Post by Toadkiller Dog on Oct 24, 2011 4:48:07 GMT
(Please, if you will, allow me to introduce this strange story. While I personally wrote this, the idea, and the general tale is not my own. Early in the year I stumbled across a series of online blog entires written by a person who's first language was not English.
The events that unfolded are actually true to life, but I've taken the liberty of changing names, places and a few odd details as such. When I found these entries they were in a bad state, like I said the writer's first language was not English, so a lot of it was broken, complete with some gaps missing in between vital points of the story.
I found myself so utterly absorbed and intrigued by this blog that I KNEW I HAD TO re-write them in a more structured, semi-readable fashion. I filled in gaps where the original left only holes or completely broken English and have actually yet to finish this thing, despite slowly adding onto it for months.
The blog entries stopped, so I fear to bring some sort of story like resolution to this I'll have to become creative and finish it myself, trying to stay as close as possible to the tone and feel of the original work. Thanks.)
The summer of 1997 was an interesting one for us. School had let out and somehow most of us had managed to move on into our senior year. Jacob ended up getting kicked out of school a few months before the year had actually finished, and his dad was either too drunk to care or just flat out didn't give a damn.
Either way, as you may know his house became a regular stop for weekend parties, since again, his dad just didn't care and would just coop himself into his room, alone with a bottle of brandy.
This was also the summer in which Brad's taste in music went pitch black. Something we all suffered through together as a group. He said it started with Swans, he was really big on them. I never got it, it was like droning noise that just left you depressed and feeling lousy. But whatever. This was how we ended up finding out about Guy's apartment, which he ran a little cramped music store from.
Guy was like the textbook definition of an audiophile, reminded me of the guy in the movie Ghost World. You know the one. Brad was looking for a vinyl Swans' live album, the title had "castration" in it, I don't remember too well. I was never into things like that. I don't find that type of music healthy in large doses, even if I have professed my love for Suicide (The band, not the act) several times with great enthusiasm.
Anyway, the first time we went there seemed harmless enough. It was just Brad and myself. I think we'd asked Katey to come with us, but she refused and was stuck at home nose deep in one of her books in her little bedroom. It's how she got when she "needed space". I swear she's weirder than all of us put together, and that's saying a lot. A lot. Looking back on it, her and Brad had been feuding and you know how stubborn she could be.
Regardless, Guy's apartment was tiny, and it was made to seem tinier in that it was almost entirely lined in shelves that were packed with records. There were also stacks of both audio and video tapes everywhere, which seemed mostly to be bootlegs and mixtapes of some sort or another. There were some tape decks and record players here and there as well, but practically no real furniture. Odd, I know.
Guy himself was odd too. A stubby little man of middle age perhaps, unkempt in almost every way imaginable. Not much in the way of social graces, he invited us inside quietly. He either wasn't used to having company, or just didn't care. I'd actually bet on both. He lead us into his cramped living room, where he cleared away some of the aforementioned tapes from a stained couch and motioned for us to sit. Which we did and then sat in near complete silence for what seemed like at least five minutes.
Finely Brad spoke up asking about the Swans album that had brought us here, through word of mouth from another second-hand record store. Guy scratched his chin for a moment and nodded and then the two got to going on about music. At this point I was finding boredom a fearsomely overwhelming force. This wasn't my scene. I just wasn't into music as much as Brad, let alone this Guy fellow. I began to zone out as the two began to talk about bands I'd never heard of. I remember that at some point they brought up an album called "Baby Sex" (the name stuck with me for obvious reasons), which I'm pretty sure is by the Residents.
I ended up falling asleep on the couch where I'd settled. The afternoon sunlight, when all the kids are coming home and you're being lazy, procrastinating over the days homework, that kind of stuff makes me tired just thinking of it. Sometime later I woke up with a start, no real reason, just finding myself waking up in a strange place I guess.
I noticed that Brad an Guy had moved to the kitchen, which was tiny and adjacent to the living room. They were talking in hushed tones about something. At this point I realized that it was already dark outside, I glanced down at my watch and it was like half past seven. So I called out to them and their conversation abruptly stopped. Guy almost dropped the beer can he'd been holding. They both stared at me as if they'd just heard a disembodied voice speak to them. I guess they had forgotten I was there. Brad could really get into music when he wanted to, it happened fairly often.
We said our goodbyes (as I hurried the whole thing along, wanting to get out of there) and Brad left with a record he wanted. I remember it now, it's called "Public Castration is a Good Idea". Quaint title. He put it in the backseat and we drove back, he dropped me off at my place.
On the way back though I'd asked him what he and Guy had been talking about all that time. All in all we'd been there over three hours. He said nothing, just music and trivial shit, adding that he was an interesting guy, just a little weird. I agreed and didn't further pursue the matter. He dropped me off and I went nearly straight to sleep, because for some reason I was stupidly tired, despite having done nothing but sleep for the past few hours.
The next day, a Saturday Brad didn't show up at the usual place to meet. As you may know, this was like a custom to the group, so it was odd. I called his cell and got no answer, probably out of juice. He let it die often. I then called the house and his mom answered, said he'd been up since she'd gotten up and had been cooped up in his room all morning. Probably never went to sleep in the first place. This wasn't really uncommon.
Summoning up Katey and Anthony, we decided to march over there and see what was up. I say "we", but honestly Katey could have cared less.
Brad's mom opened the door and looked at the three of us with something like distress on her face. But then again, she never really was a big fan of any of Brad's friends. All the same she was regularly polite with us, and even offered us cookies sometimes, so that was more than good enough for us. Brad's younger sister, Tina was busy playing Mario or something on the SNES in the living room as we passed through, hardly even noticing us.
The door to Brad's room was closed, and it took three or four knocks before he finally opened the door for us. He looked like hell, he hadn't slept, that was clear. An unlit cigarettes dangling loosely from his lips, dark circles under his eyes and messy hair to complete the look. He looked at us as if it made no difference who we were, and then scooted aside on bare feet and allowed us inside, closing the door behind us.
Stepping into the room I'd noticed his record player spinning away, the new Swans record on it, but it wasn't making a sound. Brad had a nice used record player he'd found at a really good price for it's condition. Anthony tried to play around with it a bit, Brad telling him to be careful with it. Katey just grabbed a random magazine and sat down on the corner of his mattress to bury herself in it. Obviously still upset at Brad, though none of us really knew why. She holds grudges like that though, it's just how she is.
So we sat there in silence for a few minutes, Anthony and I were mostly waiting on Brad for an explanation for his reluctance to meet up at the usual spot, or even for the lack of a phone call. Katey was in her own world, absorbed in the magazine she'd scooped up off the floor, a Hustler. Brad raised up his head, he was practically falling asleep in the chair next to the record player, he was about to say something when this explosion of noise erupted from the speakers. A unearthly screech from hell that made us all wince and made Katey drop the magazine to the carpet below. The speakers almost seemed to visibly jump as the hellish sonic boom of torture blasted throughout the room for all of four seconds, then abruptly stopped, and it went quiet again.
Brad's mom stormed into the room with an extremely angry look on her face wanting to know what the hell had just happened. He sheepishly apologized, said it'd been a malfunction of the system, said it wouldn't happen again. She gave us all a disapproving look, her eyes stopping on the spread open Hustler on the floor that Katey had dropped. A spread eagled blonde lay on her back, twiddling herself with two fingers. She brought her eyes back up, slightly narrowed and shut the door.
We really don't look THAT weird, so most parents like us. We behave fairly well too. But I guess when you spend enough time around us as a group like Brad's mom did, you learn to roll your eyes at nearly everything we do, I guess.
After a moment of silence and all of us turning around to stare of Brad, even Katey he decided to spill it, but not before plugging in a pair of large headphones to the record player first. Disconnecting the external speakers to spare our ears any further torture. He started that he had talked to Guy, the fellow who had sold him the record. Apparently it was some sort of special first issue version. It was apparently recorded at a different venue than the one recorded on the official release version. Brad had been very excited about this notion and had got to work on playing it as soon as he'd gotten home last night after dropping me off.
The problem was that it had been playing all night and it didn't make a single sound except for periodic outbursts, apparently all similar to the horrendous one we'd all just witnessed. "Well, fuck that." I interjected, "It's probably scratched beyond recognition or the guy conned you. Take it out and we'll go bitch him out right now and get your money back."
Brad just shook his head. He explained further. He had been listening to the album all night with his headphones on, so as not to disturb his family, and the record wasn't damaged at all. It was just...different, he'd said. He nervously lifted the headphones up and handed them to me. I gave him a blank stare and then put them on.
First I only heard the usual crackle and pop of vinyl. But then I realized there WAS music playing, although very softly. Like it had been recorded from miles away. From what I could make out this did indeed sound like Swans, the droning noise they called music. After listening for about another thirty second I realized there was other sound there too. What sounded like a wood chipper or something and very faint dialogue.
Brad took the headphones off my head and put them on the floor. He began to explain that the outbursts, the extremely high volume screams and screeches coming from the record, were unpredictable, and that's why he couldn't listen to it continuously. You had to crank the volume all the way up to hear the music and sounds at all, and if one of those super sonic blasts came at you through headphones at full volume, that was it. You'd go fucking deaf or damage your eardrums beyond repair.
Listening to the record for any long stretch of time involved putting you at risk of doing just that. Anthony and myself listened to the story with moderate interest, Katey had picked up the magazine again and resumed looking through it, or at least pretending to. In fact it won't even make a difference if I stop mentioning her here. You know her. She's stubborn as all hell when she's pissed off at someone and doesn't even like to acknowledge their existence. She and Brad wouldn't actually formally make up for weeks to come.
Brad looked at our reactions as if he'd expected them, but then he leaned in closer to us, as if to tell us the punchline to a joke.
"The thing is," he started, and I remember this word for word, "That this isn't a Swans record. This a lot of places, like a list of places being recited repeatedly."
I didn't really react. I mean, aside from being a danger to your health, the damned thing wasn't even a Swans record. Probably a random bootleg from a no-name band that never went anywhere. "Fuck it." I said and put on the headphones again, despite Brad starting to protest. I strained my hearing, trying to make out what was being said, trying to hear the message. The vocalist, who was definitely not Michael Gira of Swans (I believe that's the guy's name...), was indeed screaming out names of locations. Places in OUR city.
Record Stores, it would seem.
When I confirmed this, the street names, the locations, everyone looked at me weirdly. Suddenly this had become interesting. This had to have been recorded by a native of our city...it didn't make sense else wise. Had to have been some no-name local band's bootleg. But my hearing isn't the best. I couldn't make out all of what was being recited. At this point we were intrigued, at least all of us except Katey, who continued to pour over the pictorials of nude women engaging in raunchy acts...despite being straight, as far as we knew.
We decided we were gonna get to the bottom of this. We were bored on a summer day, nothing better to do, and it could prove interesting. The first step would be to find out what the guy was saying. We decided the best course of action would be to call up the guy with the best ears in our little circle, which of course would be Nick. Remember him? Yeah, we weren't really good friends at the time. He was a decent enough guy, and we'd have decent conversations every once in a while with him.
So we called him up and asked if he'd like to hang out for a while, just chill out and get some drinks maybe. At this time Katey sighed deeply, finally putting the Hustler down and made toward the door. She stopped and turned around briefly to wave goodbye, rolling her eyes and promptly left, slipping out without saying a word. Whatever.
Nick agreed to the idea of having a few drinks. So we met up at the usual place where we did our usual "undercover" non-I.D. drinking. We got to it casually, calmly, and as briefly as possible summarized the story. He seemed fascinated by the whole thing, but as he would later tell me, he didn't really believe us at the time. He was only humoring us because, remember, they had sort of kicked him out of the cool group at school for a reason he never talked about, so he was kinda looking for a new circle of friends anyway. He was too cool for us before...whatever.
Anyway, we went back to Brad's house, and got another disapproving look from his mom as we tromped through the living room back into his bedroom. The record was still playing. Again though, we warned Nick about the sudden blasts of super loud noise. He seemed unimpressed by our sombre warning. Again, because at the time he didn't believe us. Without a second's thought on it, he put the headphones on and we hurried to find some paper and a pen for him.
He jotted, or rather scribbled down a few names and locations, a handful or so to be exact. When the message started to loop he took off the headphones. With a half-bewildered and half-amused look on his face, he said calmly "That's all."
I'm not shitting you when I say that not more than a second after he'd finished saying "That's all" that the record emitted the most brutalized, awful scream, it was like a wave of metal crashing into a sea of metal, with hundreds of tortured human screams playing over it. It literally fucking BLEW out Brad's headphones. We were all left standing there in shocked silence, especially Nick. He was left slack jawed. It's funny looking back on it now, but back then I felt bad for him. We had pretty much used him and put him in danger of losing his hearing, but we HAD warned him. We just stood there in silence, with the list in hand.
-To Be Continued.
The events that unfolded are actually true to life, but I've taken the liberty of changing names, places and a few odd details as such. When I found these entries they were in a bad state, like I said the writer's first language was not English, so a lot of it was broken, complete with some gaps missing in between vital points of the story.
I found myself so utterly absorbed and intrigued by this blog that I KNEW I HAD TO re-write them in a more structured, semi-readable fashion. I filled in gaps where the original left only holes or completely broken English and have actually yet to finish this thing, despite slowly adding onto it for months.
The blog entries stopped, so I fear to bring some sort of story like resolution to this I'll have to become creative and finish it myself, trying to stay as close as possible to the tone and feel of the original work. Thanks.)
The summer of 1997 was an interesting one for us. School had let out and somehow most of us had managed to move on into our senior year. Jacob ended up getting kicked out of school a few months before the year had actually finished, and his dad was either too drunk to care or just flat out didn't give a damn.
Either way, as you may know his house became a regular stop for weekend parties, since again, his dad just didn't care and would just coop himself into his room, alone with a bottle of brandy.
This was also the summer in which Brad's taste in music went pitch black. Something we all suffered through together as a group. He said it started with Swans, he was really big on them. I never got it, it was like droning noise that just left you depressed and feeling lousy. But whatever. This was how we ended up finding out about Guy's apartment, which he ran a little cramped music store from.
Guy was like the textbook definition of an audiophile, reminded me of the guy in the movie Ghost World. You know the one. Brad was looking for a vinyl Swans' live album, the title had "castration" in it, I don't remember too well. I was never into things like that. I don't find that type of music healthy in large doses, even if I have professed my love for Suicide (The band, not the act) several times with great enthusiasm.
Anyway, the first time we went there seemed harmless enough. It was just Brad and myself. I think we'd asked Katey to come with us, but she refused and was stuck at home nose deep in one of her books in her little bedroom. It's how she got when she "needed space". I swear she's weirder than all of us put together, and that's saying a lot. A lot. Looking back on it, her and Brad had been feuding and you know how stubborn she could be.
Regardless, Guy's apartment was tiny, and it was made to seem tinier in that it was almost entirely lined in shelves that were packed with records. There were also stacks of both audio and video tapes everywhere, which seemed mostly to be bootlegs and mixtapes of some sort or another. There were some tape decks and record players here and there as well, but practically no real furniture. Odd, I know.
Guy himself was odd too. A stubby little man of middle age perhaps, unkempt in almost every way imaginable. Not much in the way of social graces, he invited us inside quietly. He either wasn't used to having company, or just didn't care. I'd actually bet on both. He lead us into his cramped living room, where he cleared away some of the aforementioned tapes from a stained couch and motioned for us to sit. Which we did and then sat in near complete silence for what seemed like at least five minutes.
Finely Brad spoke up asking about the Swans album that had brought us here, through word of mouth from another second-hand record store. Guy scratched his chin for a moment and nodded and then the two got to going on about music. At this point I was finding boredom a fearsomely overwhelming force. This wasn't my scene. I just wasn't into music as much as Brad, let alone this Guy fellow. I began to zone out as the two began to talk about bands I'd never heard of. I remember that at some point they brought up an album called "Baby Sex" (the name stuck with me for obvious reasons), which I'm pretty sure is by the Residents.
I ended up falling asleep on the couch where I'd settled. The afternoon sunlight, when all the kids are coming home and you're being lazy, procrastinating over the days homework, that kind of stuff makes me tired just thinking of it. Sometime later I woke up with a start, no real reason, just finding myself waking up in a strange place I guess.
I noticed that Brad an Guy had moved to the kitchen, which was tiny and adjacent to the living room. They were talking in hushed tones about something. At this point I realized that it was already dark outside, I glanced down at my watch and it was like half past seven. So I called out to them and their conversation abruptly stopped. Guy almost dropped the beer can he'd been holding. They both stared at me as if they'd just heard a disembodied voice speak to them. I guess they had forgotten I was there. Brad could really get into music when he wanted to, it happened fairly often.
We said our goodbyes (as I hurried the whole thing along, wanting to get out of there) and Brad left with a record he wanted. I remember it now, it's called "Public Castration is a Good Idea". Quaint title. He put it in the backseat and we drove back, he dropped me off at my place.
On the way back though I'd asked him what he and Guy had been talking about all that time. All in all we'd been there over three hours. He said nothing, just music and trivial shit, adding that he was an interesting guy, just a little weird. I agreed and didn't further pursue the matter. He dropped me off and I went nearly straight to sleep, because for some reason I was stupidly tired, despite having done nothing but sleep for the past few hours.
The next day, a Saturday Brad didn't show up at the usual place to meet. As you may know, this was like a custom to the group, so it was odd. I called his cell and got no answer, probably out of juice. He let it die often. I then called the house and his mom answered, said he'd been up since she'd gotten up and had been cooped up in his room all morning. Probably never went to sleep in the first place. This wasn't really uncommon.
Summoning up Katey and Anthony, we decided to march over there and see what was up. I say "we", but honestly Katey could have cared less.
Brad's mom opened the door and looked at the three of us with something like distress on her face. But then again, she never really was a big fan of any of Brad's friends. All the same she was regularly polite with us, and even offered us cookies sometimes, so that was more than good enough for us. Brad's younger sister, Tina was busy playing Mario or something on the SNES in the living room as we passed through, hardly even noticing us.
The door to Brad's room was closed, and it took three or four knocks before he finally opened the door for us. He looked like hell, he hadn't slept, that was clear. An unlit cigarettes dangling loosely from his lips, dark circles under his eyes and messy hair to complete the look. He looked at us as if it made no difference who we were, and then scooted aside on bare feet and allowed us inside, closing the door behind us.
Stepping into the room I'd noticed his record player spinning away, the new Swans record on it, but it wasn't making a sound. Brad had a nice used record player he'd found at a really good price for it's condition. Anthony tried to play around with it a bit, Brad telling him to be careful with it. Katey just grabbed a random magazine and sat down on the corner of his mattress to bury herself in it. Obviously still upset at Brad, though none of us really knew why. She holds grudges like that though, it's just how she is.
So we sat there in silence for a few minutes, Anthony and I were mostly waiting on Brad for an explanation for his reluctance to meet up at the usual spot, or even for the lack of a phone call. Katey was in her own world, absorbed in the magazine she'd scooped up off the floor, a Hustler. Brad raised up his head, he was practically falling asleep in the chair next to the record player, he was about to say something when this explosion of noise erupted from the speakers. A unearthly screech from hell that made us all wince and made Katey drop the magazine to the carpet below. The speakers almost seemed to visibly jump as the hellish sonic boom of torture blasted throughout the room for all of four seconds, then abruptly stopped, and it went quiet again.
Brad's mom stormed into the room with an extremely angry look on her face wanting to know what the hell had just happened. He sheepishly apologized, said it'd been a malfunction of the system, said it wouldn't happen again. She gave us all a disapproving look, her eyes stopping on the spread open Hustler on the floor that Katey had dropped. A spread eagled blonde lay on her back, twiddling herself with two fingers. She brought her eyes back up, slightly narrowed and shut the door.
We really don't look THAT weird, so most parents like us. We behave fairly well too. But I guess when you spend enough time around us as a group like Brad's mom did, you learn to roll your eyes at nearly everything we do, I guess.
After a moment of silence and all of us turning around to stare of Brad, even Katey he decided to spill it, but not before plugging in a pair of large headphones to the record player first. Disconnecting the external speakers to spare our ears any further torture. He started that he had talked to Guy, the fellow who had sold him the record. Apparently it was some sort of special first issue version. It was apparently recorded at a different venue than the one recorded on the official release version. Brad had been very excited about this notion and had got to work on playing it as soon as he'd gotten home last night after dropping me off.
The problem was that it had been playing all night and it didn't make a single sound except for periodic outbursts, apparently all similar to the horrendous one we'd all just witnessed. "Well, fuck that." I interjected, "It's probably scratched beyond recognition or the guy conned you. Take it out and we'll go bitch him out right now and get your money back."
Brad just shook his head. He explained further. He had been listening to the album all night with his headphones on, so as not to disturb his family, and the record wasn't damaged at all. It was just...different, he'd said. He nervously lifted the headphones up and handed them to me. I gave him a blank stare and then put them on.
First I only heard the usual crackle and pop of vinyl. But then I realized there WAS music playing, although very softly. Like it had been recorded from miles away. From what I could make out this did indeed sound like Swans, the droning noise they called music. After listening for about another thirty second I realized there was other sound there too. What sounded like a wood chipper or something and very faint dialogue.
Brad took the headphones off my head and put them on the floor. He began to explain that the outbursts, the extremely high volume screams and screeches coming from the record, were unpredictable, and that's why he couldn't listen to it continuously. You had to crank the volume all the way up to hear the music and sounds at all, and if one of those super sonic blasts came at you through headphones at full volume, that was it. You'd go fucking deaf or damage your eardrums beyond repair.
Listening to the record for any long stretch of time involved putting you at risk of doing just that. Anthony and myself listened to the story with moderate interest, Katey had picked up the magazine again and resumed looking through it, or at least pretending to. In fact it won't even make a difference if I stop mentioning her here. You know her. She's stubborn as all hell when she's pissed off at someone and doesn't even like to acknowledge their existence. She and Brad wouldn't actually formally make up for weeks to come.
Brad looked at our reactions as if he'd expected them, but then he leaned in closer to us, as if to tell us the punchline to a joke.
"The thing is," he started, and I remember this word for word, "That this isn't a Swans record. This a lot of places, like a list of places being recited repeatedly."
I didn't really react. I mean, aside from being a danger to your health, the damned thing wasn't even a Swans record. Probably a random bootleg from a no-name band that never went anywhere. "Fuck it." I said and put on the headphones again, despite Brad starting to protest. I strained my hearing, trying to make out what was being said, trying to hear the message. The vocalist, who was definitely not Michael Gira of Swans (I believe that's the guy's name...), was indeed screaming out names of locations. Places in OUR city.
Record Stores, it would seem.
When I confirmed this, the street names, the locations, everyone looked at me weirdly. Suddenly this had become interesting. This had to have been recorded by a native of our city...it didn't make sense else wise. Had to have been some no-name local band's bootleg. But my hearing isn't the best. I couldn't make out all of what was being recited. At this point we were intrigued, at least all of us except Katey, who continued to pour over the pictorials of nude women engaging in raunchy acts...despite being straight, as far as we knew.
We decided we were gonna get to the bottom of this. We were bored on a summer day, nothing better to do, and it could prove interesting. The first step would be to find out what the guy was saying. We decided the best course of action would be to call up the guy with the best ears in our little circle, which of course would be Nick. Remember him? Yeah, we weren't really good friends at the time. He was a decent enough guy, and we'd have decent conversations every once in a while with him.
So we called him up and asked if he'd like to hang out for a while, just chill out and get some drinks maybe. At this time Katey sighed deeply, finally putting the Hustler down and made toward the door. She stopped and turned around briefly to wave goodbye, rolling her eyes and promptly left, slipping out without saying a word. Whatever.
Nick agreed to the idea of having a few drinks. So we met up at the usual place where we did our usual "undercover" non-I.D. drinking. We got to it casually, calmly, and as briefly as possible summarized the story. He seemed fascinated by the whole thing, but as he would later tell me, he didn't really believe us at the time. He was only humoring us because, remember, they had sort of kicked him out of the cool group at school for a reason he never talked about, so he was kinda looking for a new circle of friends anyway. He was too cool for us before...whatever.
Anyway, we went back to Brad's house, and got another disapproving look from his mom as we tromped through the living room back into his bedroom. The record was still playing. Again though, we warned Nick about the sudden blasts of super loud noise. He seemed unimpressed by our sombre warning. Again, because at the time he didn't believe us. Without a second's thought on it, he put the headphones on and we hurried to find some paper and a pen for him.
He jotted, or rather scribbled down a few names and locations, a handful or so to be exact. When the message started to loop he took off the headphones. With a half-bewildered and half-amused look on his face, he said calmly "That's all."
I'm not shitting you when I say that not more than a second after he'd finished saying "That's all" that the record emitted the most brutalized, awful scream, it was like a wave of metal crashing into a sea of metal, with hundreds of tortured human screams playing over it. It literally fucking BLEW out Brad's headphones. We were all left standing there in shocked silence, especially Nick. He was left slack jawed. It's funny looking back on it now, but back then I felt bad for him. We had pretty much used him and put him in danger of losing his hearing, but we HAD warned him. We just stood there in silence, with the list in hand.
-To Be Continued.