Is it Friday yet?

I've had one of those days that feels like it goes on forever.  Jumping from one thing to another to another with no time to catch my breath.  Kind of like what I'd imagine a hackey-sack feels like.  And just as I'm starting to feel like falling onto the ground in exhaustion, I get a little help from an unexpected person.

I'm not sure if I've mentioned this, but I take care of two girls after school every day.  The younger sister is 4 years old, and the older sister is 15.  Ok, she's only 6, but she sure as hell acts like a teenager.  I don't know when it happened, but one day she's sweetly giggling at something I said, and the next day she's rolling her eyes so hard at me that I'm surprised she doesn't get headaches from the effort.  Swear to god, she has so much attitude for such a pint-sized girl.  And the thing is, I never know what's going to set her off.  We can be having a perfectly pleasant conversation, and the next thing I know she's heaving an epic sigh of frustration at whatever pathetic and irritating thing I just did.  I mean, I thought I could do teenager angst, but I'm an amateur next to her.  This girl can put so much oomph behind her sighs that you can practically feel the disdain pouring over you in waves.

Now, this is not to say that I feel like I was any better when I was a kid.  I distinctly remember a phase of elementary school when I would go around sneering at people and saying "GAG me with a SPOON!"  (I have no idea I felt a spoon was more appropriate over any other utensil for this particular zinger catchphrase.)  But look, I didn't reach that level of annoyance until 4th or 5th grade.  I guess this 6-year-old is an early bloomer.  Lucky me.

Anyway, so I was having a really tiring day, full of stupid grown-up responsibility, and when the end of babysitting came around, I just wanted to go home and kill some brain cells by watching crappy tv.  Of course, I had to stay late because the 6-year-old had created a treasure hunt for me, and said that I couldn't possibly leave without following the clues to my prize because I promised, I promised to look for the clues, no it couldn't wait till tomorrow, please please pleeeeeeaaaaassseeeeee?  Yeesh.  So I'm going through the motions, trying to find the little scraps of paper hidden around the house as fast as I can, and I finally--mercifully--find the prize, which is a piece of paper lying upside down under the couch.  And this is what I found:

It reads: The fun woudn't be complete without you!  Andrea your more then nice!  And apparently the picture is me as a Bobblehead, which (as you may know from watching The Office) is AWESOME.

That girl is a pain in my ass most days, but she sure can turn on the charm and sweetness when she wants to.  And man, am I a sucker for it or what.

Where's Captain Planet when you need him?

Today, my kindergartners and I went on a walk through the neighborhood around our school so that we could pick up trash, in honor of Earth Day.  (Oh man, can I tell you how annoying it was yesterday, when I would say "Happy Earth Day!" and a kid would respond, "who's birthday is it?"  and I'd say, "No, I said Happy Earth Day" and this ridiculous conversation would repeat another 14 times.)  

Anyway, it was remarkable how, in this 45-minute walk, I was able to witness 15 different moments that could perfectly sum up each 15 kids' personalities.  Don't worry, for the sake of your sanity I will refrain from sharing all 15 insights.  But here are a few, just to give you a taste of what I deal with every day.

1. The hypochondriac--a few weeks ago, a little boy in our class learned what poison ivy is, and how it gives you a rash and makes you itch.  Ever since then, he has found nonexistent horrors around every corner.  The bee is going to sting him, or the bush is poisonous, or a bug bit him, or (my personal favorite) he got sand in his ear and it's going to poison his brain.  I swear, I'm not making this up.  So today, on our trash walk, this little boy is walking around looking for all the things that can hurt him.  At one point, he pointed at a piece of trash that was hidden under some blades of grass, and said that he couldn't pick up the trash because he would get poisoned from touching the plants.  Dude.  It's GRASS.  
2. The fairy princess--towards the end of our walk, we went past a house that had a gorgeous cherry blossum in the front yard.  The lawn had turned pinkish-white from the thousands of petals that had fallen from the tree, so that it looked like it had snowed.  Well, one girl had the idea to sprinkle petals into hair, so that she could pretend to be a fairy princess.  Cute, right?  Ok, except that I shouldn't use the word "sprinkle."  I should really use the word "smash" or "shove" or "grind" when describing how this girl put the flowers in her hair.  I spent the next 20 minutes picking out the tiny petals.  Look, honey, I'm not your personal hairstylist.  I don't get paid enough.
3. The overachiever--ok, so I want to save the Earth as much as the next person, but I have a limit.  I mean, we were doing this trash walk without gloves, for crissake.  So sure, pick up the candy wrappers and empty gatorade bottles, but leave the nasty stuff behind.  This method, apparently, wasn't enough for one of the boys in our class.  He was like a freaking trash bloodhound, sniffing out every disgusting piece of litter he could find.  And once he found his target, he would proudly stand over it, loudly anouncing to the world, "I found some GUM!  GUM!  Hey, look, a CIGARETTE BUTT!  LOOK!  OVER HERE!"  Yuck.  Oh man, and it gets worse.  Halfway through the walk, when this kid has accumulated a sizable bag of trash, the wind catches it, and the whole bag of trash explodes onto the ground.  So of course I have to help him pick it all up again and put it back into his bag.  Like I said, I DON'T GET PAID ENOUGH.
4. The romantic--So we're walking back to the school campus, and as we make our way along the side of the road, a boy comes up to me with a wilted, half-crushed dandelion in his hand and says sweetly,"I picked you a flower."  Say it with me now, awwwww.  Who can't help melting a little when faced with something like that?  This kid is seriously gonna break some hearts when he gets older.  I mean, yeah, technically it was a weed, not a flower, that he so kindly bestowed upon me, but I confess that I wore that weed proudly in my hair.  At least, I wore it until it fell out 5 minutes later and I was too busy trying to herd 15 kindergartners back into our classroom to notice.  Oh well, it was a nice 5 minutes.  

You spin me right round baby, right round

Ughhhhhhh.

Ok, so Sunday morning I woke up feeling a little dizzy.  No big deal, right?  I figured I was just dehydrated, so I drank a lot of water.  Plus, I had a ton of work to do for my online courses, so I figured it could also be my body having an allergic reaction to having homework for the first time again in two years.  So I toughed it out.  Well today I woke up with a serious case of the spins.  Not enough dizziness to warrant a day off work and forking over $70 for a sub to cover me, of course.  Come on, I'm my mother's daughter.  I was taught that unless I have a fever of 102 or higher, I go to school (or in this case, work).

So I manage to stumble, literally, through the day, and by 3pm I'm feeling pretty good.  That should've been my first clue.  It's always just when you're feeling tentatively ok that the pain strikes.  Around 4:30, I was hit with a massive dizzy spell, which sucked ass cause I still had an hour of babysitting.  I don't know if you know this, but kids could really give a shit if you're feeling sick.  It just doesn't register with them.  What does matter to them is that you're ruining their fun by sitting silently on the couch with your eyes closed while you wait for the room to stop spinning.  Thanks, kids, I really appreciate the sympathy.  I mean, come one, I was seriously hurting.  I was basically experiencing hangover symptoms, without the benefit of actually consuming any alcoholic beverages.  Well that freaking sucks.  Hey, maybe that's why the kids gave me so much grief.  What do they know about hard mornings after too much fun the night before?  Well let me tell you kiddies, it's no picnic.  Anyway, the point is that I have spent the last 4 hours completely incapacitated.  Hey look, I feel perfectly fine--as long as I don't move.  Hmm, that's not really all that helpful...

Oh, and top it all off, I ran into my landlord as I was coming home.  I'm moving out at the end of June (HALLELUJAH--wow, that looks really weird in all caps.  is that really how you spell that word?) so my landlord has started showing my apartment.  Well, I thought he would give me a heads up before he brings someone around, so that I could do a hasty clean-up and, you know, hide my dirtiness so that strangers don't judge me.  When I saw him tonight, my landlord told me he showed my apartment today.  Did I have a clean apartment?  NO.  I had underwear lying around, and dirty plates are stacked up in the sink, and the trashcan in my bedroom (the first thing you see when you enter my apartment) is almost overflowing, and there's cat hair on everything.  Crap.

You know what?  Whatever.  I don't care.  I'm still dealing with the sober spins.  I don't have the energy or inner ear balance to deal with my slovenly lifestyle.  I have to go lie down and stay very still.

Break me off a piece of that Kit Kat bar!

When I went over to Australia for a semester in college, I was devastated to find out that European candy is severely substandard in quality.  Sure, the british Cadbury chocolate bars can hold their own, but other than that, there is nothing over there that could satisfy my sweet tooth.  So, imagine my utter child-like wonder and delight when I discovered that a small candy store a few blocks from my hole-in-the-wall apartment sold American candy.  The first time I went in, I think I just stood there for half an hour, my eyes drifting over the various brand names that were oh so familiar to me, the brightly colored packaging aglow with the promise of sugar and happiness.  Jelly Belly, Snickers, Starburst, Butterfinger, they had it all.  It was my own little piece of home right there in Melbourne.

You should know, I have been harboring an intense sugar addiction almost my whole life.  When I was in elementary school, all I wanted was to open my lunch box and see a Fruit Roll-Up or a pack of Gushers sitting next to my sandwich.  That was just the beginning.  Unfortunately, I rarely got my sugar fix. Shockingly, my mom had this thing about feeding us food that had actual nutritional value.  I'm sure she was trying to encourage healthy eating, but all it did was cause my addiction to go underground.  My need for sugar was still there, I was just sneakier about how I got it.  One year, when I was in middle school, we ended up having a ton of Halloween candy left over because nobody had come trick or treating to our house.  My mom packed up the extra bags of Skittles, put them on a shelf in the basement, and didn't give the candy a second thought.  I, on the other hand, was consumed with thoughts of those delicious bite-sized pieces of sugary heaven.  I began sneaking down to the basement to grab a bag of Skittles.  I was smart about it, too--I would rearrange the bags so that you couldn't even tell that some were missing.  Of course, I fell victim to the most basic rule of stealing--don't get greedy.  My addiction was bad, real bad, and I just kept taking bag after bag of Skittles, until even I, in my sugar-induced haze, could tell that there weren't as many bag as before.  Needless to say, my mom pulled her own Nancy Drew and cracked The Mystery of the Skittles Thief.  I'm not sure, but it might have been the wild look in my eyes and constant jitter to my step, not to mention the empty Skittles bags I had cleverly hidden under my bed.

The point of all this is that over the years, I have become a sort of candy connoisseur.  And much like my dad is particular (coughPRETENTIOUScough) about wine, I turn my nose up at candy that does not meet my expectations.  And European candy just does not cut it.  So when I went to visit my boyfriend in Namibia and discovered that they, too, suffer from the unappealing imports from Europe, I resolved to fix this problem.  Therefore, I have just come back from an extensive shopping trip to Five Below.  Five Below is a dollar store that stocks everything from books to sports toys to makeup kits to, you guessed it, CANDY.  And man, they do it right.  They have all the basics--Snickers, M&Ms, Starburst, Sour Patch Kids, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups--as well as the great classics from my childhood--Airheards, Laffy Taffy, Ring Pops, Push Pops, Pop Rocks, and Warheads.  I think I almost overdosed just by looking at all racks of candy.  It's lucky that I didn't just rip open bags of candy and start feasting right there in the store.  But no, I was on a mission: to educate my boyfriend's host family about the wonder that is AMERICAN candy.  So, I loaded up my shopping bag, and I headed for the checkout:

When I dumped the contents of my bag onto the counter, the checkout girl looked appalled as she said, "I really hope that's not all for you."  I happily explained the whole story, but truthfully, I could easily be there next week buying just as much candy, but with no plans to ship it over to Africa.  I told you, I got it baaaaaaad....

Where did I put that bottle of Raid?

I freaking hate ants.  I'm sorry, I know it's Earth Day in a week and we should love all of Mother Nature's creatures or whatever, but ants do not deserve to live. I came home tonight, and my cat's food bowl was covered in ants because my cat had left a crumb of food behind.  What the F?!  Where do these suckers come from?  I live on the third floor, for crissake.  Are they that determined to invade my apartment that they manage to bypass the two floors below me?  You know, I always forget how much I am creeped out by ants, until all of a sudden I have the entire cast of A Bug's Life running around my kitchen.

Oh my God, I just remembered something:  back in 5th or 6th grade, I read this book of scary stories or urban myths or something.  The story that freaked me out the most was about a boy who tried to kill all the ants in his ant farm, and that night, as he was sleeping, the ants ATE HIM.  He woke up with ants crawling in his mouth and covering his eyes and creepy shit like that.  That is just not right.  Do you see now why I cannot handle ants in my apartment?  Tomorrow, I'm running to the nearest ACME and buying out their supply on ant traps.  I'm seriously going Terminator on their asses.

On a happier note, after a really nice walk down by the river,  my friend gifted me with a mango today.  So I guess the day wasn't a total bust.

I'm a fat kid at heart

I'm supposed to be catching up on a bunch of coursework for these online classes I'm taking, but I have zero attention span for linear equations and slope formulas.  So instead, I've decided to distract myself with thoughts of food.

Yesterday, I went up to New York so that I could check out the Teachers College campus.  My best friend went with me, and thank god for that because she is my go-to NYC tour guide.  She can get you anywhere you need to go, do it with spending as little money as possible, AND give serious attitude to anyone who gets in your way.  I know, it's awesome.

Anyway, after we spent a few amazing hours wandering around Columbia, hoping for some Goodwill Hunting intellect to seep into our skulls, we headed downtown to get an early dinner.  And guys?  We found Heaven.  No joke.  In case you're interested, eternal bliss can be found in the East Village, at a small restaurant called S'MAC.  This place serves the most amazing macaroni and cheese you have ever tasted.  And not just your standard variety--no, this place makes mac and cheese an art form.  And they serve it still bubbling in different-sized pans, covered in a crust of bread crumbs.  Is your mouth watering?  Cause it should be.  

Ok, now my post was going to end there, but then I just remembered the cherry on top that made my day so perfect yesterday.  So after loading myself up with as much mac and cheese as I could (and which sadly, wasn't even the whole serving) my friend and I headed over the Union Square to pick up some Jamba Juice.  FYI, I am a slave to the sweet nectar that is Jamba Juice.  I first discovered it in California, while I was visiting my boyfriend in college, and I have had an addiction to it ever since.  Unfortunately, I haven't had it in over 2 years, since my boyfriend graduated from college, and there aren't any Jamba Juices in Wilmington.  (Yet another reason why DelaWhere? sucks.)  So last night, I was thrilled to get to taste that Jamba taste again.  And then God gave me a present.  When my drink was ready, some punk-ass girl swooped in, grabbed MY Jamba, and rushed out the door.  What. A. Bitch.  Nobody messes with my Jamba Juice!  I was ready to throw down!  Actually, it's me, so I just sort of stood there, blinking my eyes in a moment of stupor, with my mouth unattractively hanging open in surprise.  Yeesh, why do I always have to be such a victim?  I seriously need to toughen up and get some attitude before I move up to NYC.  Oh, you're waiting for the good part?  Well, the upshot of some whore taking my drink is that not only did they remake my 16 oz Strawberry Nirvana, but I also got a 22 oz Mango Mantra for free!  I KNOW! It was awesome.  Turns out, I ended up liking the Mango Mantra better than my original order.  So thanks, random rude girl who stole my drink.  You just made my day.

This Is Africa, PART TWO

Ok, well, I feel like crap.  After going the entire school year so far without getting sick once, I was feeling pretty cocky.  I mean, come on, when a kid sneezes right in your face--sneezes so close to your face that you can actually feel the germ-ridden mucus and spit seep into your face--and you don't end up with H1N1, you deserve to get a little cocky.  "Superman's immune system", I liked to brag.  "Totally untouchable!"

Guess again.  I have finally been overtaken by my kryptonite, those oh so pesky germs.  Of course, I can probably blame it on the plane ride back from Africa.  In my Houdini-like attempts to find a comfortable sleeping position in the cramped coach seat, I probably rubbed countless diseases all over my body, and am now most likely suffering from some rare African malady that mimics the symptoms of your average cold.  If I'm found dead in a week, you'll know to check the medical encyclopedia--look under A for Africa.

Speaking of Africa, I promised you a sequel to my last Namibian post, which you can find here.  Well, I just received more pictures from my boyfriend, so here goes Part Deux:

In Namibia, there are several different tribes of people.  My boyfriend has tried again and again to explain the geographical, cultural, and dialectic differences between them, but I always get them confused.  God, I am a walking example of the Ignorant American stereotype.  Look, I try, but what with European colonization and apartheid fucking everything up, things are complicated over there.  Anyway, my point is that there are several different groups of native Namibians, including Herero, Damara, and Himba, to name a few.  Now the Himba are what most Westerners think of when they think of the stereotypical "African":

But the other tribes have become very Westernized.  They drive cars, they wear jeans, they have cell phones.  This can create a very striking contrast to some of the more traditional huts that some of the more remote communities still live in:

But many people now live in small towns, which look just as modern as any American or European counterpart.  My boyfriend lives with his host family in one of those towns, on the west coast of the country, called Walvis Bay.  Specifically, he lives in the "location" (aka ghetto) called Kuisebmond.  Kuisebmond, like the rest of Walvis Bay, is covered in sand.  All the time.  It was one of the things that really struck me as being different from home.  Everything is muted in color from the fine layer of sand that is constantly being carried by the strong winds that whip through the town.  It's in your eyes, it's in your shoes, it's in the houses, it's everywhere.  Here's an aerial view of Kuisebmond:

See?  I wasn't exaggerating--it's literally in the middle of a freaking desert.  To add to the rather bleak dustiness of everything, many of the houses in Kuiseb are not exactly HDTV candidates.  Thousands of black Namibians live in Kuisebmond as a result of the segregation that came with apartheid.  While many homes are constructed out of sturdy cinder blocks, there are also many homes that are little more than scraps of metal, or even cardboard.  It is, to say the least, very different from what I'm used to.

But like I said in my previous post, within many of these homes are some of the most generous, kind, welcoming people I have ever met.  Which brings me to my boyfriend's host mom, Barbara.  She is in her early thirties, has a 4-year old son, works at the local high school, and cooks some of the best food I have ever tasted.  A couple nights before I had to return to the States, Barbara took my boyfriend and I to experience the iconic Walvis Bay activity: climbing Dune 7.

Ok, when I think of sand dunes, I think of those cute little rolling hills of sand that sit on the edge of the Delaware beaches.  Those are not dunes.  Those are Nature's version of a speed bump.  Sand dunes in Namibia are more like mountains than anything else.  It is breathtaking, seeing them up close.  It kind of makes you feel like you're just an ant who stumbled into a giant's sandbox.  So we arrived at Dune 7, and we immediately started climbing.  As we started passing bushes, my boyfriend pointed to them and said that they were actually the tops of palm trees--the rest of the tree had been swallowed up by the drifting sand.  SERIOUSLY.  It took us about 15-20 minutes to get to the top of the dune because the sand was so soft that it just caved in where ever you put a foot down.  It felt a little like trying to walk up a down escalator.  But man, once you reached the top, it was totally worth all that effort.  We could see for miles around us.  There were no buildings or cell phone towers or highways to ruin the view.  It was just us and the sand.  Like we were the last people on Earth.  Needless to say, I instantly fell in love with Dune 7.

So, for those of you who made it this far (hi mom!) through my excruciatingly long post, I apologize.  That's 15 minutes of your life that you're never getting back.  The scary thing is that I could have kept talking.  What's that I hear?  The panicked pitter-patter of footsteps as you run far far away?  I promise, no more tedious travel logs.  It's back to our regularly scheduled programming tomorrow.  Coming up:  Juice boxes, matchbox cars, freeze tag, and nose picking--a glimpse into the complicated workings of a kindergartner's mind.  

Knock, knock

Who's there?
Mango.
Mango who?
Man, go get your own.  This one's mine!


Can you believe I just made up that incredibly witty joke?  I know, I'm a comedic genius.  The reason for this display of my mad improv joke skillz is so that I may segue into this little update:

While in Africa, after 23 years of fruit-related ignorance, I took my first bite of a mango.  I know, right, this is ground-breaking news.  But seriously, where has this fruit been hiding?  Why aren't more people singing the praises of the mango?  It's not stringy, like a peach.  It's not overflowing with juice, like oranges usually do.  It's sweet enough to be a dessert, but it's not too acidic, like pineapples can be.  Bottom line: it's awesome.  Seriously, run, do not walk, to your nearest Whole Foods (or Acme, for those lacking in funds like myself) and grab yourself a mango.  DO IT!

On an entirely separate (and, though it's hard to believe after that mango story, even more pathetic) note, I would also like to share a little vignette from my life:

I was feeling sorta blue yesterday, having returned to my empty apartment, knowing that I had to once again be the responsible adult and take care of bills and show up to work and do a million other things that are on my to-do list.  So, I decided to call my boyfriend and tell him my tale of woe so that he may give me comforting reassurance that everything will be ok.  (By the way, this never works on me.  Don't tell me that everything will be ok.  What are you, God?  You can't guarantee that things will work out.  There is always room for something to go wrong.)  So I'm in the middle of my tearful list of complaints when I walk into my dining room and see a bee buzzing around the ceiling.  Well, this just takes the cake.  I immediately flip out and start half screaming and half sobbing in the phone, yelling at my boyfriend "THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT I'M TALKING ABOUT.  THERE'S NO ONE ELSE HERE TO KILL THIS BEE.  I AM ALL ALONE AND I ALWAYS HAVE TO BE THE ONE TO TAKE CARE OF THINGS.  IT'S NOT FAIR.  I WANT SOMEONE ELSE TO BE HERE TO KILL THE BEE.  WHY IS IT ALWAYS ME?"  I know, right?  I'm certifiable.  I'm literally cowering in a corner of my apartment, soaking my cellphone with tears of outrage and misery, because I have managed to heap all of my psychosis and neurosis onto this little buzzing insect.  Ridiculous.

Oh, you're waiting for the moral to the story?  The big climactic scene where I heroically slay the bee with one of my flipflops?  Yeah, that would have been good.  What actually happened was that I barricaded myself into my bedroom, stuffed a towel into the crack under the door, and proceeded to wait until the bee died of starvation.  Talk about avoidance issues, huh?  But that's ok.  About an hour after the traumatic bee incident, my boyfriend sent me the following text message:

When we're married, I'll kill the bees 

My knight in shining armor.  

 

This Is Africa, PART ONE

Well, Spring Break has come and gone, ladies and gents, and my life in DelaWhere has resumed once again.  Starting tomorrow, my routines start back up, but before I let myself settle back into those well-worn grooves, I just want to take a minute to savor the absolute differentness that I experienced during my week in Namibia.  So, in no particularly organized way, here are some thoughts:

It starts the minute you step off the plane.  The landscape is beautifully different than anything I've seen in the US.  It seems rough, untamed, almost prehistoric.  Maybe that's because no one lives there.  No seriously.  I think I read once that Namibia is one of the least-populated countries in the world, second in sparseness to Mongolia.  MONGOLIA people.  There is so much distance between towns that when they do pop up out of the savannah or desert (depending on where you are in the country), it's a shock.

On a related note, it then becomes a little challenging to travel the country if you don't possess a car.  My boyfriend's solution is to hitch-hike (or free-hike, as they call it there).  Are you kidding me?  My generation was raised on crappy horror films where the young, naive couple is brutally murdered by the seemingly harmless (but secretly psychopathic) hitchhiker that they picked up off the side of the road.  There is no way in hell that I would ever give a stranger a ride.  But Namibia isn't the US.  As my boyfriend likes to say, "T.I.A."  This Is Africa.  The normal rules don't apply.  You need to get from Walvis Bay to Okahandja?  Just stick your hand out, wait for the next bakki (truck) to pull over, and enjoy a seatbelt-free ride in the open back of the truck while the rugged landscape whips past you at 140 kilometers/hour.

The reason free-hiking is a legitimate way of traveling is because of the people.  Now, I won't try to generalize my experiences to include all 100 people who live in Namibia, but based on my encounters in the community where my boyfriend lives with his host family, it seems to be a part of their culture to help others.  And not in a conscious, "I'm doing a good thing by helping you out" sort of way.  It's just a given.  I see it the most with food.  The belief is that if you have enough food to feed one person, you have enough to feed five people.  It seems like such a small thing, but it's what struck me the most about Namibia.  I didn't realize it until I was faced with it, but that idea is so different from what I've experienced in the US.  In the States, you are responsible for your own food.  If someone else is going to eat some of your food, it's because you have already established a date and time when they will come over to eat with you.  Not so in Namibia.  If someone happens show up unannounced, you just got out an extra plate and divvy up the food so that everyone has some.  No questions asked.  TIA

I think I'm going to leave it at that for now.  If I kept going, this post will become ridiculously long, and I don't know about you, but these days I have the attention span of a gnat, so if you've even made it this far down the post, congrats!  You hung in there longer than I would've.  I'm hoping to put up some pictures soon, but for now I will leave you with this teaser:

Two words: Dune 7.