting me at least 1 night a week and the rest of the nights are spent working on the website project I took. Fucking busy. I almost have to play for this concert too but I successfully tai-chied it away.

My SAF Pledge

They
members of the Singapore Armed Forces,
Do solemnly and sincerely pledge that
they will always bear true faith and allegiance
to the President and the Republic of Singapore.
They will always support and defend the Constitution.
They will preserve and protect the honour and independence of our country
WITH THEIR LIVES!

magic fingers.

It appears that after 20 years, I've finally lost it. The magic fingers that makes electronics work at a touch.
It all started 2 days ago when I stupidly decided to try something as simple as renaming a file on my x-box. A simple action it may be but the repercussions are titanic. My X-Box is now rendered useless. Since it's more than a year old, the warranty's already non-existent. I finally decided to go ahead and get myself some Torx screw drivers and pry my way inside the forbidden machine.

I spent an entire afternoon trying every possible solution available and none of it works. For some reason, I backed up my C: but forgot to do the same for the eeprom.bin file located at the same place. Fuck. It would have made everything so much simpler!!

I feel as if I lost a part of me. I had the uncanny ability to make electronical stuff work, I don't have to know what I'm doing, all I had to do is touch, remove a part and replace it at the same location and more often than not, the thing works again. Not this time. I remember a period of time when I was still using my crappy 266 and the thing just freezes at start up before showing anything. I did what I could, open and touch, and it will work again. When my friend encountered the same problem, I told him my solution and he said it's stupid. True enough, there's no theory behind it and no part of it suggests intellect in any way but somehow, it works. My very satisfied friend told me that stupid as my solution sounds, it works.

But now it's gone, my fucking X-Box will not start. It would have been so much easier if I'd bothered to back up more files! DAMNIT! Then there's Microsoft, what the fuck is wrong with them? It's my X-Box once I bought it, why the fuck is it you set a password on MY harddisk which password is stored in a fucking CHIP that couldn't be read unless the harddisk is ACCESSED!!!

Fuck!

Never be replaced

This song's been bugging me for some time already. What the fuck is wrong with the music industry for allow such junk to be sold for any amount?! It's shouldn't even be downloaded!! Too bad for me, my sis got it and decided it's fun to put it on repeat!

Baby I love you and i'll never let you go
But if I have to boy I think that you should know
All the love we make can never be erase
And i promise you that you will never be replaced

Imagine that on repeat! Over and over and over again! The next time I hear it on repeat, I'll run down to the nearest Vinmart and get myself a heavy wrench so I can smash up whatever device is playing the damn song over and over and over and (insert over and here unlimited times) AGAIN! If you still do not get the gravity of the situation, being the nice me as I always am, I've extracted the chorus part, aka the FUCKING TUNE,of the song which should playback fine one any audio player that supports the MPEG Layer 3 format(mp3), hardware and software alike. Put it on repeat on your player of choice and hit play, sit back and die. Got the idea yet? No?! What are you fucking DEAF?!!! I'm not saying the entire song consists only of the chorus, if that's the case, the chorus wouldn't be the chorus anymore. The nature of the song is such that the entire damn fucking composition consists only of the tune from teh chorus, add in some slight variations in the lyrics, hardly fantastic. Imagine listening tot he crappy nasal voice along with the fucked up composition! It's giving me a fucking headache!

There are times when I think I go overboard to make it a point that others hate what I hate and this is one of those times! *So here's a little something I made. Send the link to people you hate. I can assure you that if that person is like most of the sitting ducks out there that know nuts about what they call "computer stuff" and still uses the bane of browsers, IE, with no pop-up blocker whatsoever. They WILL hate you even more! That little site will also most like crash his/her IE.

A quick fix to it will be to press "Ctrl-Alt-Del" and end task on Internet Explorer. Make that a permanent end if you must and you MUST!

* WARNING! This WILL CRASH your IE if you have no pop-up blocker installed. If you have a shitty computer, it WILL CRASH your computer. Do NOT under any circumstances try to verify my words. You will regret it if you do not believe what I said about the little something I made. After that you'll kick yourself for being stupid since I've already warned you NOT TO CLICK ON THE FUCKING LINK! Remember I'm always right.

FRGT/10

The memories I keep
Are from a time like then
I put em on paper
So I could come back to them
Someday i'm hoping to close my eyes and pretend
That this crumpled up paper can be perfect again

A small part of Linkin Park's FRGT/10 that I will always remember. It's stuck there, embeded in my head since the first time I heard it. In the 6 lines, I felt a mix of emmotions ranging from nostalgia to regret, resonating with my past, all that's happened to me, all that I felt, everything that I see and everything I hoped to see. I don't even know why I'm writing this, I just felt like it.

Everyone have different channels of expressions, most of us have a few basic ones and many of those are shared and common among people. Number 1 on the list would of course be speech, followed by, most probably, literature. Of course different people have different levels of expression and some are better in expressing their thoughts than others. Then there's art and music. People who are good at expressing their thoughts, whose ideas most find easily understood are often better speakers and writers. Then there're those that not many people understand, most of them are boring as fuck but there's always a small number of these that are just putting forth ideas too controversial for most people to understand and/or accept.

I'm blessed, rare choice of word by me, such that I have quite a number of channels of expression. To speak, to write, to scream, to draw. I have quite an arsenal there don't you think? Then there's the part where I'm spoilt for choice and can't decide what to do, this means I'm either feeling some kind of weird emmotion, say at a weird place in my life, or I'm damn bored. Right now, I'm the latter. I'm staring at the Icarus pic. I did a few days back now, it's just lying there among my pile of books and papers scattered at random across my table top. Sloth is evident in all aspects of my life, everything is secondary to everything, nothing has priority. I'm living life and taking everything that comes and pass. Nothing lingers, nothing gets done. Fuck.

Grisham is a good writer, I like quite a number of his books, he's squirming his way into my list of acknowledged authors. She who wrote Harry Potter, what's her name again?, is not in the list. I've read the beginning of the first Potter book and if Crichton's books are adult pants, her books are used diapers, with shit to go. I don't remember the names of the authors of most of the books I've read so if I remember the name, he's(this is not sexist) got to be good. Generally, I prefer male authors to female ones for cutting straight to the point, no shit, word play and humour not involving flowers and tea parties, and kick-ass names that are realistic and not shit like Mary Poppins. Face it, most of the successful writers I know of are guys. Off the top of my head, some successful female authors are Catherine whatever, my mum reads her books, I don't; Agatha Christie, I hate her books; and who's that who wrote Sweet Valley? A title I remember hating from primary school. There's Jane Jensen, I only know this name because one of her book's staring me in the face from my cupboard, Dante's Equation. It started fine and I thought I finally found another Sci-Fic author worth my 2 cents, other than Crichton, but wham! Half-way through the book, I'm slapped with a ridiculous plot bad science and garbage theories. It's not my fault I don't read what most people classify as thrashy books, porn novels if you ask me. The vivid descriptions I know only from Friends, Chandler's mum writes thrashy novels.

mental in sync

1 full day of SAFDAY rehersal is enough to get me wasted. Nothing seems right and all I can think of doing is sleep, coming from me, I'm that fucking tired. To be sunburned is one thing, to be fried 2 weeks in a row is another. To know that you'll continue to be fried everyweek for the next few weeks is total mental annihilation!

Then there's waking up with a headache, how is that even possible?! SAFDAY is screwing up my life I tell you. It's not the first time the SAF screwed up my life anyway, it's been doing that for more than a year now.

Yixian's back from Yunan, we fetched her from the airport last night. Her mum said she got darker, I just beg to differ, looks the same to me. *It's a relative thing I guess. Anyway, her family was there too along with her aunt and a little cousin, probably 5 to 6 years of age. The kids, including her teenage sisters, wrote these really sweet, to them, but is in fact really embarassing, to me, welcome "cards" to flash for all to see. Written using a red marker on the back of the pieces of A3 paper found on the Burger King trays. They were are really happy and glad that she's back, not that I'm not, and they were all showing off their welcome "cards" with zest!

So I said to Kenneth, what's more embarassing than a 5 year old doing that? That being the flashing of the welcome notes and jumping up and down. And like always, he knew what I was thinking and promptly answered, a 20 year old doing that.

That's just one of the many examples of our brains working in sync. We went on to watch shows at yixian's place and just before we left, there was this stupid taiwanese variety show on TV showing some twins along with the stupid host trying to make a fool out of himself by suggesting that twins are psychics.

Twins are often fundamentally different, as far as I know of, not many, and although they may be alike when they're young, they soon grow to want to be unique and different from the other. Or perhaps some twins really do know alot obout the other and are able to quote the likes and dislikes of each other. Does thsi prove that they are psychic? No. I'll just use me and Kenneth as an example. We're not related by blood in anyway, just friends that hang out a lot for a long time. Things we do include completing each other's sentences, saying the same thing for the first time at the same time, having the same thoughts and comments about a certain subject. We don't know gay stuff what our favourite colours are and if you grill us on what we know about each other, we really have not much to say. But when given a situation or a loser to make fun of, that's when you see our real "psychic" abilities. It happens because we think along the same train of thought making us arrive at the same conclusions most of the time. We also think at the same rate, meaning our brains permutate, evaluate and eliminate possibilities at the same pace. So we often arrive at the same conclusion at the same time. This works only for impromptu situations, given time our thoughts will deviate and we will have vast differences in our opinions of various subjects. It's nothing to do with being psychic, it's being in sync at the mental level.

*For the benefit of those that didn't get it. This is a pun. I'm implying that her mum noticed that she got darker because she's family, I'm also implying that I didn't think so because I myself got a lot darker thanks to SAFDAY and kayaking. Damn it's not cool when I worry about people not getting my word play.