diff --git a/html5lib/__init__.py b/html5lib/__init__.py
index 962536cb..9484fdc9 100644
--- a/html5lib/__init__.py
+++ b/html5lib/__init__.py
@@ -22,4 +22,4 @@
            "getTreeWalker", "serialize"]
 
 # this has to be at the top level, see how setup.py parses this
-__version__ = "0.9999999"
+__version__ = "1.0b8"
diff --git a/html5lib/html5parser.py b/html5lib/html5parser.py
index 12aa6a35..a8f591ac 100644
--- a/html5lib/html5parser.py
+++ b/html5lib/html5parser.py
@@ -22,7 +22,7 @@
 
 
 def parse(doc, treebuilder="etree", encoding=None,
-          namespaceHTMLElements=True):
+          namespaceHTMLElements=True, **kwargs):
     """Parse a string or file-like object into a tree"""
     tb = treebuilders.getTreeBuilder(treebuilder)
     p = HTMLParser(tb, namespaceHTMLElements=namespaceHTMLElements)