Shameful Advance Retreat

A handful of days past, I relinquished my pride so-as to hell of speedway out of a computer lab due to my downside eruption of a most foul fart that undoubtedly caused an equally foul reaction from the random female parked next to me. Her knowledge of my accurate guilt is undeniable. But damn man her awkward blank stare masking her obvious concentration on my worthlessness is much better to think about when it's not burning an additional hole in the 180 of my neck. And then there's the natural question of how phenomenal it would be if I slipped a shitgas out of my glare-sprouted neckhole.

Oh God man why do my farts remind passerby of the burning Holocaust piles they've only but read about.

O.J. Simpson; a Study, a Comparison.

O.J. Simpson, alleged decapitator.


Dorian Tyrell, a.k.a. "The [Foe-]Mask", bullet vomitor.

Note the striking similarities; the accentuated features of the latter, masked individual being a self-parody of the former. Let the green face do all but thwart your mind and give the finger to your soul, the bodies are one in the same.

In essence, these photographs ask of all individuals to question who we all are, who we all will become, and whether or not a black man can really stand a pony-tailed Italian nailing a teed golf ball with a nine-iron a total of 269 yards, according to a woman's voice on a computerized golf simulator.

A Story To Never Be Finished

This is the contents of a file on my desktop, wherein lies the beginnings of a that which will never be completed, for reasons obvious and unquestionably likewise.

Young, freshly-intrepid Tobias meandered into the kitchen with the determination much the same as a grandfather clock's to annoy the shit out of your houseguests at the stroke of midnight. In his left hand was an item most hidden, to be revealed at the most beneficial moment in time.

He spoke to his father for the first time as he believed a man would, ripe with demeanor and candidness, albeit sounding like a saucy tramp, as he had failed to succumb to puberty for what he would later describe to his first girlfriend and grope-partner as "the seventh in a long line of soprano years".

He announced loudly to his father, proudly, and with pectoral thrustingness, "I have made horror in your cabinet of tinycars."

Young Tobias then revealed the contents of his left hand to be a sliver of feces, most foul. The methane snake was worthy of no man's anus, lest it be the anus of a man whose sole diet contained the excrement of his own anus and nothing more, except the occasional drink, coincidentally from the same flowing source.

His father later described the following scene as "revealing, for the first time, that Hammurabi never anticipated shitting on your kid's complete collection of McDonald's Batman Forever Glass Mugs as a fulfillment of his code."

The file was called "poop.txt". In the spirit of its name, it's been sent to the Recycle Bin, where it was shortly-thereafter emptied.

I had made horror on my desktop. Thank you for allowing me to wipe my ass of it.

And likewise, in the spirit of Hammurabi, I invite you to make horror on this post. But not in the same manner as young Tobias; it is hard to type a comment when your hands are covered in your own shit.

Early Memories

I am convinced the earliest memories anyone has is after or during the time in one's life when the ability to not crap one's pants is ascertained and fundamentally mastered.

For example, my earliest memory is my father pissing into the toilet and announcing, "Doesn't that sound awesome?"

My answer involved a gleeful nod, the first in a series of uncomfortable pants-removals, and forceful rummaging.

Time Machine

Note: The date of posting this was actually July 20, 2006 around 1 PM. I was going to save this and post it when I finished it, but chances are, it will never happen. So here it is, a story I wrote as another pointlessly-long reply to a thread on 3dmm.com.

Originally posted by Shaun: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Titor

This reminds me of a time in my life when I was running out of time. I attempted to use the time I did have left to make more time, but by that time it was high-time for a break (which I timed to be exactly fourteen hours, eighteen minutes, and forty-two seconds), during which time I read a highly interesting article in Time

The article mentioned was an article on time travel, concerning the idiosyncrosies and general conundrums involved, which took at awful lot of time to comprehend (obviously, considering the amount of time during my break from making time that it took to read it).

The overwhelming coincidence that I read an article (in Time) about time travel when I found myself running out of time, juxtaposed with the irony that I had to waste my precious time to do so, was such a harmonious dichotomy that it was obvious what I should do with the remaining amount of time I possessed:

Build a time machine.

Yes, I know what the lot of you are asking yourselves. (1) "What the fucking?" or (2) "Are you for seriously?" or (3) "Shouldn't you be making horrible flash animations involving popular dead presidents?" or (4) "Wait, why are you running out of time, anyway?" or (5) "Hey, where the hell have you been?" and now possibly (6) "What, how the hell do you know what I'm thinking?" And I'll answer all of these questions, disregarding some of your blatant grammar mistakes (Jesus, "What the fucking?" Nice job, Demented Ferret.)

Am I (2) "for seriously"? Yes. Should I (3) be making more flash animations involving dead presidents? Absolutely. Where the (5) hell have I been and (6) how do I know what you're thinking? Well, let me continue with my story.

Now, for you deductive thinkers among the lot (obviously the ones who were thinking of questions without a horrible disregard for at least decent grammar), the fact that I am taking so much time in writing such a long reply for this thread is proof enough that I am no longer running out of time. And considering that the socially accepted means of putting an end to the losing of time is to create more time, combined with the fact that a mere human-being alone cannot accomplish this, then I must have created a machine with which to do it. A, hmm, time machine, perhaps?

Thus, obviously, yes, I have successfully created and made use of a time machine.

And as an aside, to benefit some of you (and because I totally sympathize with those of you in the unfortunate position of having minimal time in your life to spend), the several of you who are running out of some of it would find it in your best interest to just skip ahead in this post to completely avoid the unnecessarily long story behind my new-found ability to time travel (and a summary of where I've been), to near the very end where I finally answer the first and fourth questions that were thought at me that have insofar remained just a pair of phalic questions fagging out without their proper female mates, a pair of vaginal answers.

You know, to save you time.

Anyway, time to move on, while I still feel like the best use of my infinite supply of time is to waste yours.

First of all, let me say, for the record, that there is an irony involved with time travel that no one really stops to consider until it becomes an issue. And since I am one of the few human beings to successfully time travel, it is as issue that solely belongs to me and a handful of people, and not to the world, like abortion or slavery or oil or the price of stocking sugar packets in marginally-expensive French restaurants.

Sorry, sometimes I keep forgetting what time period I'm in, which is another inherent issue in frequent time travelling altogether. That last thing I mentioned above becomes a very prevelent issue in the near future, I assure you, moreso than you think it would. And as I've already established that I can read your thoughts, apparently, then I know for a fact that the aforementioned fact is more prevelent an issue in the future than you think.

No, the ironic issue I am referring to is that once you invent a machine that gives you (virtually, since you still age and that sucks man, like a lot okay) an infinite amount of time, you begin to forget that time still actually chugs along.

You begin to waste more time that you initially used to.

So ironically, now that I have created a machine so I no longer have to waste time, I am wasting more time than ever writing about it.

And plus, I constantly have no idea what fucking time it is.

Anyway, I am wasting time.

Not mine, yours. I got plenty.

Back to the story.

So, after that Time article, I was running extremely low on time, and it quickly dawned on me that it was time to get busy real quick. I didn't have time for the standard research and development of materials and theories needed to fully bring a professional, safe time machine into existence. I was about several generations-worth of time short on that shit. The time was ripe for improvisation. And why the hell not, the idea to do this shit in the first place certainly wasn't scripted.

So I thought, with little time to spare, about how I could quickly invent a way to make more. There was no time for safety an efficiency. Both were right out.

Running out of time, I firmly decided that what I needed to do was invent a quick and relatively non-life-threating means of time travel, and that once I accomplished this, hopefully before my time ran out, then I would go back in time later, with my newfound infinite supply of time, and meet myself as I was inventing this quick way to travel through time and create a better means of traveling through time.

Yeah, it's confusing. I almost ran out of time trying to come up with and fully understand that decision. But once I did, I looked at my watch, and suddenly I realized with what little time I had, I had to create a means of time travel quicker than a bolt of lightning.

Wait.

Lightning.

Suddenly, I knew exactly what to do.

I went to my DVD collection. Luckily, I was in my room at the time so it was like right there and I only had to like turn my head a little bit so I didn't waste very much time at all, which was a really good thing considering the position I was in, you know? Putting the certain DVD that I will save the name of for comedic value in the player and queueing it up to the part of the film I wanted to watch did take a little bit of time, though, but goddamn I am so glad I had the film on DVD because if it was VHS I totally would have run out of time and that would have been a bitch man Jesus.

I quickly did a pause on the frame I needed (another benefit of DVD man DVD kicks ass), and copied everything down. I was proud of myself, I was totally at least like halfway there. This totally was not a waste of time.

But then I took a quick look at what I wrote and the smile on my face fell down and sort of reversed itself into one of those frowns when realized that I had no idea what any of it meant. There was something that sort of looked like a triangle in a box, with some shit written beside it that looked like numbers and equations. What good did that shit do me, I barely had enough time in life to pass math, much less comprehend it or generally care. And I certainly didn't have enough time left to do either of the last two.

This goddamn Flux Capacitor was going to be the end of me.

I didn't have time to research it and comprehend it, not to mention put the Back to the Future DVD back in its case on the shelf, and all I knew about it was what I just copied down, how Doc Brown thought it up, and how much the thing just looked like a trio of fiber optic cables inside a tinyass plastic box. Besides, where the hell would I find lightning to get 1.21 gigawatts?

Great Scott! That was it, I knew how Doc Brown thought it up!

Luckily, I was already standing in my bathroom taking a very quick piss as I was thinking about just what the hell to do next, and the sudden realization that I may soon fully understand how the Flux Capacitor worked was such a shocking realization that (when mixed with a sudden and unexplained distant noise that resembled "whop") I forgot how to properly stand and proceeded to faceplant into my toilet, which was ironically exactly how my recently-dubbed hero Doc Brown faceplanted into his toilet in Back to the Future, awakening with a newfound knowledge of the Flux Capacitor. Further luck soon followed, as I awoke only moments later (which was lucky since I was nearly out of time) with full knowledge of how to create, use, and effectively not royally fuck a Flux Capacitor (which was lucky since that was, you know, exactly what I wanted to accomplish in this recent fit of improvisational time-saving).

I guess the unlucky part was that I got piss all over myself, but that seemingly unlucky fact wouldn't be a big deal in the near future.

So with this knowledge in hand, a Flux Capacitor in my mind, my penis still in my other hand, and piss in my socks, my emotions filled with glee and a general feeling of contentment.

Then, as I put my penis back in my pants and out of my hand, I looked at my bitchin' Fossil watch and the glee and contentment left my emotions. Then my recently-returned penis was joined in my pants by a new disgusting neighbor, as my bowels relinquished their contents immediately in a most disapprovingly uncontrolled manner.

I was very much almost out of time. And with piss on my shoes and gravity bringing fresh shit to soon join it, I was almost out of pride as well.

(For those of you who don't already know, when I get nervous, I have to shit. And since running out of time in life is a pretty nerve-racking ordeal, I had to shit awfully fucking bad. Luckily for me, the shits were pretty firm.)

Then, naturally, I remembered my firm decision I made earlier that I would invent a means of time travel and then go back in time to help myself make it better.

And I'm glad I did, because, coincidently, at that very moment I looked up to see myself standing a few feet away in the bathroom doorway, wearing a towel around my waist, laughing and generally appearing to be having a relatively decent time at my expense.

That lucky asshole. He must have all the time in the world, now. Or I do. Whatever.

And for those of you wondering, I definitely knew I was looking at myself and not some sort of twin or some lame shit because I fucking own a mirror and recognize things. Use your goddamn brains, people. I can actually forgive the shitty grammar.

Me: "Oh. This is embarassing."

Me 2, Cruise Control: "Not really, dude, it's nothing that hasn't happened to me before."

See, I told you it wouldn't be a big deal.

Me: "Heh, I suppose you're right."

Me 2, The Return of Jafar: "Of course I am. You will be soon, too."

Me: "So I guess the Flux Capacitor works."

Me 2: Electric Boogaloo: "Yeah, probably, I don't know."

Me: "What do you mean."

Me 2, The Two Towers: "Well what's happening to you right now happened to me. So I never got a chance to build the Flux Capacitor-based time machine like on the shit I copied off the TV, because I saw myself walk in and see myself piss-shoed and shit-legged. Then I just gave myself a new time machine and walked off. I never built one myself, which means you won't build one either."

Me: "Oh. So you've seen all this before?"

Me 2 and the Chamber of Secrets: "Yeah, I saw it as you."

Me: "You mean me."

Me 2, The Empire Strikes Back: "No, you."

Me: "But I am you."

Me 2, A Tail of Two Kitties: "...goddammit, why did I have to be a smartass to myself when I was you?"

Me: "Because you're me."

Me 2, Reloaded: "Shut up."

Me: "But wait, that doesn't make any sense."

Me 2, European Vacation: "Why not?"

Me: "Well, because- Wait, you already know why. You were me. You've had this conversaton before.

Me 2s: "Dude this time travel shit is fucking serious. I don't want to fuck it up and not let you say what I said before. I may have solved my time issue, but certainly not galactic fucking paradoxes. That's next on the list."

Me: "So, wait, you've said exactly what I am saying right now before?"

Me 2, Hypercube: "Yes."

Me: "And this."

Me 2, Die Harder: "Yes."

Me: "And this."

Next Me: "Yes."

Me: "And this."

Me 2, Pig in the City: "Yes."

Me: "Well, the conversation seems to be flowing entirely too quickly and naturally for you to have remembered to say all the shit you're saying exactly."

Me 2, The Legend of Curly's Gold: "Goddammit, are you trying to destroy the fucking universe?"

Me: "You tell me, you said what I just said first."

Me 2, Havana Nights: "I hate you."

Me: "Then you need to work on your self-esteem. Hahaha"

Me 2, Dead Man's Chest: "Funny."

Me: "Then why aren't you laughing?"

Me 2, Prince Caspian: "I already heard it before. Coming out of my own mouth."

Me: "Oh. Yeah, I suppose you're right. Well wait, if you're really me, then what number am I thinking of right now?"

Me 2, Life, The Restaurant at the End of the Universe: Forty-two.

Me: "...uh, no, actually, it was twenty-three. Well, shit. I guess the world is going to explode or something."

Me 2, The Hunt for the Blood Orchid: "Nah, I just forgot what I thought earlier. I've got a lot on my mind right now, man. I got plans. I'm daydreaming about having sex with Cleopatra."

Me: "Like I said, I hope you realize that none of this makes any sense."

Me 2, When Nature Calls: "Nothing has to make sense when right now I could go hang out with Jesus with this nifty time machine."

Me: "No, really, that's exactly it. It doesn't make any sense because if I never made that initial time machine, how are you coming back into the past to give me one that I made? I was supposed to help myself make a better one, anyway. For being afraid of galactic fucking paradoxes, you seem to be perpetuating one quite readily here."

Me 2's Bogus Journey: "Dude, you know more than anyone that I am a hypocrite. And you should have put Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure in your DVD player after Back to the Future. It's chock full of this paradox shit at the end, and they turned out righteous."

Me: "Oh. Yeah. I suppose you're right."

The Bride of Me: "Yeah. Well. Uh, I have this time machine thing with me here and another one I just built when I got here, before I came in here to laugh at you; and before when I was you I gave one of them to you and then I walked out this door, but I didn't see what I did after that because the shit running down my legs hit my shoes and they are new-ass shoes and I wanted to clean that shit while I was in the bathroom anyway so I would look respectable when I went into the past with my new time machine so I could laugh at myself without being a hypocrite moreso than I already was. So then after I give you this shit, I guess I am pretty much set to jet and end my running-out-of-time problem with this bitchin' new time machine."

Me: "What."

Me 2, Judgment Day: "Uh, don't worry about it. Just take this shit, use it, make a new one, and give it to yourself. Don't forget to say exactly what I have said. I think that shit is important."

Me: "Uh, right."

Me 2, The Great Valley Adventure: "Yeah. Okay, I'm, uh, going to go to the living room and build this thing I guess. I'll see you later. Or you'll see me later. Or whatever. Bye dude."

Me: "Uh, bye."

Then future-me turned around real quick.

Me 2, The Wrath of Khan: "Oh yeah shit fuck, don't forget to build another time machine based off the one I gave you once you travel back in time, and then give that one to your past self like I am doing right now. Otherwise, you're just going to give the thing to yourself to give to yourself to give to yourself etc etc etc and you'll give it up before you can build another one. Not to mention give yourself a time machine that was never made to begin with, this creating another one of those ridiculous paradoxes."

Me: "What."

2 Me 2 Furious: "Just do it, man, fuck. I am just covering up the plotholes here. Shit."

And then I watched myself go out the door as I felt my gravity-propelled shit hit the floor.

And I got to work on my pants.

I cleaned myself up a bit, went to grab a towel. I had to make sure I grabbed the same color towel I saw myself wearing a few minutes before, and put it on the same way and all that shit. I didn't want to fuck this shit up and destroy existance, man. Besides, that would be stupid, I was going to be a badass with a fucking time machine. Hardcore.

Oh yeah, the time machine.

I picked it up and rolled it around in my hands, and I was totally unimpressed. It was a goddamn Fossil watch. That's all it was. A Fossil watch with the face punched out and what looked like fiber optic cables hanging out of it connected to an old tiny microphone. What the fuck. Then I realized something, and took my current watch off my left wrist and, sure enough, it was the same fucking watch. Huh. So I was holding the same watch in two different hands. That is fucked.

Then I noticed that the Time Watch had a bigass scratch on the side that my current watch did not. How the fuck did that happen?

Then I started walking out of my bathroom and tripped over my new towelpant and dropped my regular watch. Fucking thing's face got punched off by probably the ground, and when I picked it up it had a familiar-looking scratch all up on it.

Shit, I should be more careful.

I realized I should probably go ahead and head the fuck into the past so I could hurry up and do all that shit I needed to do so then I would have more time to create infinite time for myself. Simple.

Wait, I thought. How does this goddamn thing work?

There were no buttons on the thing since the face was apparently punched out, only these wires, a microphone, and a bitchin' Fossil wristband. An ex-girlfriend gave the thing to me as a gift, and I was totally going to throw it away after she left me but the thing was just too fucking badass. And now it's a time machine, so it's even more badass. Fuck.

"Goddammit, you pile of shit."

Then, to my surprise, the watch lit up.

And then, to my further surprise, the watch retorted.

"I believe the pile of shit is in your shoes, asshole."

And if that pile of shit in my shoes across the room hadn't just recently escaped my bowels, the even greater surprise of a fucking watch talking would have created a new pile of shit, most likely directly under my asshole.

To be continued. Maybe.

Dude, are we cool?

I wrote this as a joke reply to someone on a forum after I apparently broke a rule where you can't have "text signatures." And that just wasn't cool, apparently.

Originally posted by Chippy: *gasp!* I see a text sig.

Dude, are we cool now? Is it cool? I want it to be cool, tell me it is.

Because if it's not cool, I'll do whatever I can to make it cool.

I mean, seriously, when things aren't cool, my whole day is thrown off. I can't do anything. I've tried doing things, anything, when things weren't cool, and it just didn't work out.

I remember this one time where me and BR weren't cool. It was rough. I just acted like it was cool, you know how people do that, where it was awkward by I tried to not make it awkward and it just made it more awkward but I would never admit it, that type of shit.

Work became a chore. Chores became work. My wife threatened to not make pancakes for dinner (the fact that we didn't have any pancake mix was just a half-assed excuse).

And so finally I just decided, "Fine, if he doesn't want things to be cool, then things just won't be cool and we can all go about our business in spite of the non-coolness."

So the sans-cool life, we both sort of just knew the other accepted it. And we were cool with that. With not being cool. It was nice, for a time.

But then some asshole had the bright idea to point out the irony in the fact that we were cool with not being cool. Who knows, it was probably me.

It was devastating. Our entire non-cool coolness was shattered. Instantly, BR and I were no longer cool with not being cool. We weren't cool at all.

Cool? Well, cool was out of the question. It was no where near a question mark, let alone an answer.

The days that followed were not very cool, at all. I mean, I went to work, and I think my wife made me pancakes, and that was pretty cool, but other than that, things weren't too cool. Except sex. Sex was totally cool. My wife let me do this thing where I stick it super-hard into-

Wait, that's another story.

Anyway, to segway, BR took it super-hard, too, though. His work was like a really hard chore that your parents give you when you get in trouble that they fucking know you can't goddamn do and just laugh at you as you attempt it. His chores were like work your boss gives you when you keep telling everyone in the office whether they are listening or not how you stick it super-hard into certain parts of your wife.

He was a wreck. Hell, he got in a wreck. A horrible one. Like, it was in the newspaper.

Well, not the wreck, but his obituary.

See, BR is... dead.

Dead.

Fucking dead.

Gone, and buried.

Well, he wasn't buried. The maple tree he rode his bike into was pretty thick and he got his head caught in one of those knots, like to where you can't really get it out without buttering it up real good, you know? Like when you're a kid fucking with the columns on your stairway and you're like, "Hey mom, check it out, I am totally in jail look okay." And then you realize, "Oh shit damn, my head is stuck. Jail sucks."

Yeah, it was like that, so the elementary school kids were looking at him with his head stuck and his neck snapped and his Huffy a couple yards away on its side with one of those cool mile-timers on it, and they said, "Fuck that, that shit is hilarious." And left him there and took the bike. There wasn't really any damage, either, it was a fluke. The thing turned out fine. I dunno, maybe it pulls to the right or something, but it was more than likely doing that to begin with and isn't even that big of a deal anyway. Hell, that was probably why BR crashed his bike into that tree to begin with. Things weren't cool enough for him to get it fixed.

So shit, man. Not being cool sucks, I've been there. A friend of mine fucking died. And got his bike stolen.

I don't want that experience to happen again. Not to anybody. But preferebly not to me. Because that wouldn't be cool.

So let's be cool man. Not being cool totally isn't cool, no matter what the cool kids let you believe. Because even though they say things aren't cool, they totally, totally are. Especially for them. But not for you.

So are we cool, dude?

If not, I can totally have my wife make you pancakes. Or at least tell you about how I stick them super-hard into her vagina.

Just like BR's head into that maple tree. See, with maple, the syrup's already in there. It's like dunking into some good ol', pre-microwaved Aunt Jamima's.

Ironically, that's my wife's name, too.

And that's some irony that we are all totally cool with. My wife's not complaining.

Neither is her OB/GYN. They often have weekly morning appointments and share a breakfast.

What a cool guy.

...wait. That's totally not cool.

Volunteer Hero

When you go to sign up for being a volunteer fireman there's three things they tell you before they let you sign away your right to live: (1) Make sure your wife/girlfriend/boyfriend/lover supports you, (2) make sure you're not narcoleptic, (3) breathe.

Number one is bullshit, and just for courtesy. Even the most protective of wives or girlfriends will allow their man to sign up to be a Volunteer Hero, because there is no greater aphrodesiac than the idea of your man punching through pyromanic walls to rescue a five-year-old boy. It's bullshit, though, simply because any veteran volunteer knows that the first death scare nulls any clear-thinking wife from wanting their husband to jump into open flames. It's a great divorce catalyst, though. When you nearly lose your left leg and your wife is indifferent, the end of the rainbow reveals itself to be a pot of mold rather than a pot of gold.

Number two is a joke, to create a chuckle or two to loose the junior Supermen up into signing. Even an awkward laugh is enough for the nervous to realize that the recruiters craving ink squiggles before them are just as human as they are, and they can defeat walls of flame.

Number three is the only one that matters. Because even after the potentials hear it, they almost always hold their breath as they dot the "i" or cross the "t' in their names on the bottom of that simple page. What it is is a test; in a job where breathing at the right time is the key to survival, you never breathe in the danger zone without an oxygen tank strapped to your face.

And signing that form, the acknowledgement that you have a 78.8% chance of dying within two years, is just as big of a danger zone as the World Trade Center in the middle of September. And as you face that sliver of bark with a Bic pen in your hand, you're not a fireman strapped onto a scuba tank, yet. You're the five-year-old boy.

So they test you: go ahead, breathe. We dare you.

Take in the molten ash of your grim fate.

Because the ones that work their lungs as they sign their death warrant, the swaggering self-badasses, they are always the first to die. Always.

But they don't tell you that. They never do. Not until you attend your first funeral as a volunteer.

Those wildass daredevils make the worst firefighters. Because what makes you good at it is not being fearless. It's in being afraid. Fearing the flame. Respecting it.

Because fire is not just a blind destructive force. It's not a hurricane or a tornado, or a tsunami or an earthquake. Flame is the beginning and the end. It can cook our food, it can keep us alive. It can melt us into molecules.

There is a reason the Romans chose the Sun to represent the almighty Zeus.

You fear the flame like you fear God.

The real heroes aren't the ones who save people's lives. It takes more guts to let a man die before your eyes than save him.

The real heroes are the ones who are shit scared. Who attend the funeral of a 25-year-old father while standing next to the fatherless children. The ones who cry for those children, for themselves. Who turn to their wife and tell them they're through.

And then show up at the station first when that bell rings anyway.