I found out I’m not a racing fan anymore

Well, at least I don’t think I am a fan of major american racing series anymore.  Today is the last day of the NASCAR season.  The championship race.  It all comes down to this, and I can’t be bothered to even turn the TV on.  I would rather clean the gutters on the house or do graphics work than waste the time.  Last week was the end of the champcar season, and I had the same feeling.  I would say that almost without a doubt, I am no longer interested.

According to the TV ratings, I am not alone in turning NASCAR off.  Viewership in the US is off by about 10% this year from what I can tell, and many of the races have seats available on race day, walk up and buy a ticket on race day.  2 years ago you would have had to kill people to get tickets to most of the races.

There is little innovation, nothing new… 50% of the races are run on cookie cutter track that, except for the skyline in the background, could all be the same track.  The entire race often hinges on who can save gas to avoid a pitstop or who put the right 1/4 pound of air in that right front tire.  480 miles of nothing to get 20 miles of racing, in a series who’s point system rewards average and doesn’t give anyone a real reason to win.  The artificial “race to the chase” and “the chase” tries very hard to create some tension and stop run away seasons, but all it does is turn 33 drivers into lame ducks too scared to race anyone in the top 10, and turns the top 10 in boring bots too scared to race in case they screw up their average points finish.

When racing stops rewarding winning, people stop wanting to win.  They race for points, they race for scoring better than average, and all they do is aim to be slightly better than average, because that is all it takes.  Make the chase, and even at 10th place, you are only 50 points behind. 23% of the drivers make the chase, so you only have to be in the 77th percentile to make it in.

Champcar and the IRL are no better at this point.  Champcar is packed full of no-names and lame brains, unsponsored cars, stupid street races on tracks so tight nobody can pass without a major incident, and short fields that would make my local circle track cancel a class for lack of competitors.  IRL has the names and the Indy500, but a bunch of other cookie cutter races and all the competition of a pin the tail on the donkey contest.

I still enjoy F1 from a totally technical stand point, I enjoy how strategy, driver skill, and the choices of others all interplay.  But that is a sport of billionaires… and it is pretty hard to swallow at times.

Too bad… I really use to enjoy racing. 🙂

Conservatives circle the wagons around Bush… AGAIN

I caught this thread from conservative commentator Michelle Malkin about The New York Times “leaking” information about how the Bush Administration is going about tracing down terrorists.    I won’t express an opinion (except that Bush has certainly pushed the legal limits on many issues), but what shocked me was the amount of images in this column.

Are we back to World War 2?  Are we all suppose to just eat the government line because “it is good for us” without questioning how far this all goes?  In a land where freedom lives, it should be normal to wonder if something could violate those freedoms.  The images in her column cross the line from “commentary” and move right over to gag the media.  It seems that the conservatives want the NYT to just shut up, and is willing to blame any number of things on them, “daddy died because the NYT talked” and bull like that.

All of this to take the heat and the public eye off of Bush.  Nobody has answered why they are using such extraordinary measures, and such secretive means that are apparently not entirely within the scope of the law.  A brave expansion of executive powers that might not be exactly within what is expected.

Answer the questions, and I am sure that the NYT will print the results and shut up.  If you don’t answer the questions, they will keep asking.

To Catch a Predator… the missing link

Dateline NBC has been doing a series of shows called To Catch a Predator. These shows focus on adult men who trolll around internet chat rooms, looking for teens (mostly girls, sometimes boys) for sexual encounters. For the most part, the age of the teen is set at 14 or 15. Many of these guys are repeat offenders, having been arrested in the past for other offences of a simlar nature.

The show has been a big eye opener for many americans, who has seen the internet through a whole different eye. For the adult industy, it has actually been a really good thing in my opinion because it shows that it isn’t porn sites that are making the internet dangerous, but rather those abusers and criminals that would otherwise be cruising the mall and burger shops.

The internet just made it easier for them to go fishing without as many apparent risks. No public exposure, little risk of running into police and whatnot.

I applaud NBC for their effort, they have really shown how things work. They have trapped out 130 perverts in the last couple of years.

Wonderful.

I wish though that they would spend some time on the missing link, the actual cause, the root cause of this problem isn’t the predators… it is the children left alone to surf the net, enter chat rooms, operate web cameras… ending up looking more like an open invitation to predators. Kids with computers, internet access and a closed door is a very dangerous combination.

Dateline should work with the police and set up the reverse sting. Become the predator, hit myspace and the chat rooms, and start fishing. Find the kids home alone, talk them into a meeting or giving up personal information, and then go for it. Hook up with the kids (with police present) and then go find the parents. Show them what the heck their chidlren are up to, and teach parents all over america how to keep their children from being victims.

It is about time someone took responsiblity for their children, and understood that these crimes only happen when the children are not cared for, not supervised, and allowed to run free when they are too young to accept the responsilbity.

Summer off

Many people talk about “taking the summer off”. I think every office worker dreams about wandering away when the summer months come and heading back to work in September, sort of the same way we use to get out of school when we were kids. Well, for me, school is out. Chatboard school, that is.

I have spent much time in the last couple of years involved in the social aspects of being in the adult industry. Running link sites and what not does require a certain amount of social interaction, and I have been pretty social, I can say. For years I have done all the adult trade shows, working in partnership with other people on developing sites and traffic, and generally I played the social game.

About a year ago, I started to take less of an interest in the social parts of the business.  I don’t attend anywhere near as many trade shows, and I haven’t seen much of a difference in the bottom line of my business, which tells me I am on to something.  But that isn’t really what has brought on the vacation.

In the last 8 or 9 months, a few individuals have decides that they didn’t like private comments I have made, and they have spent that time making my time in public chat boards more and more unproductive.  I have tried all the usual techniques, not paying attention, purposely stepping away from situations that might cause issues, etc.  I have been very careful “not to go there”.   Apparently this isn’t enough for some people.

Update Nov 2014: 8 years later, I know… but I just wanted to say that I get a particular laugh in realizes that all of those people who annoyed me and claimed to know better are pretty much all gone from the adult world. They knew so much that they went broke and quit. The adult world is entirely different from what it was when I posted this, and there is a certain satisfaction in knowing that I am surviving where the ‘experts’ failed in a big, public way. Good riddance to bad garbage!

It’s okay… tons of work to do, many new things to develop properly (like Free pornstar movies and Sologirl Amateurs ), so I will stick with working and developing and producing and not worry too much about what self-important people think.

Bell Expressvu has horrible customer service.

Well, it ain’t a ranch, now is it?

Anyway, I have the ongoing disaster that is Bell Expressvu. It has been a seriously shitty experience all around… let me explain:

I have had expressvu for a bit more than 3 years now. I take pretty much all the normal programming from them, about $90 a month or so for a couple of hundred channels, movies, etc. I have an older 3100 series receive and single gun dish. Anyway, I have had issues with my local housing authory (I live in a planned community, stupid move on my behalf) that said the current install location of my dish outside was unacceptable, and they threatened me with a $60,000 fine if I did not move it quickly.

So, I figure “what the heck”… Expressvu is pushing rental 6100 series receivers which is compatible with HD TVs. I don’t have an HD set yet, but I am sure it will happen sooner or later. So I figure why not rent a new receiver, and get them to move the dish at the same time. This is where the fun starts.

As an existing customer, I would have to pay significantly MORE than a new customer would for the same thing. Basically, I would pay the install charge ($75) and I would get no signup bonus or rental bonus as a result… the net difference was upwards to $200 just to start with, plus two or three months of free HD programming that I wouldn’t get. I contacted Bell, and they agreed that this was silly, but it “is the way it works, nothing we can do”.

So I decided to cancel their service and try another provider for a while.

This is where the “save” department comes into play. Pretty much every subscription company has a save mechanism to attempt to keep clients. Most companies don’t want to tell you the truth, but it costs them MORE to find a new client than it does to keep an existing client. Advertising, freebies, spiffs… they spend hundreds if not thousands of dollars to drive new clients to their services, and when they know that you could leave them (big loss of income) and go to a competitor (with little expense on their side) it is katie bar the door and they bend over, pretty much willing to give you whatever you want to make you stay.

I should point out that one of the more frustrating things about dealing with Bell Expressvu is that their phone system has a pretty amazing rate of hangups. Over the course of 5 days, I have been on the receiving end of no less than a dozen total hangups, transfers to space, and such. This is our phone company, remember… you would think their stuff works. My feeling is that employees are happy to accidentally push a button and make clients who are asking difficult questions go away, as difficult sitautions no doubt lower their call ratios and make them look ineffecient.

Anyway, “Jason” finally said, well, if you go to a store, get the $49 rental install kit (which is nothing more than a paper contract), we will pay for the install, refund your install costs (near net $100) and give you 3 months free service (did I mention they would bend over?). Net numbers on the table for me was about $450 if I stayed in the game.

Okay, you guys are frustrating the heck out of me, but I will give it one more shot.

The next day, I go to the local bell store and buy the install kit, call the number, schedule the install, etc. No actual problems here, shockingly.

Later that evening, a bunch of the channels on my current system disappear.

Contacting customer series (I have the number memorized by this point, which is a bad sign), and they say “oh, your software is out of date, yadda yadda…” over and hour on the phone and a little bit more time and the new software is downloaded and “it can take up to two hours for your programming to reactive properly”.

Next morning, the programming is still screwed up. Call them back. They ask me for what channels I am missing. I tell them. They say “you aren’t paying for those channels in any package you have, so your programming is correct”. I am a bit confused at this point, until I realize what has happened: When “Jason” gave me three months free, he “accidentally” bumped me to a weird combination package that doesn’t include about half the channels I normally watch. Free indeed.

Driod on the phone says “that is your package, but if you want to spend an extra $X per month, we can move you to this other package so you can get those channels that you want” – the price quoted would have pushed my monthly bill to just over $100.

I lose it. This may be the one time in this process that the “transferring me to a supervisor that turns into a hangup” was earned.

Anyway, back down the line, time to cancel all this shit and get it over with.

All the way to cancel, get an actually pleasant african guy on the phone (his full name I won’t post because I am sure he is the only one with that name in the company… but it starts with MB, which is a pretty interesting combination at the start of a name). He admits outright that many current phone service employees have techniques for losing a difficult call, that my experiences are NOT unusual for anyone asking difficult questions, and that he was personally sorry (not bell sorry) that I had to put up with shitty service. He very carefully worked to try to get the programming right… and offered me three months additional free service when I covert to the new HD plans within 12 months. So net, Bell has put about $750 on the table to keep me in the game. Against the odds, I agree, and allow him to work on the program. Standard “it takes a couple of hours” deal, so I thank him, and the night ends unhappy but hopeful.

Next morning, check the programming… it is certainly DIFFERENT, but not correct. The failure rates here are pretty much blowing my mind.

Anyway, I figure the HD installer is due later in the day, I will bite my tongue until he is done and then give another try to fix this stupid situation. Installer shows up a little later than I thought (They said betwen noon and five, it was about 2 when he called to say he would be there soon… why couldn’t they just say “between 3 and 5?”). He came in with the new receiver under his arm, and I stopped the show and said “let’s talk about dish installation”. Remember, the need to move the dish a bit is why this all started to begin with.

I walk him outside, show him the current install, show him the potential install locations and he has one look and says “It won’t work” (he said it in french, but same thing). He didn’t have any equipment to do the install of anything outside of the standard box, wouldn’t go on the roof at all (not insured) and generally said “no chance”. Remember now, I have been a client for 3 years with full service, and the dish move is literally less than 10 feet.

With that, he picks up the receiver in the box, says “sorry”, and leaves.

You can picture the steam coming out of my ears at this point.

Back on the phone with the cancellation people. This time I get a real droid, someone filling time. I know it is useless, so after giving him my basic information and talking to him a minute or two, I ask to speak to a supervisor. He puts me on hold and miracle of miracles, the phone hung up. Call back, I get ANOTHER droid, and immediately ask for a supervisor, no wasting time. I get a supervisor that honestly sounds like he has no interest at all in trying to find a soltution, and he floors me with this: “your account has already been closed, there is nothing more I can do”.

What the fuck? Turns out the hangup employee took it on himself to cancel the service outright and thank you good bye. He didn’t want to talk to me, and he was VERY happy apparently to cancel my service. Upset and unhappy supervisor managed to restart my service and tells me to suffer (nicer words, but basically “nothing I can do”).

Anyway, my programming is still fucked beyond belief (I am apparently paying for 7 option packages, but I don’t have any CNN or anything like that, and many of my local french channels have gone AWOL as well), and I still have to move my dish. I am convinced the new location will work out fine, and I have the measurements and angles calculated that say it is good to go. I even tested and peaked out the dish in it’s current location and I have signals between 90 and 100% on all transponders.

Now let’s get into the really fucked up parts of this deal.

First, if you are getting rental equipment, only a Bell installer can put it in. They will not just send you the stuff, they have to install it. If you want to BUY the receiver, that is $300, and I would have to buy a switch and a second LNB to add the second sat to the system to get HD and whatnot… another $100… plus my dish really does need to get replaced, considering the paint is off of it completely… that is another $99 plus shipping… so I would be looking at shelling out $500 plus shipping instead of $10 a month rental charges… but because one single tech decided he couldn’t do an install, well, they won’t do it.

Second, none of their stores have any stock. You have to order online and take delivery by courrier in 3-5 days. They won’t send a new dish to existing customers (but an installer can replace a defective or damaged dish when making the rental install). So even if Ibuy the thing, I can’t get everything I need.

Finally, the replacement dish thing drives me nuts. Even the supervisor type said that Bell will not sell only dishes, they have to be part of a system – but because I am an existing customer, if I upgrade my equipment I don’t get a new dish because I already have one. I took 3 calls to get anyone to admit I could buy one, and that took 20 minutes and two sessions on hold to find that out: $99 plus shipping. It would appear that an existing customer with any issues with an installation is pretty much screwed over and has to find their own suppliers outside of bell to get any parts.

I was also shocked to see that major stores like Futureship and Bestbuy (same owners) no longer stock any expressvu equipment, they just have the same useless rental packages (a programming guide, and a rental contract… no equipment). Not a single receiver or any equipment in my local FS store at all.

So here I am, 10 days later, and I still don’t have a new receiver, still don’t have the dish moved, and time is running out.  I have to go to my local “What use to be a radio shack now a circuit city mutant thing” and get some stuff so that I can relocate my current dish, plus probably a can of rattlecan grey primer to keep it from rusting, and I will do the work myself, relocating the dish to it’s new location, getting perfect signal, and telling Bell to “GFY”.

I submitted a change to my programming tonight, we will see if they can manage to make it work.  I wonder if they will notice that I have cut my bill almost in half.

Anyone from expressvu reading this?  Shame on you all.  A near monopoly that should be broken up and sold like the junk parts it really is.

New Sponsor on board

Well, I finally added a sponsor to my blog.  Not because I want to make money from this blog, but because the service they offer is truly worth it.

That sponsor is SPAMARREST.

I get tons of mail each day – some of it personal, some of it for business, and much of it, well, spam.  Horrible stinky spam.  I have ranted, I have raved, I have gone off on people, and I have even made the news about it… I have filtered, cut back, checked, limited and choked my mail program trying to keep the spammers out but I have still be deleting hundreds of messages a day.

So as of today, I moved to spamarrest and I am hoping that the sickness that is spam won’t bother me anymore.

Try it out for 30 days on a free trial… you will be glad you did 🙂

Southpark Chef gets going away present

If you are a Southpark fan, you know that Isaac Hayes (soul singer who’s career came back when he took the role of South Park’s Chef) has begged out of his contract with the show because he didn’t like them making fun of Scientology.  The episode, aimed mostly at the annoying Tom Cruise, was quite funny the first time it aired.  Well, recently the scientology people must have gotten pissy about it, as Comedy Central pulled a replay of the show apparently because Cruise threatened to not participate in promotion of a new movie he stars in, which is being made by CS’s parent company.

Anyway, turns out “chef” is also a scientologist, and he got a bee up his bum about all this and pissed off out of the show.  He didn’t seem to mind when they made fun of catholics or muslims or jews… but scientologist apparently are off limits.

Anyway, the show must go on, and well, the show’s creators pretty much killed Chef off in the latest show.  A fine fuck you to someone apparently a little too full of himself.  Goodbye Chef, it has been fun, but don’t let the door slap your big ass on the way out.

 Click here to read the story about this wonderful situation.

I was right… NASCAR ratings slipped again

Overnight ratings are in for Vegas, and they are off 7% from last year, a very similar number to the amount that the California race was off 2 weeks ago.

Why?  Two of the dullest races, back to back with a week off in between.  It is hard to maintain interest when you have a week off so early in the season, and the two races themselves were total snoozefest that not even the most dedicated fan could find much fun in.  You could have watched the first 10 laps and the last 10 laps of Vegas and gotten about 99% of the excitement and joy that came in about 3.5 hours of broadcasting.

The week off thing really confuses me as well.  Drivers bitch and moan and complain about no time off after July… but there we are, 3rd week of the season, already taking a break.  Most of the off weekends are piled up in the first half of the season, and that really hurts.  Changing the schedule to have two western races with a week off in between really takes away from the whole deal as well.  On top of which, the weather in Vegas was really quite poor this year, and it often is questionable in the winter / early spring period.

I know there are only a few tracks on the circuit that could handle a race after Daytona, but that is more an issue of economics than anything.  Rockingham use to be the traditional “after daytona” race.  It is a smaller and more entertaining track, but had suffered occassional issues because of bad weather.  I looked at the 2000 and 2001 schedules, and it was bang bang bang sex races in a row to start the season, on a variety of tracks (Daytona, The Rock, Vegas, and Atlanta… then Darlington and Bristol).   Now the first four races are all on tracks 1.5 mile or greater, and it isn’t until race #5 that we get something other than aero and drafting.

At the end od the day, I don’t know the answer, I don’t have a clear idea how to fix it.  With so many cookie cutter tracks on the schedule, it is pretty much impossible to make it as interesting as it once was.  Trading out race dates at places like Winston-Salem, North Wilkesboro, Rockingham, and such, and replacing them with 1.5mile D shaped ovals sprinkled all over the US has taken away much of the character and nature of the series, and replaced it with a sort of generic “race of the week” look that to me just looks like the same track with a different name painted on the wall and a different background on the wide shots.  Otherwise, it is the same old same old, playing into the hands of the teams with the most money for development of downforce and plate race cars, and less reward for the good drivers that tend to flourish on the slightly tighter or more skill oriented tracks.

A 7% haircut on viewership isn’t going to be enough to make things change, but I think that NASCAR will see as the season goes on that certain races (like, say Bristol) will bring in the crowd AND the viewers, and snoozefest 1.5 mile tracks will continue to sell decent tickets (as the only NASCAR race in a region for a whole year) but the fans will turn the noses and remotes up at this somonex on wheels, and they will find better things to do.

Wake up NASCAR… The “new” fans out west are not turning up like you wanted (California race wasn’t even near a sell out again), meanwhile Interesting, fun, and challenging tracks from the history of the sport sit idle, spoiling in the sun.

Free North Wilkesboro 🙂

A fuck of a week so far

Well, this week has been a little bit fucked up and weird. Some weeks you get into the pace and beat and shit and stuff happens. This week I have been all over the road like a drunk driver just after closing time. It truly has been weird.

First off, I have been driving a rental car for the last 2 weeks while my car got fixed. Yeah, some dumbass snow removal guy decided that reversing without looking was a really good way to save himself some time on the job. instead, it got him writing reports and arguing with insurance companies, who found him to be responsble and me to be fine and clear. Anyway, I got the car back today but there are a couple of things still to do to make it all right again, so I will be going back and forth on the issue I guess.

The weather has been fucking mental as well, it was freezing cold last weekend, and today it is raining and they are talking about 11C by Sunday. Spring usually rolls in slowly, but this time it looks like a freaking freight train coming to run us over. I am not really ready for it.

I have also been working on my least favorite thing, accounting. I hate the work, I hate checking it, and I hate that in the end it just means that I have to send the government money. Nothing fucking good there!

Worst part? The last episode of The Deadliest Catch ran this week, so I am way fucking bummed out about it all. First because it was an interesting show filled with real, decent, hardworking people that I can truly identify with, and second because I didn’t know when it started that this was also a documentary of the last year of this style of crabbing. Basically, for pretty much all times, they used a derby style system – total catch permitted was X tons of crab, and everyone starts on the same day and they go until the X tons has been caught. If you catch more you make more, if you catch less you make less. Pretty simple, right?

The Deadliest Catch was exactly about the competition and spirit of “try harder, work harder” that made these guys special. They would work for days at a time non-stop in order to get the most crab before the limit was reached. Sort of a combination business and sport. You could see the intelligence, the knowledge, the experience, and the skill that these people use to win the game. No fucking basketball hoop or other false prize – this was all about money and pride. Amazing.

It saddens me no end to know that many of the people who were on the show have since lost their jobs in the crab fishery because the quotas were only granted to some boats, and others were purchased by the state and put out of service forever. Approximately 250 boats fished for Opilio crab in 2005, and in 2006 I have seen numbers under 100 boats total. Truly fucking amazing how the government can take something noble, prideful, and all american like this and turn it into a red tape clusterfuck beyond all understanding.

Anyway, losing one of the few TV shows I truly enjoy sort of sucks.

Besides that, I have had a little problem this week getting traction on an idea I have been working on. Nothing like having a really great idea but not being able to exactly put it down on paper or share with others. I sort of shared part of it with one person, but I didn’t get any feedback yet which is sort of driving me around the bend a bit wondering. That is just one of those things, I guess.

I am also looking to sell my house this real estate season, 2 other similar houses have sold in the last couple of months on my street and I feel pretty good. But to do that, I have to get the house into salable condition and make sure all the odds and ends are taken care of, which is a bitch. Worse, as I go along, I find more shit that needs to be taken care of, so I am actually sort of going backwards instead of forwards. Fuck.

Finally, spring break season is on, which is usually a quiet time in the online busines as students go away, and families often take trips etc. So as a result, pretty much everyone I know is saying “quiet this week”… Things should pick back up in a little bit, but for now, it just sucks.

Anyway, back to work I go, I guess… enough bitching for one day 🙂

I got to the end of Gonzo Marketing

I got it.

I mean, yeah, I get it, I really get it… but Chris Locke probably won’t like my conclusions.

Let me paint a picture for you. Let’s say you go to the electronic store to look for a new TV. At many of the big box retailers you go into the sales people will be all over you like stink on shit. You can’t even get NEAR the product before someone is there to help you find the most expensive thing in the store. They push, they shove, they try to sell you extended warrantees and in home service and setup and 101 other things. They pressure you like made to spend the most money and make them the most commission.

The Gonzo Marketing version would be this: You go into the same store. The sales staff are all hidden in dark corners where you can’t see them. The place is filled with other people who aren’t looking for TVs, but instead are enjoying watching the discovery channel on 64 big screen TVs. As you walk around, they talk to you about the green leaves on the screen or the life cycle of the wild animals or how to save the rain forest. Now, you love the rain forest, and you start to talk to that person about the rain forest, and how it is important and stuff. All the while, you are watching the picture on this really nice new plasma TV that happens to be right next to you. The person mentions they have one just like it at home, and it is really great. They talk some more about the rain forest and stuff… and then they mention that this plasma is much better than the LCD screen and much brigher and stuff, and really is a good bargain right now at $300 off the normal price. Did they mention that their son works in sale here? I am sure he could get you another $200 off on it… let me introduce you… and you end up buying the over priced plasma TV from your friend.

The “father” is in fact employed by the store, and gets a commission on every sale. Rather than looking like sales staff, they play the friendly “other shopper” and disarm people by making them think that they are NOT selling them something. It is clever, but it is massively misleading and dishonest (and I suspect illegal in some manner, but I can’t be sure)

The company and the individuals have to team up together to create the perfect ruse. They have to setup the TVs just right, put the right show on the screen, and have enough people around that they are sure to hit something you are interested in. Once they get you talking, it won’t be long before they can make the sale without you realizing you were getting cornered.

Putting it in the web context, it basically breaks the assumed trust of blogs and bloggers. While we know (see previous post) that bloggers are not entirely honest or at least not entirely correct, there is a trust that they are blogging with some sort of obvious purpose. Commercial blogs are obviously commercial, and personal blogs are obviously personal. Some sites shade the lines, but basically you can tell one from the other. The Gonzo Marketing idea is to go into the personal blogspace and invade it with nice people who in reality are just well disguised fronts for the sale department of their companies.

I guess what cheeses me off the most about this is that Chris Locke goes on and on about the personal responsilbity and the great potential for power that comes with the self publishing world of “weblogs” and personal webspaces. He goes on with the power of the pulpit to preach to us about how we will all have this great personal power, and how it will be the thing that liberates us all.

Then he carefully explains to greedy corporations how to invade, subvert, and abuse this very liberating form of self expression and turn it into just another mass media turd, by assembling as many micromarkets as you can touch and leveraging them together just like any other billboard campaign.

It really sucks to see something so potentially good subverted from the get go by the person preaching about it the most.