All Star Balloting under way

This MLB ad just crept into my e-mail inbox:

Is it just me or is this ad totally creepy?

Once you get over the willies from seeing a wave of tiny disembodied heads that are staring into your soul, go and vote. Or don't. I usually wait until June so I don't end up voting on players based on a ridiculously hot or cold start.

Oh, and maybe just once, you all can go and

VOTE FOR BRIAN McCANN FOR CRYING OUT LOUD

It's not like he's the best damn catcher in Major League Baseball and singlehandedly got the National League a win last year or anything....

The Irritation of an Incomplete Page

This is not the post I had planned for today, but I ran across this in a binder while looking for a different binder which I still haven't found yet, so it's either this or nothing today so deal with it. Here's a set of Mickey Mantle reprints.

Yes, I know. Mickey Mantle is the 21st century equivalent of those advertisement cards for the Topps Puffy Letter Sweatshirt. Damn things are everywhere and you can't get rid of them, not even with poison, fire or nuclear force. This set is from 1996. Back then reprint cards were uncommon and Mantle cards were actually sought after. Especially original Topps cards that you weren't ever going to be able to afford. Reprints (and these have original backs, not the lame write-up that today's reprints have) of The Mick were fricken' sweet 15 years ago. So look and enjoy, I'm going somewhere with this.

I got the whole dam set EXCEPT the 1959 card. Pulled all of these suckers out of packs too. No trades, no purchases from card stores or eBay, all packs. Granted, they were cheap Wal-mart mini packs that cost 50 cents initially and maybe a dime or a quarter when they went on clearance, but all packs. Hear me kiddos:

IT IS INCREDIBLY HARD TO BUILD A SET USING PACKS ONLY

So now I've got a set missing just one card. However, necessity is the mother of shenanigans:

Good 'ol Finest! Close enough.

(seriously though, if anyone has that damn '59 I've got doubles or triples of about half the set. I'll hook you up)

Hawks win!

They beat Orlando! Hooray! Now we get to be swept in the second round again by the Bulls! Booooo!

Perhaps if I wave this Josh Smith relic I got from Madding at the Bulls players, they'll go blind and miss all their shots. It's so crazy, it just might work!

Thanks, Madding, here's hoping the Blazers take it to 7...

NFL Draft Night

Damn, I don't have ESPN anymore after I cut my cable package. I guess I can't listen to Chris Berman and Mel Kiper foam at the mouth and babble incoherently all night. No draft for me. Oh, wait....

FUCK CABLE

NFL.COM

Internet. AAAAAAAAAAW YEAAAAAAAAHHHHH

In other news the Bengals are about to ruin yet another UGA star. WTF Cincinnati.

FALCONS NOOOOOOOO!!!!!! WHAT ARE YOU DOING?!?!?!? DON'T BURN FIVE PICKS TO MOVE UP TO TAKE A WIDEOUT! OUR DEFENSE SUCKS!!!!! WE NEED LINEMEN!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Still waiting for my McLovin Autograph

Actual product not containing what the sell sheet promised??? That's unpossible!

2011 Roma Royalty - the set that lives up to its Gypsy roots.

Of course, this sort of thing is not entirely new.

(they know we'll all go out and buy the shit anyway)

Card Show Top 20 - #7 Super Chief

Moving right along, the #7 card scrounged at the Freedom card show from several months ago is a three for one special. These cards are bigger so it's only fair. Actually, these cards aren't cards so it's not fair at all. Unfairness in blog posts!!! Actually, true unfairness is everyone and their sister ripping Gypsy Queen right now while my local Target doesn't even have crappy Attax yet. Boooooooo! Speaking of really really unfair, the Braves have 5 short prints in 2011 Roma Royalty. I'll just watch other people have their fun and catch up on the posts while the thunderstorms roll in to kill us all. Normally I would make a morbid joke about how if I don't post again tomorrow you'll know I got wiped out by a tornado but I've been posting erratically lately so I don't want to tempt fate. Or risk anyone not even noticing. Do I have any readers left? Yeah, there you are! I ran off all the weak ones. All you cool people with fortitude, check out the goods:

Knucksie! On a very thin glossy oversized black and white card! Silly person, this isn't a card at all! It's a team promo photo of some type. Or maybe from a team photo pack. I'm not 100% sure and I'm not spending a lot of time figuring it out either. It's a cool old black and white photo of one of my favorite players of all time. Probably from around 1969 or so. How do I know that?

It was in a pile of similar photos including Cha-Cha here. Orlando was only with the Braves for a short period of time so I'll make a wild-ass guess educated speculation that it's around '69. Got this from the same seller with the crazy dollar box with Sertoma Stars and O-Pee-Chee Deckle Edges and Collectible Card Game cards from 1874 in it. (among other things, I'm not nearly finished with that guy yet) The dollar table had piles up on piles of photos, postcards, credit cards (no, really) and Sportscaster cards. Also a tub of photographic slides. Oh, and these photographs. I almost missed 'em the first time I scrounged through his wares as there was a postcard of Spock from Star Trek on top of them. I almost bought that postcard too, actually. Damn I wish I could go back to that table with a hundred dollar bill in my pocket. The stack of Braves photos were mostly of lesser known players but I was able to track down these two Hall of Famers among the scrubs. The  photos were not all from the same year either, I recognized a couple that I got back in the '80s that were leftovers from an autograph signing at a  card shop. Oh yeah, I also got one more...

CHIEF

NOC

-A-

HOMA

I might have to rethink these rankings. This might be the second most incredible thing I got at the show. It's not the best, though. You'll have to wait for that one. If the tornadoes don't get me first!

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons

Card Show Top 20 - #8 Lonely '53

Don't have much to say about this one so it's gonna be quick. Every time I go to a card show I try to pick up a 1953 Topps card off my list. There's a real card show in Atlanta about once every three years, so it's not as hard as it sounds. Here's my sole '53 pickup for Freedom Card Show 2011:

1953 Topps Bob Wilson

This show was tough. I didn't see a whole lot of affordable 1953 Topps cards. The low numbered cards I needed that I found were all superstars. The high numbered cards were all pricey. I regret not snapping up all the crummy five dollar high numbered cards in the bargain box a few years ago. Now they are all twenty-five dollars a pop and up. I haven't quite gotten to the point where I'm willing to pay twenty-five bones for a common card simply because the card number is over 220. Scrounging in Uncle Table Full of Binders bargain box, I found this high number of Bob Wilson that I needed. For two bucks! This card looks great for two bucks! And a high number to boot? How the heck did this get in the bargain box?

Yeeeeeeesh. Well, I've seen worse. Glue stain/paper loss on all four corners isn't so bad considering. You can still read most of the text and stats. Man, if I had been born 30 years earlier, I would have been a terrible paster. I have a tendency to want to cover every square millimeter of an object when I am spreading goopy gunk upon it. I am sure that any cards my '50s self had pasted into an album would never have a readable back ever again. I'm thankful for this lazy kid who just dabbed a glop in each corner.

The glue is actually the least horrifying thing on the back of that card. Look at the cartoon. What. The. Hell. Is. That. THING. I'm pretty sure that the question is "What is called a 'gopher ball' in baseball?" I don't know what that manically grinning creature is supposed to be but it ain't no gopher I've ever seen. Is there such a thing as a chupacabra ball? Even the sun is scared of that nightmare.

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons

Card Show Top 20 - #9 '60 Spahnnie

After spending several hours trying to figure out what the heck that Charles Dickens card was, it's nice to show off a card that I know exactly what it is. BEHOLD:

1960 Topps Warren Spahn

This was the priciest card I bought at the show. Ten whole smackers for Spahn. An entire Hamilton for the lefty. This was in the bargain box too. The vintage seller had apparently picked up a pile of Hall of Famers in crummy grade condition and was blowing them out. I had a my eye on a couple in a case full of of the scratch & dent sale cards before I found Warren hiding among a bunch of 1960 Topps cards. You can see it's in perfect shape. Corners round enough to have been made by a compass. All the gloss perfectly buffed and scrubbed off. A nice little crease going perfectly through the face of the black and white Warren photo.  Perfectly awful, but perfect nonetheless.

1960 Topps is one of my favorite sets ever. One of the reasons for this is due to a bunch of '60s I bought when I was a kid. The card shop I used to go to in the '80s had bricks of older cards for sale and I'd usually pick a few up. There were usually a bunch from the '70s and a few from the '60s. Remember, in the mid-'80s cards from 1969 weren't even 20 years old yet. It would be like buying a brick of cards from 1997 today. I built a good chunk of my vintage collection through these bricks of commons. Generally, the cutoff for bricks was about 1964. I got a ton of '64 cards in that brick box. Not so many from '63 and earlier, if any. One time though I found a brick of 1960 Topps in there. There were about 50 cards, Wally Moon was probably the biggest star in the lot and they were all in terrible condition. I friggin loved those cards.

Think of any kind of horrible thing that could happen to a card and it happened to one of those cards in that brick. Here's a partial list:

• Massive crease right in the middle of the card - Wes Covington
• Creases everywhere - Faye Throneberry
• Tear in the card - Dick Hyde
• Hole punched through the card - Ray Sadecki
• Paper loss - Larry Sherry
• Paper stuck to the back - Walt Dropo
• Miscut - Del Rice
• Corner nibbled by mouse - Gary Peters
• Written on, then erased his face - Tony Taylor
• Wax Stain - Chuck Tanner
• Water/Mildew stain - Jim Gilliam
• Unidentified gunk - Glen Hobbie
• Tape stains all over the front - Gene Green
• Run over by a truck - Bob Nieman 
• Dissolved in acid - Jim Coker

The best thing about destroyed cards is there is no disincentive to playing with them. What the hell could I do to these cards that hasn't already been done? I couldn't just play around with my hallowed 1956 cards or the 1972 cards that actually had corners on them, but these things I could fling across the room and actually improve their appearance. Combine this lack of fear with the awesomely colorful design, goofy closeup pictures and sweet team logos and this was the most fantastic set ever. So now, if I see a 1960 Topps card is in crummy condition it brings back great memories. How could I pass up the Spannie?

Here's the back, complete with bonus scuffs. Oh, it's 1986 all over again... I do regret one thing about this card. I didn't realize the comic would be so utterly fantastic.

@\/\/\/\!! 

DEM

BUMS

!

Does anyone have a better scan of this? This might have to be my new title image.

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons

Card Show Top 20 - #10 What the Dickens

I'm gonna finish this thing if it kills me. I can't just do the bottom half of a countdown and then drop it can I? That's just plain rude. That being said, this post right here was a real pain in the kiester. I got major post constipation trying to squeeze out this one. You see, fine readers, I thought I knew what this was... and then it turned out I didn't. Here's the 10th best card I got at the Freedom show.

Wow! A card of Charles Dickens! An old card of Charles Dickens! Just look how decrepit that card is! That's the hallmark of real agedness right there. You can't fake dirty, scuffed and rounded like this card. Beleive me, I've seen people try, it don't work. There's a certain softness and filthiness and griminess that permeates really old cards that is really hard to fake. Plus look at that engravery on the flourishes and cabbages and whatnot. That kind of stuff just isn't done today. Gank a picture online, whip it through a pirated copy of  Photoshop and bang bang you're done. That's what passes for quality nowadays. This here is real live art on a bit of ephemera that outlasted all the chumps who tried to throw it out. Beautiful. Just beautiful.

So what the hell is it?

A good question. A damn good question. Hell if I know. I mean, I thought I knew, and then I didn't, and then  I looked around and I got a little information on it, but not all that much. So now I kinda know what it is. But not as specifically as I'd like. Lemme start out with what I know. I found this card in the bizarre dollar box that had all that wild oddball crap in it like this and this. There was TONS of these cards in there. At least two or three dozen of 'em. All had a picture of an author on the front, a random letter and number and the author's name and the names of three books underneath. Most of the authors I had never heard of, and I got a degree in this crap. Somebody Thackeray? Colonel J. Whoozit? I wish I had written down some of the other names because it might help me immensely in dating this thing. After sloughing through a pile I finally found a card of  Washington Irving, then one of Nathanial Hawthorne. Finally! Authors I've actually read! I had just about settled on Hawthorne when Chuck popped up. STAR CARD! Woooooooooooo! I looked through the rest in hopes of maybe finding Mark Twain, but it was not to be. Can't beat an old-ass card of Charles Dickens though so I snagged it for a buck. Here's the back of the card:

Looks like the back of a playing card. I had seen designs like this while scrounging though 19th century Tobacco cards so I thought it would be a cinch to find this extremely distinctive design in my Tobacco card book.

Nope. I didn't find anything even remotely like it. Well shucks. If you don't succeed, try, try again. I practiced my Google-fu and found... the same damn card on eBay. This guy didn't know when or who made it either. There was a mention of a card game called "Authors" although I'd never heard of it. Time to keep Googling.

I found this site offering some contemporary Authors card sets along with a subject list. There's that William Makepeace Thackeray dude! He wrote Vanity Fair which is probably why that name stuck in my head. That and Makepeace Thackeray is an awsome name. Pretty sure Louisa May Alcott wasn't on any of the cards I saw. And if I would have come across an Edgar Allen Poe, I would have pooped myself. So this one must be the updated version without the stiffs whose names I can't remember. and yes, I know the second I typed that sentence that someone would eventually identify the set and post a checklist resulting in complete embarrassment on how little the dork with the English degree actually knows about authors. HEY. I got my degree purely on my strength in writing a whole lot of bullshit about nothing of any importance You of all people should recognize that talent.

Ok, so this is a real game that people still play. Time for more Googling. Wikipedia is always a help. Apparently the game was first published in 1861 (!!!!!!) and Parker Bros. picked it up in 1897. Clicking a citation gives the rules of the game. Basically Go Fish for the Literati crowd. Now that I knew this was a game I had some more search terms to use and I found an old copy of the game from 1943 on eBay, a different game about Charles Dickens also on the Bay, and a really old copy of the game (but not as old looking as mine) on Etsy. no more information on my card though.

Wait... this is a game... duh. BOARD GAME GEEK. Not much more information in that link, but BoardGameGeek always has great image galleries. Maybe I can find my card in there!. Here's the 1897 Parker Brothers version. No roses on the back, just squirrels. Here's another version with some of the authors I don't know about and SAMUEL LANGHORNE CLEMENS. Ooooh, I want me an old Mark Twain Author card.Or maybe Edgar Allen. Droooool. Here's a version from 1893 that isn't my version. That's about it for the old author cards. If you scrounge through the gallery you'll see all manner of variations on this game from bugs to trolls, to jets, to Wall-E. I even saw Hitler in there. Didn't see my guy in there though.

So, I have an awesome old card of Charles Dickens from an old playing card game that goes back to Civil War times, but I can't quite date the thing. You don't know how much this is killing me, but I gotta post this tonight.

Maybe one more Google search... "1861 authors card game" click click click...

Meh. No pics of the cards. lots of images though... Hey, the portrait on this one kinda looks like the same style as the one on my card. Lemme search "Vignette Authors"...

Whooptie-doo, The American Blah-de-blah society has two copies of the game but no images. boooooring. Here's the Tokalon series but again, no card images. I guess the Tokalon series is for English majors who like a little smokey-smoke when they study. (do cards not drugs, folks) Ok, Somebody, Somewhere has to be selling one of these damn things. This is America, dammit! Capitalism and free market and all that claptrap! C'Mon sellers, Sell already!

Search search search... Wait! ETSY! YEEEEEEESSSSSS!!!!

That's the exact Washington Irving card I thought about buying! And there's Norwood! Who the hell is Norwood? Oh, that's the name of the book, not the author. Oops. BUT THIS IS THE SET! It's from 1874-ish. That's a good enough date for me! I got a card of Charles Dickens from 1874 for a BUCK! Heeeeee-WACK! I can sleep soundly tonight! Wait, I could get the whole set shipped for twenty bucks from that Etsy seller? Man, I got ripped off! Peace of mind isn't always peaceful I guess. Who cares, I gots mah Dickens. AND I KNOW WHAT IT IS NOW

Can't beat that.

Well nine other cards can I guess.

The Top 20 List:

#20 Reds' Heavy Artillery

#19 Blue MadDog

#18 Lil' Jimmy

#17 Real Fake '52

#16 First Topps

#15 Bogus Boog

#14 V103 Tree

#13 Sertoma Rico

#12 '55 Finishers

#11 Hey Shiny

#10 What the Dickens

#9 '60 Spahnnie

#8 Lonely '53

#7 Super Chief

#6 Original Frank

#5 Hoops Inspiration

#4 Rocket Robin

#3 Wizard Off Kilter

#2 Shenanigans Were Called

#1 The Holy Grail of Commons

Top 20 Intermission - What the hell was I thinking

All dedicated dime box scroungers has this happen to them. After spending hours putting together wantlists and vowing to focus only on the cards they actually need, the box diggers frenzy strikes and a whole bunch of weirdness ends up in the shopping cart. Here's some oddball crap that I got from the card show that I really did not need at this point in my life. Not that it's necessarily a bad thing.

I know what I was thinking here, I like Carlton Fisk, and I had just put an Eddie Mathews and Tom Glavine from the same insert set in my stack. Makes sense. The card is damn ugly though.

Well., I am a fan of the WBC. And it is fairly shiny. Why I picked out a card with a Yankee and a Met, I don't rightly know. Maybe I meant to give this Jeter to Sooz but forgot. Man, I really bungled the scans on this lot didn't I. I'm not going to take the time to rescan my dime box Fails, so you'll have to deal.

Ok, I know why on this one. Alex Gonzalez is the Braves' shortstop. So I grabbed a Bowman's best die cut insert of a Florida Marlin with Mark Grudzielanik on the back. There's a dime I'll never see again.

You gotta admit, a card of Bo Jackson and George Brett is pretty kickass, even with the hideous Donruss Design. They're about to beat the crap out of each other with baseball bats!

This card tests the theory that any Ichiro card is a good Ichiro card. This is from a set called Topps Pack Wars. Basically, you and a friend go to a card shop, plop down $20 a throw for a pack of this junk, choose a statistic and whoever has the highest total wins the relic card inserted into the pack. You know, just like if you were playing pack wars with some 50 cent packs of 1988 Topps, except it costs $40, and one of you leaves with nothing and the other gets a relic of Eric Chavez and an auto of Johnny Estrada.

Q: Why did Dayf buy this card?

a) he hates Griffey and wants to voodoo it
b) the busyness of the card hypnotized him
c) he likes old-timey looking cards to have newfangled players on them
d) everyone and their brother collects Reds and Dayf is clean out of Cincinnatians.

If you chose D, congrats! You passed the quiz!

Teddy's my favorite President, sure. This was in the dollar box though, not the dime box. In my defense, it was the 6th card in a 6 for 5 dollar deal. However, the prosecution notes that I went back and bought another dollar card from the box after this one and that I am an inveterate box scrounging collector. The defense agrees wholeheartedly and rests their case. I need a new lawyer.

Another Jeter card! That I don't even want! The hell is wrong with me.

Here's half of a Griffey insert card. Not sure who's on the other half. Probably A-Fraud. Did I mention I don't like Griffey anymore? Maybe I bought this for trading purposes.

I like oddball mini cards, that is not in question. I still am not sure why I got this card of the Father of Texas from a football retro set that I don't have the time or energy to seriously collect anymore. I guess the combination of mini and history grabbed me. Austin is apparently a happenin' little town though. Wasn't Slacker filmed there? That's a good enough reason as any to buy this card.

I DON'T LIKE A-FRAUD EVEN A LITTLE BIT! IT UGLY TOO! Y I BUY THIS CARD??? WHY???

!!!!!!!!!!!!!

YEEEEEEEESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS

Top 20 Intermission - The Braves Spectrum of Shinyness

Back to more card show stuff. Here are all the Braves cards (not featured in other posts) that I found at the show listed in decreasing order of Shinyness. This post may be used as a Shinyness meter if you ever need to rate your own shiny cards. Note: these are all base, insert and parallel cards. Autographs, relics and vintage are on entirely different planes of Shinyness.

Chipper Jones in the Yar's Revenge Victory screen is just about the shiniest thing ever.

Diamond Shiny is pretty darn close though. Did you know Nate McLouth is one of the better Braves hitters so far this season? That is why we are in 4th place.

J-Hey Chrome rookie! I'm not sure if this is the actual Chrome or the Update Chrome RC. Not sure it even matters at this point. This card would probably be #1 on the Shinymeter if Jason was hitting above the Mendoza line.

This McCann Ultimate Collection card doesn't have all that much foil on it, but Mac has taken over for Chipper as Best Player On The Team and that means something. Especially when you're talking about obscure base cards from a high-roller set.

Glowy Knucksie on a Topps Tribute card. This card probably throws off more radiation than anything else in this post, but Topps has bungled the Tribute brand so badly that it loses some luster.

Refractors are always the baseline of Shinyness on cards. Jair is kicking ass early on this season, now if we can just keep him on the field.

Another refractor. Nate McLouth cards are dirt cheap right now for some reason.

Of all the many, many flavors of Baseball Heroes parallels, this Cobalt Blue is easily my favorite.

Proof that Shininess does not equal attractiveness. This Eddie Mathews Elite insert is a damn mess.

Eddie beats Tom because Mathews was never a Met. That's right, I hold grudges.

Here's another Gawdawful Donruss design. Now I know this is technically not a Braves card, but Tim has an A on his cap so it's close enough for government work.

Proof positive that you do not need foil of any kind in order to be Shiny. Shiny is a state of Being. 2003 Playoff Portraits is one of the best sets ever and Greg Maddux shines all by himself. In fact, bump Greg up above those ugly Donruss cards.

Everyday Jonny Venters in Topps Gold version. Does anyone care about Topps Gold anymore?

Here's a Gallery short print of Spahnnie. For some unknown reason Topps only put foil stamping on the Galley cards of Hall of Famers that year. It doesn't look as good as the Maddux card with no foil though.

It's amazing how foilboard can make a card less shiny. I still don't understand why this Mike Minor card from 2010 was a prospect card and not a Rookie card.

More needless busyness from Donruss drops this otherwise utterly fantastic card down the Shiny Scale.

This is probably the best of  the many, many Legends sets put out in the late '90s. The patented Upper Deck textured two-tone foil is nifty.

I pretty much cringe when I pull one of these Topps 60 cards from a pack, but this one of Murph I have to admit is nice.

Topps Archives cards generally have negative Shininess but Holy Crap look at the sluggers on this card.

Reprinting card designs from the late '80s just doesn't seem as good an idea now as it did back then.

A foilboard minor league insert card of a draft pick that topped out at AAA is about as unshiny as you can get. Alec Zumwalt apparentiy flipped from the outfield to pitching in 2002.

This card is a hot mess and doesn't have the shiny foil of Elite to save it. Sad, concidering Wave of the Future used to be one of Fleer's more innovative inserts.

Reprinting card designs from the early '80s just doesn't seem as good an idea now as it did back then.

A Topps '52 Rookie card of Nate McLouth just may be the unshiniest card in existence. This card acts as a Shiny black hole, sucking in the shininess from other cards into its faux-vintage abyss. Not saying this is necessarily a bad thing, just that you have reached the absolute end of the Shinyness index. Scroll up if you need a shiny fix after this.