| The Rat | |
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Friday, May 30, 2003
( 1:20 PM ) The Rat TEXAS PAPER DROPS MAUREEN DOWD'S SYNDICATED COLUMN, citing the "..." incident. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:20 PM ( 12:54 PM ) The Rat RECENT SEARCH REQUESTS. about girls brisket naked rat hallucinations spell SHOTGUN WEDDINGS making guinness beer dead rat ball kicking mistresses # Posted by The Rat @ 12:54 PM ( 12:53 PM ) The Rat An archaeologist is the best husband any woman can have: the older she gets, the more interested he is in her. —Agatha Christie (wife of Sir Max Mallowan) # Posted by The Rat @ 12:53 PM Thursday, May 29, 2003 ( 4:44 PM ) The Rat CHECK OUT SIR EDMUND HILLARY in the current NYTM. My favorite is the last graph: All of the big things have been done now; all the great peaks have been climbed; and the depths of the ocean have been reached; and the poles, of course, are just routine nowadays. But the fact remains that there are still hundreds of lower mountains that are technically very difficult. I have a few little secret places that I still wish I had done. There is one place in the Antarctic that I would have loved to go up. It is a glacier, and I would have loved to go to the top of it and climb the mountains there. It's still not climbed, so it remains as a good challenge. But I am not going to tell you where it is. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:44 PM ( 4:24 PM ) The Rat After all, if your only child turns out to be a mess you feel 100% ineffective. But if you have three and one turns out bad, you can always think "Well I'm batting .667, that's not bad." —friend (who has five children) found quoted in an old e-mail # Posted by The Rat @ 4:24 PM Wednesday, May 28, 2003 ( 4:06 PM ) The Rat FYI: ADMISSION AT MOMA IS HALF-PRICE THROUGH JUNE 23. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:06 PM ( 12:40 PM ) The Rat YESTERDAY, as I of course remembered to point out at the time, was St. Petersburg's 300th birthday! On a more timely note, today is the Great American Grump Out. Celebrate by beating somebody up. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:40 PM ( 12:29 PM ) The Rat IRANIAN BLOGGERS. There are now roughly 12,000 Farsi blogs created by Iranians, Derakhshan said, with more coming online every day. "Until there is a free press in Iran again, weblogs will flourish. In the last few years about 90 (pro-democracy) newspapers in Iran have been shut down. So people have turned to the Internet to get news," Derakhshan said Friday... # Posted by The Rat @ 12:29 PM ( 12:26 PM ) The Rat THE VOICE'S PRESS CLIPS looks at Lewis Lapham's Rules of Influence in light of the Blair scandal. In his fin-de-siècle primer on self-promotion, Lapham recalls how, sometime after 1980, ambitious college grads began to concentrate less on learning, merit, and morality and more on perfecting the navigational and social skills of a courtier. Courtiers first flourished under a monarchy, according to Lapham, but the "arts of deference" became indispensable in a status-obsessed and way-fluid democracy. "What else is the courtier spirit," he writes, "if not the spirit of a society guided by talk-show hosts, captained by lawyers, inspired by actors, educated by press agents—all of them the kind of people paid to arrange the truth in its most flattering and convenient poses?" [...] Self-promotion is an age-old ploy, according to Lapham. Just as "being seen at court" was the key 400 years ago, today's venues are TV studios and gossip columns. A careerist must "seize every photo opportunity; accept every invitation to an interview." So there was Blair with a cigarette on the cover of Newsweek. "When confronted by a photographer with a still camera," Lapham writes, "you may strike a flamboyant or expressive pose.... The correct expression is slightly contemptuous and faintly amused." # Posted by The Rat @ 12:26 PM ( 12:16 PM ) The Rat MAUREEN DOWN AND THAT BUSH QUOTE. And... the Times braces itself for a correction to the correction? # Posted by The Rat @ 12:16 PM ( 12:15 PM ) The Rat From wine what sudden friendship springs! —John Gay, "The Squire and his Cur" # Posted by The Rat @ 12:15 PM Tuesday, May 27, 2003 ( 9:50 PM ) The Rat ICONOCHASMS. Interesting quiz (I bombed). While you're there you can also retake the "Political Compass" assessment. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:50 PM ( 8:48 PM ) The Rat RANDOM STEVEN WRIGHT JOKE SERVER. # Posted by The Rat @ 8:48 PM ( 4:04 PM ) The Rat TIME ON SADDAM'S SONS. A chef at Baghdad's exclusive Hunting Club recalls a wedding party that Uday crashed in the late 1990s. After Uday left the hall, the bride, a beautiful woman from a prominent family, went missing. "The bodyguards closed all the doors, didn't let anybody out," the chef remembers. "Women were yelling and crying, 'What happened to her?'" The groom knew. "He took a pistol and shot himself," says the chef, placing his forefinger under his chin. Last October another bride, 18, was dragged, resisting, into a guardhouse on one of Uday's properties, according to a maid who worked there. The maid says she saw a guard rip off the woman's white wedding dress and lock her, crying, in a bathroom. After Uday arrived, the maid heard screaming. Later she was called to clean up. The body of the woman was carried out in a military blanket, she said. There were acid burns on her left shoulder and the left side of her face. The maid found bloodstains on Uday's mattress and clumps of black hair and peeled flesh in the bedroom. A guard told her, "Don't say anything about what you see, or you and your family will be finished." # Posted by The Rat @ 4:04 PM ( 12:15 PM ) The Rat LIES, DAMN LIES, AND JOURNALISM. A roundup of some of Jayson Blair's predecessors. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:15 PM ( 12:15 PM ) The Rat The lowest of genres—life itself. —Zuckerman Bound # Posted by The Rat @ 12:15 PM Friday, May 23, 2003 ( 10:35 PM ) The Rat COWS WITH GUNS. Make sure you have the sound on. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:35 PM ( 9:42 PM ) The Rat AND HERE IS A TRIPPY PHOTO. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:42 PM ( 9:37 PM ) The Rat RECENT SEARCH REQUESTS. Pekingese porn rat sex Cambodian porn little whore # Posted by The Rat @ 9:37 PM ( 4:51 PM ) The Rat It's, of course, what hell must be like, if hell has valet parking. —David Mamet on L.A. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:51 PM Thursday, May 22, 2003 ( 9:56 AM ) The Rat THE LATEST FROM BRITAIN. A British woman who is afraid her husband might leave her if her beauty fades has insured her face for $164,000, the BBC reported. Nicole Jones, 26, of Bristol took out the policy—for which she pays about $330 a year—as a birthday gift for her husband, who joked that he would leave her if she let herself go over the years, the BBC story said. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:56 AM ( 9:55 AM ) The Rat The dignity of tragedy demands some other passion more noble and manly than love. —Pierre Corneille # Posted by The Rat @ 9:55 AM Wednesday, May 21, 2003 ( 2:28 PM ) The Rat SIAMESE TURTLE! Not as cool as the pushmi-pullyu, but hey, take what you can get. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:28 PM ( 2:26 PM ) The Rat The Good Apprentice by Iris Murdoch is about a young man seeking redemption. Edward Baltram, the student protagonist, slips LSD into his roommate's sandwich. The roommate, writhing in ecstasy and moaning that the universe is "a big shaggy scaly fish... it's pingling," leaps out the window to his death. Edward goes to visit his father and stepfamily in their country cottage, "a holy place where pure women tend a mystical crippled minotaur"—Murdoch's way of saying tht the household consists of three vegetarian feminists and a senile ex-libertine. We get squeezed in the iron maiden of Murdoch's parentheses: "What young Edward (he was 20) had not expected was that young Sarah (she was 19), who was small and dark and agile like a Russian acrobat, would immediately (how had it happened?) undress him (his clothes had seemed to melt away) and introduce him into her bed..." Murdoch also indulges in lots of italics to make sure we get the message. I get it all right; it's called a sick headache. This novel is a big, shaggy, scaly fish that doesn't pingle. —Florence King, "A Burnt-Out Book Reviewer Case" # Posted by The Rat @ 2:26 PM Tuesday, May 20, 2003 ( 5:44 PM ) The Rat OREGON TOWN PUTS DISUSED WATER TOWER UP FOR SALE ON EBAY. Even at a time when it seems that anything can and does go onto the virtual auction block, the Sublimity water tower stands out. First of all, it's rather large, standing at least 100 feet tall. And whoever buys it will not only have to take it down, but take it away and find a place to put it as well. It is listed under the eBay category "Everything Else: Weird Stuff: Slightly Unusual." # Posted by The Rat @ 5:44 PM ( 5:39 PM ) The Rat MAKING THE WORLD SAFE FOR HOMEWRECKERS. Time could be running out in Missouri for the cause of action known as "alienation of affections"—breaking up a marriage. The Missouri Supreme Court is set to hear arguments today in the case of a Buchanan County woman, Katherine Helsel, who won $75,000 in damages from the other woman in her ex-husband's life: his chiropractor, Sivi Noellsch. Noellsch, now Sivi Helsel, appealed the award, and in March the state's highest court made the rare move of taking over the case from the appeals court. That indicates to some observers that the court may be ready to abolish the alienation of affections tort, which exists in only eight other states. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:39 PM ( 10:58 AM ) The Rat ANDRÉ LEON TALLEY PUBLISHES MEMOIR. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:58 AM ( 10:48 AM ) The Rat TODAY IS THIS GUY'S BIRTHDAY. Celebrate by reading this, this, this, or this. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:48 AM ( 10:31 AM ) The Rat THE RAT just received a spam with the subject title "SUFFER NO MORE!" Alas, it was only an ad for a sinus medication. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:31 AM ( 10:11 AM ) The Rat JOKE, via Eve. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:11 AM ( 10:02 AM ) The Rat TOTAL LUNAR ECLIPSE ON THURSDAY. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:02 AM ( 10:00 AM ) The Rat HEH. # Posted by The Rat @ 10:00 AM ( 9:57 AM ) The Rat BEER-SIPPING PIG SYMBOL OF ALABAMA'S NEW WALKING TOURS. # Posted by The Rat @ 9:57 AM ( 9:55 AM ) The Rat A committed empiricist, [Sir Francis] Talton was always on the prowl for more data. ‘Whenever you can, count,’ was a favorite axiom. Assessing the boringness of lectures, he actually counted yawns in the audience. He also created a ‘Beauty Map’ of the British Isles. Here he collected the data by walking around in a number of cities with a device in his pocket that enabled him to punch pinholes in different places depending on whether the women he passed in the streets were good, medium, or bad lookers. (He rated London best, Aberdeen worst.) —found in an old NR book review # Posted by The Rat @ 9:55 AM Monday, May 19, 2003 ( 7:12 PM ) The Rat RECENT SEARCH REQUESTS. DON'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL White Norwegian Rat the wild rat sex thing "broke" +"cookie" +"french accent" angry rat roland barthes soccer student orgasm nymphomaniac Survivor orgasm school vocab cheats 40 pound Cambodian orgasm and valedictorian Web stats taking veil norway rat vs. brown rat big vagina taiwan rat blog women nymphomaniac # Posted by The Rat @ 7:12 PM ( 7:01 PM ) The Rat WTF?! The National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (NICHD) provided more than $137,000 for a three-year study to "provide the most comprehensive picture to date of the sexual behavior of aging men." A House panel wants the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to explain "how this provocative data about aging men's sexual fantasies and activities will benefit hapless children afflicted with pediatric diseases"... # Posted by The Rat @ 7:01 PM ( 6:59 PM ) The Rat It showed that the novels were wrong; that commonsense was right; that happy marriages were not made from great love. Great love, on the contrary, could not possibly be fitted into such a chic apartment as this; it would knock over all the little tables. —Nancy Hale, The Prodigal Women # Posted by The Rat @ 6:59 PM Friday, May 16, 2003 ( 3:08 PM ) The Rat I wasn't used to children and they were getting on my nerves. Worse, it appeared that I was a child, too. I hadn't known that before; I thought I was just short. —Florence King recalling her first day of kindergarten in Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady # Posted by The Rat @ 3:08 PM Thursday, May 15, 2003 ( 11:15 AM ) The Rat AFTERLIFE TELEGRAMS. Weird. Paul Kinsella, 31, of New Athens, Ill., has devised an online service called AfterlifeTelegrams.com to try to deliver messages to the great beyond. It works like this: For a $5-per-word fee, Kinsella gives your message to a terminally ill volunteer "messenger," who memorizes it with the idea that he will recite it to your loved one after he dies. The money goes to charity or the messenger's family, unless the messenger elects to use it to cover medical expenses. If the messenger does not die within a year, the customer's money is refunded and the message is delivered for free. # Posted by The Rat @ 11:15 AM ( 11:14 AM ) The Rat It is only in romances that people undergo a sudden metamorphosis. In real life, the main character remains exactly the same. —Isadora Duncan # Posted by The Rat @ 11:14 AM Wednesday, May 14, 2003 ( 5:59 PM ) The Rat YAY!!! # Posted by The Rat @ 5:59 PM ( 5:58 PM ) The Rat The most successful love affairs are conducted entirely by post. —Bernard Shaw # Posted by The Rat @ 5:58 PM Tuesday, May 13, 2003 ( 4:54 PM ) The Rat WHICH IVY LEAGUE UNVERSITY IS RIGHT FOR YOU? Uncannily accurate. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:54 PM ( 12:25 PM ) The Rat "Ought we to be drunk every night?" Sebastian asked one morning. "Yes, I think so." "I think so too." —Brideshead Revisited # Posted by The Rat @ 12:25 PM Monday, May 12, 2003 ( 6:53 PM ) The Rat THINGS NOT TO DO AFTER ARGUING WITH YOUR WIFE, OR AT ANY OTHER TIME. # Posted by The Rat @ 6:53 PM ( 6:20 PM ) The Rat HEH. # Posted by The Rat @ 6:20 PM ( 12:42 PM ) The Rat HAPPY BIRTHDAY to Katharine Hepburn! # Posted by The Rat @ 12:42 PM ( 12:41 PM ) The Rat At the Bottom of the River by Jamaica Kincaid reminds me of what Dorothy Parker said just before she died. Asked what she thought of The New Yorker of the sixties, she replied: "I don't read The New Yorker much these days. It always seems to be the same old story about somebody's childhood in Pakistan." Jamaica Kincaid is a New Yorker Writer. The short stories in this eighty-two-page book are about her childhood on Antigua. One passage will suffice to give you the feel of her style and subject matter: "Standing in front of the fireplace, I try to write my name in the dead ashes with my big toe. I cannot write my name in the dead ashes with my big toe. My big toe, now dirty, I try to clean by rubbing it vigorously on a clean royal-blue rug. The royal-blue rug now has a dark spot, and my big toe has a strong burning sensation. Oh, sensation. I feel—oh, how I feel. I feel, I feel, I feel. I have no words right now for how I feel." On the edge of your chair? Can't wait to find out what happens next? All right, here's some more. "In the night, the flowers close up and thicken. The hibiscus flowers, the flamboyant flowers, the bachelor's buttons, the irises, the marigolds, the whitehead-bush flowers, the lilies, the flowers on the daggerbush, the flowers on the soursop tree, the flowers on the sugar-apple tree, the flowers on the mango tree, the flowers on the guava tree, the flowers on the cedar tree, the flowers on the stinking-toe tree, the flowers on the dumps tree, the flowers on the papaw tree, the flowers everywhere close up and thicken. The flowers are vexed." Go figure. —Florence King, "A Burnt-Out Book Reviewer Case" # Posted by The Rat @ 12:41 PM Friday, May 09, 2003 ( 2:12 PM ) The Rat THIS has just made the Rat's day. With the state facing a $3 billion deficit, Massachusetts lawmakers are considering selling corporate sponsors the naming rights to parks and forests, including the Walden Woods immortalized by Henry David Thoreau... # Posted by The Rat @ 2:12 PM ( 1:41 PM ) The Rat THIS WEEK'S SEARCH REQUESTS. DON'T GO TO LAW SCHOOL Men Wearing Underwear (two searches) White Norwegian Rat the wild rat sex thing # Posted by The Rat @ 1:41 PM ( 1:40 PM ) The Rat ADULTHOOD BEGINS AT AGE 26. No comment. # Posted by The Rat @ 1:40 PM ( 1:39 PM ) The Rat "We killed him because he didn't want to become a doctor, that's why we killed him." —Lenny Bruce on Christ and the Jews # Posted by The Rat @ 1:39 PM Thursday, May 08, 2003 ( 4:31 PM ) The Rat MMM, CHOCOLATE. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:31 PM ( 4:30 PM ) The Rat MAN IN CLINTON MASK ROBS WATERFORD BANK. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:30 PM ( 4:29 PM ) The Rat The dirty, dirty Dutch, They don't amount to much But they're a damn sight better than the Irish. —old saying quoted by George Orwell in an essay # Posted by The Rat @ 4:29 PM Wednesday, May 07, 2003 ( 6:06 PM ) The Rat TODAY IS THE NATIONAL DAY TO PREVENT TEEN PREGNANCY! There go my plans for the evening. # Posted by The Rat @ 6:06 PM ( 5:15 PM ) The Rat THE RAT HAS JUST NOTICED, poring over the listings in the new Press, that United Cerebral Palsy and the American Heart Association have scheduled their "Women Who Care Luncheon" and "Women With Heart Lunch," respectively, at exactly the same time on the same day. Don't know if this was a coincidence, or the fruit of some bizarre behind-the-scenes rivalry, but I'm picturing some poor woman out there who both has a heart and cares having a nervous breakdown over where to have lunch tomorrow. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:15 PM ( 2:55 PM ) The Rat DANTE'S INFERNO QUIZ. Neat idea, though not nearly as accurate as it could have been. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:55 PM ( 2:55 PM ) The Rat A PATENT. # Posted by The Rat @ 2:55 PM ( 2:55 PM ) The Rat I looked at my watch; it was four o'clock, but neither of us was ready to sleep, for in that city there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy. —the narrator, of New York, in Brideshead Revisited # Posted by The Rat @ 2:55 PM Tuesday, May 06, 2003 ( 5:31 PM ) The Rat MODERN DRUNKARD MAGAZINE. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:31 PM ( 4:51 PM ) The Rat ACCEPTABLE RAT TERRIER EARS. Lest you make a terrible mistake. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:51 PM ( 4:49 PM ) The Rat GET A NEW IM ICON HERE. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:49 PM ( 4:37 PM ) The Rat WOW. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:37 PM ( 4:32 PM ) The Rat A WOMAN WHO HAS A BOY OUT OF WEDLOCK IS LIKELIER TO MARRY THE FATHER, STUDY FINDS. Weird. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:32 PM ( 4:29 PM ) The Rat FAMILY FEUD WRONG ANSWERS. # Posted by The Rat @ 4:29 PM ( 1:49 PM ) The Rat A good sex manual would have helped, but the fifties offered nothing but marriage manuals. Their chief object was to deny the importance, and if possible the existence, of clitoral orgasms. Consequently, when Char had a clitoral orgasm during a diddling session, she had hysterics as well. The source of her woe was an author whose theory of the subcontracted orgasm read like a directive from the Interstate Commerce Commission. He said that while the clitoris was not licensed to operate independently, it was a spur line of female pleasure that helped carry the delirious consignment to its final destination. It did this by transferring its sensations to the vagina; the vagina then signed for them, and had the orgasm for the clitoris. Char reasoned that since her clitoris had made an orgasm run all by itself, she must be a nymphomaniac... —Confessions of a Failed Southern Lady # Posted by The Rat @ 1:49 PM Monday, May 05, 2003 ( 5:28 PM ) The Rat [T]hat Easter vacation formed a short stretch of level road in the precipitous descent of which Jasper warned me. Descent or ascent? It seems to me that I grew younger daily with each adult habit that I acquired. I had lived a lonely childhood and a boyhood straitened by war and overshadowed by bereavement; to the hard bachelordom of English adolescence, the premature dignity and authority of the school system, I had added a sad and grim strain of my own. Now, that summer term with Sebastian, it seemed as though I was being given a brief spell of what I had never known, a happy childhood, and though its toys were silk shirts and liqueurs and cigars and its naughtiness high in the catalogue of grave sins, there was something of nursery freshness about us that fell little short of the joy of innocence. At the end of the term I took my first schools; it was necessary to pass, if I was to remain at Oxford, and pass I did, after a week in which I forbade Sebastian my rooms and sat up to a late hour, with iced black coffee and charcoal biscuits, cramming myself with the neglected texts. I remember no syllable of them now, but the other, more ancient, lore which I acquired that term will be with me in one shape or another to my last hour. —Brideshead Revisited # Posted by The Rat @ 5:28 PM Friday, May 02, 2003 ( 12:55 PM ) The Rat CAPTION OF THE DAY. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:55 PM ( 12:54 PM ) The Rat BEST OF THIS WEEK'S SEARCH REQUESTS: nude more rat pets & women sex stories easy defloration rat on someone erotic cartoons leave it to beaver Jordanian men looking to marry a fo alan greenspan in bed with an e yukio boobs nude Dorothy cartoons poetry rat pestilence # Posted by The Rat @ 12:54 PM ( 12:52 PM ) The Rat MORE WEIRDNESS FROM THAILAND. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:52 PM ( 12:48 PM ) The Rat FROM THE NEW ISSUE OF NR: After a grueling fight, a company of infantrymen was resting and opening their first mail delivery of the war. One of the young soldiers had received a care package and was sharing the home-baked cookies with his friends. A photographer with a heavy French accent asked if he could have one. The soldier looked him over and said there would be no cookies for Frenchmen. The photographer then protested that he was half Italian. Without missing a beat, the soldier broke a cookie in half and gave it to him. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:48 PM ( 12:47 PM ) The Rat WACKY VILLAGE NAMES. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:47 PM ( 12:38 PM ) The Rat STUDENT SEEKS TO BE SOLE VALEDICTORIAN. This really saddens me. It would be gutsy of her to stick up for her rights in a society as touchy-feely as ours (I was never valedictorian myself, incidentally, so don't think this is just me being snooty)—but $2.7 million in damages? Looks like this girl's learned the lessons of modern American life all too well. She's also making all people who believe in being judged on merit, look like jerks. Good job, Miss Hornstine. You'll fit right in at Harvard. # Posted by The Rat @ 12:38 PM ( 12:30 PM ) The Rat "SMOKE AND SCRAM." Mayor Michael Bloomberg's smoking ban in New York bars and restaurants has given a new twist to the old bar prank of drinking and running. The Daily News calls it "the smoke and scram"—customers order, drink, excuse themselves to smoke a cigarette outside but do not return to pay their tab... # Posted by The Rat @ 12:30 PM ( 12:27 PM ) The Rat Just about everything [these days] brings back memories of how I got started in writing. The 2,476th feature on mammograms, the 4,728th segment on unwed mothers, the eternal "special" hosted by Connie Chung, Meryl Streep's soulful face as she discusses her "films"—expose me to any one of these and I will start reciting verbatim from the 1958 Writer's Market: True-confessions stories must be about subjects of interest to women: marital discord, adultery, problem children, alcoholism, insecurity, anxiety, depression, nervous breakdowns, accidents, illness, surgery, and sudden death. Upbeat ending essential. No humor; our readers take life seriously. Length 3,000 to 5,000; payment 5 cents per word. Enclose SASE. The first story I sold was called "I Committed Adultery in a Diabetic Coma"... —Florence King # Posted by The Rat @ 12:27 PM Thursday, May 01, 2003 ( 5:55 PM ) The Rat LOOKS LIKE SOMEBODY AT HONDA WAS REALLY BORED... (View with sound on if possible.) For more of the same, go here. # Posted by The Rat @ 5:55 PM ( 5:54 PM ) The Rat Above all, I avoid lesbians. It's impossible to enjoy a martini when someone keeps saying, "I'm tired of being invisible." —Florence King # Posted by The Rat @ 5:54 PM |
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