I have perhaps had enough

I’m not going to say never; however, I am really failing to see the point of this blog. I’m having a lot of trouble seeing the point of anything.

I thought about writing a graphic novel about my surrealistically weird and brutal experience at International House Budapest. I decided that it was a bad idea. I’d end up paying thousands for an artist to illustrate the novel and spending a lot of time writing the novel and, if I were lucky, selling two copies. Unless something has been hyped and marketed the shit out of, no one cares about anything beyond his facebook circle and his bastard brood and his professional sports teams and his pornography that involves men jamming huge penises into the anuses of women who have hairless vulvas and artificial breasts that are bigger than their heads. You Americans are really weird and ignorant, and you don’t fucking care about anything beyond your pathetic little lives.

It is time for me, I think, to separate myself as much as possible from this world. To move on and, hopefully, some day, move as far away from you as possible. This world has nothing to offer me, and I certainly don’t have anything to offer it beyond inflicting as much damage as possible against the greedy asshole fucks whom I encounter at the poker table.

I wouldn’t be completely honest if I told you that my disengagement from this world does not cause me pain; however, it is a dull pain. I have very little attachment left to this world. As miserable and failed as my life has been, I wouldn’t want to be you. I am not being defensive when I say that you people (most of you) disgust me, and I am glad that I was never granted inclusion into your animal society, as the thought that I might’ve been one of you gives me the creeps.

I might be back. Who knows? Maybe next month, maybe next year. I’d like to thank the few loyal readers whom I’ve had over the years.

Bottled fire. Cheap

You’re poor. You’re grateful for Obama’s big boost in EBT (electronic food stamp) payments, but it doesn’t go far enough. You want more of your welfare state dollar to go towards gigantic bags of generic, salty-as-shit potato chips so that you could fuel your growing dependency on malt liquor. You don’t want to be hemorrhaging all that good potato chip money on overpriced condiments!

I typically shoot for five pound bags of rice, as well as five pound bags of pink beans for four dollars a bag. This is a megashitload of calories and protein and carbohydrate at next to nothing. It is however so bland that one cannot eat this stuff alone. One needs hot sauce. One needs to feel that good tingling burn on one’s lips as he eats his rice and beans. One can easily spend more than the cost of the rice and beans on commercial hot sauce. Generic hot sauces are not always a solution. Shaw’s generic hot sauce is not only not hot, but is very expensive.

I have the solution to all your problems, my impoverished, potato-chip-eating and overweight alcoholic brethren. Stop & Shop generic hot sauce, priced at two dollars on the nose, with a whopping 32 ounces of bottled fire. It will give you about as much oral fun as you can have in the absence of a woman or a cigarette.

Hey Google and FilipinoCupid, stop making me horny

It’s annoying. When I publish my blog posts and review how they look online, Google keeps serving me up these FilipinoCupid.com ads.

I’m not sure why Google thinks meeting young Filipino women is something I’d want to spend money on; I’ve never even mentioned the Philippines. I’m a poor man. My supply of lubrication has gotta last. Go away you horny making Filipino women! You torture me. Damn you, Philippines!

This is how they fail you at Cambridge University

31 January 2012

Dear [UNDISCLOSED],

CELTA Course – C11 HU050 IH Budapest

I am writing in relation to your complaint about the CELTA course at C11 HU050 IH Budapest.

As you are aware your portfolio, the Assessor’s report on the course were examined at a recent Award meeting here in Cambridge.

The final Fail grade was confirmed. It was judged that there is not enough evidence in your portfolio to support a Pass grade.

In your original email you indicated that you wished to appeal the grade, in light of your confirmed grade, please could you confirm whether you wish to pursue this matter?

Yours sincerely

 
Juliet Wilson
Director
Customer Services
Cambridge ESOL
________________________________________
Cambridge ESOL Teaching Awards
I Hills Road
Cambridge
CB1 2EU

web-site: www.CambridgeESOL.org/teaching

Experts in Language Assessment

 

This letter is not from an official at some junk community college. This is Cambridge fucking University. Really important people went to this school, and I’m talking, really, really important people, like Newton and Darwin and Hawking.

One would think that I would have been invited to this Award meeting. I could have helped these illiterate Cambridge fucks with their English as they criticized my ability to teach English. This is not the only piece of evidence I have of these fucking imposters writing like shit.

“As you are aware your portfolio, the Assessor’s report on the course were examined at a recent Award meeting here in Cambridge.”

• I have no idea what “As you are aware your portfolio” means.
• “[R]eport” is a singular noun. It needs a singular verb. It should be “was examined,” not “were examined.”

“In your original email you indicated that you wished to appeal the grade, in light of your confirmed grade, please could you confirm whether you wish to pursue this matter?”

• Two main clauses are separated by a comma. The first comma should be replaced by a period.
• I would say “could you please,” instead of “please could you.”

When it absolutely positively has to be destroyed overnight

I found this ad on a free poker website for cops. This is an actual ad. It links directly to the Marine Corp. It’s hard to believe what passes for appropriate these days. Unfortunately, these assholes are paid by you taxpayer to destroy things, including people.

I cannot believe what wussies these cops are that they play free poker. You wussie cops would probably lose your shirt and cry if you faced me in a real man’s game of no limit poker.

Macy’s is weird, very weird

Why is the woman modeling for Macy’s (below) a transgendered male?

Also, I still don’t understand why Macy’s uses a red communist star in its advertising.

Regarding cunt and calling people cunts

Okay, I have decided not to call people cunts on Bastard Universe anymore. I have only called one person a cunt in the entire history of this blog. I’m not saying that this person was not a cunt, or that she did not deserve being called a cunt, I’m just saying that one cannot do this. There’s no context; it just looks bad.

My father once criticized me for referring to my next door neighbor as a cunt. (She is a very evil person. I keep meaning to write about her.) What’s funny is that I have heard my father call his mother-in-law and his daughter-in-law a cunt for many years. What is politically correct for one is not necessarily politically correct for someone else.

Once at a slam poetry event a woman was invited to give special reading of her poem before the slam – and I will never forget the title of her poem as long as I live": “Cunt Country.” It was an over-top, in-your-face-poem about lesbians and lesbianism. The word cunt must have been uttered a good hundred times. I thought it was very rousing, though the graphic nature of the poem did make me a little queasy. Had the poet not been so obese, I don’t think it would have been so difficult to hear about the intimate details of the poet’s vulva. I personally congratulated the poet for writing such a powerful poem.

Stop crying, John Kerry

 

Stop crying, John Kerry, sissy. I don’t want to hear it. Just shut the fuck up. Did you cry when you went after that VC sniper who shot at your boat? Did you cry when, as you boast, you killed him? Did you cry when you voted for Gulf War 2, one of the most horseshit wars ever invented? Did you cry over any of the poor, innocent Iraqi children whom the American military killed?

At International House Budapest, when Eszter Baumann, my teacher and professional career assassin, sabotaged my lesson, 7000 miles from home, I sat there and I took it like a man. I didn’t complain. I didn’t cry. It was her moment to destroy me. I let her have her moment of victory. The lowlife cunt could barely contain her smile when she asked me to sign her report indicating that I had failed. Complaining, at the time, that she had set me up to fail would have been undignified. Nobody would have believed me. She was the teacher. An expert. An authority. I have no patience for people  who cry in public. Be a man. Do your fucking crying at home. You probably don’t have nearly as much to cry about as I do. I don’t want to look at it.

While I believe Kerry was really crying, most of the crying done by politicians is just an act. Pretending to cry doesn’t make it any less sickening.

You’re a shit, John Kerry. A shit and a crying, cowardly loser. I am more man than you will ever be, and I don’t need to murder some poor Vietnamese guy trying to defend his country to be a man. Why couldn’t you have just left the VC you shot alone. He was just doing his patriotic duty. You had to stick your neck out and kill the guy, didn’t you, you crying shit.

Stop crying in public, politicians! It’s undignified and unmanly. And this applies especially to Hillary Clinton, who is more man than any of you crying wussie fafos.

Chub Mackerel and Olde English Brand “800:” The breakfast of champions

 

The poor need their animal protein and they need it cheap. I recommend canned chub mackerel, which is frequently on sale at Shaw’s for around $2.20 a can. The can contains a total of 600 calories and 60 grams of protein. This fish does have mercury, but is classified along with chunk light tuna as having a low mercury level. I’m sure that the arsenic and the antibiotics and the excrement that is in factory raised chickens is far worse for you than the small amount of mercury; just don’t feed it to children, unless of course you’re completely broke.

You will not be able to eat chub mackerel too often, as it is a fairly brutal thing to eat. It tastes very similar to sardines. In order to mask the taste as much as possible, I recommend chasing it down with either some very strong beer, such as malt liquor (my choice is Olde English Brand “800,” which normally runs about $2.70 for a 40 ounce bottle) or, even better, a very sweet beer, such as a double bock. Most Chub Mackerel eaters will not be able to afford sweeter beers, as they tend to be a lot more expensive.

Don’t buy regular mackerel. Chub mackerel is literally a different animal. It is fattier, more caloric, and has more protein. It tastes significantly better than regular mackerel.

I eat half the can when I open it. I store the contents of the other half of the can in the refrigerator, and I eat it the next day. Eating refrigerated chub mackerel is much more challenging than eating it immediately after you have opened the can. You will feel as though you are a participant in the show “Fear factor.”

I don’t want to share my purchase of K-Y Personal Lubricant Jelly, thank you!

No, Amazon, I don’t want to share my purchase of Personal Lubricant Jelly anymore than I want to share my purchase of videos of transsexuals with extra long penises having sex with male and female dwarfs, which requires a great deal of lubricant to watch. Is there a way of shutting this sharing mechanism off? Shouldn’t I apply myself to researching this instead of blogging about it?

Pinball Wizard Arcade review

The Pinball Wizard Arcade
150 Bridge Street (Rt. 38) Unit P, Pelham, NH 03076

I think it’s safe to say that pinball wizards don’t go to The Pinball Wizard Arcade in Pelham, NH.

Sorry, forget my camera when I went there on Wednesday, so you will have to settle for the google maps pic above. As you can see, it is located in a mini strip mall. The entrance is in the corner. A Dunkin’ Donuts, a pizza store, and a Chinese restaurant, all live in this strip mall, so you will not go hungry or become caffeine deficient if you plan on staying all day.

If you are traveling to The Pinball Wizard Arcade from Route 3, you will need to slog through the horrendous traffic of Lowell, perhaps the most hideously awful eyesore in Massachusetts. When you’re going over the river, make sure you get in the right lane and stay in it, no matter how many inches per hour you move across this bridge. Do not be seduced by the much faster moving traffic in the left lane! If you are in the left lane, you will be forced down a road that you really, really do not want to be on.

Don’t believe the good reviews you’ve read about this place. These people don’t understand pinball. Real pinball machines have their replay values either printed on the machine or displayed by the machine when one presses a flipper. Many of the pinball machines at The Pinball Wizard Arcade don’t have replay values listed on the machine, and the replay value cannot be obtained by pressing a flipper. I pressed a flipper on one machine to get a replay value, and it said “0.” This machine had been doctored. I believe all the machines had been doctored. The machines that did have replay values had astronomically large replay values that are unachievable. One other important feature doctored away from the pinball machines that I tried was the “match,” the opportunity to win a free game, through a matching of numbers that are chosen randomly by the machine. Taking away the ability to get a free game, either through skill or by chance sucks all the fun out of pinball. It is like playing poker with play money. The only pinball machines worth playing at The Pinball Wizard Arcade were priced at either .50 cents or .75 cents. This is a lot of money to pay for a pseudo pinball experience!

The only thing good about The Pinball Wizard Arcade is the video games. They had some good games, in reasonably good condition, considering their age. The price of the non-shooting video games is a quarter.

The Pinball Wizard Arcade is greedy. Yes, they have the newest pinball games, but you’re not getting the Cadillac; you’re getting the Chevette pinball experience.

Don’t be a victim of The Pinball Wizard Arcade’s tinkering. Go to Funspot instead. While the Funspot pinball selection is not quite as good, you’ll have much more fun there, because they have real, non-doctored pinball machines. They’re also cheaper, at only a quarter a game. Funspot also has a larger video game selection. If you’re coming up Route 3 and decide to bypass The Pinball Wizard Arcade, you’ll be adding another 80 miles your trip, but at least you won’t have to crawl through god-awful Lowell. You couldn’t pay me to go back to The Pinball Wizard Arcade.

Going geriatric

At the YMCA they give away a newspaper called fifty plus advocate. Since I will be 50 in less than three years, I have started reading it. I will be geriatric soon. A gerry. I need to know about elderly issues.

A came across a disturbing ad in this newspaper:

This is just horrible infantilization of the elderly. The “Meet Ginny” reminded me of how animal adoption ads are worded. Here’s an example of a pig up for adoption. Notice how it says “Meet Alfie.”

Prince Harry, fucking up people in Afghanistan and fucking up the English language

“Take a life to save a life,” says Prince Harry. He’s a real man. He fucks up so-called insurgents in his helicopter in Afghanistan. It’s manly man stuff, this killing of people in the third world.

About his naked romp in Vegas, Prince Harry says, “A classic example of me probably being too much army and not enough Prince.” Humm, I think that should be “A classic example of my probably being too much army…”

About his brother and sister and law, Prince Harry says, “I only hope that she and him…” I think that should be “I only hope that she and he….”

I really don’t care whom he screws in Vegas. What he does in his private life is his business. But I really do wish this guy would show a little class and set a better example. The first thing Prince Harry could do is stop killing people in immoral wars. The second thing he could do is speak proper fucking English.

discount ASP.net’s psycho, Micheal Phillips

Micheal Phillips (left), at his new gig, discount ASP.net

God, my last blog post was so awful:

“I deal with more shit each day than you wipe out of your ass in a lifetime.”

How much shit can one wipe out of his ass in a lifetime? It can’t be that much. It didn’t make any sense for me to say this, as I was trying to make the reader understand that the shit I deal with dwarfs the amount of shit that he deals with. Not being sober when I wrote this is not an excuse. People should be arrested for writing sentences like this. When I looked at what I had written, I reminded myself of the worst poet on earth, Micheal Phillips (a.k.a. mjp.)

mjp is a self-published and self-described writer. He tries to sound like Bukowski. I don’t say he’s terrible just because I hate him personally. He is actually a terrible poet. You can find samples of his crappy e-books on Amazon.com I googled him recently and found that he is writing some sort of column for a website that he is involved in called discount ASP.net. I wouldn’t be surprised if he owns this business.

I would not buy anything from any organization that is associated with mjp. mjp is not only a bad poet, but he’s an unscrupulous businessman. Read what this belligerent asshole wrote to me in an email.

mjp is evil. I’m not just saying this because he is a rude, belligerent motherfucker whom I hate. Look at the evil look on his face. He’s got that same deranged look of a psychopath in his eyes that Charles Manson has. Am I wrong? God forbid you’re doing business with a guy like this and he has your address. A guy like this could show up at your house, slice you and your children up, and eat you raw.

I just want to say…

Fuck you, assholes. I deal with more shit each day than you wipe out of your ass in a lifetime. I drink. Beer. Alone. Someone with a long rod up her ass once said to me, if you drink alone, you may be an alcoholic. If you don’t drink alone, well, you shouldn’t be fucking drinking! I’m taking life and death like a man, laughing at your silly ass all the way.

What’s with the rice, man?

I make a lot of rice and beans these days. It’s cheap and proteiny.  All my life I’ve been cooking rice for 20 minutes, then I let it stand for five minutes. Comes out perfect every time. I had bought some Walmart rice. It was cheap, 1970’s cheap. It was probably grown and harvested by poor orphans in the poorest village in the poorest country on earth. The Walmart rice didn’t cook so well. It wasn’t soft and fluffy; it was downright crunchy. I blamed Walmart and the evils of republicanism for this shitty rice. Then, I found some good ol’ Carolina rice on sale at Stop & Shop. I had eaten, literally, a ton of this rice, and I had never had any problems with it. So I cooked it up, and it tasted crunchy like the Walmart rice. What the fuh?

Maybe there’s some logical explanation for this. There probably is, but maybe there isn’t. Maybe the universe is just fucking with my head, and this is some type of sadistic joke. I’m never entirely sure about these things these days.

Yes, I wear women’s underwear, but I am not nearly as perverted as U.S. Customs agents.

I go to the Watertown, MA YMCA at about 1:30 in the afternoon about five days a week. I am not afraid to tell you this. I’m not afraid of any of you. You can’t miss me. I wear a black baseball hat that has the coat of arms of Hungary on the front. The coat of arms is kind of scary looking. It has a double cross and a titled single cross. I am the only person in the United States who wears such a hat. Nobody in Hungary wears it. I would take a photo of it, but it’s almost 3 a.m and I’m in bed, and I’m like, fuck it. Here is what the coat of arms looks like:

The assholes at United States Customs asked me if I knew what the symbol means. They don’t know what it means. One would be hard-pressed to find a Hungarian who can tell you the meaning of this coat of arms. It’s just one of the myriad of stupid questions that the closet homosexuals at American Customs think up in order to make themselves feel important and less gay. There’s nothing wrong with being gay, but I think that one has to accept it instead of being some perverted asshole who needs to bear arms, ask you stupid, overly-personal questions, and rifle through your belongings in order to feel like a man. I bet that a large percentage of these Customs perverts lead secret gay lives. One has to have something seriously wrong with him to be a Customs pervert. I do not call them perverts because they suck cock, but because they are voyeuristic weirdoes. The last Customs pervert who interrogated me asked me what medication I take. He’s not a doctor. He’s a fucking perverted weirdo!

I use an elliptical machine at the Y. It is really boring and sucks. The specialist said I needed to use the machine 150 minutes a week in order to fix my lame knee. I dread going to the Y every day, enduring the traffic and using this boring as shit exercise machine.

I buy women’s underwear too these days. It’s bikini underwear for men, though they don’t call it that; they call it a Mini Slip / Hip Brief. My ass! I call it panties. The brand is Hugo. It’s expensive. I am grateful for my women’s underwear because it fixed my awful chafing problem, which plagued me for years. The secret to this underwear is that it keeps your dick inline. Underwear needs to be tight enough to keep your penis from moving. Regular underwear rides up your ass, and your penis finds its way through the slit. Bikini underwear doesn’t have these problems. Hugo is nice and soft too. I started with the more expensive Calvin Klien bikini underwear for men, but it was so tight that my nuts felt like they were in a vice, and that was the extra large.

I found a liquor store near the Y that sells 40 ounce Olde English 800 for only $2.45. I thought I was in heaven. This is fairly good quality cheap beer (technically malt liquor). This is a beer for serious alcoholics. One has to have something seriously wrong with him to drink any beer out of a 40 ounce bottle. I asked them to order me a case. I think they thought I was insane. I’ve decided to drink this beer every day. Fuck it, I could afford this beer. It won’t break me. It is good cheap medicine that I need to deal with a world of smashed dreams and excruciatingly monotonous journeys to the YMCA. I think it’s somehow fitting in this bizarre world of madness to swig 40 ounce bottles of malt liquor alone in bed wearing black designer panties for men.

I wish that some maniac would wait for me at the Y and put a fuckin’ bullet through my brain.

Governor Deval Patrick gets it right!

After Governor Deval Patrick let his ass get kicked by the scumbag, illiterate fuckwads at the Massachusetts Main Street Fairness Coalition, Patrick made some very progressive and intelligent tax proposals.

The Boston Globe left out an important detail about Patrick’s tax increase proposal: It is not a tax increase for everyone. Poorer earners will see their taxes reduced! It appears as if he is proposing a graduated tax. I took the graph below from Patrick’s FY14 House 1 Budget Recommendation:

The top 20% of earners will have the largest tax increase. Earners in the 40th-60th percentile will not see a significant increase. Earners below the 40th percentile will see a tax decrease.

The media needs to do a better job of reporting the facts! I applaud Patrick for wanting a fairer tax code. Cocksucker asshole rich people will fight this proposal like hell and try like hell to mislead people about it. However, the truth is out there!

Just say no to buying online newspaper subscriptions!

If you enjoy reading newspapers online, you’ve probably noticed that not only good newspapers such as The New York Times and the LA Times now want you to pay for online subscriptions in order to read them, but even your local crapper newspaper wants you to pay. You may have tried deleting the newspaper’s cookies in order to subvert the newspaper’s attempt to get you to pay, which works, but is a pain in the ass, as you must do this all the time. A better method is to download and use the Tor browser.

Using the Tor browser I have had no trouble reading newspapers online that require subscriptions, without actually buying a subscription. The Washington Post, which is a good newspaper, has not yet gone subscription, so I urge you to read this as well.

New blogs

I have added two new blogs in an effort to make my blog writing a little more specialized and lucrative. Bastard Universe will continue to limp along as it has for the past few years. I would really like to add a movie review blog and a travel blog, but such blogs take a lot of time, and it’s highly questionable if it is worth my time. This asshole world owes me. It needs to pay, even if it is fractions of pennies on the dollar. I don’t believe in doing things for the love of doing them. Fuck that shit. Here are my new blogs:

 

Get CELTA certified to teach English as a foreign language: English not required!

This is a blog that attempts to expose the University of Cambridge’s EFL teaching certification scam that I, unfortunately, was a victim of.

 

OKC Hotties: The beatiful women of OkayCupid

This is a very, very soft-porn website that profiles Okay Cupid women. Most of these women are middle-aged, have enormous breasts, and show way, way too much cleavage. I am trying to do this as tastefully as possible, though it is rather tasteless. I think it is highly questionable if this blog will get off the ground, as, due to copyright issues, I cannot post photos of these women in the blog. Certainly there are better things that I could be doing with my time, but I need money. Even if it is change, some money is better than no money. I have a right to live and breathe and eat and have a roof over my head, just like you do. If the blog does catch on, I hope to post articles on dating, which is what I would really like to do.

I made it through the darkness

I realized this week while making an appointment that next month is February. I had survived about five months of darkness, and I did not even realize it. During my descent into hell, I visited Hungary and saw some ghosts (I mean this figuratively) and a demon (I mean this literally). I did not speak to the demon. It took the form of a woman. It was my teacher at IH Budapest. I saw it in the Burger King near the school. It was a Sunday, as I remember, about seven o’clock in the evening, and I thought to myself, “Don’t these assholes ever go home?” The demon was with its spawn. I recognized the spawn. It was its male spawn. I had once seen this spawn naked with the demon’s female spawn, also naked, in a photo on the demon’s facebook page, which has no privacy settings whatsoever. There was nothing sexual going on in the photo, but looking at children who are at least five years old, together, naked, makes non-demons squirm. The demon understands facebook privacy and what is appropriate to take photographs of about as well as it understands what is appropriate in the classroom. I took three months of verbal abuse from the demon, which included mockery, being laughed, and its rattling frowny faces (this it did to everyone). It sabotaged my last practice lesson. My career was over. Thousands of dollars and years working towards being an EFL teacher, which included voice therapy to deal with my damaged vocal cords, pissed down the tube

Do you think that I confronted this slippery cunt? If you think I did, you don’t understand me at all. What I did was beeline it for the exit as fast as I could. The demon terrified me!

Was going back to Hungary a mistake? It was certainly mostly horrible, but I am not completely sure yet if it was a mistake. In Hungary I saw Sopron and Pécs. It was thrilling, and both these cities were so beautiful that they moved me to tears.

In Budapest on the Hungarian Memorial Day I saw people from all around Hungary converge on Széll Kálmán Square to pay their respects to the fallen heroes who were killed by Khrushchev’s tanks during the 1956 uprising. If you look carefully in the photo above, you will see someone holding up a sign that says “Szeged.” This is a city in Hungary. I saw swarms of people coming off chartered busses representing all the cities of Hungary. It was so beautiful to see this outpouring of national unity. In the United States on Memorial Day we wave around flags and watch assholes march around in military uniforms. This was not like that at all. This was a real memorial. At the point where I was moved to tears, I decided to go. I felt somehow out of place, that not being Hungarian made me unworthy of being there. I felt like some type of rubbernecker.

Online poker isn’t fixed…

…And if you believe that, you probably also believe in The Abominable Snowman and Godzilla.

The chances of four big pairs being dealt are about a zillion to 1. This hand, as one might expect, created a feeding frenzy. I was fortunate enough to get dealt K6o Pre-Flop, which I easily folded.

This hand happened on sportsbook.com  I often saw crazy shit on Fult Tilt, but never four big pairs being dealt.

Medea Benjamin of CODEPINK, 2012 Person of the Year

The editorial staff of Bastard Universe has selected Media Benjamin of CODEPINK as the 2012 Person of the Year. Below, Ms. Media Benjamin is being manhandled by a woman as well as a three hundred pound gorilla after attempting to protest U.S. drones. (Democracy Now! did not mention what the event was.) A week earlier, Ms. Benjamin was protesting Wayne LaPierre’s NRA speech, after the Newtown massacre.

For years Ms. Benjamin has bravely put her ass on the front line to protest the murderous, imperialist actions of the U.S. government.