Meta on metaphors. Hahahaha that was too easy.

[lettered]

Let's talk about metaphor.

Disclaimer: Okay, straight up, I don't know what I'm talking about. I learned some things once that helped me find a *way* to think about metaphor, and that's what I want to share. Thing is, the way I think and feel about metaphor is pretty much based on some old dead guys and their theories about poetry and linguistics (they called themselves Imagists, and their philosophy really is a lot cooler than their poetry). So, in order to say how I approach the concept of metaphor, I'm mostly gonna share with you how I interpreted these old dead guys' ideas. But, this isn't about facts or history or philosophy, it's about how I explain metaphor and all that to myself in my head. I guess my point is, I'm not trying to tell you something you don't already know, but express my thoughts. But I tend to get explain-y, so pardon the tone if I feel all lecturey.

1. Words have nothing to do with the actual things they represent. (with the exception of onomatopoeia).

This was a big thing in linguistics and philosophy; I don't know, something about Saussure, Wittgenstein, and a whole bunch of other dead guys. Okay, the point is, the word "sun" has nothing to do with the actual sun. It's just a random order of sounds someone chose; there's nothing about the big fiery ball in the sky that is inherently connect to the sounds of the letters, or the shape of the letters, or the feel of the word. Unless, of course, you're talkinging onomatopoeia: the word "hiss" represents the sound a snake makes, and the word "hiss" itself does sound kind of like the sound a snake makes. So onomatopoeiac words are in some ways intrinsically connected to that which they represent, but most words aren't.

(The idea behind this goes a little deeper: i. reality is unknowable. ii. people percieve reality through a filter or veil, in order to use reality, process, deal with it. So, there's a gap between reality and perception. Language is part of that "veil" between the two. It doesn't deal with real things, but rather tokens that represent real things. Now, we communicate in language, everything we do in life has to do with language, we even think in language, but it's sort of the way we use dollar bills: everything happens in terms of numbers and paper, and sometimes the solid gold these numbers and papers represent gets lost. An artist's job--according to this way of thought--is to pierce through the "veil".)

2. Therefore, words no longer have the capacity to create concrete impressions of the actual things they represent.

Let's say there's a process that goes on, when you hear/read a word: i. You see the word "grass". ii. Your brain gives you a concrete impression (the reality) of "grass" itself--green shoots of stuff coming up from the ground. iii. Your brain makes the connection--it goes, "oh, that stuff", and bingo, you understand what is meant by the word "grass". For you, the "concrete impression" might not be visual. It might consist of how fresh-cut grass smells, how grass feels when you roll in it, and, very importantly, memories of the time your brother dared you to eat a piece, of emptying the lawnmower bag on a hot day.

What #2 is about how we've cut out that second step, those concrete impressions (instead of connecting back to reality, communication is solely about perception of reality). Maybe when man first started naming things, and maybe when you were little and didn't know words to things, you heard the word "grass", you called up your concrete impressions of grass, and then you understood, but these days, you hear the word "grass", and you know immediately what that means without once *really* thinking about grass itself, the reality of grass, that bright green stuff that prickles sometimes but can be strangely soft when you lie on it, the smoothness of each stalk and the fresh smell of it.

(Some words do still have the capacity to create concrete impressions, reality. Certain words work as triggers for certain people; for instance, "rape" or "abuse" might always call up a very specific memory, feeling, or image for some people. But for the most part, these words are rare, and of course different people who hear the words recieve different impressions.)

What usually happens is when I say "lemon", you do not immediately process a specific lemon in your head, but rather the idea of lemon. You don't think about that real lemon, that too pithy lemon you had in your tea last Tuesday, how when you went to squeeze it you hit your friend Becca in the eye with its juice, how the seeds sweated out of it and how it looked like a broken happy face smile in your cup. Or whatever. When I say lemon, your are not thinking of one lemon, but an idea of lemon. Your lemon is not my lemon, and with nothing more denote my lemon than the mere word "lemon," never the twain shall meet.

3. Good writing will recreate concrete impressions of the actual things words represent.

Say you forgot for a moment what the word "blue" meant. I might remind you by pointing out real objects--Spike's eyes, Illyria's hair, the sky. You would then have concrete impressions of blue: feel a warm summer day under a blue sky, see Illyria's hair, remember Spike's eyes as they tried to tell Buffy he loved her. You would remember blue, feel blue, see blue, experience the reality of blue. From these concrete impressions you would make the connection, that is, find the thing in common: blue. You've discovered what blue means.

Right now, you say the word "blue," and you probably don't see it in your head, you don't feel it, you don't see it. You simply understand it so you can use it (it's about perception and not reality). But if you forget the word "blue," you need to reinsert that step, that step where there are specific images, feelings, memories, associations, that step where there's a concrete impression (reality), and only then can you understand what is meant by "blue", and use the word "blue" to understand what a writer/speaker is saying. You need to experience blue in order to rediscover the meaning of blue.

A good writer can't make you forget what "blue" means, but she can cause a reader to experience blue, and also to rediscover blue. She pierces through the word used to represent "blue" (the veil) and connects you of the reality of blue itself. This she does through association, through simile and metaphor. A good metaphor or simile doesn't let you just skip over the word "blue". A good metaphor or simile forces you to make a connection: "hey, remember blue? Color of Spike's eyes, Illyria's hair, the sky?" It connects to something from which a reader/listener will gain concrete impressions. The reader then experiences blue, and says, "oh yeah, blue."

Usually, I view metphors and similes as honing down to something specific: e.g. "I don't mean a general blue; I mean the color of blue that is Illyria's hair." But I don't think that is as constructive of a way to think of it as trying to get the reader to experience blue, whether it's a general blue or specific blue. Here's why:

3a. Clichés also no longer have the capacity to create concrete impressions of the actual things to which they connect a word.

If metaphors and similes are only about honing down to something specific, "blue as the sky," "blue as the sea", and "blue as sapphires" would all have different meanings. If you really think about it, they do--those objects all represent different shades of blue. But these clichés are so common, they've lost their meaning.

Now,"cold" is a word you hear and, as I have described above with "grass" and "blue", you read right over it, understand it without recieving a concrete impression. You don't shiver, don't smell snow, don't taste ice cream, don't remember that one winter when your grandfather was leaving and you ran out barefoot in the snow to say goodbye to him. Now, take a phrase like "cold as ice". The first time someone said, "cold as ice", whoever heard it couldn't just read over it; she had to stop, make the connection in her head: ice, what's the thing in common between cold and ice, what is the reality of both cold and ice, the reality behind the words? It's that stinging feeling, it's stick to your tongue, cheek-reddening,*shiver*,--I get it, cold as ice!

The simile subverted the automatic connection between the word "cold" and the understanding of cold; it reinserted the step in between, the step where there's an image, a smell or taste or memory, the step where the listener/reader had to make a connection between a concrete impression (the physical object of ice) and a word. You were rediscovering the meaning of the word "cold"; someone reminded you of a concrete cold you could relate to--you know, cold like snow, cold like a flagpole on a winter day--oh, you mean cold.

But the phrase is so overused that these days, when you hear "cold as ice", you don't think about actual ice at all. You might as well just say, "cold". The reader/listener reads over it and translates to "cold", to just the understanding of "cold", without the concrete impressions that remind you of the reality of ice, what ice is, actual finger-reddening, cheek-nipping pain of an icy wind, or the tongue-tearing, hot eye-watering feel of too much ice in your mouth.

Now, "ice" is pretty general too, but this happens even with the most specific cliches. First time I heard: "cold as a witch's tit in a brass bra," I got this very distinct impression of an ice witch type thing, with her hair all icicles and frosty, with these whithered boobs that burned they were so cold, with this Leia-thing on that if you put your mouth on it, you'd come away with half a tongue. But now when I hear it, I think oh, it's cold, and I tell my brother to shut up.

Conclusion: So, in the end, what makes a good metaphor or simile isn't the specificity of it, but the originality of it. An original simile/metaphor forces the reader to make a connection, find the thing in common, between one thing and another. In order to find that connection, the reader has to have concrete impressions, has to experience the reality behind the words.

Really Cool Examples:
a.
Green

The sky was apple-green,
The sky was green wine held up in the sun,
The moon was a golden petal between.

She opened her eyes, and green
They shone, clear like flowers undone,
For the first time, now for the first time seen.
--D.H. Lawrence.

D.H. Lawrence was a kind of fringe Imagist poet. I love this poem because if he had said "the sky was blue", you would read right over it. The sky is always blue; we always say the sky is blue; it's practically a tautology. Instead, you're forced to come up with the reality of the sky, and the color green, and try to figure out how to make the connection. The result for me is always a rediscovery of green, a concrete impression of that sky, an experience of a real night.

b. "Lawson’s eyes are the corner of blue on the American flag. You can almost see the stars waving in them when he salutes." Shanshu Blue, by germaine_pet

This makes me experience the American flag--not just how it looks, but how I feel when I look at it, how I still get tears in my eyes when I hear the National Anthem--and that, that pride, hope, pain--that's the connection, not just the color; that's what Lawson's eyes look like.

c. "Spike kisses like talking." Stick Shift (Redux), by stultiloquentia

The first connection I made was lips moving--that's the thing in common between kissing and talking, right? By revealing in the next few lines that no, this isn't the connection the author was making, I was forced to reevaluate, to consider how Spike talks, and try to connect that to how he might kiss. The author goes on to say: "He has no preferred pattern. Every phrase is new. Buffy's whole bodypays attention. The kiss seems to rise from somewhere deep inside him..." but now she's got me thinking about how Spike talks, how much passion is there, how much truth, how much condemnation and supplication, and I'm making all these connections between how Spike talks and how he kisses, and it's like I've never heard him talk or seen him kiss before. I loved that.

d. "She is pressed between them like a flower inside the pages of a book, like something rare and precious they would keep." All Ways, by kita0610

Okay, so what connects the flower and Buffy is how they're pressed, and the author explicitly states the other commonalities: rareness, preciousness. One of the reasons this one hit me so hard is the author spent the piece building Buffy into this force, this incredibly strong presence, this mover and shaker of these two men. Now that she's calling Buffy a pressed flower (something I'm forced to come up with a concrete impression of, the reality of a pressed flower: it's dead. It's frail. It's a possession, something pretty and owned) she's practically saying the sky is green--showing with just one phrase how Buffy is moved and shaken by them.

Uh, More Conclusions? Problems with the idea?:
a. The Imagist Dead Guys were poets (eta: I mean, their philosophy was meant to be applied to poetry), and these ideas to some extent are better applied to poetry. The Lawrence poem is bizarre; it makes you think outside the box. Poetry works as a series of startling images or impressions, but often in a story you want the reader firmly inside the box. You don't want the reader trying to fit their head around green sky when you've already moved on to Spike and Angel having lots and lots of sex.
b. Metaphors and similes are more than just the allusion, they're about how you phrase the allusion. There's always Lynne's famous "He kept the medal in a drawer and wore the hardness around his eyes" (Sense Memory) to consider (she'll never ever live it down; it's so fucking beautiful). Lynne could've said, "his eyes were hard, like the medal", but that simile wouldn't have had anything near the impact the way she worded the metaphor had.
c. This also works beyond metaphor and simile, it's about phrasing--it's about using the unexpected adjective, the one that makes you say, "how does that adjective connect to that noun?" because it's a construction you wouldn't've thought of before. Like "paisley lights [...] kaleidoscoping in front of his eyes" (in this Riley fic)--light kaleidoscoping is in some ways a cliché metaphor (The Beatles did it in, or something), so much so you don't experience the meaning any more--but kaleidoscopes have paisley light, and who thinks about that?--to the extent where ros_fod has just helped you to make the connection, experience it, rediscover that whole metaphor.

Okay, so that, all that, is how I think about metaphor. It's what I bring to writing, to a fic, when I sit down and start thinking about how to describe things. I hope it didn't come off as too lecturey or lessony or "look at me," because what I really want to talk about is how you think about metaphor. What do you think it is, what do you think it does, how do you think about it, in what way? What's your process for writing them, coming up with them, thinking about them? How long does it take you, do you experiment, do you make the noises to hear what you might compare them to, do you go outside and look around for an object to which to parallel Spike's eyes? What are your favorite metaphors, similes, descriptions of this sort, in fic or profic, what are the ones that stick in your head? Have you thought about this the way I think about this, does this strike a chord with you, do you have anything to add, do you think I'm nuts, do you like to look at light fixtures? Let's get into the ooshy gooshy of writing. Because it's fun.

Comments

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Sometimes your metaphors are unexpected with just the right edge of the absurd. I'm trying to think of an example, but I'd have to go link trawling again.

Yes, I know Magritte. That one's actually more like a pun, but yeah, that connection you have to draw, is exactly what I'm talking about. He's very cool.

I'm glad you didn't find this too boring. Sometimes I just spout off and everyone around me goes, "....hooooookay. Next?"

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I won't bother quoting the Marianne Moore poem

I guess I've been deprived in my life, because I don't like that.

their metaphor seems too clever by far sometimes, forced,

I have this problem a whole lot in contemporary literature. It's as if they feel like to get a really effective metaphor they just have to stretch really really far. That's not true; you just have to look really really hard! But I'm not to great at it myself so I...don't read contemporary literature.

His body a boat, his soul an anchor.

Should've used that one as an example. There's a timelessness to that one, the way it feels like it could be out of scripture, its weight. It's one of the most beautiful things I've ever read--few lines have hit so hard or stuck inside me so far down. I thank you forever, just for that line.

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

That's a lovely metaphor--and the one in your icon is, too. Well, not lovely, but very expressive. :) *likes that poem*

[melaniedavidson.livejournal.com]

Fascinating post, and I think it's very true.

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

*waves hand* Onamatopoeic words are not a direct representation of the sounds they are associated with. 'Hiss' sounds /kind of/ like the noise a snake makes, sure, but the same dog will go 'woof woof' in English and 'wan wan' in Japanese, and since when have you heard a cow actually pronounce the 'm' in 'moo'?

I am not sure what you mean by 'concrete impression'. How can the 'reality of grass' be produced by your brain (and where?), and since when does your brain have the ability to overcome the veil of ideas which you set up in the previous paragraph? When you think about the feel of grass, you are doing just that - /not/ actually feeling grass - and come on, thinking about how grass feels cannot be more concrete than understanding the meaning of the word 'grass'. Also, you cannot 'experience blue' as an abstract quality. You can /see/ things that /are/ blue (have blueness as a property), but you cannot experience the property of blue independent of the things, that's just trippy. Likewise, an author describing a blue thing can't make you experience blue or even see a blue thing; she can only make you imagine/think about what this blue thing is like.

I agree in part with your argument, just not iwth the terminology used. I love inventive imagery, and good imagery is good when it makes you think and remember things that produce an emotional/aesthetic reaction to the author's word choice.

I was going to bring up Problems with the idea, part a, but it seems you already have. It depends what you want to do with the story, like you said. Using a lot of unconventional imagery can be wonderful, but also exhausting for the reader. Common metaphors are for - like, so that your audience can hum along with the words; they'll know what this allusion means without anyone having to think about it or explain it in painstaking detail, because the detail is already in the cultural background that both reader and author share. (And it's not over-thinking to go into this for things like colour symbolism, as the symbolism and even colour recognition is quite different in other parts of the world.)

Apologies for the length and the rant. You do not know me; I come from metafandom

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Onamatopoeic words are not a direct representation of the sounds they are associated with.

Never said that. I said, onamatopoeic word have relation to the meaning they represent. Other words do not.

How can the 'reality of grass' be produced by your brain (and where?), and since when does your brain have the ability to overcome the veil of ideas which you set up in the previous paragraph?

Say you had real grass and fake grass, and the person looking at them couldn't distinguish, through use of concrete impressions (smell, taste, memories it evokes) the difference between them. Now, pretend the fake grass was actually a poem.

No, you can't reproduce reality, but the attempt was meant to be to reproduce perception of reality, to evoke the exact same responses with a poem as with the reality of grass.

I'm sorry that that was unclear; I agree my wording was pretty fucked up with regards to the concept of reality/perception.

Also, you cannot 'experience blue' as an abstract quality.

I'm confused by this. I never said you could experience blue independent of other things in the real world. Just because you can't experience blue abstractly doesn't mean you never experience the color. You can't experience an abstract chair, either--it always has a shape and color and make etc. Doesn't mean you can't experience a chair.

By "blue itself" I don't mean blue all by itself, but the reality of blue. And again, you're right, the term "reality of blue" should really be your perception of the reality of blue.

Common metaphors are for - like, so that your audience can hum along with the words; they'll know what this allusion means without anyone having to think about it or explain it in painstaking detail, because the detail is already in the cultural background that both reader and author share.

This really depends on the common metaphor you're using. For instance, the simile "cold as ice" really doesn't bring any detail at all these days, from a shared cultural background or otherwise. I'm not convinced that it's better to use common metaphors than no metaphors at all. But yes, I completely agree that too much unconventional imagery can just hurt the brain (like in Gravity's Rainbow!)

Thanks for your thoughts. I hope I cleared some things up, and I apologize for the bad phrasing.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Hey, I'm glad you found it interesting!

[bladderwrack.livejournal.com]

Reproducing perception of reality - that works fine in terms of emotional responses. What I was uncomfortable with was that you seem to draw no line between physical perception and remembered perception. A written description of a smell won't make you actually sense that smell, but it can make you imagine/remember what that smell is like.

Ah, my bad. 'reality of blue' sounded a bit Platonic. I misunderstood the onomatopoeia bit also; although I still hold it's not an /intrinsic/ connection to the things they represent, as foreign onomatopoeias are often unintelligible if you don't know the language.

For obvious phrases like 'cold as ice', yeah, leaving the comparison out would be cleaner and have the same impact. But the English language is saturated with odd-ends of old metaphors and weird figures of speech and things like literally translated phrases from the Bible that make no literal sense, but which no-one would notice as metaphor in everyday speech. This argument would be much more convincing if I could remember good examples. I think 'crack of dawn' may be one.

Non metaphorical question

[imnotacommittee.livejournal.com]

Hello!

I'm sorry to not really reply to this post, but I have a lj question, if you don't mind.

How did you link the bulk of this post to one sentence? I clicked on "let's talk about metaphor" and the message expanded, yet the last paragraph was in both the post I saw in my Friends page and in this post. Does that make any sense?

I had wanted to do this with my brother's wedding, but couldn't figure out how to do it.

Thank you!!

Re: Non metaphorical question

[tkp.livejournal.com]

It's called an lj-cut.

In the window where you type in your post, I wrote this:
*

<lj-cut text="This is where I typed in the phrase let's talk about metaphor.  It looked like a link.">

This is the expanded part of the post, which you couldn't see until you clicked on the above sentence.  Hello!  Lalalala!

</lj-cut>

This is the paragraph you saw on your friend's list under the link.

*
Now, what you saw was this:
*

(This is where I typed in the phrase let's talk about metaphor. It looked like a link.)

This is the paragraph you saw on your friend's list under the link.

*
What you got when you clicked on the let's talk about metaphor part was this:
*

This is the expanded part of the post, which you couldn't see until you clicked on the above sentence. Hello! Lalalala!

This is the paragraph you saw on your friend's list under the link.

*
You can also do lj-cuts without naming them. You would type this into your post window:
*

<lj-cut>

This is the expanded part of the post, which you couldn't see until you clicked on the above sentence.  Hello!  Lalalala!

</lj-cut>

This is the paragraph you saw on your friend's list under the link.

*
And it would look like this:
*

(Read more ...)

This is the paragraph you saw on your friend's list under the link.

*
Hope that cleans that up.

A link to the lj-cut answer on the FAQ is here.

Also, I have this cool thing called Semagic, which you can download here, that does a lot of stuff to help you format your posts. But it does take some getting used to, so I only recommend it if you're really annoyed with the posting interface. Which I was, so I got it!

Also, hi! I have things to say to you, but I've been doing lame other stuff...I'll get back to you one of these days...hope you're well!

[my_daroga]

I don't feel like I'm very good at metaphor, so I don't have anything specific to say about it. I'm also trying to think of a specific one that stuck in my head, but I can't, which just goes to show you! But I do know that I love being made to do a 180 by a well-timed metaphor or simile--and not in a punny, cute, Pratchett-y way. I love being surprised by an apparently contradictory metaphor. Maybe it's the irony.

Re: Non metaphorical question

[imnotacommittee.livejournal.com]

Thank you! You're the best. I shall try this in the near future when I have a lot to say, which isn't now (thank goodness!)

I know you're busy with job searching and other things; I've only added one more chapter to Klausse 2 myself, and I didn't want to seem pushy.

Hope all is going well!

[romanyg.livejournal.com]

I guess I've been deprived in my life, because I don't like that.

Oh. Eep! The poem can be found here.

I read...sporadically. I do happen to like contemporary literature. Some of it.

And, whee!, thank you for liking my metaphor! *is happy*

[romanyg.livejournal.com]

Thank you! I'm waiting to grow out of Prufrock, but luckily it hasn't happened yet. *g*

[tkp.livejournal.com]

I think more people grow into Prufrock than actually grow out of it.

Sad, but true.

[romanyg.livejournal.com]

Oh good, that means that I no longer have to hide that I have entire sections of that poem memorized!

[tkp.livejournal.com]

You're good at metaphor. I've read some great ones you've done. But I'm too lazy to go find them so I kind of suck.

Yeah, Pratchett is much more a jokester than a writer, in that sense.

Irony is like, the greatest truth. Hugo once said there's a reason the root of the word is iron. It's a strong thing.

[my_daroga]

But I'm too lazy to go find them so I kind of suck.

Yes, you do. Actually, what it probably means is that they don't stick out at us (as reader or writer) so that's a good thing.

Irony is like, the greatest truth.

I really like the "like" you inserted. (Have you ever read that Languagelog article about like as a hedge word?

Anyway, yes, I think that when we are confronted with the connundrum of how two un-like things can be compared, the comparison is perhaps especially fruitful because of the contradiction. It potentially adds a layer of meaning, because rather than agreeing that, yeah, both the sky and your eyes are blue, if you tell me my eyes are as blue as that apple I'd have to figure out whether you were being a smartass or whether that apple has some quality of blueness to it.

Which is a really bad example. And not, you know, irony.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

Well, all of Kissing The Frog was metaphor, or a subversion of a metaphor. Or allegory? Anyway, I don't know the word for it. You know, I was actually thinking of a particular metaphor in that drabble you did, "Sea", but I just went and looked at it and there's no actual metaphor in the text. The thing was, the whole thing was a metaphor to me, the sea itself a metaphor for oaths. Anyway, this is partly what I meant at the end about how you phrase them. A metaphor isn't always x is y or x is like y. I wish I could talk about more how metaphors that *don't* fit that formula work, but I haven't thought about it enough. I guess I will!

I wasn't going to put the "like" in there, but that's how it went in my head. And I hadn't read that, and that's like, how I use it, but I also use it in different ways. One of my favorites is when you're telling a story and you say, "he was like" instead of "he said". Because you can never really recall exact dialogue, you can only recall the gist of it. What it was like, like.

But no, the apple blue eyes is just like the sky is green thing. The sky can never be green; it isn't ever. But you know just the tone of color he's talking about, don't you, how the night *feels*, even if it doesn't actually look that way.

[my_daroga]

Oh yeah, I forgot about the "whole" metaphor thing. Is there a different word for that? I mean, it seems indistinct to have the same word mean both.

"Like" is actually a useful word--because just like you said, you use it when you're not giving the word-for-word truth of something. Or when you want to tone down your assertion. Not good for a logical or legal argument, but necessary in conversation.

But no, the apple blue eyes is just like the sky is green thing.

I told you it was a bad example! I can't think of a good one. I reckon you know what I mean, though.

[dossier.livejournal.com]

surfed in via metafandom, and I just wanted to say, fascinating! The thing I got out of it was a very Bill Cosby-ish question as to why the sky is blue, and in researching, discovered that yes indeed I could have a pink sky on that weird planet. Now I'll just just have to scrounge up some shocking way to describe it, metaphorically speaking. Very cool discussion, I thoroughly enjoyed it.

[tkp.livejournal.com]

"whole" metaphor thing. Is there a different word for that? I mean, it seems indistinct to have the same word mean both.

Usually a whole piece that works as a metaphor is called an allegory, but that word just doesn't fit for some things.

I told you it was a bad example! I can't think of a good one. I reckon you know what I mean, though.

What I meant was, I thought it was a good example. But anyway, yes, I know exactly what you mean, because it was what I was trying to say myself!

[tkp.livejournal.com]

hey, thanks.

And the thing is, you can even say the sky on Earth is pink (because it is sometimes). But to really make a reader *see* that sunset on Earth, that pink sky, you need something specific. Happy writing!

[zibbycomix.livejournal.com]

Wow, this was an EXCELLENT post! I think I might add it to my memories. =)

The website

[(Anonymous)]

Really bad sorry:(