Month: November 2018 (Page 2 of 7)

 

The Internet has contributed to the death of local retail shops, but it’s also brought forward a new form of expressing consumerism that’s specific to YouTube: the unboxing video. Ordering a record on colored vinyl, a Masonic ring , containers of newly legal Ontario weed or even the costumes worn by Kanye West and Lil Pump in their “I Love It” video might be momentarily exciting, but there are hundreds of people willing to enhance their thrill of anticipation by broadcasting it to the world. Many unboxing videos sound conceptually interesting but would be more enjoyable viewing if they were edited more heavily. The “mystery box from the dark web” sub-genre has started proliferating, to the point where I came across a playlist with more than 50 of them. Every single one I’ve watched is obviously fake (note to future video directors: real blood dries brown), feeling like an audition to direct and star in a low-budget found footage horror film. Not surprisingly, there are occasional overlaps with another YouTube-specific form, the ASMR video. As with almost everything on YouTube, there’s such a glut of unboxing videos that I’m not sure how much longer the concept could sustain interest, but for the moment the best videos are usually worth watching more for their makers’ enthusiasm than their subject matter. That said, I tried to choose a selection that contrasted superficially sensationalistic topics with fairly banal reality.

 

My New Grell Wig! Match Wigs Carissa Wig Unboxing

 

Shawn Mendes Cover II Vinyl UNBOXING (They Sent Me The Wrong Color?) Olivia Rena

 

Flower Boy Vinyl Unboxing/Kind of Review

 

Airsoft Global Glock Unboxing (Even More Glocks!)

 

Objectification ASMR: Item #1 – The Wooden Box

 

“Opened By Customs & Leaking Powder” / Psyched Mail

 

Retro Crown 59FIFTY Unboxing New Era fitted vintage throwback cap

 

WTF? A 37 Suit?? Alain Dupetit Unboxing and Review

 

MYSTERY BOX from the DARK WEB Unboxing (GAME MASTER Watches Me) THINGS Went Really WRONG!

 

DS Doll – body unboxing (part 2)

 

Canada Legal Weed Unboxing From OCS

 

UNBOXING a $500 Dark Web Mystery Box!

 

Illuminatiam Special Unboxing

 

the masonic ring, Unboxing will make you consider buying one

 

Unboxing Ridiculous Religious Gifts (Fan Mail)

 

$120.000 biblical synthesizer & drum machine unboxing!!

 

1/6 3R GM Reinhard Heydrich Unboxing

 

HUGE K-POP ALBUM UNBOXING!!!

 

Sedition & Sedation: ASMR Unboxing of TRUMP the Game [ASMR] [Political]

 

Salò, Or The 120 Days Of Sodom Criterion Collection Blu-Ray Unboxing

 

Why Did I Buy This?! UNBOXING the Kanye West “I Love It” Costume

 

 

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p.s. Hey. This weekend maestro Steve Erickson has concocted an addictive show-and-tell that’ll pin you to your laptop or phone or, I guess, pad, you just wait. Please click and gander and enjoy until further notice, and, of course, give Steve some kind of heads up so he’ll know you partook. Thanks, and thank you ever so much, Mr. Erickson. ** Sarah Schulman, Hi, Sarah. How great to see you here! I made that post about nine years ago, and it definitely needs updating, and I’ll start by adding links to your books. As it said in the post, it’s part 1 of 2, so there’ll be more great artists, including the two you mentioned, as soon as I can repair the second half. Thanks! I hope everything is great with you! ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. Yes, indeed. So many, many important losses. Someone needs to do a documentary or other rediscovery type presentation about the sublimely great Ethyl Eichelberger for one thing. ** Larry-bob Roberts, Well, hi there, Larry-bob! How cool! Thank you a lot for entering. Yes, the blog has a weird glitch whereby some people can’t see the comments or realise that their comments registered. I’ve tried to get that fixed numerous times, and no one has been able to diagnose what would be causing the issue, so until some genius comes along to help, it’s an unpleasant quirk the blog is having to live with. Kembra Phaler is in the part 2 post that’s forthcoming at some soonish point. Yes, Blacklips. Basically, the post is meant to cover performance artists whose work I experienced and know personally from my years living in NYC, and Blacklips started just after I moved away. ABC No Rio, yes, an inexplicable oversight. I’ll add it. Thanks for sharing your wisdom. Hope you’re doing great, man. ** MANCY, Hey! You made it through! So cool to see you here, pal. My great joy to shed a bit of light on ‘STATC’. So good! I hope the successful sneaking in means I’ll get to see you here more often. In any case, love and respect! ** Misanthrope, Ah, an eating triggered thing. Are doctor visits really called “wellness checkups” over there now? That is truly grotesque. Well, ‘Love the Coopers’ isn’t such a bad title, ha ha. You have a stellar weekend yourself, big guy! ** Dominik, Hi, D! Great to see you! I’m good. No, the TV script needs to be finished by Xmas, and I think we’ll need all the time in between to get that done. My week? Hm. Working on you-know-what. An almost all-day TV script producer meeting that was productive but very annoying. Saw some art (retrospectives of Franz West and the architect Tadao Ando, both great). Saw a shockingly terrible recreation of an old performance piece by Mike Kelley and Franz West put on by some director who obviously didn’t even the tiniest idea of what they were doing. Emails. Some PGL-related work and news. Worked on a new gif piece. Kind of an uneventful but okay week, I guess. Yeah, Lily’s very cool. It was funny because I had read and really liked her SCAB piece but somehow spaced on her name and didn’t realise it was hers until I saw her. I hope your last trans workshop today goes really well, and that everybody cool with your departure and gives you all the props you deserve. And of course I hope the organisation head agrees to let you use the space? Did that happen? No, I don’t know Patrick Melrose at all. That might be due to my general ignorance when it comes to almost all TV. I will seek  the book and/or the series if there are traces online. Thank you! Weekend: need to work. The big Paris Xmas fair opens today in the Tuileries, which is just down the street, so I’ll check that out. I’ll probably go look at art. But, yeah, TV script work needs to eat a bunch of my days. Boy, am I ready to get that thing out of my life. I hope your weekend has the perfect combo of rest and extreme, blood-boiling excitement! See you when it’s over! ** Steve Erickson, Unless I’m mistaken, Zeena has collaborated on a lot of dance and theater and performance work by providing music and sometime music performed live, but I don’t believe she’s ever done that kind of work totally on her own. Btw, thank you in person for this fantastic weekend! I’m not sure that there’s anything left to reject. Or nothing centralised enough. Unless some artist or set of them has some brilliant counter to Rap, which is really the only music dominant enough these days to be available to overthrow. ** Colin Herd, Wow, hi, Colin! So extremely good to see you! Oh, thank you so much for the invitation! Very cool. Yeah, let’s confer. My current email is: denniscooper72@outlook.com. I’ll try to write to you too today. How great that your ex-student wants to use my poem. Of course I’m very happy about that and cool with it. If he’d like to be in touch with me, you can give him my email. I’m good, and I hope you are too, and I’ll talk to you very soon! ** KeatonsStuffingTho, Ha ha, your name can do anything. There are weird things in Japan. Well, what is weird, I guess? I guess weirdness is a crapshoot, but, yeah, I saw things there that seemed to maybe qualify. Story! I won’t read anything into it. I don’t think I do that ‘reading into’ thing. Anyway, … I’m there. Everyone, Enjoy your Thanksgiving holidays by doing some mental and other non-money-requiring shopping in d.l. Keaton’s fictional Black Friday, which I feel I can safely predict is a whole lot more soul enriching that the one that just costed money. ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. I do indeed know Blobbyland, yes! I am a fan. If I haven’t featured it on the blog before, that’s some kind of weird fluke. Thanks, pal. Have a great weekend. ** Bill, Hi. Geography used to be such a fascist. Yeah, well, the TV script work annoyance is what I didn’t full realise I had signed up for but should have realised so … Thank you. I assume you’re back in SF and enjoying a relatively peaceful couple of days? ** Joey, Whoa, hi, Joey! Yesterday’s post pulled in all kinds of non-usual pals. Miss you too. Yeah, I’m good, busy, doing my thing, and all is proceeding apace. And you? I have no idea what books are on tape? I’m pretty certain in my initial guessing that not a single book I’ve read in ages is on tape, though. Hm, I’ll see if I’m wrong about that, and, if so, I’ll pony up with a suggestion. Take care of those eyes. Hi to Jarrod! ** Okay. You know what to do or what you’ve done or what you’re partly through doing, depending on your blog viewing habits. Luxuriate in Steve’s gift and say hey in some way or another to him between now and Monday, okay? See you then.

 

Agnarkea
Fire-Toolz
Puce Mary
Hermit & The Recluse
Bamba Pana
Bob Bellerue
Amnesia Scanner
Thou
Rabit
Aki Onda, Akio Suzuki, Annea Lockwood
Ana da Silva + Phew
Colin Self
Young Paint

 

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Agnarkea Blue Beam
‘I don’t know how I’d classify it exactly, I draw influence from so many places and each song kind of turns into it’s own thing. It could be any mix of punk, jungle, plug, boom bap, R&B, neo soul. Lately me and my Waistdeep counterparts have been experimenting with coming up with something wholly different from the norm. A new genre, something never before heard. I hope to keep a strong PMA message and vibe but also build off of the brutality and beauty of previous genres. We will see how it goes LOL. This is all conceptual, it’s really hard to do, but still something cool to strive for.’ — Agnarkea

 

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Fire-Toolz Experience ☆ Slips ☆ Away
‘Earlier Fire-Toolz releases, like 2017’s Drip Mental and Interbeing, stoked a keen sense of restlessness. The project veered from the staid ambient meditations and noisy experiments Marcloid has cultivated under a variety of other monikers in the past decade (her Bandcamp discography dates back to 2006). Instead of ruminating on a single theme, Fire-Toolz accentuates the contrasts between often clashing forms of sound, a strategy Oneohtrix Point Never also employed on his last two albums. But Skinless X-1, Marcloid’s fourth Fire-Toolz release, finds the project locking into new grooves. Rather than highlight how easily attention can scatter, it congeals attention, testing just how many disparate elements the ear can hold together in a single moment.’ — Sasha Geffen

 

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Puce Mary Fragments Of A Lily
‘When I first started recording, all I had was a sheet of metal and a distortion pedal and it took me years to build up a proper studio. I learned a lot from listening, being curious about what friends used and trying to imitate instruments that I could not play or get my hands on. I think this has resulted in me being able to think about making music in a way that is very free and not reliant on certain instruments. I make room for the experience of not being able to know what the sound of the action I am doing will be. Gradually these ‘designed accidents’ accumulate and all together trends are discernible and those themes, suggested by the hand of my own unconscious and the sounds themselves, feed back into the composition of the rest of the track. Only after a substantial amount of the work is created do I really feel like I can exert my own conceptual control on the material. A lot of material is replaced and rerecorded. Like a regenerated organ or organ transplant… It’s like a body sloughing the dead cells and replacing them with rejuvenated ones all the while coexisting with colonies of bacteria in the same structure. I want the chaos implied by this to be legible to the listener so when a rhythm is guiding their ears along a piece of music, they are not carried away and are very much aware that a single tone, a single beat, can stop that sound and time completely.’ — Puce Mary

 

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Hermit and the Recluse Oedipus
‘For his sixth LP, the onetime member of Natural Elements and Roc Marciano affiliate has teamed with producer Animoss (of the Arch Druids) for a concept album of epic proportions titled Orpheus Vs. The Sirens. Taking on the roles of “Hermit” and “The Recluse,” these two contemporaries have put together 10 songs that use Greek mythology to illustrate the struggles of an MC navigating his hostile environment. Orpheus is a legendary poet and musician from Greek mythology, and in the ancient poem Argonautica, he accompanies Jason and The Argonauts on their mission to attain the Golden Fleece. His main role is to sing louder and more beautifully than the Sirens, who look to shipwreck and kill the sailors.’ — Ambrosia For Heads

 

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Bamba Pana Baria
‘singeli is unfeasible music that imagines new possibilities for the human; not even a machine could outrun the body. it’s an optimistic, impish taunt, a counterpoint to accelerationism articulated in the language of technology — a comeback, a challenge. but Bamba Pana fast-forwards further into a future in which human & machine so intertwine that the margins between them (us) entirely disappear. the result is haunting: an uncanny sonic valley, hot & sweaty in relentless motion yet bereft of human warmth — a post-apocalyptic savanna, a landscape onto which to resurrect what was never — or was always — sentient: psychic percussion, haunted ngomas, ghosts in the drum machine, snares to reprogram a ritual-summoning-qua-dance-party where everyone’s invited: a djinn wearing sunglasses, witches shaking ass, Serengeti cyborgs taking selfies with Diamond Platnumz in one of the fastest growing cities in the world.’ — Baldr Eldursson

 

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Bob Bellerue live @ Festival Akouphène
‘Bob Bellerue’s new double-LP, “Music of Liberation,” is a careful and intricate album of textured drone and shapely noise. Like the greatest works by post-industrial masters David Jackman (Organum) and Steven Stapleton (Nurse With Wound), its power lies not in harshness, but in dynamic spectral intensity. These are minutely composed pieces with very great attention paid to timbral details and variances.’ — Elevator Bath

 

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Amnesia Scanner Symmetribal
‘Amnesia Scanner terrorize the simile. Another Life, chameleonic as it is demonic, aggregates its influences and kaleidoscopes them into earworming shards of electronic puncta, a diabolical mimesis whose loathsome grin belies its functionality as dance music. Under the dissimulating surface of accelerationist avant-gardism — the simulation of the simile — Amnesia Scanner carefully construct a somatically accessible sonics whose basic though intricately intercalating rhythm schemes tessellate through the contrapuntal harmonies of the distorted voices squeaking and shrieking and earsplitting all over the place. Rather than articulating a disavowing disidentification with the mainstream, Amnesia Scanner telescope the ironic distance of experimental music into a functional invitation to dance, to channel the molecular movement of sound into the cellular movement of dance.’ — Benjamin Eckman Bieser

 

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Thou The Changeling Prince
‘Thou’s basic sound combines a lot of styles which are in vogue: the weight and heft of powerful sludge, the atmospheres of post-metal and the scratchy, atonal undercurrent of noise rock. Because of their collaborations with bands like The Body it’s tempting to lump Thou with difficult, abrasive experimental music, but Magus is fairly free of wild excess or brain-flaying drama. It is Thou’s most traditionally and accessible metal album so far, with a series of rewarding riffs scattered across the record. The focus they exhibit is key to the record’s success. The tracks have the weight, mass and filthy growl to rank them with the best of the genre, but are sprinkled with unpredictable moments. Rather than – as many other bands do – picking the form apart to make something abstract and joyless, it’s rewarding as a metal listener to come across such a thoughtful record that’s happy to be just be ugly and satisfying.’ — Tom Coles

 

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Rabit The Quickening
‘Rabit resets his sound in kaleidoscopic, cinematic dimensions on ‘Life After Death’, an absorbingly psychedelic, pop-wise and fractally refined follow-up to his trio of boundary-pushing albums that bridged the gaps between DJ Screw and Coil, grime and the GRM, also inspired by Surrealist art, Enigma, and Japanese Ambient artists like Hiroshi Yoshimura.’ — boomkat

 

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Annea Lockwood, Aki Onda, Akio Suzuki Tabletop Music
‘Though they differ in generation and performance practice, Aki Onda (b. 1967) and Akio Suzuki (b. 1941) share an astonishingly inventive, open-ended, and spontaneous approach to the infinite and variegated possibilities of sound as a spatial phenomenon. Since initiating a collaborative relationship in 2005, the duo have embarked on a number of tours in Europe and Asia, exploring locations ranging from an abandoned factory on the outskirts of Brussels to an underground parking lot in Glasgow. Onda and Suzuki perform by utilizing unconventional and self-made instruments including analog cassette Walkmans and radios, found pieces of wood, nails, hammers, buckets, marbles, and glass jars, allowing the individual architecture and acoustics of various sites to guide the flow and development of performance. For this final stop of their six-city North American tour, Suzuki and Onda debuted a collaboration with New Zealand-born American composer and sound artist Annea Lockwood. The three artists presented a new collaborative work, examining the possibility of using found objects both as visual and sound tools, accompanied with live video projections of Brooklyn-based filmmaker Motoko Fukuyama.’ — Blank Forms

 

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Ana da Silva + Phew The Fear Song
‘Brilliant, prickly meeting between The Raincoats’ Ana Da Silva and enigmatic Japanese vocalist Phew, who pursue a tempestuous mix of avant-garde vocals and variegated electronic backdrops, from post-punk rhythmic noise to lysergic, outernational ambience.’ — Boomkat

 

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Colin Self Emblem
‘Siblings is the final installment of Self’s Elation Series, a six-year body of collaborative work that spans opera to performance art, sculpture to song, and in doing so showcases the vitality and versatility of the queer creative underground of New York and beyond. Such interdisciplinary interdependence both necessitates and creates the ideal conditions for kinship: trust, play, close listening. On his debut album, Self’s musical expression was centered on choral arrangements with electronic production that he tagged “devotional.” While his debut LP remains a salve, Siblings demonstrates an extraordinary evolution, pulling the concept of the devotional into an abundance of new shapes. To borrow Donna Haraway’s term, the album is a compost of sonic vocabularies—including choral, techno, pop, folk, string quartet, noise, and East Coast club rhythms—and vocal evocations of kinship, in and among which a network of invigorating ideas burst into life.’ — Ruth Saxelby

 

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Young Paint NEUTRAL PAINT
‘Young Paint (aka Jade Soulform aka Francis aka Generation 4 aka AZD) is a Learning Program that has been progressively emulating the Greyscale to Silvertone process Darren J. Cunningham started during the recording of the Hazyville LP on Werkdiscs in 2008. A decade later much of the Actress material, both composed, recorded and performed live has incorporated partially independent YPAi.’ — WERK_LTD

 

 

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p.s. Hey. ** David Ehrenstein, Hi. I published a book by Michael Lally with Little Caesar. I had a publication party for him at my West LA pad. Maybe you were there, although I don’t think we’d met yet by that point maybe. I’m totally assuming that whatever drawbacks I have re: ‘Performance’ are my issues not its. Ah, a new FaBlog! Hooray! Everyone, Mr. Ehrenstein has a new post at long last on his legendary FaBlog. It’s called ‘Intruder in The Mascara’, and it has something to do with Faulkner, and it’s right here. ** Tosh Berman, Hi, Tosh, Thanks. Yeah, like I said, I think ‘Performance’ is kind of fun, but it just doesn’t reach any further with me, which is just to do with what I’m into, I’m sure. ** Sypha, Hi, James. I look forward to reading Kyler’s book as soon as it gets over here. Great news about the ‘Harlem Smoke’ contract signing. Yes, of course, I’m extremely into hosting a ‘welcome to the world’ post for it, you bet, with jingle bells on. ** Kier, Hey, buddy! Miss you! Ah, so great you had the operation and that its aftermath involves flying colors! Well, except for the immobility thing, yeah, ugh. But you can draw and make work with extremely light materials at least, no? Anyway, victory! So happy for you! Yeah, Zac and I are super psyched about the Oslo thing. I guess it’s not a million percent for sure, but it seems like it’s going to happen. I’m waiting to hear. I think they want me to do a reading too, which is not my favorite thing to do, but I will if it helps get ‘PGL’ screened. Anyway, I’ll let you know as soon as it gets cemented. You take good care of your repairing self, okay, promise? Very gentle hugs from Zac, and mega-love from me! ** Steve Erickson, Well, he could make a living doing interesting smaller films too, obviously. Enjoy your time with the folks. I hope your mom is feeling a lot better. You’re interviewing David Bryne? That should be interesting. I do know a song or three by Primitive Calculators, but I haven’t revisited their stuff in a long time. A revisit sounds good. Thanks! ** _Black_Acrylic, Hi. Ah, once you get the hang of the story form, and once you locate what you’re interested in doing with it, it’ll get easier if no less difficult, no worries. I imagine so: five senses + Day of the Dead. Great luck with the writing, man. ** Dominik, Hi! I’m virtually all better, thank you. Just a few very minor reminders that I wasn’t. Yes, I have to finish an initial draft of Episode 3. Then it goes to Zac for further work. Basically, Zac and I have to get each episode to a point where we’re both happy with it, then we give it to Gisele. She goes over it and tells us what she wants changed, and then we go back into the episode and work on it until she’s happy. So we’ll do that with the three episodes until we’re ready to send them to our producer. She’ll have input, which, so far, we’ve mostly declined to accept because, frankly, her ideas, uh, suck. Then we’ll send all three to ARTE and hope they’re mostly into them. Oh, good, that your restlessness was a creativity related. I sort of thought and hoped so. New SCAB in-process! I totally believe you that the next will be the best yet. That’s how it’s been so far. Yay! Huh, I do know Cody Fern by face, so I guess I’ve seen him in things, or at least in photos and gifs, and, yes, I get what you see in him, you could say, ha ha. Thank you. And those gifs are pretty, I might steal one or two. My weekend … work pretty much. I did see the Avital Ronell lecture, and that was great, and she’s living here now, and that’s cool news ‘cos I like her. Oh, and I ran into Lily Ruban at the lecture, who had a piece in the second SCAB. I hadn’t seen her in ages, that was cool. But, yeah, I think I just worked. The days just seemed to begin and then suddenly be ending. But I have interesting stuff to do this week, so I’ll get out. Do you have anything extra special planned for this week? May it be amazing! ** JM, Hey, man! Yes, I have read the ‘Collected’ Kiddiepunk. I don’t know what to say regarding your finances, but it is pretty packed with killer stuff. Michael doesn’t really publish anything that isn’t killer. ‘Bad Timing’, yeah, I remember liking that. And I think I liked ‘Walkabout’? Have a rockin’ Tuesday if it’s still Tuesday down there. ** Keytung, Your tree stuff sounds squared away. Your doppleganger sounds both classical and post-post-modern, which is pretty rare. ** Misanthrope, Thanks, G. Well, yeah, use the long weekend — I totally forgot it’s almost Thanksgiving, how nice. I mean nice to have totally forgotten about that world’s worst holiday — to get un-flued if you are fluish. I saw that a thing called Franzen’s 10 Rules for Writers existed, and that people were unloading on it/him, but that’s as far as I got or will go since I, you know, don’t like his shit. ** Bill, Hi. Yeah, my cold is almost non. Great that NYC is a relaxer with cultural chasers. Sounds like heaven. Dig. ** Kyler, Hi. Well, whenever it gets here, I’ll be glad. Obviously, like your other friends, I would advise you to concentrate on the good news part of your book being temporarily o.o.p. because it’ll be fine. People’s desires aren’t that fickle, and their memories aren’t that short. ** Thomas Moronic, Hi, T! So, so good to see you! Obviously, my great pleasure and honor to focus on the book, which I totally love. Me? Trying to finish the script for a 3-episode TV series for ARTE that Zac and I are co-writing for Gisele/ARTE. Shepherding PGL’s gradual entrance into the world. Finishing the script for Zac’s and my new film and starting to raise money to make it. Very slowly back to working on a novel I put aside about four years ago. And you? You’re the truly mysterious one. Big love, me. ** Corey Heiferman, Hi, Corey. I like Brad Listi. He did me a few years ago. It was fun, but he didn’t go fan boy. I got his snark. Which I liked. Huh, curious reaction to Lally and Grantham. The Lally poem is more than thirty years old, so if it feels zeitgeist-chasey, that’s an illusion. The Slammer is totally new to me. Huh, interesting. Thank you, I’ll chase down its depths, or at least its semi-depths. I actually know about route ciphers, weirdly enough, because some ancient relative of mine fought in the Civil War, and his surviving notebooks have route ciphers in them. How strange. What English stuff did you end up ordering? ** Okay. Yesterday I showed you recent books that I recommend, and today I’m doing the same with music tracks. And that synchronicity wasn’t even planned out or anything. See you tomorrow.