Trashing an apartment? Nothing wrong! It's perfectly acceptable! Oh, and Big Ben uses batteries, and what's this about panthers?

Why is it that the people you care about the most always are the first to be left behind? Why is it that when you grow, the one person you want to stay with is the one who seems to backslide instead?

I was hosting someone, and asked them a very simple thing. "I need to give a cat a bath. Would you help out by doing some dishes?" And of course they said yes. It's not like I asked them to give a bath to a cat with a front paw full of needles, no that was my job.

I came back to the kitchen over an hour later to find all the dishes...still in the sink. I was furious. It's not like I asked my guest to remake a bed or run a malware/virus check and purge onto my computer. He'd been there three days already and I'd fallen into my mother's old trap, sorry Mom. I'd let him NOT LIFT A GORRAM FINGER. Well, okay, I let him make his own tea, but that's more the fact that everyone likes their tea/hot beverage of choice differently.

So I go into the (trashed!) living room and there he is. Reading. READING! I confront him, and he said he did do dishes! HAH! So we went back into the kitchen and he points out three small plates. Three small plates. In an hour?! No, he says. He just wanted to finish his book, and anyways, they're my dishes.
Sure, I say to him. Sure, there are a few in there that are mine, but look, there's all SEVEN mugs you used for THE SAME TEA, and look, you cooked last night because you wanted something you could cook and I could not, and don't forget who used two oven bowls for his pasta the day before instead of reusing the one you'd just eaten out of, and just LOOK at this room, and the other one!

It was at that point, as I nearly-scream at him on the same subject for the second time, hear more promises most likely just as empty as the first set...

This was going nowhere. I loved him, but the things he did...or rather that he didn't do. I left the ability to be comfortable in my own mess and filth behind at a school with people I loved but teachers and staff that hated me, one where I was socially in the best position I'd even been in(still applicable, too), where I'd left the, to quote a friend, "meh" moods that led to me not seeing anything wrong with sitting in a puddle in driving rain. A place where I was happier than I'd been in years but also more miserable than I'd ever been in my life.

If I left that behind before I'd met him, I'd also left behind being okay with others making a royal mudpit of my own home. I may not be the best at cleaning up, but I'm nowhere near making my living room cat-repelling in just a few days.

And that? That's something I cannot tolerate. The ability to not only sit as a place gets trash but to ACTIVELY TRASH IT and wonder why that's a bad thing.

There is a large difference between being an inefficient cleaner comparable to a solar car running out of energy on a sunny day...and someone who willfully ignores cleaning up in the way of a gas vehicle's engine malfunctioning in the way of its name. I, like the inefficient solar car, at least TRY to clean up and often can keep my apartment from "running out of sun" for several months, theoretically, and I get better at it all the time, if very slowly. However, the one who is an over-compliant combustion engine? If I cannot completely keep up with my own cleaning I do not need an explosive anti-cleaner around. Eventually(okay, really not so eventually) I'd go insane, or wear myself out, or something like that.

No one needs that. And as much as you may like someone, if they cannot see they have growing to do, and before age 23 at that...it is unlikely they ever will see it, no matter what they say. Superficial acknowledgement is only as lasting as the memory of what they wore that day.
There are very few days that I can say I know what I wore on them without lying. One was the worst day of my life. One was honestly pretty fun, but sad too because I had to throw out the bottom part of my best work yet because the knees of my jeans didn't fit...and that was only the jeans anyways that I remember.
And the last? It was the last Christmas with my grandfather, and I wanted to sleep outside because Naples was closing down all the non-private-residence-or-hospital lights around and in Forest Glen and the surrounding area to funnel power to an orchard that would have frozen otherwise. Street lights, outside lights, Christmas lawn ornament lights, golf course lights, restaurants and Wal Marts and Kohls and Targets and Pubixes, and even gas stations. The stars were so bright I thought I was out at Misery on the boat for a minute, until I realized I wasn't actually on the boat, or on any boat.

But that's beside the point. The actual point is that...as much as you care for someone, if they refuse to see that they actually need change...there isn't much that can actually be done, is there? If they cannot see that their actions and beliefs are harmful to others, and also to themselves?

I refused to have to babysit my boyfriend. I refused to have to walk him through thoughts that shouldn't be THAT hard. I refused to clean up after him, when all he did was fight it. I refused to sit there and fight with someone who obviously only ever COULD learn through rote memorization, someone who couldn't even begin to guess how to start a mechanical clock, even though a further "suggestion" proved he wasn't beyond thinking "batteries did it." Yes, Big Ben used and uses batteries, that's exactly it. A several-hundred-year-old clock tower, and you just put a couple AAs in, maybe a C-cell or D-cell. Maybe a Baghdad battery? Oh! I know, plug it into the thousand year-old power grid from the Roman construction of Londinium.
And that's just on GRANDFATHER CLOCKS. Ask me about "non-melanistic panthers". That's a hoot! Please, it's hilarious!

The world is sick...can we heal it?

Some people seem to be picking religion, delusions, and objects over family. It makes me sad to see friends unable to even talk to their immediate family, or attacked by siblings, or destroy relationships with children because of disagreements over clothing blown way out of proportion. This is why the whole world is sick and dying. This is why family is thrown aside when ideals become indoctrination and brainwashing. This is what happens when the world itself makes sickness that alters our very minds.

I once heard something, a long time ago, that to this day makes me think that maybe there is hope. I heard someone say that everyone has value by being alive. That by being alive an living our lives we make change, even if just with the ones we meet, our friends, family, someone we say hi to on the sidewalk. That we're all born with the same soul, that we are born without hate, without prejudice, without bias. That there are things that can't be changed in us, that we cannot choose our family, our eyes, our skin color, our bodies. That if no one can choose that, then why the hell can't we see that the person we hate couldn't choose base facts about themselves? If we can't choose things like appearance, gender, family, country, culture...why hate that we can choose other things like clothes and friends and what movies and shows we watch?

A while back, after this but well before now, I was told that in our souls are two wolves. One is made of darkness and hatred and war and violence. The other is made of love and friendship and happiness and peace. They battle constantly for your soul until one loses.
The one that wins? It's the one you feed.

We all are born with the same soul. If we feed it peace and acceptance and love, that is what we will be. If we feed it darkness and hate and us vs. them, that is how we will be.

I won't tell you how to live your life. Your life and thoughts and feelings are yours. All I can do is tell what I feel, so that others can read it and decide how reading it makes them feel.

Whose fault?

So, there's this guy out there, right? He likes this girl, who is pretty much oblivious. She's happy being oblivious. To her, this guy is a very, very distant relative. Turns out her cousin is his second cousin, on opposite sides of the family. But to this one girl, that's MORE than enough. I mean, her family? Not one person she knows is related to her by blood. Doesn't matter, they're FAMILY, you know? Mom, Dad, Grandfather, Mimi and Papa, cousins, brothers, aunts, uncles...not one blood relative among them. Some people made a huge deal about it. She said, "Why? My mother brought me home, changed my diapers, and fed me that pharmacy her kitchen became when it turned out that all she could stomach was ground lamb. Her dad took her camping and boating EVERY summer, and for all that she didn't see him every single day of her life, she thought he was the best dad ever. I mean, he got her two cats, right? And kept them because her mom is deathly allergic, for almost 12 years, until she could take them to her own place? Yeah! And he WAS there, right? Yeah! Her dad was awesome.

Anyways, back to that guy. He got tired of her being oblivious, and just one day called her his girlfriend.
Point 1

And so things went on, and events happened, and all the while he started getting pushier and pushier, and she tried to ignore it as best she could.
Point 2

And then, one day, he pushed so hard that, not wanting to, she agreed.
Point 3

And then she said, "No." Nothing had happened. Yet. But she said no. He ignored her. She said it, yelled it, screamed it...and he ignored it.
Crack.

He said, 'Oh, it won't happen again, I'm sorry, give me another chance.'
And she did.
Break.

And so time passed, fun was had, it was summer. She saw a friend's band play, was fun.


And it happened again. Much the same way. Wore her down, and she agreed...for all of about a minute.
"No. This happened before. I told you no, you said you'd listen next time. This is next time. No."
And she walked away.
She didn't make the door.

She fought and screamed, tried to get away. Screamed bloody murder. But for all there were other people home, her bedroom was out of hearing. Yeah, both times in her own home, in her own room.
For once she cursed the fact that she kept her nails cut to the quick. Biting did nothing. At the end of it, she told him one thing: "I am going to walk you to the door, to your car even. You are going to leave. If I ever see you again but for chance, I am going to go to the nearest phone, press one button once, and one more two times. If anything comes of your idiocy, I will tell everything. And if you try to contact me blatantly, I will tell everything. I expect you will try once or twice, and I will give you that...but do not keep trying."

And that was that. He called for over a week. Send a package. That was, I expect, the last straw, having something sent back so coldly.

The guy had said before that he could twist any marks left to be her fault. She believed him. The second time, she didn't care.

And so that ended.

But she was silent. She told only three people. Two were her friends. The third was too. But something he said, you know, put anything that might develop beyond mere friendship, however close, out of any thought that developed about it later.

"Are you sure you want to say that? I mean, something like this could ruin his life." Ruin. His. Life. Ruin HIS life? Ruin his life, when he ruined MINE?! I stopped speaking about it. I never brought it up with him again.
Shatter.

I later told a few others about it. Not many. I had to choose carefully. So scared of something like that happening again, I never even told the person who had become my sister in high school until recently. For someone who knows all too well that family need not be blood, that family is entirely about love, acceptance, a bond closer than any other, she is the only family I've ever told.

His family owns a relatively widespread business, involving deliveries and essential dry goods, non-food, and I still shudder every time I see a truck belonging to the business. Because of him, I see parts of life so much differently. Some of them I never had the chance to ever see WITHOUT that creep's interference. Yeah, I'm not putting this in third person. Why? Because as hard as I try, this happened. It was personal. And I can never stop blaming myself. If I'd stopped him just calling me his girlfriend without even asking, if I'd stopped it when I realized he was wearing me down, even if I'd thrown him to the curb the first time instead of the second. What would have happened then? Maybe I wouldn't have all this to deal with,

I can never un-live what happened. I can never un-do what he did to me. I can never forget. Even now it's not, and can never be, something that happened.


And let me get this straight: THIS IS NOT SOMETHING I ASKED FOR WITH MY WORDS OR MY BEHAVIOR! I NEVER wanted this. I NEVER asked for it. And guess what? HE IS AT FAULT! It's not him being "young" and it's not him "not having the brain development to know it was wrong". People are WELL past knowing right from wrong by late teens. People are WELL past NOT knowing that rape is WRONG. And people are WELL past thinking it RIGHT to, once refused this, hold her down and do it like that anyways, with the screaming and the tears and the begging for help.

Ruining HIS life? What? What would I be doing to ruin his life that he's not already done? I know, letting people know he did it, letting them know he's MORE than capable of doing it again! And this instead of what, keeping quiet and giving him the opportunity to ruin another woman's life?

Yet I kept quiet. Why? Because I couldn't deal with what would happen. I couldn't deal with the attention and the people hating that I'd told what happened to me and kept this guy from being able to do like in the future. To another girl? Another woman? I wouldn't ruin his life. He'd already ruined his own by committing a violent and sexual crime. All I'd do was not let him hide it.

And even though I'd let him hide it, it doesn't mean he didn't do it.

And even though I'd kept quiet, it didn't mean it hadn't happened. That he'd done this to ME, that he'd ruined my whole life. The way I see things, the way I act around people, the way I live.

All ruined because he couldn't take no for an answer, couldn't take the fact that he wanted this and yet it was still my RIGHT to refuse it. Couldn't take that I DID.

So, people, think: who takes the blame? Not the pointed fingers, but the REAL blame. Was it my fault? Was it MY fault I said no, I fought tooth and nail, and I...lost?
Or is it his fault for forcing me? His fault for thinking that "No" cried and screamed and begged and fought for meant, "Go right ahead and take what you want by force!"?

It's not up to me to decide what you think. But as someone who has been through that? Been bruised and forced and held down? Screamed my lungs out for help, to stop, to please, just stop....I can tell you now, that it's his fault, and he had a few bruises to prove it, too.

Fulya Rant Time! - Subject: Flash Carts

I get it, okay! Under normal usage, flashcarts are indeed illegal. Please also know that I do have...slightly illegal things(okay, very illegal) on my cart. Yeah, okay, point taken.

Yet...
What about people who use them for games such as...umm...well, Tetris DX, Pokemon Gen 1, or Pokemon Pinball? What about people whose only way of playing imports is to NOT shell out $25+ EXTRA, PLUS insanely high shipping costs? What about the people who cannot afford to pay $100+ for old, out-of-print games or whose older systems have died? What about them?
What about the people who used their flashcart to BACK UP data from games that are in extreme danger due to battery acid leaks? What about them?

WHAT ABOUT MY POOR TROPIC AND SWAMPER!? WHAT ABOUT THEM!?

Yes, I just had two of my prize Pokemon die due to a battery acid leak. Poor Tropic the lvl 26 Tropius and Swamper the 36 Swampert, who took down the Hoenn Elite Four almost by themselves(the rest were heal-time-buyers), who survived a massive, world-burying flash-flood only to be grabbed at the last minute(almost lost the game down a storm drain), whose cart I "lost" at boarding school, only to find them being sold by the person in line in front of me at the last EB games in New England(who actually believed you if you said a game was yours and could tell them your Hall of Fame team[Tropius, Swampert, Kyogre, Breloom, Ninetails, N/A]...), the game I spent money to have someone back up for me...BRICKED! And it's not the cart. The data on the SD itself is locked down. I was really slow about putting that data on my new computer because I thought it was safe enough...and now not only is the cart useless(yay extra microSD cards!), but all that data...two gyms from the Elite in Red, my poor precious ONLY! Hall of Fame team, quite a few high scores in some non-NA-releases, all my progress in Tales of Phantasia (S?)NES version...all my hard work in one of the SMB re-releases for GBA, and half a game done of FF6.

It's not right! Some of us use flashcarts because we REALLY don't want to re-buy games and/or shell out a lot of money for old, out-of-print, or non-localised games.

I understand why it's done...I just don't get what makes it seem RIGHT to these people, these companies.
Any thoughts?

Moving

So I'm moving. Not far, but it's a change.

The problem is that I'm not going to be here when I'm supposed to move in. I'm going to be away until a few days before I move...and I need most of my things OUT until I leave. I have no way to pack about 90% of what I have here because of that fact.


Also, on Customer Service. Notably, Verizon.
I have one of my best friends coming to move in with me. I won't be there, and I need someone who is on my account, authorised, to be there to change over/accept the router and box. This is not good.
Apparently, no one gets the concept of moving from a one-person studio with barely room for a bed and a desk to a two-bedroom with a roommate. Also a difficult concept: NOT BEING THERE WHEN THE FIRST PERSON MOVIES IN! I've been asked if I want to CANCEL my plan and WAIT THREE MONTHS TO BE ABLE TO GET A NEW ONE. No, I do not. I want to move, move my plan to the new address in the same city, same coverage area...but my roommate happens to be moving in well before me, due to a very extended vacation. She needs to be in before Christmas. I'm not coming back til almost January. I have no way to be there, and she needs the internet at the very least.
Is that so difficult a concept?

Also, apparently I have been on the phone to someone who says they're in Seattle. Sure, okay, but can you at least TRY to speak English in a way I understand? I mean, it's one thing to claim to be in Seattle, but another thing to claim to be in Seattle in a very strong Mexican accent speaking broken English, and passing me off to someone else because "I am sorry, no understand."
Next guy claimed to be in PENNSYLVANIA. I have nothing against the state, probably a great place. I do not believe, however, that someone in Pennsylvania works at a Verizon call center. For one thing, Pennsylvania doesn't HAVE a Verizon call center. Nope. There's one about five miles outside of Seattle, apparently. The closest Verizon TV/net call center to Pennsylvania is...about three states away, I believe. So that's one strike. The second? Your accent, Ma'am, is not even American, let alone North American. That's not exactly so bad. All sorts of accents here. Yet I can barely understand you through this accent and you seem to be using words that I've never heard. A lot. Passed off again.
Finally! Someone who speaks English. Hello, Mr. Canadian Guy! But you say your call center is in Texas?
I was in Texas for five days and I couldn't stop myself from picking up the accent. Your accent is CLEARLY eastern Canadian. Okay, whatever. I need help........and hours later?
"I'm sorry, I have no clue what you're trying to do."
"I have been saying this. I am moving to a two-bedroom apartment up the street. My roommate is moving in well before me. I need to add her name to the plan so that she can accept the new box and router, as I will be away when she moves in."
"Why do you need a new one?"
"I was told that the ones I have are tied to this building. That I can't move them from here."
"So you can cancel your plan and get a new one in three months."
"I don't HAVE three months!"

And so on. That was pretty much the conversation.


Don't you LOVE when that happens? Nope, neither do I, but it happens.

Oh, dammit, I need to change my ID again when I get home. Three times in as many years. They're gonna LOVE me.

I belong to a group of people online. They're going through this upheaval. The leaders are AWOL, nothing gets done even when they DO show up, and we've now initiated the process of picking someone. I've already chosen.
There were two favorites, but only one has any real talent for leading. He was the one who CALLED the meeting in the first place. He chose group leaders for minor events that make the whole group more active, things they wanted to do.

Isn't that what a leader is? Someone who can see what needs to be done, what wants to be done, and can step back and say, "This is something better done by someone else. This I can do. This I can do, but this one has a better grasp of this particular thing. This I can do. This I need to do." and so on? Other people agree he already leads our group, whether he realises it or not. This is something that our group NEEDS. This is something that will make our group stronger, more active, more fun to be with and do things with.

Now let me tell you something about the other guy. He can be a real sour pickle sometimes and has the name to match. Oh, he's personable, he's nearly always with the group, but somehow, he's...lacking. I don't think this guy can handle leading. Maybe sub-leading...maybe. But this guy...he has his friends, and then he has..........those other guys in the group. He knows of the others, maybe a hi, hello, oh, heard about that thing, great for you!

But the clear choice? He has his friends, and then he has his other friends. Maybe they're not as close, but he cares about them just the same. He takes the time to make sure they're doin' okay, maybe do they need help with this or that or the other thing?

So what do you all think? Who's the better choice?

Yeah, me too.

Fulya out.

Fulya's Music Time! THINK! (Aretha Franklin)

I love music. I love it to death. Sometimes I have no words for something, but there's a song.
A lot of my emotions can be expressed more accurately by song than by discussion. A lot of the songs I feel express emotion aren't really about what I project into them. But isn't that what Music's really about? Taking a song, a song someone put their emotions, their energy, their feelings into....and FEELING it, making it...no LETTING IT be about something in your life?

Let's take this song: Aretha's Think. The original one.

To me, it will forever be my way to tell one person...
"Think! You're trying to push me into a box I don't belong in! You're taking who I am...no, who you SEE me as, and you're trying to make me "better" by making me just like every other stereotypical popular girl!"

You see, she thought I, the perfectly happy person, would be made LESS MISERABLE as she told me everything I was and loved being was WRONG, and that if I just acted like everyone else, I would be happy and have friends.

And to this day I have never been able to really tell her this:

If you had stopped to THINK about things, you would have seen that I was happier BEFORE you started your crusade to make me be just like everyone else. I was depressed, yes, but through no fault of my own. I wasn't unhappy, I was FUCKING DEPRESSED! It's a medical condition, not an emotion, and it cannot be FIXED by taking the things that make me happy and labeling them as "bad behavior", "bad habits", and "bad parenting.
Yes, bad PARENTING. She wasn't, and still is not, even my mother. Or my aunt, or my grandmother, or my older sister, older cousin, or any other sort of family member. She was someone who, having the opportunity to as my father's girlfriend, took a look at the girl with the Game Boy, the tee-shirts, the jeans, who considered any day where she wasn't outside doing something a total loss, who loved who she was. She said, "Oh, she is depressed, which is another word for unhappy(no, lady, it's a medical term, too, and you SAW me having fun, too, and took your OPINION and it didn't fit, so you threw the FACT away!), and I must fix that! Look at her, she's like a boy! She's in the woods, climbing, running around! She'd be happy to have more friends, and to get more friends, she must look and act like a popular girl!"

Now, here's my thing with popular girls. I don't like 'em as a general rule, because as a general rule popular girls in schools of any type are self-important bitches who think everyone should toady to them. I had a....very personal experience with one of those bitches.

Her name was.....hmm...let's call her Rachel. Rachel was my best friend since before we could walk. For the first four years I was in the school system I was in private school. And then, in fourth grade, I started at the local public school. Of COURSE Rachel went there. So the first day, when all 20 of us kids were waiting for the doors to open, I saw Rachel. So of course, I did the smart thing and waited to see where she was socially, right?

Nope. I was stupid. I was a MORON.
I didn't know any better.

I went up to her, said hi, and hugged her. Stupid in hindsight, but really, it was my first time setting FOOT in a public school. And of course she took me aside and explained popularity, right? Because she was one of my best friends, the see-every-weekend kinda best friends, right?

Nope. She pushed me onto my butt and said, "I don't know WHO the HELL you think you are, FREAK, because I've never seen you before in my LIFE."

And so it continued, and that's why I was miserable. The Head Bitch decided that I was a bit of gum on the sidewalk, and so I was treated for almost three years. Sure I went to her house, she invited me after all. But I got pushed around both physically and verbally, and her mother, my mother's friend, looked away and pretended it didn't happen as I was pushed down stairs, called freak and moron and idiot.

And so while this was going on and everyone knew, this BITCH girlfriend of my father's decided I needed to be taught everything about being a girl. Being a girl meant being popular, I was told. It meant wearing things I wouldn't wear now to go swimming in to beach parties when I was 10! It meant treating others like so much lint on a white shirt.
And it meant giving up my game boy.

That was IT. NO ONE TOOK MY POKEMON GAME AND THREW IT INTO THE TRASH!
So she learned that was a Limit. I actually physically attacked her for that. So she learned one thing and I learned one thing.
She learned that NO ONE MESSES WITH MY GAMES!
I learned to keep my games away from her.

When I was nine I got an iPod Mini. You know, those big clunky things in pale colors, metal, old-fashioned LCD screen?
I'm pretty sure it was never more than seven inches from my person until finally, after replacements and replacements of replacements, it died. That is to say, Apple decided to drop it from its supported devices.
From that time on, I had an iPod. The longest I have NOT had an iPod was....March to June.

But still, all that time, she was trying to change who I was, who I couldn't NOT be. I watched Wolf's Rain. She called it kiddie and a cartoon, and why was I watching it? She never saw one frame of it.
She said video games were for little kids and slightly older boys and I shouldn't be playing them, because I was one: too old and two: a girl. She didn't get why I liked sci-fi(and it wasn't really. Star Wars was great and Doctor Who, and Stargate was amazing, but I couldn't STAND anything else.), she called it over-hyped and stupid. I forgot to mention how many fans Stargate and Who had/have. She could NEVER understand why I went around with headphones glued to my ears. She thought my interest in Japan was "inappropriate" and once even ripped up my homework because it wasn't in English. It shouldn't have been...but I thought she knew the difference between Spanish with Japanese in the margins because it helped me remember a couple words and Japanese. I mean, there's no letter e in Japanese...it's all kanji and kana, no Latin lettering at all. Still...to her mind...

And so that's how I lived. Being accepted by more and more people for who I was, and going home to someone who never gave me an opportunity to tell her what I thought, because she was too busy criticising my decision to buy a period tunic dress...with my own money.

And where was my mom? There. I lived with her for the most part. She had to go to Florida my senior year because of Grandfather. I was kept out of the loop, my dad decided I'd do better being told lies and half-truths as my grades got so bad I almost didn't pass, though they.....that's another story for another day. But I was told everything was fine, they could come back at any time, while my mom had a heart attack and Grandfather couldn't walk on his own.

And through this all, that BITCH was the one who told my father to keep it from me.


My mom was always there to say that I was who I was and I should be proud. Grandfather was there to be my dad in a lot of ways. He was always there, and he didn't have to work through Ms. Girlfriend saying that she would do better talking with me when I was "being inppropriate". So she was the one to tell me that no one wanted to hear about how I was doing in Japanese when the person I was talking to asked. She was the one to tell me no one listened to music and hummed while doing homework. She was the one to tell me that I needed to start wearing miniskirts and ruffles because I was 12, and not a little kid who wore jeans and tees to school. That I..........and on and on with the bad crap that I knew wasn't true.

And that all brings us back to the song.

"Think about what you're tryin' to do to me!"
And think: why should your laws of how a girl should be apply to me?
Let your rigid mindset go, let yourself be free to accept the differences in people.
We are not all how you think we should be! We have the FREEDOM to chose who we can be.

And that is how that song makes me feel, that is what I put into it.
Someone for years trying to make me who I am not, who, if she had just thought instead of putting me into a box and trying to cut out all of who I was that fit into it.
If she had thought, who knows how our relationship would have turned out, instead of the barely0civil thing we have now, where I pretend to like her just a little.