Lit blog

Oh my back!

Two days before Christmas and I threw my back out! I have no idea how--maybe mopping the kitchen floor Friday? Who knows? I woke up yesterday in the most excrutiating pain, so my darlin eagleyez took me to the emergency room, where they said Yep. You threw your back out. I have drugs, but they are making me very woozy. I have ice packs and they are freezing! :cool:

Tomorrow is our big dinner/present extravaganza with ee's boys. Somehow I have to get the place straightened up and make crab cakes, a standing rib roast and a bunch of other stuff. Eagleyez will help. Maybe he'll just do it all. :D
 
Two days before Christmas and I threw my back out! I have no idea how--maybe mopping the kitchen floor Friday? Who knows? I woke up yesterday in the most excrutiating pain, so my darlin eagleyez took me to the emergency room, where they said Yep. You threw your back out. I have drugs, but they are making me very woozy. I have ice packs and they are freezing! :cool:

Tomorrow is our big dinner/present extravaganza with ee's boys. Somehow I have to get the place straightened up and make crab cakes, a standing rib roast and a bunch of other stuff. Eagleyez will help. Maybe he'll just do it all. :D


uh huh
mopping
when I had the heart attack I told them I was " moving large furniture"
which was true from a certain point of view
:p


hot baths and spiked eggnog
you'll be fine
:D


feel better sweetie
:kiss:
 
If ange and ee are having standing rib roast for dinner tomorrow, I may wave my magic happy wand and show up. What's a bad knee in the presence of a twisted back? I'll spice the roast. Did you see Tyler Florence's recipe on the food network? My mouth was watering!
 
If ange and ee are having standing rib roast for dinner tomorrow, I may wave my magic happy wand and show up. What's a bad knee in the presence of a twisted back? I'll spice the roast. Did you see Tyler Florence's recipe on the food network? My mouth was watering!


It was that very recipe that made us decide to make a rib roast. T picked it up today and it is just obscenely huge (and expensive).

You're invited. ee will need a woman to talk to as I am drugged and reduced to babble along the lines of "Honey will you bring me some cranberry juice? Is it time for my painkiller?" Oy this better be resolved by tomorrow morning. I feel like a big ol drugged lump.

And it's Lit's fault! I got my annual thank you for being a moderator amazon gift cert and bought this steam cleaning mop thingy. It arrived Friday and I was so excited to have it, I mopped wildly. Perhaps with too much abandon. :cool:

Thank you Champies and Tath, both. Ugh. I gotta get the fresh ice pack on now. Can't sit up too long. :kiss:
 
It was that very recipe that made us decide to make a rib roast. T picked it up today and it is just obscenely huge (and expensive).

You're invited. ee will need a woman to talk to as I am drugged and reduced to babble along the lines of "Honey will you bring me some cranberry juice? Is it time for my painkiller?" Oy this better be resolved by tomorrow morning. I feel like a big ol drugged lump.

And it's Lit's fault! I got my annual thank you for being a moderator amazon gift cert and bought this steam cleaning mop thingy. It arrived Friday and I was so excited to have it, I mopped wildly. Perhaps with too much abandon. :cool:

Thank you Champies and Tath, both. Ugh. I gotta get the fresh ice pack on now. Can't sit up too long. :kiss:

ee will probably be fine - drugged women are lotsa fun. You can mess with their reality with immense ease.

poor baby! You should obviously give up mopping and try throwing your back out doing something way more fun.

get better baby. at least the shiny lights of the holiday will be even shinier on good drugs...

ma pauvre petite. may your healing be speedy and graceful.

bijou
 
ee will probably be fine - drugged women are lotsa fun. You can mess with their reality with immense ease.

poor baby! You should obviously give up mopping and try throwing your back out doing something way more fun.

get better baby. at least the shiny lights of the holiday will be even shinier on good drugs...

ma pauvre petite. may your healing be speedy and graceful.

bijou

You are so sweet. I seem to be on the mend. I do believe the e-room doc was right about the ice pack thing. But, if I am still in serious pain when I awaken on the morrow, I am going to my doc and pleading for more drugs to get me through the next two days. EE is a great cook, but it's no fun to feel like an invalid when everyone else is having fun.

And that man loves to mess with my reality on my good days, even. In the funnest possible way. :)
 
You are so sweet. I seem to be on the mend. I do believe the e-room doc was right about the ice pack thing. But, if I am still in serious pain when I awaken on the morrow, I am going to my doc and pleading for more drugs to get me through the next two days. EE is a great cook, but it's no fun to feel like an invalid when everyone else is having fun.

And that man loves to mess with my reality on my good days, even. In the funnest possible way. :)
I did my back out a couple of weeks ago, while making the bed. (Yes, I know. Why bother?) Nothing weird, just all of a sudden things hurt.

Rest, of course, helps. I also did this yoga-y thing which helped as well.

Oh, and this: Ibuprofen. Wonder drug. Bad for your liver in large doses. Use sparingly.

The food sounds good, but we have our own eat too much thing goin' on.

Be well. :)
 
I did my back out a couple of weeks ago, while making the bed. (Yes, I know. Why bother?) Nothing weird, just all of a sudden things hurt.

Rest, of course, helps. I also did this yoga-y thing which helped as well.

Oh, and this: Ibuprofen. Wonder drug. Bad for your liver in large doses. Use sparingly.

The food sounds good, but we have our own eat too much thing goin' on.

Be well. :)

So I woke up this morning and my back said "twing" and "twang," and other things that generally mean "I will take you down today." Back to my doc, who saw me right away and said "sometimes these things don't go away in two days" and reupped the happy drugs for me for another 3-4 days. Thank heavens. It is not humanly possible for eagleyez to do everything that needs to be done today himself.

Yeah I'm taking ibuprophen, too. Last night I thought between that and the ice and the Flexeril, I'd be ok. But I wasn't. No champagne for me tonight unless the Alberta Clipper makes good on her promise and arrives on my doorstep. (If you do Champie, you'll eat well and I'll...well, I'll probably giggle a lot.)

:kiss:
 
So I woke up this morning and my back said "twing" and "twang," and other things that generally mean "I will take you down today." Back to my doc, who saw me right away and said "sometimes these things don't go away in two days" and reupped the happy drugs for me for another 3-4 days. Thank heavens. It is not humanly possible for eagleyez to do everything that needs to be done today himself.

Yeah I'm taking ibuprophen, too. Last night I thought between that and the ice and the Flexeril, I'd be ok. But I wasn't. No champagne for me tonight unless the Alberta Clipper makes good on her promise and arrives on my doorstep. (If you do Champie, you'll eat well and I'll...well, I'll probably giggle a lot.)

:kiss:
It would be an evening of excess for me... I love food ('specially beef) and pink champagne and giggling. I'm giggling now thinking of you giggling... we can share drugs, I still have a PK or two for my "good knee".
 
It would be an evening of excess for me... I love food ('specially beef) and pink champagne and giggling. I'm giggling now thinking of you giggling... we can share drugs, I still have a PK or two for my "good knee".


It would be fun. We're both pretty fun to be around, I think. And I'm definitely more fun (in a goofy way) on Vicodin, like I am now. I just made another batch of chocolate biscotti. Next, mini crabcakes! T is doin the roast and root veggies, so that just leaves me sweet potato biscuits and monkey bread, both of which are very easy. Oh and the green bean and mushroom thingy...he can do that. :)
 
I work with computers for a living. This does not make me any happier with them than most people, possibly less.

Sometime Christmas Day my system froze up (it's running Windows XP and I haven't reloaded it in four years, so this is not an uncommon occurence). I powered it off and back on as always and it appeared to come up just fine except for one thing. The network/internet didn't come up. Rebooted the system again and got the same result. Checked the cable—OK. Checked and reset the router—OK. Tried to bring up Device Manager to look at the status of the network adapters—wouldn't come up. Hung the system again—powered off and back on. Etc.

System now can't see the external hard drive I use for backup. It's a USB device, so I unmount it and unplug it. No change. Power the system down again, reboot. No change.

Check when the last time was I actually did a backup. 200 some days ago. Attack problem with renewed vigor.

Try to bring up system properties. Won't come up. Hangs the system. Cycle power again. Start to look at advertisements for new systems. Check credit card balance. Find even more motivation to correct problem on current system.

Finally manage to get Hardware Manager to come up, via circuitous route I immediately forget (see below). Try to deinstall network bridge. System hangs. Recycle power. Spend 30 minutes trying to remember how I got Hardware Manager to come up. Try to deinstall network PCI card. System hangs. Recycle power. Wonder if I have any DVD-ROM discs and whether my DVD writer works. Decide to try to connect the external hard drive again and see if I can get that to work. Power system down. Reconnect USB cable and cycle power on drive and system.

Everthing now works (as of 9:15 AM this morning). Start full system backup at 9:15:08 AM.

New Year's 2008 resolution number 1: Back up system regularly.
 
Montale

Something rather incredible happened today.

First some background. I have been for many years, amounting to decades, a lover of the poetry of Eugenio Montale (he won the Nobel Prize in 1975). And over the last 10 years I have come to love the translations of Montale by William Arrowsmith, which I have had for quite a while in paperback. Over the last year I have been gradually replacing paperback copies with hardcover copies, the last one needing to be replaced being the second one, called The Occasions — published in 1987 — which is the hardest one to get. Last week I found a super-cheap copy at Abebooks, which had the added bonus that it was inscribed by Arrowsmith himself. (A nice thing to have, I thought.)

Second piece of background information: the Occasions is full of love poetry to a woman who is only identified as Clizia. Now for as long as I’ve been reading Montale — which as I say is a loooong time — I have wondered who this woman was. I’ve scoured the notes of Arrowsmith’s book looking for clues, but there is nothing to give it away. I looked for clues in my original copy (one of the first poetry books I owned) the Selected Poems, published by NDP. No hints whatsoever — except that she was American. The love affair took place in the 1930’s was all I knew. For some reason I had never thought to look on the web but had I done so I might have found out that the woman had discretely revealed her identity in 1983: she was one Irma Brandeis. The love letters that Montale wrote to her have just now been published in Italy, after Brandeis’s death, and after a long period when she insisted they should not be read. Here is a review, that will give you some more of the background.



Letters to Clizia
In Florence, on a summer day of 1933, a young American knocks on the door of the Gabinetto Vieusseux: she wishes to meet the poet who has written "Ossi di Seppia" (1925), at the time the librarian as well as director of the celebrated local institution. This is the beginning of a strong and intense love affair, that was to last over five years: this fact is born out by the over 150 letters written by Montale to the woman hiding behind the name Clizia, now collected in a book ("Lettera a Clizia", Mondadori, pp. XLVI-378, Euro 25.00) edited by Gloria Manghetti, Franco Zabagli and Rosanna Bettarini, the latter also responsible for the magnificent introduction.
The enterprising admirer, whose real name remained shrouded in mystery until the Eighties, was Miss Irma Brandeis, an American Jew, of Austrian ancestry who had moved to the States in the middle of the Nineteenth Century, the second born of an important intellectual family living in New York, a lecturer in Italian language and literature and the Sarah Lawrence College and a regular presence at Columbia University, a scholar of Dante and the Latin Middle Ages but also of Futurism.
The passion that united the two intellectuals was primarily epistolary, seeing as there were very few occasions for meetings, only two summer trips by Irma in Italy, in 1933 and 1934, and a third in 1938 that to some degree was the farewell meeting between the two lovers: too much difference, in all likelihood, lay in their respective idea of the feeling (Irma believed in eternal love and a much more traditional relationship, ideally crowned by marriage; while Montale, more pragmatic, was well aware how difficult it was for certain aspirations to be fulfilled, and the resoluteness required to achieve them), too different in character, even in imagination. Montale, already tied to Drusilla Tanzi, with whom he shared his home (and who he married, shortly before her death, in 1963), often took this established relationship as his excuse to procrastinate every decision concerning the future of his life with Irma.
Yet, beyond these transient aspects of the relationship, the poet's passion was certainly very strong, and it imbued the lyrics of the collection of poems "Occasioni" (1939, dedicated not surprisingly to I.B.) and shows through in every line of these letters. Which, it should be added, are particularly precious for us as a portrait of our national cultural life in the years leading up to the second world war, seeing as they include many archetypal situations and descriptions of people, striking anecdotes and wicked gossip: all of which was fated to be channelled into the priceless prose writings of the "Farfalla di Dinard" (1956). There was therefore nothing "disastrously stupid" about that distant episode of 1933: certainly, for Montale it represented a precious source of inspiration and stimulus, and has given us the opportunity of getting know more hidden aspects of his private existence.

Francesco Troiano
When my copy of the Occasions turned up today it was inscribed by Arrowsmith to Irma Brandeis herself. “To Irma Brandeis, this copy of her own book is enthusiastically inscribed by its translator (with the hope that she won’t be wholly disappointed by “what’s lost in translation” — William Arrowsmith, Boston ‘87”

The bookseller, in Albuquerque New Mexico, has no idea of the gem he has let go for a song!
 
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Something rather incredible happened today.

<snip>


That is very, very cool. Isn't it wonderful when such things happen? I had a similar experience. Most people here know that I am somewhat obsessed with the late, great jazz tenor sax player, Lester Young. I've written many poems about him and his world, his life fascinates me, I guess because I see it as some sort of critical statement about life at in America at a certain time. And, of course, I'm addicted to his music. Many poets have written about him (e.g., Kerouac, Ginsberg), but one, David Meltzer, a second-generation beat poet from San Francisco, wrote this amazing book-length poem about him called No Eyes. ("No Eyes" is an expression Young would use for something he didn't like and, conversely, if he liked something he'd say he had "big eyes" for it.)

Anway when this book came out about five years ago, I ordered it in hardback immediately. Nothing special, just an order for a hardback copy of the book. When it arrived and I went to my bookstore to pick it up it was carefully wrapped up, which struck me as odd, but ok. When I got home and opened it up, I realized the publishers had sent me a limited edition inscribed by the author! He only signed a few of them in the first printing and somehow I ended up with one. Why? How? I like to think that Lester (who went supernova in 1959) made it happen. :D

Here's an excerpt:

Lester's insouciance was cool
a word that's lost all coolness
laidbackness
its power to defuse & confuse
diffused in Netscape blips & MTV
hip hop flip flop meager wages
surface glare & glide
slide easy digital tic toc
cool clock cool time
everything's so fucking cool
bodies float up on vicious poolside pane
shot through fiberoptic hairstrands
Prez adrift saunters off the bandstand
across the street in a reet
buzz of blue serge words.


~ David Meltzer, No Eyes

Life is good. :)
 
I sincerely think I need to find some more cool poetry books. That David Meltzer excerpt has me needing more, like a meth addict after the first taste. Ang pushes poetry. I'll be speaking to ee now, turn your eyes Angeline... Kiss her every time she starts quoting poetry, for God's sake (and mine) you have no idea how much time this consumes, or maybe you, of all of us, do; this reading, exploring and emulating so many fantastic poets.

Maybe I'll buy a book store and bring in precious copies of books. Maybe I'll grow up to be like Oggbashan, he's very cool.

Eluard, that is a fantastic find. You'll have to take it to Antiques Roadshow Austrailia and have it appraised... Insurance replacement value, even though it's irreplaceable.
 
I sincerely think I need to find some more cool poetry books. That David Meltzer excerpt has me needing more, like a meth addict after the first taste. Ang pushes poetry. I'll be speaking to ee now, turn your eyes Angeline... Kiss her every time she starts quoting poetry, for God's sake (and mine) you have no idea how much time this consumes, or maybe you, of all of us, do; this reading, exploring and emulating so many fantastic poets.

Maybe I'll buy a book store and bring in precious copies of books. Maybe I'll grow up to be like Oggbashan, he's very cool.

Eluard, that is a fantastic find. You'll have to take it to Antiques Roadshow Austrailia and have it appraised... Insurance replacement value, even though it's irreplaceable.

He's in the other room. Want some more No Eyes, little girl? Here:

if exhaustion were an ocean
I'd dive in head first
& forget how to swim

down to the deepest deep
creep along bottom's bottom
& sleep w/out dreaming

turn blue in salt cold
shrink old prune gray
water filled folds pop open
on sunny days

no more sweet or sour
just hour after hour of no time
is nobody's time w/ nobody around
if misery were the sea
& blues were the sky
I'd still sink and fly.


~ David Meltzer, No Eyes
 
He's in the other room. Want some more No Eyes, little girl? Here:
<candy>
~ David Meltzer, No Eyes
You're evil! I'm going to Amazon.com now. I'm betting my local library isn't going to have it. Besides, now I covet it, it needs to be within easy reach all of the time.
 
You're evil! I'm going to Amazon.com now. I'm betting my local library isn't going to have it. Besides, now I covet it, it needs to be within easy reach all of the time.

Hehehe. <Sidles back to my post near the schoolyard. (We have a schoolyard on this forum?)>
 
Being on crutches at any time is tough, it's worse in winter, trust me. I hobbled up the walk, eyes on the concrete patches shining through the mottled pattern of crusted snow, to reach the door. Canes don't have the same complexity, you only need to place one rubber foot and you always have a leg to stand on. Using crutches means that you relinquish control to two unfeeling platforms, rubber ends that support your body weight on four square inches rather than the feet you're used to.

I know the ghoul in you wants to hear about an awful fall, where crutches and limbs splay akimbo and tortured muscles flatten between concrete and bones. It's not hard to see that eager sweat limning the three dimensions of your body. You gleam, darling, really. It makes you cold with disappointment when my fingers grasp the doorknob. Especially chilled as the wind slips between your zipper and throat, to close the frost around your neck, but it's winter and only to be expected.

Once inside and beyond the ken of nosy neighbours and curious kids, my hat and gloves shed onto the hall table, pockets spill onto the silver pool of change tray, while boots drip into a pool of their own making. Now is the dangerous time, the time the rubber ends of the crutches are still frozen and the melt lubricates the slick tiles of the foyer. The stairs up into the living room are a mad carpenter's rendition of Mount Saint Elias in celebration of Canadian geography.

I delay my departure. The expedition needs more preparation. I lean the crutches against the wall, watching in dismay as they succumb to gravity and slip, first slowly and then accelerate in an arching slide to the floor. That will need to be dealt with, but not now. The relative humidity and warmth of the house creates a junglelike swelter inside my jacket, ridding my shoulders of its clinging weight is tops on this hopper's list of priorities.

Balanced on one leg, the Canadian crutchdancer struggles at the opening to its shelter. Gripping a recalcitrant zipperpull of its winter coat, the female crutchdancer shouts its greeting call into the warm confines of the nest. As the zipper opens the CCD (as its called in biological circles) sways in an awkward celebration of freedom, exhaling loudly.

A near ballet gracefulness exhibited here, as she bends to recover the fallen crutches and then a leg shake freeing her hanging appendage of its footwear. Watch now, as the warm air stimulates bladder release urges just as all of the CCD's weight hangs balanced in delicate equalibrium between her sticks. The last boot is kicked off in haste as the urge to void hovers between insistence and desperation.

The Canadian Crutchdancer.
.. Hinterland Who's Who has nothing on me.
 
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Thanks Ange and Champers — and that is a very cool story Ange. Books are magical objects!

Here is one of the short poems from The Occasions, one of my long term favourites.


Do not cut, scissors, that face…

Do not cut, scissors, that face,
alone in my emptying memory,
do not change her great, watchful look
into my eternal fog.

A frost descends... the hard blow slices.
And the acacia, self-wounded, casts off
the husk of the cicada
into the first mud of November.

. . .
 
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I posted poems today. Old stuff that was written in 2007, but still poems. I'm hoping w/peace comes the poetry again.
 
I'm finally living it up. Up somewhere in goofy ass land. Yeah, I've had friends and lovers call me goofy. My latest goofy adventure was vodka. Before I met Hugo, I drank about once every four years. Now my Saturday nights aren't complete until I'm kneeling on the front porch naked and someone's peed on me, followed by conversations with aliens and a boyfriend who suddenly materializes before my eyes. Don't chase vodka with vodka, because the next morning you're asking yourself why your hair smells funny and where did all the bruises come from.

I've decided to embrace my odd ways, sober or not, and stop worrying about the townsfolk who think I'm either goth or a witch. I've decided to accept that I'm sexually dark and disturbing. I'm okay with the fact that I have a tongue like a Saint Bernard or that I climb into a Jacuzzi with my boots on and camera in hand.

I'm a goofball and I'm fucking happy and I understand spacemen.
 
Kelly Kay, Tupperware Kelly Kay, school mommy, friend of sorts, Kelly Kay -- her daughter has been demoted from Twig Girl to Rat Tail Kid. First it was, "Your mommy has a boyfriend. He has tattoos here, here, here and here. Your mommy is going to marry him and you'll have a new daddy."Tuesday held less drama and she only taunted my Hanna with, "Your mom is on her cell phone, talking to her boyfriend." It may seem like a simple statement, but Rat Tail Kid has a way of saying it so it sounds like, "Nah, nah, na, nah, nah!"Driving the kids home from school, I pulled over and asked her what's wrong. I told her to tell me now, because we weren't taking it home. She tells me about the nah nah. I haven't called Kelly Kay about it. Kelly Kay isn't the rattle nor the fangs. She's the venom. Redneck venom, coursing through the veins of the slithering, hillbilly parents and teachers. How does a stubby-stout woman, dressed in pink Tinkerbelle, with a rifle-toting preschool son, manage to be the darling of everyone, and I'm feared because I wear... black slacks and dark sweaters? So I can't anger the Great Kelly Kay. Not yet. Not until I move out of town. I offer Hanna comebacks to use on Rat Tail Kid. But all Hanna can think about is mommy leaving like daddy. Daddy left, Daddy got a new wife, Daddy rarely came around, Daddy died. Katy wants to know if they're the only kids without a dad. I thought about breaking up with Hugo a month or two ago. The stress was winning. Even my mom was calling and asking if Hugo was going to take me and the kids away. Good grief! I drove home, after being with Hugo on Tuesday. The goofy, love-sick smile was present. I felt happy like I hadn't felt in many years, maybe never. Then I felt bad, so very bad the rest of the day, because Hanna is confused and her daddy is gone. I didn't feel like picking them up today. I printed out a picture of us from Tuesday -- one where we're sitting on a big rock by the river. I framed it and placed it on my desk and that made me happy. Then I heard the bus outside and reluctantly turned it face down, then took a call from Kelly Kay and agreed to drive her kid home one day soon.
 
Kelly Kay, Tupperware Kelly Kay, school mommy, friend of sorts, Kelly Kay -- her daughter has been demoted from Twig Girl to Rat Tail Kid. First it was, "Your mommy has a boyfriend. He has tattoos here, here, here and here. Your mommy is going to marry him and you'll have a new daddy."Tuesday held less drama and she only taunted my Hanna with, "Your mom is on her cell phone, talking to her boyfriend." It may seem like a simple statement, but Rat Tail Kid has a way of saying it so it sounds like, "Nah, nah, na, nah, nah!"Driving the kids home from school, I pulled over and asked her what's wrong. I told her to tell me now, because we weren't taking it home. She tells me about the nah nah. I haven't called Kelly Kay about it. Kelly Kay isn't the rattle nor the fangs. She's the venom. Redneck venom, coursing through the veins of the slithering, hillbilly parents and teachers. How does a stubby-stout woman, dressed in pink Tinkerbelle, with a rifle-toting preschool son, manage to be the darling of everyone, and I'm feared because I wear... black slacks and dark sweaters? So I can't anger the Great Kelly Kay. Not yet. Not until I move out of town. I offer Hanna comebacks to use on Rat Tail Kid. But all Hanna can think about is mommy leaving like daddy. Daddy left, Daddy got a new wife, Daddy rarely came around, Daddy died. Katy wants to know if they're the only kids without a dad. I thought about breaking up with Hugo a month or two ago. The stress was winning. Even my mom was calling and asking if Hugo was going to take me and the kids away. Good grief! I drove home, after being with Hugo on Tuesday. The goofy, love-sick smile was present. I felt happy like I hadn't felt in many years, maybe never. Then I felt bad, so very bad the rest of the day, because Hanna is confused and her daddy is gone. I didn't feel like picking them up today. I printed out a picture of us from Tuesday -- one where we're sitting on a big rock by the river. I framed it and placed it on my desk and that made me happy. Then I heard the bus outside and reluctantly turned it face down, then took a call from Kelly Kay and agreed to drive her kid home one day soon.

It will absolutely get better as Hanna sees that he isn't a threat to your love for her and Katy. And Katy will follow her sister's lead. What's happening now is because he's new in your life. It will get better. Let that be your mantra.

And then y'all can move to Asheville and I'll be your new neighbor. (I said "y'all!" Bless my heart.)
 
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