Dollhouse.

I'm rewatching "Dollhouse" right now and, as it always does, it's making me philosophize a whole bunch.

For the uninitiated, "Dollhouse" is a TV series that ran from 2009-2010 (only two seasons). Joss Whedon (creator of "Buffy" and "Firefly") was the showrunner. The show's premise was this: A person signs a contract for 5 years of their life to have their brains wiped in order to create a blank slate for other personas to be imprinted into their brains, for a price. A client can order any sort of person for any sort of job, then a "doll" is chosen to fulfill the client's order. When an Active (the doll) isn't on an "engagement" they are left in their brain-wiped state doing art, getting massages, doing yoga and generally kept in a calm and happy state. After their five year contract is up, the person's original personality is returned to them and they are left rich for life with no memory of what happened to them in that five years time. It's a pretty great show and yes it's on Netflix.

Now the questions start coming. Is this prostitution? Would you do this if all your financial burdens would be nonexistent afterwards? Would you be a bad person for ordering a doll? Would you order a doll but draw the line at having sex with them?

The show deals with all of these questions. It even gets into the complicated issues of the realness of the imprinted personalities. Sometimes an Active gets imprinted with a personality for a long-term engagement and doesn't want to give up the personality that feels real to them. Is that personality any more or less real than the one you were born with?

And then there's the societal questions. In the show someone figures out how to do a "remote wipe" wherein an Active can be returned to their blank doll state via a radio frequency. If someone can be wiped remotely like that, someone could create dolls en masse. Someone could create armies en masse. People would become nothing more than programmable computers.

The whole show is one big question: are human brains any different than computers?

Later on in the show, we're given a nightmare vision of a future where remote wipes are commonplace. Half of the population are wiped dolls. Another large percentage are trained to wipe the Actuals (anyone that still has their original personality). There's a group of vigilante dolls that carry imprints of different personalities they need to survive on flash drives they carry around their neck, ready to upload skills they need in any given moment they need it.

Another question is that of immortality. If you could back up your brain to be uploaded into another human being indefinitely, you could live forever. And would that be ok in a situation where someone has signed a contract to be a doll? You could just keep their body for the time of their contract and then move on to another. But people with money and power would exploit this.

Whatever good could be done with this kind of technology, it would ultimately go so VERY VERY wrong. People would be wiped without consent. People would be imprinted without consent.

One of the Actives in the show was forced to sign the contract to become a doll by a man she had rejected in life. He became one of her regular clients, imprinting her with the fantasy version of her original self so that he could have sex with her. That sounds like rape to me, yeah?

Is any sex with an Active rape? Presumably they signed up for this but they're not THERE, you know?

I don't know of any other television show that has made me have as many thoughts about morality and philosophy than this show. It's a shame it got canceled after two seasons. At times, the storyline is confusing and feels rushed.

The fact that the whole thing can also be seen as a metaphor for acting and how actors feel taking on personas for the entertainment of our society is not lost on me, either.

I feel like I'm poor enough that I would consider becoming a doll. But I would ultimately say no because I couldn't be assured that those in power would truly do everything in their power to keep me safe. In the show, the house is run by mostly good people truly looking out for their Actives, but in the real world you couldn't trust people in power. In real life, heroes probably just don't exist.

The last Four: Final Thoughts.

The Mighty Boosh is like an ice cream sandwich. It is talented at being an ice cream sandwich and tastes delicious, but it’s not a more high-brow dessert like tiramisu. It’s not meant to be. You don't even want it to be, because you're having so much fun eating the ice cream sandwich that it is all that you feel. This is a show that’s meant to make you laugh (and possibly feel like you’re tripping a ‘lil bit?).

There are so many memorable bits in the show. Just in the episode I watched for this project entitled "Charlie", there are at least four joke segments I think of often in my everyday life. I could bore you with the description of said shenanigans, but instead I shall pick my favorite. At the beginning of the episode Vince and Howard are talking at work as they distribute seeds. They work in a zoo. The following exchange occurs:

Vince: Come on Howard, put some energy into it! Get involved!
Howard: I'm carrying a bucket of seed. How am I supposed to get involved in that?
Vince: This is the best job in the zoo! Millet distribution.
Howard: There's something wrong with you. You know that, don't you?
Vince: What do you mean?
Howard: You're always happy, aren't you? Everything's "fun" for you. You see a peanut, the day's off to a good start. You witness some soil, it's a jamboree for Vince Noir. I need something more.
Vince: I think it's this poncho. I mean, it's impossible to be unhappy in a poncho.

The "plotline", in as much as The Mighty Boosh ever employs a plot, follows with Howard attempting to become a writer, Vince annoying him, then getting his children's books about a wad of gum named Charlie published himself.

The episode ends with the following:

The Mighty Boosh is this exact flavor of cute insanity all the time. It, like the ice cream sandwich, makes no sense, but once you've experienced it you won't ever forget it. Most of the jokes are visual. If you enjoy the clip above, more can be found on YouTube if you hunt around a bit. There's no need to watch the episodes in any kind of order.

What I like most about Star Trek: The Next Generation (besides space, one of my top five onscreen settings of all time) is the philosophy. The show regularly questioned everything, turning the ideals we've long held in our society on their heads, picking issues apart and putting back only the most logical, moral, and righteous elements.

“The Measure of a Man” questions the personhood of Data, the show’s android. Is he the property of StarFleet or does he belong to himself? Data may profess to not have feelings, but he has attachments and he has opinions. He’s kind of like an autism surrogate. Data is my favorite character in any Star Trek franchise, because I feel I can relate to him more than any other character. I’m not fiery like B’Elanna (from Voyager, she’s half Klingon). I’m not authoritative like Spock. I’m not as unfailingly good as Picard. I'm not as kind as Deanna Troi (the empathic Betazoid). But I can see myself in Data; mostly sexless (though “fully functional”), logical, uncomprehending-of-sarcasm, cat-having Data.

Though this episode does not pass the Bechdel Test, like the rest of the series, there are women in authority and no sexism present anywhere, so I shall let it slide. Star Trek, the entire franchise (even, for its time, the original series), represents females in a positive and (sadly still) forward-thinking light.

This episode speaks to slavery and personhood in a very succinct manner. It delivers morality in that sophisticated way that Star Trek is known to do. The episode is of course focused on Data, but there’s an Emmy-worthy smackdown by Captain Jean-Luc Picard during Data’s trial at the end that is an absolute show-stopper. I looooooove watching that man lay the smack down!

This show was a pioneer in forward-thinking diversity. I noted several characters of non-white races in just this episode alone, not to mention the entire franchise’s use of “alien” presence to denote diversity acceptance. Most shows today don’t have such a diverse cast and this show aired in the ‘80s. Oh how we have backslid.

It was difficult for me to pick a favorite episode of this series, not because I had so many, but because I don't remember them individually. I've only been through the series once, over the course of a few years with Michael, usually before bed. I've slept through many of these episodes. I like the show a great deal, but putting it on feels like hanging out with the characters to me. I don't feel the pressure to pay attention to all the details. I just enjoy the process of wishing I were among them. 

That said, this episode truly had my attention, both the first time I saw it and last night when I watched it again. It's a great stand-alone episode. Watch it on Netflix if you've interest. If you like it, the series is for you and congratulations. You are now a trekkie.

I find the premise of Dollhouse to be very intriguing. A person signs a five year contract with a company that will back your brain-substance and personality up on a hard drive before wiping it, leaving that previously occupied brain-space to imprint personalities as paying clients see fit. In return, you will be wealthy for life after your five year contract. As a bonus perk, traumatic memories can be left out of your self-imprint before it's put back into your head. It’s essentially slavery and prostitution, but you won’t remember any of it and you’ll be rich and happy when you wake up. That’s a job I might consider signing up for…which I guess makes me a whore. Whatevs.

I think the parallels between prostitution and acting are at the surface of the metaphor. Each episode of this show takes you deeper into the rabbit-hole of this premise. It is so intriguing. This is definitely the most morally-ambiguous and philosophical of the Whedon shows, and I still haven’t sorted out if Joss is an asshole or a pioneer for making it. I’ve only watched the show through twice, and it only survived two seasons, but there was no question that "Echoes" is my favorite episode.

I particularly enjoy episodes of television that take the characters out of their typical personas. It is the foundation of Dollhouse to do this every episode, though watching Eliza Dushku become varying shades of Eliza Dushku isn't quite as enjoyable as the performances of almost every other actor on the show. I love Eliza as Faith on Buffy, but she doesn't have quite the range that this role demanded of her. "Echoes" uses her a bit less while using Topher and Adele a lot more, as accidentally-drugged playmates. They are so much fun together, like stoned teenagers. It is almost as enjoyable as watching Giles become a teenager again in Buffy's "Band Candy". 

Being a Joss Whedon enterprise, there isn't a problem with female representation. Every group of characters has equal numbers of men and women. At this point (2009) in Whedon's career, there's not a problem with racial diversity here either. The show is enjoyable, pretty, and makes you think. Enough said about that, for now.

The episode of Gilmore Girls I watched is "Those Are Strings, Pinocchio". It's the one where Rory graduates from a very prestigious high school as valedictorian and the entire town of Star's Hollow shares in her joy, like they've shared in all the joys of Rory Gilmore throughout her entire existence, 'cause she's got beer-flavored nipples.

Gilmore Girls is a fast-paced witty-dialogue show about the relationship between a young mother (she had Rory at 16) and her daughter. It reminds me of how close my mom and I are, except we are not from money and the entire town of Joplin doesn't adore me like Star's Hollow adores Rory. Like Rory, I read a lot, though I was no valedictorian.

My mother and I watched this show as it was on and then started it over, watching an episode a week almost every week since then. It's so much our thing that we call Thursdays "Gilmore Girl Night". There are great characters in this show, including the cutest Melissa McCarthy as a klutzy chef.

Every female character on this show is an excellent example of a woman that is intelligent and carved her own path ruthlessly and without assistance from men. Also, there's so much family drama in this show that one doesn't need to fulfill their own family dramatic moments. It's like if reality TV were a scripted feminist whirlwind. There's a lot of walking-while-talking scenes in this show. I love those.

I think you've waited long enough. My Top Ten TV Shows of All Time will appear on this very blog...sometime before midnight, 'cause they HAVE to be done by then.

Quantifications.

The hardest part of "scientifically" picking apart the art that you love, besides the obvious ramifications of infusing intellect upon something that maybe shouldn't be thought about quite so much, is that you have to decide how to define your parameters at every turn, a task that's sure to give you pain in the membrane. Yeah, I said it.

The first question I had to ask myself was how a show even gets to be on my top shows list. At first, I decided not to include reality competition shows such as Project Runway and RuPaul's Drag Race, using the lack of a plot-driven storyline as my reasoning. Earlier today, with my composition book, a pink pen, and many scribblings I realized that RuPaul has to be on my list. It's no less plot-driven than Daria or The IT Crowd. I love it because it represents a chunk of culture that's entertaining, moving, and beautiful to look at. I've never missed an episode. I watch it every Tuesday night with my girls Kim and Lindsey in a Facebook chat box nearby. I've rewatched seasons. So

Ru, your show was added to my quest for the top ten TV shows!

As a newly-more-aware feminist, I couldn't include Big Bang Theory or That '70s Show in my list, though I have previously considered them favorites and are both shows I've spent many hours enjoying. On both shows the females are outnumbered and sexist jokes are sprinkled throughout the dialogue like glitter at a strip club. Donna and Penny are both fierce women with their own agencies for the most part (and two of my favorite female characters on a sitcom), but they both make and endure sexist jokes with a smile most of the time. Their male counterparts (Eric Forman and Leonard Whatever-His-Last-Name-Is) are lauded as wonderful boyfriends and sweet men, though they are both contemptible, arrogant, sexist assholes, if you ask me. You didn't, so I'll move on.

Then I wondered if fluff shows like Aqua Teen Hunger Force, Beavis & Butthead, and Sifl 'n Olly could count amongst my favorites. These are shows I enjoy without higher levels of thinking...well sometimes my levels of thinking while watching these shows are, ahem, high, but not intellectually so. Under these considerations, even Daria skirts the line of "Is this GOOD enough to be a favorite?" I'd say Daria represents the type of outsider-feminism me and my friends exhibited in high school in the late '90s, so that means something, I suppose.

Sifl 'n Olly means a lot to me, but the lack of DVD releases of the seasons leaves me with the arduous task of tracking down as many episodes as I can find dubbed from old VHS tapes onto YouTube, so unfortunately, it's out of the running for a stupid reason. If anyone has all of these episodes on VHS, please mail them to me and I will upload them to YouTube and send you a package of amazing kitschy things and love you forever. I live for these hilarious sock puppets!

In the vein of television that simply makes me laugh uncontrollably, I have a soft spot in my giggle bones for Beavis & Butthead and Aqua Teen Hunger Force. Shake reminds me of my brother Sagan, the presence of which both comforts and fills me with overwhelming outbursts of love. Beavis and Butthead were two figures that were there as I grew up, reminding me of my male friends. They were the way I came to understand adolescent boys to be, and overall, I think that's still a pretty accurate portrayal. I always identified with Beavis more, myself, if you care to know such personal details.

Even after my top 13 and their rating parameters were finally decided upon, I had to figure out a way to apply my ratings of the parameters so that they could make the shows numerically comparable to one another. It got complicated, as I tend to make things. I decided upon a point system of 0-10. As described in an earlier blog entry, I knew I'd be averaging the scores.

FEMINISM: I decided that for an episode or show to be deemed (by me) as feminist it would be judged upon five parameters. It would get three points for passing the Bechdel Test, two points if the show as a whole represented well-rounded female characters (women with personalities, flaws, and agency), two points if the ratio of females to males was at LEAST 1:3 (being generous on that point), two points if the show overall had non-sexist humor, and one point if one of the characters was a feminist icon.

CHARACTERS: For a show to receive top marks in character development, I have many requirements. First, I will isolate the Core Four characters in each show. For The Office, that would be Jim, Pam, Michael, and Dwight. Then I give the show one point for each of the Core Four that I like. I then give the show two points if at least two of the Core Four are women. The show then gets one point each if it portrays/represents the following people in a positive light: trans-individuals, people of varying body types, people of varying sexual orientations, and a variety of race representation.

STICKINESS/INTEGRATION INTO MY DAILY LIFE: In order to receive many points in this category, a show must be quotable (three points), memorable (four points) and re-watchable (three points).

COPING: I watch television to either escape (comedy) or learn skills to cope (fantasy/drama) with my life. A show gets up to five points if it allows me to be sufficiently distracted from and/or better equipped to cope with life. The other five points are allotted when I feel that a show as a whole has achieved a specific goal. This "goal" is one I perceive as the viewer and may be a "goal" it achieves for me specifically, and not one any of the creators intended. For example, Buffy has a very clear goal of being a feminist show with a feminist icon. Buffy has achieved that goal, completely. A show like The Office on the other hand, doesn't have an obvious goal, though I do find it to be a good-natured show that's HILARIOUS and awkward and changed the way comedies were created from then on. Without it, we might not have Parks and Recreation or New Girl.

With all parameters set, I've settled in for some serious television watching/scrutinizing. Today I watched three episodes.

Let's begin with Daria's "Malled". It's the fifth episode of the series wherein everyone takes a school-enforced field trip to the Mall of America. Honestly, I still have no idea what my favorite episode of Daria would be. Unfortunately, plots in the show are not memorable enough to choose a favorite, for me anyway. What I like about Daria is what I like about my good friend Lindsey, dry sarcasm and a fierce wit. Daria is a feminist icon, to be sure, but her day-to-day activities don't make big statements or quotable impressions most of the time. I can watch Daria with the type of partial attention my teenage-self-on-the-phone probably paid it the first time around. Daria and Jane (and even several other secondary characters) are great characters and high schools and malls are two of my favorite settings in film, but there's not a lot else with which to assess here.

I was very disappointed to find that what I typically list as one of my favorite episodes of television ever, The Office's, "The Injury", does not pass the Bechdel Test. Pam talks only to Jim, Michael, Dwight, and Oscar in this episode. Angela talks only to Dwight. Phyllis only talks to Michael. Kelly doesn't even have a line in this episode. As a whole, the show represents females in an honest way, though they are often outnumbered and out-shined by their male counterparts.

With that said, I quote this episode almost every day. "I can feel the blood coursing through my foot veins!" I find several scenes to be laugh-out-loud funny. It is an excellent example of comedy in exactly the way I take my comedy: weird, awkward, and sweet-natured. It's the one where Michael clamps his foot on a George Forman grill and Dwight gets a concussion and is really nice to Pam all day.

The characters on this show are very endearing to me. They are all essentially good human beings and I prefer them to the assholes of It's Always Sunny... or Seinfeld. I have rewatched the entire series at least twice and will do so again and again throughout my life. Getting swept up in Jim and Pam's love-story is something I look forward to doing over and over. It is one of two popular heterosexual love-arcs I enjoy as much as the rest of the world. (The other is Pride and Prejudice, btw.) If I was the type to channel-surf, I'd watch The Office anytime I found it on. I suspect the show will make my top five.

The IT Crowd is a new favorite for me, having only just watched it twice through in the last few months, but I liked it immediately. What started as a huge crush on Moss (above, quite possibly the cutest boy on television EVER, in my opinion) blossomed into a genuine appreciation for both Jen and Roy, the other two main characters of the show. A British comedy about a nerdy tech-support trio working in the basement of a big corporation, all three of whom are pretty to look upon? Sign me up! I think I have a predilection towards workplace comedies because they tend to stay in the realm of not-too-emotional and not-too-serious. In fact, all three kinds of television I enjoy (workplace comedy, high school drama, and fantasy -- hey, Buffy is all three!) have barriers to bald emotions of an intense nature. I have no problem dealing with intense emotion if I am tricked into it by falling in love with a vampire, but don't show me real tragedy and sadness.

I don't seem to have much deep thought about The IT Crowd. I enjoy the eye candy (and humor, because Richard Ayoade's character is perfection) of Moss while laughing often at every other character/situation of the show. The episode I watched today was "Aunt Irma Visits". The boys get sympathetic-PMS alongside Jen and hijinks ensue, basically. This episode also includes the rare cameo from a sexy gothed-up Noel Fielding. I'll talk more about my crush on HIM in a different post.

Sadly, this episode also does not pass the Bechdel Test. However, as the show typically deals mostly with the three main characters, two of whom are men, this is not as big of a slight to me as it is when a show with a larger ensemble cast, such as The Office (a show that has NO excuse to ever have a non-passing episode) doesn't pass.

Once The IT Crowd has been seen by me four and five and six times and inevitably become part of my vocabulary, I will have more to say about it. For now, enjoy this, my current favorite quote from Moss:

The Quest to find my Top Ten TV Shows...

Buffy is #1 of course, but what are the remaining nine slots of my favorite TV shows of all time? To determine the all-important answer to this question, I've made a chart.

On the chart I've listed my top 12 shows:

*Buffy the Vampire Slayer
*Daria
*Dollhouse
*Firefly
*Friends
*Gilmore Girls
*The IT Crowd
*The Mighty Boosh
*New Girl
*The Office (U.S. version)
*Parks and Recreation
*Star Trek: The Next Generation

The second column in the chart, next to show's name, is what I think might be my favorite episode of each show. This turned out to be a more difficult task than I thought it would be. Some shows I knew right away. The Office's "The Injury" I have watched probably a dozen times. I quote it often and enjoy every bit of it. Buffy's "Restless" immediately came to mind as my favorite Buffy episode. Most shows I had to painstakingly look through the episode lists to find the possible favorite ep of each. The aspect of each show that I like usually boils down to the characters and isolated situations that make me happy. For example, I love the fight between Monica and Rachel on "The One After the Super Bowl", but the whole episode isn't gold. The thing I love the most about "The IT Crowd" is Moss. So anyway, I picked an episode per show. An episode I know I like, though in some cases I couldn't choose a favorite.

I will rate each episode on the following five criteria, then average the score for an overall episode total:

*character development/representation within the episode
*storyline
*quotability
*times I felt genuine emotion or high-level intellectual thought in response to the episode
*feminism (like does the episode pass the Bechdel Test and represent chicks well?)

I will then rate the overall scope of the series on the following five criteria:

*character development/likability
*story development/overall engagement in the series
*how often do I think about the show in everyday life/quotability/has the show become a part of me?
*identifiability: how well did the show teach me to cope with something in my own life?
*feminism

THEN, I will average the two averaged scores together to get an overall score for each show. Then I shall have my ranking. At that point, I will probably watch a few more episodes of each of the top five to analyze them more thoroughly.

Here we go!

TV in the kitchen.

I worry about the effects of forever-connectivity on our social culture.

Also, the last few days I've been thinking about how massive smartphones are getting. Like physically massive. They're getting so ridiculously huge that they might as well be called tablets. And what's the difference between a phone and a tablet these days if the size doesn't distinguish? Why do I have a laptop and a tablet and an ereader and an iPod and a phone? If phones keep getting bigger will we eventually reach a point where we just say "fuck it" and just carry our laptops with us everywhere? I mean, we might as well.

I listened to a podcast today that was speaking to this issue and the hosts brought up examples...like, we make reservations for dinner from an app on our phone and then check in on foursquare when we get to the restaurant and then we upload pictures of our food to Instagram when it gets to the table and on and on. Frequently, when out at dinner or a bar or a show all I can see are blue-light tinged faces sucked into their "dream machines" as my mom calls all handheld devices since my GameBoy in the '90s. The boys on the podcast mentioned an article comparing our relatively new smartphone era (the iPhone has only been out 6 years, though it feels longer) to the "TV in the Kitchen" phase when TVs had become such a member of American families that we started letting them interrupt our dinner. But this phase arguably (though I still know people with televisions in their kitchen) didn't last long. One can hope that smartphones will fade into our pockets in a few more years and they won't be the downfall of human interaction like a lot of us are foretelling.

I am so torn on this issue. On the one hand, I'm hopelessly in love with aluminum electronic devices that keep me plugged into the Matrix. But I worry about how fragmented my time has become by checking my phone every five minutes. I used to be very strict about keeping my phone out-of-sight out-of mind in social situations. I still hardly ever take pictures in the presence of others and I never answer my phone when I'm with friends, but so many of my friends just have their phone's screen up-and-at-the-ready on the table and I've started doing it too. But I want to be present. I still will not take my phone out at concerts because the pictures/videos you take will be crappy and distract from your experience in the moment. The lens through which we view the world organically (our eyeballs/brains/etc) is still farrrr superior to the 8MP lens on our phone camera. The sensory world is something I feel I am missing more and more. While I relish the opportunity to plug in and tune out the world sometimes, I'm overusing this tool. For fuck's sake, as I'm writing this blog I'm getting texts that alert me on my phone, my tablet, and my computer simultaneously in case I miss a single emoticon.

Don't even get me started on social media. There's TOO much! Google +, Facebook, Instagram, Tumblr, Twitter, Goodreads, Pinterest...ahhhh. They all have their advantages, of course. I go to Facebook to actually get ahold of people I know in my life. I go to Instagram to upload pictures of my animals. I go to tumblr to get validation for being a weirdo. I avoid Twitter and Pinterest and Google+ most of the time....but they're tools too. I'll use them to promote this blog. It's maddening. It would be nice if we were all connected to one conglomerate social media that was infinitely customizable...oh, wait, that's just sitting in front of a person and fucking talking to them. What?

As introverted as I am, I still prefer face-to-face when it comes to my real connections, my top ten friends and family.

All this blathering is to say that I'd like to make some parameters for myself...boundaries between me and my technology. My first move was to delete all but Tumblr, Facebook, and Instagram from my social media folder in my phone. Next, I think it would behoove me to unfollow a chunk of people on my Instagram and Tumblr to remove the temptation to get sucked into those worlds. I tend to scroll through those sites until I'm updated on EVERYTHING, which has got to be the mark of insanity. I get up every morning two hours before work in order to play with my tablet while drinking my coffee. True, I got up that early before the smartphone era, but then I was READING and/or WRITING.

And how much do you hate Facebook these days? It's gotten to the point that people seem to think just because you're friends on Facebook that you have seen and memorized all the details of their lives and the lives of our mutual friends. It often seems that people are continuing a conversation with me in person that started with a pictures of someone's granddaughter online assuming I have seen every single update on Facebook. Or that I want to see every single update on Facebook. And how weird is it when someone from high school you haven't seen SINCE high school runs into you at Target and already knows everything that's going on with you because you posted it on Facebook and forgot to make your post "friends only"? Social media is this weird privacy invasion we all signed up for!

Just in the time it's taken me to write this blog I've gotten an email and a dozen or so text messages. Maybe I should turn the alerts off on my phone too. This world of immediacy is driving me bonkers. I feel like I don't hone in on a task anymore...the distractions are constant. I feel like I'm about to have some sort of meltdown and go back to my pink Razr, sell my tablet, and just log onto the internet for an hour at the end of the day like I did back in high school. I had a social life back then. And I got lots of exercise too. Damn screens are ruining my life!! I don't really mean that. I love you, screens. Don't ever leave me.