Records

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Turntablist and artist Christian Marclay created an album — using a 4-track in New York City, March 1985 — composed of other records. All seems pretty normal, but the thing is, Recycled Records’ Record Without a Cover was sold without a jacket or cover, and it even came with the instructions “Do not store in a protective package.” Marclay’s concept was to let the natural ageing process make each individual record unique. Through scratches, and dust caught in the grooves, the record’s deterioration make it constantly evolve. If it could be described, think: a warped history of the universe.






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German genius Peter Lardong came up with the idea to create records out of chocolate and, believe it or not, they can be played on a standard phonograph. He creates the records by pouring his time-tested recipe of melted chocolate into a silicon mold of his favorite vinyl. He places it in the refrigerator to set and voila. Each disc can be played up to 12 times before it’s too worn out, and that’s when you eat it.







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Robot with record player brain





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Buried in the midst of a load of LPs I recently bought was a clear virgin vinyl LP in a plain white jacket. The odd thing about it is there are grooves cut both sides with nothing on them. The dead wax on side one has inscribed NITTY GRITTY and BP 360 LP1 along with NW RTI 19724. Side two dead wax has 13875 and BP 000. Any ideas what this is and what it was for….we’d be interested to find out.





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Jeroen Diepenmaat 'Pour des dents d'un blanc éclatant et saines' (2005), Record players, vinyl records, stuffed birds, sound. Dimensions variable.









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Music lovers can now be immortalised when they die by having their ashes baked into vinyl records to leave behind for loved ones. A UK company called And Vinyly is offering people the chance to press their ashes in a vinyl recording of their own voice, their favourite tunes or their last will and testament. Minimalist audiophiles might want to go for the simple option of having no tunes or voiceover, and simply pressing the ashes into the vinyl to result in pops and crackles.





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In 1967, the BBC created its own record label, designed to exploit the demand for commercially released TV tunes, comedy shows and, finding an unlikely niche in the market, sound effects, the best remembered being their three horror-related collections. Volume 1, Essential Death & Horror, appeared in 1977 and offers a dizzying collection of 91 different effects. Particular favourites of my own include an actually rather disturbing electronic workout, ‘Monsters Roaring’, and ‘neck twisted and broken’. Such was the success of Volume 1, a follow-up album arrived in 1978 – Volume 2: More Death and Horror. Rather more ragged than the first release, we are treated to even more inclement weather and death rattles – of particular note is ‘death by garrotting’. There was one final outing, the paltry twenty-five minutes of Volume 3: Even More Death and Horror. Easily the most startling record of the three, the methods of torture are truly imaginative; ‘self immolation’, ‘female falling from great height’ and ‘tongue pulled out’.











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Knowing how easy it is to scratch records or make them skip with the slightest bump, it might seem counter-intuitive to put a record player into a moving car. But the automobile record player, first introduced by Chrysler in 1956, contained a number of features that would keep the music going even when there were bumps in the road. Part of its downfall can be attributed to the fact that the Highway Hi-Fi required special records; you couldn’t simply pull a record off of the shelf and play it on your road trip. Rather, drivers had to purchase all of their music again in the new proprietary format. Since the machine was only available on new vehicles and not as an aftermarket accessory, there wasn’t a huge commercial demand for it. Moreover, the devices had the nasty habit of breaking often and Chrysler wasn’t thrilled with the cost of fixing all of those under-warranty units. By 1957, just one year after their initial introduction, Chrysler withdrew support for the ill-fated gadgets.






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Chris Supranowitz has made some images of a record’s grooves using an electron scanning microscope. For the vinyl record sample, he simply cut a small section of a record and attached it to a sample stub via carbon tape. He then sputter coated approximately 90 Angstroms of gold onto the grooves. Since the sample was relatively thick (2-3 mm) carbon tape was applied along the side to ensure good conductivity. It's finally clear what the grooves actually look like!









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Jacques Tati with record player





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In 1973, the Kingdom of Bhutan issued several unusual postage stamps that are playable miniature phonograph records. These thin plastic single-sided adhesive-backed 331⁄3 RPM discs feature folk music and tourism information. Not very practical for actual postal use and rarely seen canceled, they were designed as revenue-generating novelties and were initially scorned as such by most stamp collectors. They are now fairly scarce and valuable and are sought after by both stamp and novelty record collectors. Their small diameters (approximately 7 and 10 cm or 2.75 and 4 inches) make them unplayable on turntables with automatic return tonearms.







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Nam June Paik 'Listening to Music Through the Mouth' (1962)





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NON's Pagan Muzak (Gray Beat, 1978) is a one-sided 7-inch with 17 locked grooves and two center holes, meaning each locked groove can be played at two different trajectories as well as any number of speeds. The original release came with instructions for the listener to drill more holes in the record as they saw appropriate.





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The Hi-Fi murders were the killings of three people during an armed robbery at a home audio and record store called the Hi-Fi Shop in Ogden, Utah. On April 22, 1974, three enlisted United States Air Force airmen, named Dale Pierre Selby, William Andrews, and Keith Roberts drove in two vans to a Hi-Fi store on Washington Boulevard, Ogden, just before closing time. They entered the shop brandishing handguns. Two employees, Stanley Walker, age 20, and Michelle Ansley, age 18, were in the store at the time and were taken hostage. Pierre and Andrews took the two into the store's basement and bound them. Later, a 16-year-old boy named Cortney Naisbitt arrived to thank Walker for allowing him to park his car in the store's parking lot as he ran an errand next door; he was also taken hostage and tied up in the basement with Walker and Ansley. Later that evening, Orren Walker, Stanley's 43-year-old father, became worried that his son had not returned home. Cortney Naisbitt's mother, Carol Naisbitt, also arrived at the shop later that evening looking for her son, who was late getting home. Both Orren Walker and Carol Naisbitt were taken hostage and tied up in the basement. With five people now held hostage in the basement, Pierre told Andrews to get something from their van. Andrews returned with a bottle in a brown paper bag, from which Pierre poured a cup of blue liquid. Pierre ordered Orren to administer the liquid to the other hostages, but he refused, and was bound, gagged, and left face-down on the basement floor. Pierre and Andrews then propped each of the victims into sitting positions and forced them to drink the liquid, telling them it was vodka laced with sleeping pills. Rather, it was liquid Drano. The moment it touched the hostages' lips, enormous blisters rose, and it began to burn their tongues and throats and peel away the flesh around their mouths. Ansley, still begging for her life, was forced to drink the drain cleaner too, although she was reported (by Orren Walker) to have coughed less than the other victims. Pierre and Andrews tried to duct-tape the hostages' mouths shut to hold quantities of drain cleaner in and to silence their screams, but pus oozing from the blisters prevented the adhesive from sticking. Orren Walker was the last to be given the drain cleaner, but seeing what was happening to the other hostages, he allowed it to pour out of his mouth and then mimicked the convulsions and screams of his son and fellow hostages. Pierre became angry because the deaths were taking too long and were too loud and messy, so he shot both Carol and Cortney Naisbitt in the backs of their heads, proving fatal for Carol but leaving Cortney alive. Pierre then shot at Orren Walker but missed. He then fatally shot Stanley before again shooting at Orren, this time grazing the back of his head. Pierre then took Ansley to the far corner of the basement, forced her at gunpoint to remove her clothes, then repeatedly and brutally raped her after telling Andrews to clear out for 30 minutes. When he was done, he allowed her to use the bathroom while he watched, then dragged her, still naked, back to the other hostages, threw her on her face, and fatally shot her in the back of the head. Andrews and Pierre noted that Orren was still alive, so Pierre mounted him, wrapped a wire around his throat, and tried to strangle him. When this failed, Pierre and Andrews inserted a ballpoint pen into Orren's ear, and Pierre stomped it until it punctured his eardrum, broke, and exited the side of his throat.







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Gregor Hildebrandt's 'Kassettenschallplatte (Cassette Record)' (2008) is a sculptural work composed of hundreds of feet of wrapped cassette tape, a fetish object for which one medium has been rendered useless to embody the equally nonfunctioning image of another.





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Record player ring





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In the late 1920s and early 1930s the Vitaphone sound system used large 33 1/3 rpm records to provide the soundtrack for motion pictures. The record rotated in the usual clockwise direction but the groove was cut and played starting at the inside of the recorded area and proceeding outward. This inside start was dictated by the unusually long playing time of the records and the rapid wearing down of the single-use disposable metal needles which were standard for playing lateral-cut shellac records at that time. The signal degradation caused by a worn needle point was most audible when playing the innermost turns of the groove, where the undulations were most closely packed and tortuous, but fairly negligible when playing the outermost turns where they were much more widely spaced and easily traced. With an inside start the needle point was freshest where it mattered most. Almost all analog disc records were recorded at a constant angular speed, resulting in a decreasing linear speed toward the disc's center. The result was a maximum level of signal distortion due to low groove velocity nearest the center of the disc, called "end-groove distortion". Loud musical passages were most audibly affected. Since some music, especially classical music, tends to start quietly and mount to a loud climax, such distortion could be minimized if the disc was recorded to play beginning at the inner end of the groove. A few such records were issued, but the domination of automatic record changers, and the fact that symphony movements, for example, varied greatly in length and could be difficult to arrange appropriately on 20-minute disc sides, made them no more than curiosities.





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For their single “Blue Ice”, Swedish indie group Shout Out Louds came up with the idea of making a functional record on ice. 10 press kits consisting of silicon mold, a bottle of distilled water, and complete instructions were sent to select media and fans. Of course the record would only last in one play, and your needle is most likely to be ruined after, but the less-than-perfect crackling sounds have their own lo-fi DIY charms.










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Artist Pieterjan Grandry has broken a major barrier between the unreality of the Internet and the rest of the real world. Grandry has successfully taken animated GIFs and made them analog. His device, based on a pre-film form of entertainment called a phenakistoscope, uses frames from a GIF printed onto transparent material as individual frames and placed on a wheel. Once spun and illuminated, the images form a single moving picture — in this case, a head bobbing cat.






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A record album is stuck in record 3 of the 5 record changer in my Sharp Audio Disc A4 Player. How do I get it out? Record changer not responding. Disassembly may be required to get access to the stuck record and remove it.





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In the 1946-1961 era, some ingenious Russians began recording banned bootlegged jazz, boogie woogie and rock ‘n’ roll on exposed X-ray film. The thick radiographs would be cut into discs of 23 to 25 centimeters in diameter; sometimes the records weren’t circular. But the exact shape didn’t matter so much, as long as the thing played. “Usually it was the Western music they wanted to copy,” says Sergei Khrushchev, the son of Nikita Khrushchev. “Before the tape recorders they used the X-ray film of bones and recorded music on the bones, bone music.” As author Anya von Bremzen elaborates: “They would cut the X-ray into a crude circle with manicure scissors and use a cigarette to burn a hole. ... You’d have Elvis on the lungs, Duke Ellington on Aunt Masha’s brain scan—forbidden Western music captured on the interiors of Soviet citizens.”








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Ottawa band, Hilotrons are releasing nuggets of their music on plastic records that only work for an all-but forgotten children’s toy. The Fisher Price record player is actually a simple wind-up music box, and each indestructible little plastic record is a spool that triggers different notes. What you get is the creepy, tinkling tones featured in the video below.






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Jasper Johns''Scott Fagan Record' (1970) is a lithograph of Scott Fagan’s 'South Atlantic Blues' record, released in 1968. Fagan is the father of The Magnetic Fields singer and songwriter, Stephin Merritt. Although they had not met, John’s 'Scott Fagan Record' was instrumental in reuniting Merrit with his estranged father. Writer Mark Swartz had posted an image of John’s lithograph on his Tumblr, which Fagan found while searching for himself on Google. He contacted Swartz, and a relationship eventually created an opportunity for Merrit and Fagan to reunite, along with Merrit’s mother, Alix. Fagan and Swartz created a Kickstarter to fund a tribute album of a man interpreting his son’s (Merrit’s) songs, to which Jasper Johns contributed. The sentimental nature of the work is also present in the imagery, recalling Johns' early "Target" paintings.





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Evan Holm: There will be a time when all tracings of human culture will dissolve back into the soil under the slow crush of the unfolding universe. The pool, black and depthless, represents loss, represents mystery and represents the collective subconscious of the human race. By placing these records underneath the dark and obscure surface of the pool, I am enacting a small moment of remorse towards this loss. In the end however this is an optimistic sculpture, for just after that moment of submergence; tone, melody and ultimately song is pulled back out of the pool, past the veil of the subconscious, out from under the crush of time, and back into a living and breathing realm. When I perform with this sculpture, I am honoring and celebrating all the musicians, all the artists that have helped to build our human culture.






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Imagine a turntable but instead of a needle, you have a pizza sauce spout, and instead of a record, you have pizza crust spinning so the red sauce can cover every inch. Imagine no more. That’s how pizzas get made at Costco. Workers put the dough on the turntable and the pizzas gets expertly covered in a controlled flow of sauce from the machines.





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The Vinyl Flat Record Flattener is the proven, affordable way to fix warped and dished vinyl records and is used by knowledge record collectors and vinyl record enthusiasts worldwide. In 2014 we increased the diameter and weight of the Vinyl Flat to ensure faster flattening times and better edge warp performance! The Groovy Pouch is a dedicated, "use anywhere" heat source for the Vinyl Flat Record Flattener. Just slip an assembled Vinyl Flat Record Flattener into the pouch, seal the Velcro opening and plug in the included DC power supply. The pouch uses high-tech carbon fiber heating elements to surround the Vinyl Flat with gentle, even heat. The pouch is a safe way to repair records because it operates at a lower temperature than a kitchen oven, reducing the possibility of heat damage to your valuable records.







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A record player sits on the floor, shown from above. Slightly off-centre in the corner of a room, it lies surrounded by cables and a power strip. Through a transparent lid, the white label of a black vinyl disc catches the eye. This painting by German artist Gerhard Richter depicts the record player of Andreas Baader, member of the German terrorist group Red Army Faction (RAF), inside Baader’s cell at Stuttgart-Stammheim prison, and was painted after a police photograph.





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Many might say it is impossible for a tortoise to survive three decades living in a record player inside a filthy storage room. Those people would also be wrong. One fateful day 30 years ago, a pleasant Brazilian family lost their tortoise named Manuela. Manuela apparently got trapped in the storage room where the man of the house, Leonel Almedia, stored a variety of worthless junk, including electronic devices. Inside a record player is where Manuela the tortoise would call home for 30 years.





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22 picture discs


Anti-Flag 'Bacon'


Skid Row 'Youth Gone Wild'


Rev Jim Jones 'Thee Last Supper' WSNS 1984-PSYCHIC TV/TG


Metallica Interview LP


Fat Boys 'Pizza Box Set'


Trick 'r Treat Soundtrack Album


Urine Junkies 'Abscess'


MF Doom 'Rhymes Like Dimes'


J Dilla 'Fuck the Police'


Sebadoh 'Limelight', ltd. ed. released to 'honor' Rush's 40th anniversary


Revolting Cocks 'Beers, Steers & Queers'


Uriah Heep 'Backstage Girl'


Acid King 'Busse Woods'


NZI 490004G605


David Bowie 'Valentines Day'


Erika's Hot Food to Go


Ozzy Osbourne 'Miracle Man'


Guns n' Roses 'Nightrain'


Danny Brown 'The OD'


Malcom McLaren 'Madame Butterfly'


Queen 'I'm Going Slightly Mad'


Lord Finesse 'E-mu EP'



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One of Afro-Peruvian artist William Cordova's recent sculptures, "Greatest Hits (para Micaela Bastidas, Tom Wilson y Anna Mae Aquash)," is a 13-foot tower of 3,000 stacked records accented with pieces of broken discs. Inspired by historical movements such as Dada and Arte Povera, Cordova created the tower to recognize those who have been overlooked in mainstream music. He wanted the piece to acknowledge past artists who added to the genre even if they had not produced a "greatest hit."






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Rutherford Chang has a unique vinyl collection. He only collects the Beatles first pressing of The White Album. I interviewed him: Q: Did you grow up in a house of Beatles fans? When did you first hear about the Beatles? and about the white album? A: My parents are from Taiwan and didn’t listen to the Beatles, so I didn’t grow up with the music. I bought my first White Album at a garage sale in Palo Alto for $1 when I was 15 years old. Q: So how did you get familiar with the Beatles? A: They are the biggest band. Q: Are you a vinyl collector? A: Yes, I collect White Albums. Q: Do you collect anything other than that? A: I own some vinyl and occasionally buy other albums, but nothing in multiples like the White Album. Q: Why just White Album? why not Abbey road? or Rubber Soul? A: The White Album has the best cover. I have a few copies of Abbey Road and Rubber Soul, but I keep those in my “junk bin”. Q: Why do you find it so great? It’s a white, blank cover. Q: Are you a minimalist? A: I’m most interested in the albums as objects and observing how they have aged. So for me, a Beatles album with an all white cover is perfect. Q: Do you care about the album’s condition? A: I collect numbered copies of the White Album in any condition. In fact I often find the “poorer” condition albums more interesting.









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Aphrodisiacal record





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For 'Years, artist Bartholomaus Traubeck fashions a slice of tree trunk into the form of a vinyl record, with the tree-trunk’s rings resembling the spiral groove of the now-outdated audio format. Using a record player with a special sensor, computer software is used to translate the trunk rings into notes and then “play” them as melodies.








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p.s. Yeh. ** Thomas Moronic, Thank you, Thomas, that means a lot! Yeah, the blog feels like it's a different place than it used to be, and I can't put my finger on why exactly, and that's not a bad thing, but, for whatever reason, when I post my own work here nowadays is when I really feel that. Don't know. ** Tosh Berman, Thank you so much, Tosh. Yeah, I saw a pic or two on FB marking your appearance in Detroit. Why are you there? I haven't been there in, gosh, 15 years, yikes. Enjoy the strength! ** David Ehrenstein, I forgot about Garbo's cameo in 'Adam and Yves'. Wow, in retrospect. I think my favorites from the gay art porn era are Jason's Sato's Sirkian porn melodramas. ** Steevee, Good question, hold on. Nervous Gender has stuff on iTunes here. You can get a B People comp album here. You can get Human Hands stuff here. Monitor's album can be bought on CD here. Yeah, Laibach's North Korea tour is kind of inescapable, at least in the internet circles in which I move. I think it's interesting that nobody seems to have any problem with them doing that. I'm surprised by the almost across-the-board 'wow, that's cool' reaction. ** Kyler, Thank you, sir. ** Adrienne White, Hi, Adrienne. Oh, yeah, I would love to see that, if it's easy when the time is right. Thanks a ton! ** James, The Joshua Cohen tiny brain thing made me laugh. No, it's not Eddie Furlong. I read 'The Holy Terrors', yeah, but in the 1970s, I think, so I barely remember it. I did like it a whole lot at the time, for sure. ** Etc etc etc, Hi, Casey. Thanks, man. I did see that you were in the finals every day during CCM's Mainline thing, and I was rooting heavily for you to get the gig. Damn. But, yeah, you should definitely take the high placement there as further incentive to send the mss. all over the great place. No, I haven't read it yet. I'm still swamped, but I'm at the near-end of being swamped, I think. Frick: nice. Always so. Palais de Tokyo is in a lengthy between shows phase right now, but I think it reopens in a week or so. I saw the Henry Darger retrospective and Sturtevant's 'House of Horrors' haunted house art/ride next door at MdAM last week, and that was great. ** Postitbreakup, Wow, hi Josh! Long time no ... Awesome to see you! And you are correct, of course, How are you? ** Bill, Thanks. Those old gay art porn movies were totally dependent on being watched by people trapped without time-manipulating powers in a theater, poor things. They meant so well. ** _Black_Acrylic, Thank you, bud. The weekend does sound extremely busy, fun, and productive. Getting a zine out every day must be quite the job. Very nice covers. Oh, I believe you about their awesomeness! Maybe someone will scan them and archive the series online at some point? ** Chilly Jay Chill, Hi, Jeff. Thank you very much. Yeah, I tried working more intricately with text in that gif story. It was interesting. I think I'll do that even more intricately if I make another one. I haven't seen 'State of Siege' for many ages. I thought it was great back when. You think it's as good as 'Z'? I haven't seen 'Z' in ages either, but that film really blew my mind at the time. Standstill? Shit. Well, let me know what's up or rather down with that when you feel like it and by whatever means. I'm still waiting for Zac's notes on the latest draft of the new film script. When he finishes that part, I think we'll able to complete a solid enough draft of the script to start proceeding. Zac wants to shoot the film in French, so the next step would be getting the script translated, I guess. ** Chris Dankland, Hi, Chris! No, what you said about the gif pieces is amazing and exciting and exactly an ideal response. Thank you, I'm very, very happy to hear that. The title ... I was fishing around, trying things, and then that title sort of popped out of a daydream or something, and I don't know why it seemed like 'the one', but it did. Pretty intuitive, I guess. Also, the short gif works are for a forthcoming book of them, and so decisions are made thinking of how the pieces will work together, and I think that title seemed like it would bash interestingly against the surrounding titles too. Yeah, I don't think Malick's influence on 'My Loose Thread' is so readily apparent, which is very good, I guess. I was trying to figure out how to write that novel, and I happened to see 'The Thin Red Line' at the time, and it not only wiped me out personally with its greatness, it also suggested the way to approach that novel. I'm not sure I can explain why, but something to do with how Malick's internal/exposed monologues operated as emotional graphs and plunges, and how he had the protected, ruminative emotion fuse with a poetic kind of language massively influenced how I created Larry's voice and the location of his voice in relationship to the action. Yeah, Malick was massive, the total key to how I wrote that novel, but I guess my own use of language and style kind of ended up hiding his influence. I'm so happy that you like that novel and return to it. As you know, it's one of my very favorites of my novels. Second after 'The Marbled Swarm', I think. Great and very not rambling thoughts on the shootings, man. How is your work going? Best of the very best to you! ** Statictick, Hi, N. Cool, that's awesome, thank you. I'm a little impractically far away to accept the kind offer of furniture, but ... Everyone, Anybody need/want some really great furniture? Statictick has some on offer. He's in Detroit, if you want to know the logistics in advance. Give a holler here or directly/privately to him if you're interested. Hugs! ** Misanthrope, It makes sense that that particular gif work would be more up your alley, ha ha. Gotcha on the 'fellow gay' thing. Lucky you on the WWE live event. Maybe you should just stay around there and curl up on the doorstep of your workplace after the show. Except you're probably your kin's designated driver, I bet. ** Okay. There are records up there, if you're interested, See you tomorrow.