April 30, 2009

Poseidon and the Bitter Bug

The first song I heard by Indigo Girls was, like most folks my age, "Closer to Fine." And I have to say, I really, really liked it. It was infectious, it was fun ... and unlike a lot of "pop" music, it asked you to think a bit, too. While the music, the beat, the progression of notes all can sweep me away, the music that I enjoy the most is music that makes me both feel and think. Every Indigo Girls album from Strange Fire all the way through Poseidon and the Bitter Bug has more songs which make me think & feel than songs that don't. The fact that I have always enjoyed the way Amy and Emily's voices blend and the type of music they coax from their guitars, mandolins and even the banjo (and we all know how much I adore the banjo) ... and the way that they've grown as musicians, adding drums, orchestra (and even *gasp* electric guitars at times) have always remained amazing to me.

There are bands that I once loved, but which grew in a different direction than I did. Best example is U2 - I haven't liked anything they've done since Rattle & Hum - and I adored pretty much everything they'd done up to that point. There's nothing wrong with the music they've done since then, I certainly don't think they're a horrible band now or anything. But I adored the musical direction they took in Rattle & Hum and simply haven't been as interested in their direction since then.

REM is another band where I had to have everything they'd done once I discovered them ... but somewhere around Monster, I stopped buying CDs. I'm not sure why, but the intense connection I'd once had with their music just ... faded.

Indigo Girls, on the other hand, have grown as I've grown and apparently we're still growing in similar directions. I admit, I was frustrated with their frustrations with a big name label and I enjoyed the risks they took in their music and their ever-evolving sound (which nonetheless always remained uniquely identifiable as Indigo Girls) and worried that the record label would try to force them to make only clones of "Closer to Fine." So, I was very curious to see what would happen once they broke away from the big label.

Poseidon and the Bitter Bug came out a month ago and somehow I managed to not notice that until this past week. Interestingly enough, they released a double set - one disc as a "studio" album and the other as an acoustic album.

I find it interesting that the first review I read of the CD complained about the "over-production" of some of their previous albums - I assume the reviewer was thinking of Swamp Ophelia, for example. For me, I found the progression from Strange Fire (their first CD) through Poseidon and the Bitter Bug to be one of constantly growing musically. No album was some odd re-invention of what it meant to be Indigo Girls, but instead was an outgrowth of what had gone before. I found it interesting when their music took on new depth with new arrangements and new instruments added to the mix. This reviewer (I'm afraid I didn't save the link, sorry) enjoyed the acoustic version of the album more than the "studio" version.

And here's where I think Amy & Emily were simply brilliant in releasing this dual album. There are plenty of fans who prefer the simplicity of two voices and a couple of acoustic instruments. A kind of campfire, back to the roots movement. There are some folks who are sick to death of a voice and guitar and that's all there is. I don't quite fall into either category (shocker, I know). But I think it was brilliant of Indigo Girls to both continue to explore their music the way they want to - and to also give that segment of acoustic fans who've been with them since the Uptown Lounge (and earlier!) what they loved in the first place.

As for specific songs, once again, I'm going to have to listen to the whole CD in a place where I can concentrate and read the lyrics along with them. They always make me think. I have yet to get an album of theirs where I don't want to sit with the lyrics and get lost in the music and what they're saying (both lyrically and musically) - this CD is no different in that regard.

From my superficial listen at work yesterday, the songs that have particularly caught my attention are "Sugar Tongue," which wasn't at all what I expected - though I expect that to change again when I can really listen with the lyrics - "I'll Change," "Ghost of the Gang" and most especially, "True Romantic."

Let me tell you, I thought on first listen that Amy had actually swiped Radiohead's "Creep" with "True Romantic." And I'm not the only one who's made that connection. However, when I listened to "Creep" and "True Romantic" back to back - they're not the same song at all. (And, to be honest, I'd be beyond SHOCKED if either of the Indigo Girls actually swiped a song. It's just not who they are.) What amazes me is that as much as I adore "Creep," I think that "True Romantic" goes even further - it's an even better song. I would guess that it's a kind of riff off of "Creep," kind of an extension of it. Of course, I still need to sit down with the lyrics and really study it.

The weird thing, though, is that I have this odd tendency to hear lyrics that are not there. For example, in "Sounds of Silence" by Simon & Garfunkel, I can clearly "hear" a space in that song for the words "fuck you." The words are not there, I'm not physically hearing them, don't worry. But I can hear the intention of them. I've done this a few times with Indigo Girls songs as well, including some alternate lyrics to "touch me fall" that are rather ... umm ... racy. (And then I found out that there were some alternate, private lyrics to that song that were rather close to what I "heard.") For "True Romantic" I keep hearing "True Believer." Dunno why, I've got to make some time to listen to this CD more carefully!!

At any rate, I think the CD is well worth the money and I love the fact that they added an Acoustic Sessions disc as well.

I fully expect this CD, like all of their others, to grow on me the more I listen to it. And I'm constantly amazed at how they grow as people, as lyricists, as musicians - and that we seem to be growing in the same directions.

And now, I'm late for work ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:05 AM | Comments (1) | Blog | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

April 20, 2009

The Day I Beat the Lie Detector Test

Once upon a time, I was determined that I was going to be a cop and catch bad guys. This was the very beginning of the 80s and I convinced my friends to play detective games at recess every day. (Except when we played Star Wars.) One tree served as the door to every building - it had started life as two trees, but had grown together ... had a huge V opening. We placed a flat rock in front of the tree one day as a "welcome mat" - last time I was in the neighborhood, that rock was still there.

We all read slews of Hardy Boy books - I had the Hardy Boys Detective manual ... a toy forensics kit ... we investigated real crimes. And then "Anne" got a little game with a lie detector. It was not the Mattel Lie Detector game which is all Los InterWebz seemed able to find when I looked, but a little game and kit - the lie detector could be reconfigured to be a burglar alarm which Anne used to guard her room from her big brother and little sister.

But the game is where I got into trouble. I cannot hold a straight face very long. I would be horrible at poker. I was notorious in school for coming up with some insane but yet plausible answer to people's questions ... and then as soon as it looked like they were actually swallowing the bait, I couldn't do it anymore and I'd burst out giggling like a maniac. You could believe what I told you ... because I couldn't really lie to save my life for more than 5 minutes anyway.

So we all gathered in Anne's room one day and began playing the little board game that came with her lie detector game. The game was sort of like clue and sort of like go fish. The other players could ask if you had a particular suspect/weapon/place card ... and then could ask you to put on the lie detector to make sure you told the truth.

It would have been one thing if I could have beaten the cheap, toy lie detector and kept a straight face. I mean, that was a big part of the game - trying to beat the lie detector. It would have been one thing if any of the others could have beaten it with any regularity.

But no, I had to be the only one who beat it regularly AND I couldn't keep a straight face when I beat it. So everyone freaking KNEW I was lying. "Stacy" actually tried to institute a rule that I wasn't allowed to lie during the game so everyone else had a chance to win.

I only remember us playing that game, all together, the one time. Not too long after that, the group and I had a falling out as I got tired of "Stacy" telling me what to do, when to do it, blah blah blah.

Posted by Red Monkey at 4:18 AM | Comments (1) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

March 7, 2009

Brakes Are Over-Rated

My father was ... is ... an alcoholic. So maybe that one tidbit will help you understand a little better my desire for my own set of wheels. After years of being forced to get into the car in the evenings with a drunk, I was ecstatic to be able to take myself places and not have to worry about Dad's condition ... or Mom's reluctance to leave the house for any reason.

So that rolling deathmobile may have represented freedom to me in a way a little bit bigger than it did to most teenagers.

Shortly after I moved out of the house ... actually, as soon as my mother discovered that I was planning on moving out of the house, she planned on divorcing dad.

At any rate, moving out, getting a set of wheels, meant a great deal to me.

But, of course, in the U.S. it generally takes more than a minimum wage job to make even the barest of livings. I was staying in an apartment complex with a roommate for $201 a month and we could barely make ends meet on our budget. Neither one of us went out clubbing -- cost too much in gas to go to clubs and we couldn't really afford the cover charges anyway. And, of course, I was paranoid about drinking and driving given my dad.

In the course of starting college and filling out financial aid forms, I discovered something about my family that completely shocked me. In 1986, my father filed a tax return just under six digits.

We had a hell of a lot more money than I'd been led to believe.

Now, in some ways, this was a good way to have been raised ... I wasn't a spoiled brat and I didn't expect to be given a lot of things like some of my friends. I didn't expect to have the latest and greatest popular stuff. The Swatch watch craze pretty much passed me by, as did a slew of other Name Brand Fads. And, I expected to work for the things I wanted.

But, I've also been led to believe ... just by the society I grew up in ... that when even an adult kid really needed something, something important, that you could rely on your parents to help you to the best of their abilities.

So, I was driving the rolling deathmobile to work one day, about a year after moving out. I worked at Bizmart, an office supply megastore (eventually bought out by the ever-evil OfficeMax).

I pulled up to a red light ... and my brake pedal went all the way to the floor. Nothing.

I slammed the car into neutral and prepared to yank the wheel into a curb to avoid entering the busy intersection. Luckily there was enough of the brake pads left that the combination of the brakes and neutral did stop me. (The emergency brake had never worked.)

By this point, my parents had been divorced for about a year and my father had agreed to help me with college as necessary and to repair the rolling deathmobile when it broke down. At this point, it had only broken down once and he'd been fairly good about getting it fixed.

I finished the drive to work gingerly, but without any further scares. Throwing the transmission into neutral seemed to be the key to getting enough brake power to stop reasonably. The trip home was a little more nerve-wracking, but no major incidents. I called my father and let him know the brakes had completely failed. It was Sunday night.

"Well, I can't do anything about that now."

"I know, Dad, but should I take it in to Pep Boys in the morning? My roommate can get me to work tomorrow, but I need the car back for classes Tuesday."

"Well ... I don't know."

"Dad! I have NO brakes!"

He sighed. "I'll look at it on Saturday."

I was shocked. I thought parents were supposed to be concerned about their children even after they moved out of the house. It's not like I was going to a private university and sucking the money out of him. It's not like I was driving a BMW and demanding that he pay the insurance and maintenance. I'd already gotten grants for my college tuition, so he wasn't having to pay for my schooling anymore. I was taking care of all of my own bills ... our town had no public transportation and walking was not an option -- everything was just too far away.

This was not a hole in the muffler that I could drive around for a week.

Brakes, I thought, were kind of important.

I got off the phone with Dad and was at a loss. My brain was going like 60, trying to figure out how to get out of the problem I was in.

And then, I remembered what I'd gotten in the mail just a day or two before.

My first credit card. $500 credit line for the college student in need. I got it for emergencies.

Brakes seemed like a necessity. Not having brakes seemed like an emergency.

I asked around, found a good mechanic -- NOT Pep Boys -- and paid the $120 repair bill with the shiny, new credit card.

I never asked Dad to repair the car again.

He didn't call me on Saturday to ask about the brakes.

He never did ask me about them.

Guess it didn't matter to him. After all, he's the one who bought the rolling deathmobile to begin with.

Posted by Red Monkey at 9:31 AM | Comments (0) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

March 6, 2009

Rolling Deathmobile

My family was not rich and I had no pretensions growing up that we had money. We didn't have a pool, we didn't have a family room with a pool table or fooseball, and I didn't expect a car for my 16th birthday as many of my classmates did. After all, in the '80s, we didn't have the $500 for me to go to Washington, D.C. with the rest of the honors geeks or the $50 for the PSAT that could have gotten me a national merit scholarship, so I knew we didn't have a lot extra.

What I couldn't understand was that my parents really didn't seem to want me to have a job, either.

At any rate, I will admit to having more than a little bit of envy for my classmates who drove their second hand beaters to school ... and especially for the ones who drove their own BMWs, Porches, the Alfa Romero and the Lamborghini. But it was an idle kind of thing. I had no idea how I would ever manage a car of my own since I was so rarely allowed to take mom's car, couldn't work and my parents didn't have anything to spare.

So, I was trying to take some vicarious joy out of my mother's quest for a new car when her ancient and decrepit Delta 88 had lived far past its prime. I was completely stunned when Mom passed a book to me advising me how to pick a used car -- we were going to use the money from the sale of the Oldsmobile to buy me a car for my senior year of high school. Ecstatic, I threw myself into the task. We made little checklists of things to look for and examine and set out to various used car lots.

But, everytime I found something within the price range, the answer was the same -- "let your father check it out first. We have to wait for him."

After two months of this, I gave up. I'd get my hopes up over a cool car and be ready to drive it to a garage for a check-up only to be told again to wait for Dad ... and he never looked at any of these cars.

I thought maybe I'd get a surprise for my 18th birthday. Nope. Christmas? Again, no. I gave up completely.

Mom tried to bully me into going car shopping again, but I kept asking her what the point was and she, too, finally gave up.

I threw my after-school time into our drama production and forgot all about it (mostly). The day of our premiere, my grandparents and mom were beaming at me from the audience. A shy kid (despite the hyperactivity -- I'm just a mass of contradictions), my mother in particular was shocked and proud when I'd decided to pursue drama. But I was more than a little surprised when Mom and my grandparents dragged me out of the theatre as fast as they could after my performance, telling me I had to come outside NOW.

About a month early, my graduation present sat in the parking lot. A red Buick Skyhawk hatchback with mag wheels. Only 6 years old.

I was completely stunned. I really hadn't expected to get anything.

In retrospect, I would have preferred a nice pen set. You know, like the 5 other uninspired, generic pen sets I got for graduation.

My idea of a new car had been small, foreign and standard. My father's was small, American, automatic ... and red. Yes, the 18-year-old wanted something more practical and the 40-something wanted RED. And, as it turned out, he bought one of the worst vehicles on the lot.

First, the mechanics on the lot had not yet looked at the car ... it had just come onto the lot as a trade-in from the new car lot. Second, my father's idea of working on a car is to stick his lit cigarette face deep into the running engine and bang on things, so his examination was incredibly intense and thorough. Third, the car had a glass roof ... a "moon roof" that was an obvious home-job. I have never seen any project EVER use so much caulk. (It did, however, never leak from the roof, I will say that.)

Oblivious to most of this at the moment, I was ecstatic. My own wheels! Freedom!

The next day I took the car to a shop to get an evaluation of it. The mechanic walked back out white as a ghost and said, "I hope you didn't pay much for it."

The car had been in a serious accident which had broken the frame of the vehicle. It was welded back together underneath the driver's side door. The mechanic looked at me and said, "Don't ever get into even a fender-bender in this car. That weld could snap at any time and the car will crumple at that point ... right at the driver's seat. Don't even let anyone rear-end you."

I stared at him, horrified, looked back at the car and then up to the moon roof. He just bit his lip and nodded. He didn't need to say it. This car was a rolling deathmobile.

As a result, I was probably a far more careful driver than any of my peers, including my best friend Andy, who totaled out at least two cars in high school and the beginning of college.

Somehow, though, we nursed the car along for about two or three years before the repair bills were $200 every other month, rather negating the bonus of having a car with no car payments.

Highlights of the deathmobile were the time that Mom decided she knew "what was wrong with that car" -- she happened to be reading a book on auto repair ... I have NO idea why because she certainly wouldn't deign to stick her fingers in the engine. Coincidentally, the parts needed for this repair happened to be on sale at Pep Boys ....

Net result: Dad broke the timing chain in his efforts to fix a car that had been running just fine. The car wound up at Pep Boys for about three or four days while they repaired the car for me. However, when driving it on the way home, I took my foot off the accelerator for an approaching red light.

The car didn't slow.

It sped up.

Crap. I put my foot on the brake and it did slow to a stop. However, I had to ride the brake all the way home because the car continued acceleration regardless of whether or not I was pushing the accelerator. I called the shop the next day and complain, telling them they need to fix it. They hem and haw around, telling me they were nowhere near the fast idle choke and that they didn't break the car. I point out it wasn't doing that before they got hold of it. Yelling match ensues in which they think they can bully me because I'm a kid ... bad mistake.

I take the car back and they fix it.

Phone call, "Your car is ready, but I have to tell you that there's a potentially dangerous problem with the vehicle."

I'm thinking, yeah, the frame is probably cracking already.

"Three of the four engine bolts that hold the engine in the car are missing."

At this point I'm sure that they had the three frickin' bolts sitting in the mechanic's pocket because he was pissed that I made them fix the fast idle choke. Of course, they have the car ... and I don't have the bolts ... and there's lots of potholes on the way home. I tell them to fix the car and tell me when it's done again.

Two weeks later, the car is ready. They had to order the bolts. Mmmm-hmmm. I believe that. My father, on the other hand, is ecstatic because they only charged me $12.00 to fix the car -- no labor, just the cost of the bolts. He's now convinced these are the most honest mechanics in the world.

But my favourite story about the rolling deathmobile is when the brakes went out.

Well, really, I guess it's a story about my dad more than the car.

But I'll save that one for another day ... until then, if you see a red Buick Skyhawk on the road ... don't scare it ... it'll fall apart if you honk at it, shattering the inch thick glass roof and probably exploding, creating a crater the size of Detroit.

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:22 PM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble

February 22, 2009

If It Weren't For Those Meddling Kids

Once upon a time, I went to elementary school. Well, actually, I went to three of them, but this story takes place at the third one.

Nice suburban neighborhood in a part of Dallas/Fort Worth with loads of creeks and trees, sat Butler Elementary school. It was this insanely progressive school, on the cutting edge. Or that's how they portrayed the school. The reality was it was one huge one-room building, real cutting-edge. o_O

The year after I began attending, my language arts teacher was well-aware that I was determined to be a cop. Actually, I wanted to be Joe Hardy, but that's another story completely. So, when a flasher was reported to be in the woods behind the school - the woods that butted up to our playground - things were a little tense. Add to that, the fact that the group of kids I hung with and I played at the very very outer edges of what was allowed and I think we made our teachers a little nervous. Plus, we played detective stories almost every day. (Except when we were managed to get the entire fourth grade to play Star Wars and made Leia and Darth Vader walk out of the interrogation room stumbling drunk ... yeah, we were ahhhh, interesting kids.)

We were told, rather explicitly I might add, to NOT go anywhere near the woods.

Umm, yeah. Like THAT was gonna work on us. We understood how policework was done. I mean, we weren't just some snot-nosed kids poking around and messing up evidence. (Please forgive the old sketch...one of these days I'll redraw just this portion as a separate sketch.)

Of course, we hung out at the edges of where we were supposed to be, all but bringing binoculars to school in order to scan the woods more effectively. If my parents had owned a pair of binoculars, I would have brought them to school, no doubt. As it was, I crept as close as I thought I dared and convinced our little group to be very observant of every adult male near the school.

And then I found him!

The parks department had a man with a leaf blower in the park next to the school. There was NEVER ever someone from the parks department there blowing leaves. We found the flasher!

So we ran up to the teachers, panting, out of breath and delivered our discovery. I'm fairly certain that at least some part of me wanted to go run up and bop the dude on the head and drag him in to the teachers, but we did settle for just telling.

The teachers rather pooh-poohed us. There, there, child, sure you have identified the ra--err, flasher.

Turns out we were being incredibly observant. Turns out the dude was not an employee of the parks department after all.

He was, however, a city employee.

Yes, we managed to ID the undercover cop.

Oops.

I bet that poor cop never lived down his Scooby Doo reputation after that.

Posted by Red Monkey at 5:40 PM | Comments (1) | People Say I Have ADHD, But I Think - Hey Look, A Chicken | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Stumble

November 3, 2008

More On The Pronoun Game

So, a while back, Lisa took me up on my post specifically about an episode of the TV show Bones, called "The He in the She." Her feeling, and the feeling of many folk in the trans community, is that the episode wasn't all that great - some would call it perpetrating stereotypes, some call it not enough discussion. Then, of course, I fell down on the blogging job again and have let the subject slip for a while.

It's back.

First, I'm going to intersperse Lisa's comment throughout this post because I think many folks don't really read the sparse comments here on older posts and I think this is an issue worth bringing to the front again. Second, since we're discussing gender and sex, we need a few quick working definitions. Please note that better and more detailed definitions exist - this is a working definition for the purposes of this post. Sex = your biological sex as reflected by your genitalia. Gender = a social construct of ideas defining how each sex should behave. (I.e., females like dolls and shopping and staying at home with the kids. Males like Tonka and cars and going to work every day and avoiding housework and the kids. Gender roles often are interpreted as stark stereotypes ... the reason some folks insist there are more genders than there are biological sexes is precisely because most people do not fit into these narrow stereotypes.) A fast definition of "cis" is someone whose biological sex and genders match within "normal" parameters. That is, a female might like cars, but also very much enjoys wearing dresses and make-up, etc. A cis male might enjoy cooking and spending time with his kids, but still exhibits primarily "male" behaviours and interests.
Think of it as a continuum instead of as a black and white - one end of the line is folks who are stereotypically "male" or "female" whose biological sex is male or female. And then the other end of the line being a stereotypical "male" who is biologically female and a stereotypical "female" who is a biological male. There's LOADS of room in between encompassing all the variations of human existence. But the end that tends to match sex and gender would be "cis" people and the end where sex and gender appear mismatched would be "trans" people.

Now, I think Lisa made some excellent points in her last comment and I needed some time to digest them. First:

Many cis people like to assert that they're confused about trans people's preferred pronouns, which gives them an opportunity to misgender trans people repeatedly. Asking them to use the proper pronouns is asking them to stop taking up that particular bit of space, because trans people do happen to be standing there and need breathing room as well. That's what my point about taking up space was about. I was thinking of Amanda Baggs' analogy about how people are like water when I wrote it.

This is interesting ... but I had to go look up Amanda Baggs' analogy to really get it:

people seemed to be a lot like water. Water spreads out to take up whatever space the container it is in allows it to take. People, also, seem to spread out in a similar way in terms of what actions they view as okay for them to be doing. And they rarely notice all the space they are taking up, until some person or event makes it clear to them. It just feels ‘natural’ to take up as much space as they’re allowed.

At first Amanda is talking about the portion of the Harry Potter books when Neville finally stands up to Harry and his friends and tries to make them play by the rules. Ron fusses that Neville was supposed to stand up to other people not them! Ron is essentially telling Neville to expand to fill the space somewhere else - and not to impede Ron, Harry and Hermoine's expansions. (We're getting back to the cis/trans and pronoun issue in a moment, hang on.)

Then, Amanda goes on to talk about Irit Shimrat's Call Me Crazy. A psychologist who reviewed Shimrat's book was at first offended and dismissive of Shimrat because she felt that her entire profession was being dismissed and belittled ... and then she realized that her "feeling of being discounted and unfairly stigmatized in this book parallels what Shimrat and her colleagues often felt as patients." Baggs goes on somewhat scathingly to protest that the psychologist's "hurt feelings" are in no way analogous to the experiences of "captivity, degradation and torture" which many psych patients are subjected to.

Now, here we can circle back to the cis/trans issues - and indeed, the core issue at stake in the episode of Bones as well.

Crap, I just used academic-speak, didn't I? I'm sorry. I get carried away when I analyze things. It won't happen again.

Anyhow, I think the situations are analogous and, in fact, very useful depending on the person having the revelation. Yes, there are several degrees of magnitude difference between the shrink realizing that there's a parallel and the psych patient being degraded and essentially tortured. But the right shrink getting that realization can make a huge difference. If they have that eureka! moment of epiphany, then change is possible. Has the shrink felt the exact same way? No, but then we're not actually comparing hurts here. We're talking about understanding.

It's the same when we talk about cis/trans issues. If a cis person continually fumbles with pronouns or worse, insists on using the wrong ones, they are like the water expanding to fill all the space at the expense of the other folk in the room. They're like Ron Weasley insisting that Neville should stand up to everyone except them.

Now here's the thing. To effect a long-lasting change in society, we need both the people who see the small steps - like this shrink who finally sees that psych patients are too often discounted even though her experience of hurt feelings is in now way similar to what Shimrat has been through - AND we also need people agitating that this doctor's epiphany is not good enough.

To bring it back to Bones, we need both episodes like that one which struggle with the topic ... AND we need the angry reaction from the trans community to cry out that it's not enough.

The first is a stepping stone ... the second is making sure we can't then step backwards onto our familiar ground, but that we must continue stepping forward.

ARGH. I've written far more than enough in the past hour and covered only one small portion of Lisa's comments (and the excellent post by Amanda Baggs as well). But, I think this is enough to digest for one post. More laterz ....

Posted by Red Monkey at 7:02 AM | Comments (2) | Storytelling: She was, of course, supposed to be sleeping. | Struggles | Stumble