Bug Jack Barron

1

“Split boys, will you?” drawled Lukas Greene, waving his black hand (and for that nasty little moment, for some reason, thinking of it as black) at the two men (perversely seeing them for the tired moment as niggers) in the Mississippi State Police (coon to the right) and Mississippi National Guard (schvug to the left) uniforms.

“Yessur, Governor Greene,” the two men said in unison. (And Greene’s ear, caught in what he could outside viewpoint see as the dumb mindless masochistic moment, heard it as “Yassah Massah.”)

“Tote dat barge,” Governor Greene said to the door when it had closed behind them. What the hell’s wrong with me today, Greene thought irritably. That damned Shabazz. That dumb trouble-making nig—

There was that word again, and that was where the whole thing was at. Malcolm Shabazz, Prophet of the United Black Muslim Movement, Chairman of the National Council of Black Nationalist Leaders, Recipient of the Mao Peace Prize, and Kingfish of the Mystic Knights of the Sea was neither more nor less than a nigger. He was everything the shades saw when they heard the word nigger: Peking-loving ignorant dick-dragging black-oozing ape-like savage. And that cunning son of a bitch Malcolm knew it and played on it, making himself a focus of mad white hate, the purposeful prime target of a garbage-throwing screaming Wallacite loonies, feeding on the hate, growing on it, absorbing it, saying to the shades, “I’m a big black mother, and I hate your fucking guts, and China is the Future, and my dick is bigger than yours, and China is the Future, and my twenty million bucks like me in this country, a billion in People’s China and four billion in the world who hate you like I hate you, die you shade mother!”

As the Bohemian Boil-Sucker observed to the chick who farted in his face. Greene thought, it’s people like you, Malcolm, who make this job disgusting.

Greene swiveled in his chair, and stared at the little TV perched on the desk across from the in-out basket. Instinctively he reached for the pack of Acapulco Golds sitting on the pristine desk top, then thought better of it. Much as he needed a good lungful of pot at this moment on this day, it was not a smart move for anyone who was where anything was at to be under the influence of anything on a Wednesday night. He glanced surreptitiously at the dead screen of his vidphone. The screen might very well come alive during the next hour with the sardonically smiling face of good old Jack Barren.

“Jack Barron,” Lukas Greene sighed aloud. Jack Barron. Even a friend couldn’t afford to be stoned if he got a public call from Jack. Not in front of a hundred million people he couldn’t.

But then it had never paid, even in the old Jack-and-Sara days, to give an edge to Jack Barron. What’s-his-name—whoever remembers anymore?—made the mistake of letting Jack guest on his Birch grill for one night, and Jack grew all over him like a fucking fungus.

And then—no more what’s-his-name. Just a camera, a couple vidphones, and good old Jack Barron.

If only… Green thought, the same old familiar Wednesday night “if only” thought… if only Jack were still one of us. With Jack on our side the SJC would have a fighting chance to break through and beat the Pretender. If only…

If only Jack weren’t such a cop-out. If only he had kept some of what we all seemed to lose in the 70s. But what had Jack said (and oh, was he right; and don’t I know it!), “Luke,” Jack Barron had said, and Greene remembered every word Jack could always stick a phrase in your head like a Bester mnemonic jingle, “it sure is a bad moment when you decide to sell out. But a worse moment, the worst moment in the world is when you decide to sell out and nobody’s buying.”

And how do you answer that? Greene thought. How do you answer that, when you’ve parlayed a picket sign, a big mouth, and a black skin into the Governor’s Mansion in Evers, Mississippi? How do you answer Jack, you black shade you white nigger you?

Lukas Greene laughed a bitter little laugh. The name of the show had to be an inside joke, a real inside joke, inside Jack’s hairy little head, is all…

Because (since he had waved bye-bye to Sara) who in hell could really… bug Jack Barron?

Not a night to be alone, Sara Westerfeld unwittingly found herself thinking under the sardonic blind gaze of the dead glass eye of the portable TV which suddenly seemed to have infiltrated itself into her consciousness in her living room, where Don and Linda and Mike and the Wolfman stood unknowing guard against loneliness-ghosts of Wednesday nights past, and she against her will realized (and realized against her will that she always realized) that it had been a long time (don’t think of the exact date; you know the exact date; don’t think of it) since she had spent a Wednesday night with fewer than three people around her.

Better to play games with Don Sime (will I - won’t I—is tonight the night—or will I ever?) than to sit alone the way I maybe want to, with the dead glass eye daring me to turn it on. Better still just to sit here and dig the Wolfman rapping with half an ear and let the broken record of his harmless talking-just-to-hear-himself talk bullshit turn off my mind, turn off memory, and let me drift in the droning not-really-Wednesday now…

“Dig, so I say, man why ain’t there a check for me?” the Wolfman was saying, pulling at his scraggly muttonchops. “I’m a human being, ain’t I?

“Know what the fucker says?” the Wolfman whined with a great display of wounded dignity Sara could not tell was put on or not. “Says, ‘Jim, you’re too young for Social Security, too old for AID, and you ain’t never worked ten weeks in a row to qualify for Unemployment. In fact you are a bum in hip clothing, is what you are.’ ”

The Wolfman paused. And now Sara saw a strange thing happen to his face as the supercilious mood left it revealed as superciliousness by its passing—and she saw what the others in the pseudo-Japanese room also saw, that for once the Wolfman was grotesquely pitiably earnest.

“What kind of shit is that,” the Wolfman said stridently, and the joint he was holding slid from his fingers and fell unheeded, burning the black-lacquered coffee table.

“Screw it, will you, Wolfman, and pick up that Pall Mall you dropped on the table,” Don said, trying to act like the Defender of Hearth and Home in front of Sara, make his dumb little points with her in her own apartment.

“Screw yourself, Sime,” the Wolfman said. “I’m talking about like real injustice. People like you, people like me—”

“Aw—” Don began, and the moment stood still for Sara, knowing what he was going to say, the three words, the exact cynical intonation, having been flayed by those words dozens of times a week for years, wincing, dying a little each time she heard those three last words, knowing that Don Sime would now never ball her, not with a billion screaming Chinese holding her down, not ever. Sooner would she make it with a gila monster or Benedict Howards than give herself to a man who said those three words on a Wednesday night between 8 and 9 p.m., and by the little death induce the grand mal déjà vu, images on his face on the television screen carefully tousled over his face on the long-ago blue-flowered pillow carelessly neat his beard blue and stubbly…

Don Sime, unheeding (and, she saw, an unheeding, rotten swine by his thoughtless reflex reaction), nevertheless said the three magic words, the outsider’s inside expression that shriveled to death for an instant the insides of Sara.

“Aw,” said Don, “bug Jack Barron.”

Cool was the night breeze in Benedict Howards’ throat as he lay easily in the crisp white sheets of the hospital bed, snug and safe in the monolithic citadel that was the Rocky Mountain Freezer Complex. Out beyond the half-strength heat-curtain opening on to the balcony (they had screamed when he demanded to feel the breeze when he came out of it, and they told him it seemed to have worked, but no half-ass gaggle of quacks was going to give any lip to Benedict Howards) the mountains were vague shapes in the heavy darkness, and the stars were washed out by the muzzy twilight glow from the busy lights of the Freezer Complex, his Complex, his Complex, all of it now, and…

Forever?

He tasted Forever in the pine breeze that blew in from the mountains and from New York and Dallas and Los Angeles and Vegas and all the places where lesser men scurried for crumbs bug-like in the light; tasted Forever, lying calmed and warmed against the breeze by postoperative weakness in the sheets that he owned in the Complex he owned in the country where Senators and Governors and the President called him Mr Howards…

Tasted Forever in the memory of Palacci’s smug grin as he had said, “We know that it’s taken, Mr Howards, and we know that it should work. Forever, Mr Howards? Forever is a long time. We can’t know that it’s forever till it’s been forever, now, can we, Mr Howards? Five centuries, a millenium… who knows? Maybe you’ll have to settle for a million years. Think that will do, Mr Howards?”

And Howards had smiled and allowed the doctor his dumb little death-joke, allowed it, when he had broken bigger men for less because what the hell you couldn’t nurse every little dumb grudge like that for a million years, now, could you? Had to take the long view, get rid of excess baggage.

Forever? Howards thought. Really, this time I could smell it on the doctors’ sweat, see it in their fat little bonus smiles. The bastards think they’ve done it this time. Though they’d done it before. But this time I can taste it, I can feel it; I hurt in the right places.

Forever… Push it back forever, Howards thought. Fading black circle of light, big-eyed night nurses, daytime bitch with her plastic professional cheeriness back in the other sheets in the other hospital in the other year tube, wormlike, up his nose down his throat, in his guts, membranes clinging and sticking to polyethylene like a slug on a rock, with each shallow breath an effort not to choke, not to reach up with whatever left rip-gagging tube from nose-throat rip blood-drip needle from left arm, glucose solution from right; die clean like a man, clean like boyhood Panhandle plains, clear-cut knife-edge between life and death, not this pissing away of life juices in plastic, in glass, in tubes and retches enemas catheters needles nurses faded faggot vases of flowers…

But the circle of black light contracting, son of a bitch, no fading black circle of light snuffs out Benedict Howards! Buy the bastard, bluff him, con him, kill him! No dumb-ass wheel flipping to goddam Limey limousine gives lip to Benedict Howards. Hate the bastard, fight him, burn him out, buy him, bluff him, con him, kill him, open up the circle of black light… wider, wider. Hate tubes hate nurses hate needles sheets flowers. Show ’em! Show ’em all they don’t kill Benedict Howards.

“No one kills Benedict Howards! Howards found himself mouthing the words, the breeze now cold, warm weakness now gone, fight reflexes pounding his arteries, light cold sweat on his cheeks.

With a shudder Howards wrenched himself out of it. This was another hospital another year; life poured into him, sewn into him, nurtured in Deep Sleep, not leaking out in tubes and bottles. Yes, yes, you’re in control now. Paid your dues. No man should have to die twice, no man twice watching life leak away youth leak away blood leak away all leak away muscle torn to flab, balls to shriveled prunes, limbs to broomhandles, not Benedict Howards. Push it back, push it back for a million years. Push it back . . . forever.

Howards sighed, felt glands relaxing, gave himself over again to the pleasant, healthy warm weakness, knowing what it meant, warmth pushing back the cold, light opening the fading black circle, holding it open, pushing it open—forever.

Always a fight, thought Benedict Howards. Fight from Texas Panhandle to oil-money-power Dallas, Houston, LA, New York, where it all was action open oil leases land stocks electronics NASA, Lyndon Senators Governors, toadies… Mr Howards. Fight from quiet dry plains to quiet air-cooled arenas of power, quiet air-cooled women with skin untouched by sun by wind by armpit-sweat…

Fight from tube up nose down throat fading black circle to Foundation for Human Immortality, bodies frozen in liquid helium, voting assets liquid assets frozen with them in quiet dry helium-cooled vaults of power Foundation power my power money-power fear-power immortality power—power of life against death against fading black circle.

Fight from dry empty Panhandle-seared women lying in wrecked car blood trickling from mouth pain inside fading black circle, to this moment, the first moment of Forever.

Yeah, always a fight, thought Benedict Howards. Fight to escape, get, live. And now the big fight, fight to keep it all: money power, young fine-skinned women, Foundation, whole goddamned country, Senators, Governors, President, air-cooled places of power, Mr Howards. Forever, Mr Howards, forever.

Howards looked out the heat-curtained window, saw the busy lights of the Freezer Complex, Complexes in Colorado, New York, Cicero, Los Angeles, Oakland, Washington… Washington Monument, White House, the Capital, where they lay in wait, men against him, against his citadel against Foundation against Freezer Utility Bill against forever, men on the side of the fading black circle.

Little more than a year, thought Benedict Howards. Little more than a year till Democratic Convention—destroy Teddy the Pretender, Hennering for President, Foundation man, my man my country, Senators, Governors… President, Mr Howards. Month, two months, and they vote on the Utility Bill, win vote with power-money fear-power of life against death—then let the bastards find out how! Let ’em choose then. Sell out to life to Foundation to forever—or give themselves to the fading black circle. Power of life against death, and what senator, Governor, President chooses death, Mr Howards?

Howards’ eyes fell on the wall clock: 9:57, Mountain Time. Reflexively, his attention shifted to the tiny dormant screen of the vidphone (Mr Howards is not to be disturbed by anyone for anything tonight, not even Jack Barron) on the bedside table next to the small TV set. His stomach tightened with fear of the unknown, the random, exposure.

Just reflex action, Howards thought. Wednesday-night condition response. Nothing more. Jack Barron can’t get to me tonight. Strict orders, lines of retreat, back-up men. (’Mr Howards is on his yacht in the Gulf is in plane to Las Vegas duck hunting fishing in Canada, can’t be found, a hundred miles from the nearest vidphone, Mr Barron. Mr De Silva, Dr Bruce, Mr Yarborough will be happy to speak with you, Mr Barron. Fully authorized to speak for the Foundation, actually in more intimate contact with details than Mr Howards, Mr Barron. Mr De Silva, Dr Bruce, Mr Yarborough will tell you anything you want to know, Mr Barron.’) Jack Barron could not, would not be permitted to bug him on this first night of forever.

Just a dancing bear anyway, Benedict Howards told himself. Jack Barron, a bone to the masses the reliefers loafers, acid-dope-hux-freaks Mexes niggers. Useful valve on the pressure cooker. Image of power on a hundred million screens, image not reality, not money-power, fear-power, life-against-death power Senators, Governors, President, Mr Howards.

Walking tightrope between networks, sponsors, masses, FCC (two commissioners in Foundation’s pocket) Jack Barron. Bread-and-circus gladiator, with paper-sword image of power, Bullshit Jack Barron.

Nevertheless, Benedict Howards reached out, turned on the TV set, waited stomach-knotted, through color images of Dodges, network emblems, Coke bottles dancing, plastic piece of ass starlet smoking Kools Supreme, station emblem, waited frowning tense in the cool night breeze, knowing others waited, bellies rumbling with his in the quiet air-cooled vaults of power in New York, Chicago, Dallas, Houston, Los Angeles, Washington waited for three words (scarlet on midnight-blue background) to begin the hour’s ordeal of waiting, glancing at dead vidphones, pustules of Harlem, Watts, Mississippi, trip City, Village niggers, loafers, losers randomly popping—a hundred million cretins, hunched forward, smelling for blood, blue venous blood from circles of power:

“BUG JACK BARRON.”

“BUG JACK BARRON”—red letters (purposefully crude imitation of traditional “Yankee Go Home” sign scrawled on walls in Mexico, Cuba, Cairo, Bangkok, Paris) against flat dark-blue background.

Off-camera gruff barroom voice over shouts: “Bugged?”

And an answering sound-collage as camera holds on the title: students heckling People’s America agitator, amens to hardrock Baptist preacher, mothers crying soldiers griping sour losers outside the two-dollar window. Barroom voice in cynically hopeful tone: “Then go bug Jack Barron!”

Title becomes head and shoulders shot of man against uncomfortable dark background (semisubliminal whirling moire pattern flashes seem to hang on brink of visibility like black Indian ink over kinesthop underpattern effect). The man is wearing fawn-yellow collarless sportjac over tieless open-necked red velour dress shirt. He looks about forty? thirty? twenty-five?—anyway, over twenty-one. His complexion seems to hover between fair and gray, like a harried romantic poet; his face is composed of strangely hard-edged softnesses, tapestry of stalemated battle. His hair is reminiscent of dead men—sandy JFK cut about to grow down the back of his neck, flank his ears, spring wild curls upward, and become Dylan-like unmade-bed halo. His brat-eyes (knowing eyes) smolder with amused detachment as his full lips smile, making the smile a private ingroup, I know-you-know-I-know thing with latest Brackett Audience Count estimated hundred million people.

Jack Barron smiles, nods, becomes Acapulco Golds commercial:

Mexican peon leading burro up winding trail on jungle-covered volcanic mountain, a fruity-authoritative Encyclopedia-Britannica voice over: “In the high country of Mexico evolved a savory strain of marijuana which came to be known as Acapulco Gold in the days of the contraband trade.”

Cut to same peon cutting a stand of marijuana with a sickle and loading it onto burro: “Prized for its superior flavor and properties, Acapulco Gold was available only to the favored few due to its rarity and…”

Roll to border patrolman frisking unsavory Pancho Villa type Mexican: “… the difficulties involved in importation.”

Aerial view of huge field of geometrically-rowed marijuana: “But now the finest strain of Mexican seeds, combined with American agricultural skill and carefully controlled growing conditions, produce a pure strain of marijuana unequalled in flavor, mildness… and relaxing properties. Now available in thirty-seven states: (Cut to close-up of red and gold Acapulco Golds pack.) Acapulco Golds, America’s premium quality marijuana cigarettes—and, of course, totally noncarcinogenic.

Back on screen comes Jack Barron, seated on old school arm-rest-desk-type chair, desk of which holds two standard white Bell vidphones; white chair and white phones against black wash over moire pattern background make Barron look like knight in front of forms of darkness dancing.

“What’s bugging you tonight?” Jack Barron asks in a voice that knows it all—knows Harlem, Alabama, Berkeley, North side, Strip City, knows it all knows clean-painted cement walls of a thousand Golden Age Projects urine inside jail cell knows check twice a month just enough to keep on dying (Social Security, AID, Unemployment, Guaranteed Annual wage pale-blue cyanide Government check), knows it all and knows what the fuck but can’t stop caring, the outsider’s insider.

“What bugs you, bugs Jack Barron.” Barron pauses, smiles basilisk smile, dark eyes seem to pick up moving shadows of kinesthop-through-black background, Dylan-JFK-Bobby-punkid-Buddha. “And we all know what happens when you bug Jack Barron. Call collect. The number is Area Code 212, 969-6969 (six-month fight with Bell-FCC over special mnemonic number), and we’ll take the first call right… now!”

Jack Barron reaches out, thumbs audio of vidphone (vidphone camera and screen face away from studio camera). A hundred million television screens split. Lower lefthand quarter shows standard black and white vidphone image of white-shirted, white-haired Negro, vague gray vidphone-washed-out background; the remaining three-quarters of the screen is occupied in living color by Jack Barron.

“This is Bug Jack Barron, and you’re on the air, friend. It’s all yours until I say stop. A hundred million fellow Americans, and all of ’em waiting to hear who you are and where you’re from and what’s bugging you, man. This is your moment in the old spotlight—your turn to bug whoever’s bugging you. You’re plugged into me, and I’m plugged into the whole goofy country. So go ahead, man, high from the image of white-shirted, white-haired Negro, vague gray lip, and damn the torpedoes—bug Jack Barron,” says Jack Barron reeling it off with a big let’s-you-and-me-stomp-the-mothers smile.

“My name is Rufus W. Johnson, Jack,” the old Negro says, “and as you and the rest of the country can see, out there on television, I am black. I mean, there’s no getting away from it, Jack. I’m black. You dig? I’m not colored, I’m not of dark complexion, not a mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, bassoon, or baboon. Rufus W. Johnson is a black nig—”

“Cool it,” interrupts the voice of Jack Barron, authoritative as a knife; but with a tiny hunch of his shoulders, a little smile, really cools it as Rufus W. Johnson smiles, hunches back.

“Yeah,” says Rufus W. Johnson, “we mustn’t use that word, man. Uptights all them Afro-Americans, colored folk. American Negros, what you call ’em? But we know what you call ’em… Not you, Jack. (Rufus W. Johnson laughs a little laugh.) You a shade, but you a black shade.”

“Well, maybe let’s make that sepia,” says Jack Barron. “Wouldn’t want to get me canceled in Bugaloosa. But what’s happening, Mr Johnson? I hope you didn’t call me just to compare complexions.”

“But that’s where it’s at, ain’t it man?” says Rufus W. Johnson, no longer smiling. “That’s where it’s at for me anyway. That’s where it’s at for all us Afro-Americans. You black, even down here in Mississippi, what’s supposed to be black man’s country, that’s where life is at. Ain’t nothing but what you call it—a comparison of complexions. Wish you could vidphone in color, then I could go to my TV set, screw around with the color controls, and see myself for once as red or green or purple—colored folk, y’know?”

“When do we get to the nitty-gritty, Mr Johnson?” Jack Barron asks, a shade of a degree colder. “Just what is bugging you?”

“We is at the nitty-gritty,” answers Rufus W. Johnson, gray-on-gray image of black face—lined, hurt, scowling—expanding to fill three-quarters of the screen, with Jack Barron in upper righthand catbird-seat corner.

“When you is black only one thing bugging you, and it bugs you twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week, time you’re born time you die. Or anyway, once was a time when being black was over when you died. Not no more. Now we got that medical science. We got that Foundation for Human Immortality. Freezes them dead bodies like instant pizza till them medical scientists get enough smarts to defrost ’em, fix ’em up and make ’em live till Judgment Day. What they say, that Howards cat and his flunkies, ‘Someday all men will live forever through the Foundations for Human Immortality!’

“Yeah, we the leading country in the world, we got ourselves a Foundation for Human Immortality. Make that the Foundation for Shade Immortality. “Course we got plenty cats around like old George and Bennie Howards think it all amounts to the same thing. Solve the Negro problem the easy way—get rid of the Negroes. Too messy—why, then, just fix it so the shades live forever. Let them black men have their three score and ten, who cares, when a shade can live forever, long as he can pony up that $50,000.”

Tiny cold tension lines appear at the corners of Jack Barren’s eyes as the screen splits even down the middle, faded black and white image of Rufus W. Johnson facing living-color reality of Jack Barron, as Barron says hard but quiet: “You’re talking around something that’s bugging you, Mr Johnson. How about letting us in on it? Riff it out. So long as you don’t talk about any intimate parts of the human anatomy don’t use four-letter words, we’re still on the air and plugged in, no matter what you say. That’s what Bug Jack Barron’s all about. It’s hit-back time, worm-turning time, and if you got a real bind on any powers that be, this is the time they gotta sit there and take it while the you-know-what hits the fan.”

“Yeah, man,” says Rufus W. Johnson. “I’m talking about that there Foundation for Human Immortality. Hey, man, Rufus W. Johnson is like human. Bleach me white, do a plastic job on my nose, and why, every shade looks at me and says, ‘There goes that Rufus W. Johnson, regular pillar of the community. Got himself a successful trucking business, new car, own house, sent three kids right through college. Regular model citizen.’ Was Rufus W. Johnson white instead of black, why, that there Benedict Howards’d be more than pleased to give him a contract for a freeze when he flakes out and have a chance to collect the interest on every dime Rufe’s got till that Big Defrost Day comes—was Rufus W. Johnson a shade, that is. Know what they say down here in Mississippi, Harlem, out there in Watts? They say, ‘You a shade, you got forever made, but, baby, if you’re black, when you go, you don’t come back.’ ”

Back in the upper righthand corner catbird-seat goes living-color Jack Barron. “Are you charging the Foundation for Human Immortality with racial discrimination?” he asks, dancing black semivisible moire pattern flashes from backdrop off white deskchair in his slightly downturned eye-hollows turning his face to a mask of smoldering danger, suddenly solemn and sinister.

“I ain’t charging them with going through a red light,” drawls Rufus W. Johnson. “Look at my hair—that’s the only white part of me you’ll see. I’m sixty-seven years old and I about used up this one life I got. Even if I gotta live it all as a black man in a white man’s country, I want to live forever. Bad as it may be to be alive and black, when you dead, man, you are like dead!

“So I go to them Foundation shades, and I say, ‘Hand me one of them Freezer Contracts. Rufus W. Johnson is ready to sign up for Forever.’ Two weeks go by, and they sniff around my house, my business, my bank account. Then I get a real fancy letter on real fancy paper about three yards long, and what it says is, ‘Man, you do not make it.’

“Well, you figure it out, Mr Jack Barron. My house—it costs me $15,000, 1 got $5,000 in the bank. And, man, my trucks alone cost nearly fifty big ones. And Bennie Howards can have it all long as I’m on ice. But the Foundation for Human Immortality says I got ‘insufficient liquid assets for us to offer a Freeze Contract at this time’. My money’s the same color as anyone else’s, Mr Barron. Think it’s the color of my money they don’t like or could it just possibly be the color of my something else?”

The screen snaps to a full close-up of the concerned flashing face of hard-jawed, kick-’em-in-the-ass Jack Barron. “Well, you certainly got something to be bugged at—if you’ve got your facts straight, Mr Johnson. And you’ve sure bugged Jack Barron.”

Baron rivets the camera with his eyes promising bottomless pools of earnest bad-boy, brick-throwing, thun-der-and-lightning. “And how does it grab you out there, plugged into the two of us? How’s it grab you out there, Benedict Howards? What’s the scam from the powers that be? And speaking of the powers that be (abrupt facial shift to sardonic-shrug-inside-joke smile)—it’s about time to see what’s bugging our sponsor. You hang right on, Mr Johnson, and you too out there, and we’ll be right back where it’s all happening—right here right now no-time-delay live, after this straight poop from whoever’s currently making the mistake of being our sponsor.”