This is a companion to 'A 'Shroomy Fanfic Story' and anything else that
has to do with ArbyFish. ArbyFish are my creation, and I wrote this to
explain who and what they are so that they wont be such an inside joke in
my story.
As always, ENJOY! ^_^
You want to know about Arby, huh?
Well, you see...
ARBYFISH: An Overview
INTRO:
ArbyFish are considered to be the oddest and most eccentric
creatures in the known universe. Arbyfish constitute between 2% to
99.9% of the mass of universe on any given day, due to their love
of toying with temporal physics. Their bizarre qualities originate
from genetic mutation, eating habits, and interaction with each
other. All ArbyFish inherited their genes from a small, black cat
that used to live on the Moon, but now lives in Japan. It is rumored,
however, that they created the universe... so they are actually their
own creation. All of them have their hobbies, which they obsess
about constantly. They also have a nigh unto invincible quality about
them, being that they believe they're invincible, and so they are.
Either that, or any pain, death, or other harmful force looks at one,
thinks to itself about what is standing in front of them for awhile,
then meanders off in another direction. There are also different
colors of ArbyFish, each having their own language, culture, and
preferred living conditions. All ArbyFish understand each other.
Appearance:
The ArbyFish look like a cross between a small, flattened harp
seal and a forward-facing fish. They have circular, forward set eyes
that are normally brown on the outside and black in the pupils. They
have an oval nose, which is black. The oval is pulled down to a
rounded point and is located slightly beneath and in-between his
eyes. They have black whiskers that jut out at weird angles and which
are really annoying if an ArbyFish sits too near someone's ear.
Their heads are basically part of their torso, the head being
the larger part of their body. They go from large and wide at the
head and slim down at where their upside-down heart shaped tail
connects to their body.
ArbyFish flippers are attached in the front sides, slightly
higher than the mid-point of their body, and are long enough to reach
the top of their nose when standing up and looking forward. They
usually let their flippers hang apart when they are in a standing
position. Their flippers also curve down at the ends, coming to a
blunt point.
There is nothing really sharp about ArbyFish appearance,
other than the piercing gaze of their eyes.
Some Average Dimensions: (Source: Arby)
Height: A little over 8 inches from tip to tail (20 cm)
Width of head(looking from the front): 3 in (8 cm)
Body width at attachment point of tail: 4/5 in (2 cm)
Head with(from the side): 2 in (5 cm)
Tail attachment(from the side): 1/2 in
Eye diameter: 3/10 inches (1 cm)
Wingspan(flipperspan): 5_1/2 inches (14 cm)
Flipper length: 2 inches (10_1/2 cm)
Flipper width(at attachment point): 1_1/2 inches (3_1/2 cm)
Whisker length(when laid out straight): 2_1/2 inches (6 cm)
Tail lenth(diag. from attach. to end of bump): 2 inches (5 cm)
Tail width(longest horizontal line): 2_1/2 inches (5 cm)
ArbyFish have a black checkered fishing-net like pattern on
their backs that has darker and lighter shades of their color inside
the irregular checkers. Their underbellies are off-white very lightly
toward the shade of their backs. It is very rare to see an Arbyfish
without a pattern on their backs, (Excluding the white ArbyFish)
because many of the ArbyFish judge each other by the intricacies of
their posterior design. Not that they would berate them out loud for
being simple-backed, they would just mentally note it for future
reference.
Age:
The age of an ArbyFish is rather difficult to calculate,
especially with the Black and Purple ArbyFish. The easiest way to
find out is to ask them, but they will probably give you an estimate,
usually to one significant figure. It would be very difficult to go
back in time and witness the birth of most ArbyFish that you might
meet because they live for billions of years, and therefore give you
a _REEEEAAAALLLLY_ rough estimate.
Another major cause of confusion with the exact age of ArbyFish
is their "Shroom Day" as Green ArbyFish call it, or "Dump Day" as it
is known by the Brown ArbyFish. It is the eighth day of the week by
the ArbyFish calendar, being after Sunday, but before Monday. All
ArbyFish experience this phenomenon, where they get to move around
and do stuff while the rest of the universe sleeps through it.
This is a source of discontinuity for those who do not observe
'Shroom Day,' but interact with the ArbyFish. One day the
non-ArbyFish party would see a grassy hill in front of their house,
then the next day they would find a fifty-foot high, carved marble
monument to the joy of swiss cheese where the hill used to be.
They also observe 'leap' 'Shroom Days', along with many other
holidays that disobey linear laws of temporal physics.
ArbyFish call each other by different names as they age. For
example: Green ArbyFish call newborns 'spits' then they turn from
spit, to snot, to snort, to Mucus, then to phlegm, to slime, to
sludge... they get to more coagulated forms after that... and Green
ArbyFish don't die, they congeal.
ArbyFish are powerful when they are young, then get
progressively weaker until they reach their 'mid-life crisis' which
is their least powerful point. After they recover from that, they
will gain power steadily, eventually attaining a greater power level
in their old age than they had at sprouting.
Colors of ArbyFish:
There are thirteen colors of ArbyFish, the most common ones
being the green ones. Green is the main color stem of ArbyFish that
came from the original Arby mutation, Arby himself being a green
ArbyFish. The other colors are Grey, Blue, Brown, Red, Orange,
Purple, Violet, Turquoise, Yellow, White, Black, and Pink, going from
most numerous to least numerous. There are also rumors of rainbow and
translucent Arbyfish, but these have never been substantiated, and
are said not to form groups or clans, and therefore they don't count.
According to ArbyFish lore, one day Arby was very bored and he
released spores from the Moon right before he went into cryogenic
stasis. The spores matured in different environments, creating the
clans as they now stand today.
GREEN:
The Green ArbyFish are what you would call your common 'Garden'
variety ArbyFish. They make up about 60% of the ArbyFish species.
They are widely known throughout the universe by a few people on most
of the planets. They came from forests, swamps, grassy knolls, and
other green areas. They are really common only in color. Though most
green ArbyFish still live in their original habitats, many of them
have migrated into other ArbyFish clans' habitats, and are accepted
in all. They act the way they want and don't really subscribe to any
traditional way of life.
They have a wide variety of hobbies, mostly concerned with
growing things, but they will often times work odd jobs for people
who ask nicely. Among the favorite plants of the green ArbyFish are
mushrooms, fungus(the fuzzy types), mold, moss, lichen, poison ivy,
deadly shrubs, itching hedges, and bramble bushes.
The Green ArbyFish spoken language is similar to a cross
between dialects of Australian, British, Scottish, and Irish.
They will use these modes of word modification in any language they
encounter, not just English. Which is very odd, considering that
some countries like to hire them to interperet languages with very
specific word structures. Many wars started. Very bad.
The traditional Green greeting is to greet from yourself, to
the person in front of you. (refering to the first person you greet
as 'you') Then the greeting continues to the rest of the people,
refering to the second person as the appropriate third person pronoun
(her-him-it,) then the rest of them by their first names. After you
get to the last person, you greet him again and go back along the
line of people until you get to yourself. It is then an option to
greet the entire group, if it flows good and has the proper number
of syllables.
For example, a greeting to a single person would go like,
"'`Ello' says I to you to me and you back in return."
To group of two it would go something like,
"'`Ello' says I to you to him, to him to you to I."
To group of six would be like,
"'`Ello' says I to you to him to Froop to Hayken to
Borp to Quincy, to Quincy to Borp to Hayken to Froop to him to you
to I, and all of you again, you see, so now we 'ave said '`oie'."
When Green ArbyFish are speaking publically, it can take years
or even centuries to welcome the entire crowd. Green ArbyFish
greetings have been banned by most of the other social ArbyFish
groups, as have black and white greetings.
A less formal greeting is one ArbyFish nods his head at
another, then the other nods back to the first, then the first nods
back to the second, continuing until one of them gets bored or
interupted.
When traveling in a place where one might encounter Green
ArbyFish it would be helpful to know all of their laws... yeah it
sure _would_ be helpful, but there really isn't any way of knowing
what laws they are holding to at any particular time because they are
constantly being re-written.
The Green law-making process goes a little like this:
1: An ArbyFish must bring a new law or a erasure request to the
place of judgement.
2: He can not speak or write his request until it has been passed
into law or it shall become void.
3: He must be strung up by his tail, along with an opposing
ArbyFish in the place of judgement until one of them passes out.
4: Whoever passes out, wins.
An interesting thing to note, though, is that ArbyFish are
known to forget things if they pass out. The ArbyFish will then
debate about what law was actually going to be passed. Eventually
they will come to an indecision and go their separate ways. The
book-keepers will write down their own version of events, and chaos
will be restored to history.
Here are a few generally held laws:
E-49-62b: You's got's ta do what the soigns say!
Q-92-64a: Don't catch a Nut-'atch on Shroom-day!
A-42-96c: Don't pick an ArbyFish once We've taken root!
A-00-01b: You's got's ta destroy all the Pink!
A-29-46y: Awl spits must nest before sunroise!
Grey:
The Grey ArbyFish are now the most common non-green ArbyFish.
They make up about 20% of the ArbyFish species. They matured while
passing through cloud systems, jumping between the clouds and
floating around. They are fond of borrowing books from ground-
dwellers because it is so incredibly boring where they live.
Their most prominent characteristic is their re-working of
languages. It is proper grammar for them to always put the words
of their sentences in alphabetical order from A to Z. There is also
a band of younger Grey ArbyFish who have set out on reforming the
Grey language, putting their books in alphabetical order from Z to A.
Any other animal but ArbyFish will find them totally incomprehesible.
Their hobbies unclude reading, arranging things in alphabetical
order, and writing seemingly formless poetry.
Grey ArbyFish never really greet anybody, they just walk up to
them and converse with them... if they ever want to.
Blue:
The Blue ArbyFish are primarily water ArbyFish, and constitute
precisely 8% of the ArbyFish species. They matured in liquid
environments: oceans, swimming pools, nitrogen, iced tea, etc.
As mentioned before, they constitute precisely 8% of the ArbyFish
population... no more, no less. As a matter of fact, when one part of
the ArbyFish population increases or decreases, so do they,
spontaneously, often in the middle of water polo games they so
enjoy playing. Given how rapidly the ArbyFish population changes
from one moment to the next, the average lifespan of a Blue
ArbyFish is approximately 30 minutes.
They don't care, though. All they ever do is muck about in
the water, having a good time. They are born sportsplayers and
gamemasters, being capable of mastering _any_ system that could
be thought of as a game in under ten seconds, leaving them the rest
of their small lives to enjoy it.
If one ever finds a Blue ArbyFish, and wishes to harness this
innate talent for the good of mankind, one has to hold the system
or problem in front of them and quickly convince the ArbyFish that
it's _really_ fun, before he disappears from existence.
Blue ArbyFish can be greeted traditionally by splashing them
with a little water. They will probably splash you back with a great
deal of water, so don't greet them traditionally while wearing formal
attire.
Brown:
The Brown ArbyFish are underground ArbyFish. They form 3.75%
of the total ArbyFish population. They love the dirt, adore it, bathe
in it, eat, sleep, and dream dirt. Dirtcakes for breakfast, dirtclods
for lunch, and dirty laundry for dinner. Everything they do has
something to do with dirt. They rarely make appearances above ground,
due to the fact that they abhor the sunlight. They will always wear
dark black sunglasses, and thick black radiation suits with heavy
breathing masks when visiting the surface. Their dress makes them
rather disconcerting to people who happen to bump into them, and are
a major cause of extraterrestrial paranoia among human beings.
They speak in very low tones that vibrate well through the
rock and dirt. If you meet a Brown ArbyFish that is mumbling so low
that you can't understand him, shove a clod of dirt in his mouth.
This process filters the sound just right to raise the pitch of its
voice. The same effect can be reached by talking to them with your
own head stuck in the ground.
The traditional Brown greeting is to slap a clod of mud in
the mouth of the person that you are greeting. This is what usually
has to happen anyway, if you want to speak to them above ground.
Red:
The Red ArbyFish matured in lava, some near the top in
volcanoes, some deep in the mantle near the core. They swim around
through it. These ArbyFish like it hot. 2.75% of the ArbyFish are
red. They are short-tempered ArbyFish and like to relieve their
tension by pelting people with lava rock from the edge of their
calderas. Red ArbyFish like playing card-games, causing small
earthquakes, and playing dodge-ball with lava-spheres.
The traditional Red greeting is to go up to the person
you want to say hello to, and punch them right in the nose.
Orange:
The Orange ArbyFish are fruit ArbyFish. They form 1.35% of the
universal ArbyFish population. They live in tropical zones and will
mature inside of fruit. The spores went into the ground water and
were taken up through the root system, until they got to the outer
twigs and stayed there until the plant blossomed and grew fruit, at
which time they shifted into the fruit. That raises the question,
"What's worse than finding an ArbyFish in your orange?" to which the
answer is: "FINDING _HALF_ AN ARBYFISH IN YOUR ORANGE!
MWHOOHAHAHAHAA!" Or maybe finding a whole one is worse...
The traditional Orange greeting is to belch three times in
quick succesion, then slap the forehead of the person being greeted.
Purple:
The Purple ArbyFish are temporal ArbyFish. They form 1.15% of
the ArbyFish in the universe. They like to hang around subways and
sell assorted goods, such as flowers, blenders, and
gravitational/temporal field surgery kits.
They do not subscribe to any specific law of temporal physics.
They have their own logic that defines how they move through time.
The Purple ArbyFish see things that happened in the future as having
as much or more impact on the present as things that will happen
in the past, but the past has more influence on the future than the
present. The past influences the future into changing the present,
which in turn influences the past, therefore the universe started in
the future and came to the past by way of the present and ended up in
the future. That way, each of the time frames have a good bath with
a scrub brush before... after... or while they have... will be... or are
gotten to, getting to, or at their grandmother's house for Christmas
breakfast. Time is bumpy; you need a fine ship to sail it.
Well, ya see, most beings simply travel forward in time, some
have learned how to travel backward for a short while, but are
eventually caught in the current of time and are swept forward again.
Purple ArbyFish can go backwards, forwards, up, down, or sideways in
time. They swim in time well and can flutter above it if they choose
to.
The Purple ArbyFish can move themselves through time however
they think that they can. They can anchor themselves to someone
else's view of time, or they can make up their own way of doing it.
Purple ArbyFish are responsible for the creation of the
universe... well, they weren't at first, or at last, but some of the
other ArbyFish didn't like the idea of not having credit for
everything, so they teamed up with the Purple ArbyFish. The Purple
helped those ArbyFish to travel back (or was it foreward?)in time
to the beginning (or was it the middle?)of the universe. The story
goes on to talk about a little white-hot ball that lived alone
happily in a very dark place until one day, when something popped
out the dark. The something initiated 'The Big Shroom,' which caused
the formation of the universe.
Purple ArbyFish are calm-demeanored, and can be mistaken
for depressant drug-addicts if you didn't know them.
Purple ArbyFish greet each other traditionally by presenting
the other with a gift taken from the present... their present...
our past... their future's future, but if we were in their future
we would see it in the past... as their past... in the future...
whatever.
Violet:
The Violet ArbyFish are incessantly happy ArbyFish. Their
happiness is more toward the excited side of it. They matured in
theme parks with thrill rides, like Magic Mountain or Six Flags.
They make up one percent of the total ArbyFish population.
The Violet ArbyFish greet each other with a high five and
a 'YEAHHHHHH!'
Turquoise:
The Turquoise ArbyFish, like the Violet ArbyFish, are
incessantly happy, but more towards the contented side of happy. They
instead matured in theme parks with large amounts of water. Sea
World, for example. They make up one percent of the total ArbyFish
population.
The Turqoise greeting is a simple "Hello."
The Violet and Turqoise ArbyFish are all twins. When they
started forming, they split and went their separate ways. They both
went to a theme park of some kind, and the type that they went to
determined their exact shade. Most ArbyFish tend to keep as pure of
a color as they can, but Turqouise and Violet ArbyFish tend to have
a lot of 'off' shades. They range from extremely happy, to pleasantly
content, to slightly excited.
Yellow:
The Yellow ArbyFish are star ArbyFish... as in the middle of.
Remember how the Red ArbyFish like it hot? Well, their environment is
like a cold day on the dark side of the Moon compared to these guys.
Preferring to exist at temperatures upwards of three million degrees,
they constitute 0.85% of the total ArbyFish in the universe. The
spores that found these stars either matured very quickly, due to the
immense energy found there, or they were blown away by the solar
wind, leaving them to float elsewhere. Another interesting fact is
that their ego is unmatched by anything and everything else that
ever has or will exist. Their hobbies include: basking in their own
presence, creating solar flares, and throwing parties dedicated to
their own greatness.
A traditional Yellow greeting is creating a supernova, to show
off their own power and grandness to a new person. They will then
have to find another star to live in if they don't like the
gravitational disturbances caused by a neutron star or black dwarf.
It is advisable not to greet Yellow ArbyFish traditionally.
White:
The White ArbyFish are pure evil. It is very advisable to stay
away from them at all costs. They make up only .10% of the ArbyFish
in the universe.
They are ArbyFish who stayed in the top part of the clouds,
not going to the ground level while maturing. They hate all things,
and will sit in meditation for their whole lives, plotting the
destruction of the universe. The only reason they don't carry out
their plot is that they know it would make some people very happy and
it would be better just to let them live out their lives in pain and
misery. They will wear silky, white, flowing capes. They will speak
in very calm, refined accents until the moment they're about to do
something really nasty to someone. Other ArbyFish don't really notice
that the White ArbyFish are evil. White ArbyFish don't have a pattern
on their backs.
There is little interaction between them and the outside world,
and they don't do a whole lot anyway, so they don't have much of a
recorded history. Behind every evil madman/woman, though, there has
always been a white ArbyFish lurking on their sholders. They just
don't let themselves be seen by anybody else besides who they have
decided would be capable of causing pain and misery.
Their hobbies include: meditation, plotting, torture, and
knitting.
The traditional White greeting consists of lunging at the
other's throat with a knife.
*DO NOT GREET WHITE ARBYFISH!*
Black:
The Black ArbyFish are spacefaring ArbyFish. They are the
most powerful of all ArbyFish, and the most benevolent. They
impulsively do good wherever they go, and are known as heroes
throughout the universe. They have the ability to manipulate
energy, gravatational fields, time, and they read minds. They are the
least common, forming .05 percent of the total ArbyFish species.
They are also very finicky about their liquid intake, being
that they drink only from Klein bottles. Most establishments don't
carry that kind of glass, so they tend to carry their own around.
Never let a waitress/waiter attempt to refill their glasses, or bad
things may happen. Simply show them a source of liquid and they'll
muddle it out. If a Black ArbyFish asks you to fill his glass, you
should refuse, unless you ARE a Black ArbyFish. The Black ArbyFish
will not take offence at your refusal.
Black ArbyFish have the most inticrate patterns on
their backs, but because it is indistiguishable next to their main
color, it is rarely spoken of.
The Black greet each other traditionally by a little contest of
wills. The first attempts to manipulate gravity to crush the second,
and the second tries to crush the first in that same manner. They
both try to keep themselves from being crushed by willing the space
around them to expand. The first has sucessfully greeted the second
when a klein bottle has formed between them. They then go somewhere
together to quench their thirst.
*DO NOT ATTEMPT TO GREET A BLACK ARBYFISH TRADITIONALLY!*
Pink:
The Pink ArbyFish, also known as AbryFish, more than likely
matured around kittens, puppies, or in patches of sugar cane. Their
hobbies included sewing, knitting, crocheting, and being generally
pleasant and nice to each other. They are no longer found in this
universe because of the fact that all other ArbyFish hated them.
There was a massive war, the only war in ArbyFish history, and the
Pink ArbyFish were eradicated due to their good natured cuteness.
Most ArbyFish denied that they were cute at all. If you ever asked
about a Pink ArbyFish, they would hesitate, but quickly respond by
telling about how the AbryFish were the most foul creatures in
ArbyFish society, and then go on about the war.
The war was won because the AbryFish were so numerous. The
ArbyFish sent out cards inviting all the AbryFish to a family reunion
out in the middle of space. The AbryFish, not wishing to refuse the
invitation, went to this particular point out in space. The vacuum of
space wasn't what killed them, since ArbyFish don't really _need_ any
atmosphere to survive in. The immense gravity well that was created
from the compounded mass in a single area, crushed them all into a
single point of matter, effectively destroying them.
The trouble with killing off ArbyFish is that they are a bit
like cockroaches, you can kill of all of the adults, but there may
still be eggs left in the walls, and they can live just about
anywhere. ArbyFish, of course, don't lay eggs... not that we know of
anyway, but there are still young ArbyFish that are mutating, so
they are more than likely not extinct.
In their minds and history books, Pink ArbyFish were a bad
tempered, ill willed, plotting, devious, evil part of their kind.
ArbyFish really don't like to talk about them and it's more likely to
be struck by lightning on a clear day while being hit by a live,
flying woodchuck than to have it come up in a conversation. Speaking
of which, a favorite pastime of some Arbyfish is standing outside on
a clear day and attempting to get themselves struck by lightning
while hitting themselves with a live, flying woodchuck.
The traditional Pink greeting goes like this:
The greeter hands the greeted a box of chocolates.
The greeted eats the entirety of the contents of the box.
The box is handed back to the greeter.
They both then dance about in a circle and pick flowers.
They hand each other the collection of flowers.
The second nods to the first.
The first nods to the second.
They both smile at each other.
The greeting is done.
Other ArbyFish found this arcane practice too disgusting to
just sit by idly and let it continue. This was one of the acts that
fueled the fire of the war waged against them.
~ Even though we don't really know if there _are_ any Translucent or
Rainbow ArbyFish, I thought it would be good to include what we could
say from the rumors. It isn't known, even roughly, how many of these
Arbyfish are around. -note that these are only rumors- ~
Translucent:
Translucent-transparent ArbyFish are rumored to form when an
ArbyFish spore gets stuck between two panes of glass. These ArbyFish
range from invisible, to nearly invisible, to slightly opaque. Their
appearance is the main problem in finding out anything about them.
Rainbow:
Rainbow-spectral ArbyFish are the really tough ones because
they can wear any color that they want, and don't like to give away
their secret identities. There could also be ArbyFish who don't know
that they are Rainbow, thinking that they are just the color that
they were originally mutated to.
Rainbow ArbyFish are said to mature in a scenario like this
one: One sunny day in a theme park, it began to rain as a fog rolled
in. The little ArbyFish spore jumped inside a very sweet orange to
escape the rain. While the ArbyFish spore was inside the orange,
someone stuck a straw into it and created a vacume inside.
~
Approximate ArbyFish color distribution out of 10,000 ArbyFish:
Green: 6,000
Grey: 2,000
Blue: 800
Brown: 375
Red: 275
Orange: 135
Purple: 115
Violet: 100
Turqouise: 100
Yellow: 85
White: 10
Black: 5
Pink: 0
Most people can't comprehend the numbers below, so it's best
for them to look at the above guesstimations as to what they might
encounter.
Estimated number of ArbyFish: 4.213666256 X 10^27
Aproximately 4,213,666,256,000,000,000,000,000,000
Green: 2,528,199,754,000,000,000,000,000,000
Grey: 842,733,251,200,000,000,000,000,000
Blue: 337,093,300,500,000,000,000,000,000
Brown: 158,012,484,600,000,000,000,000,000
Red: 115,875,822,000,000,000,000,000,000
Orange: 56,884,494,460,000,000,000,000,000
Purple: 48,457,161,940,000,000,000,000,000
Violet: 42,136,662,560,000,000,000,000,000
Turqouse: 42,136,662,560,000,000,000,000,000
Yellow: 35,816,163,180,000,000,000,000,000
White: 4,213,666,256,000,000,000,000,000
Black: 2,106,833,128,000,000,000,000,000
Pink: None or very few: 100 to 500 at most.
These all developed within about 22,000 years.
There were twenty-two generations of them, as far as anyone can
figure, since ArbyFish release 18 spores once in their lifetime and
it takes them about 1000 years to develop to that point.
The physicysts who were working on the problem of the exta mass
forming so quickly, all quit and decided to become a co-op of
used dinnerware salesmen. They opened up some type of office in
central Wyoming, and vowed never to think about anything ever again.
All of the descriptions are in general and there are exceptions
to every case. There is rumored to be a lot of rumor in this overview,
but there are rumors of it not being substasiated. The percents and
numbers are estimated, barring any temporal tampering, and judged by
the most commonly used continuities.
Our info is still forming from the observations of, and tea
parties being held with the ArbyFish. The universe is a big place to
hide in, so much more than what is mentioned is possible.
This overview whould be updated once in a while, eventually
becoming the 'Complete Guide To ArbyFish,' once the guide to
incantations, spells, mythology, lore, signs, and symbols has been
added.
More information might be found sometime within the next four temporal
constants at this website:
arby://www.dot.cohm.RBfish.govnuh-dot.gov-/mush-mash/~fish
(Try saying it out loud, it makes it _so_ much more fun)
...
At least, that's what they tell us... ^_^