Friday, October 7, 2011

The Cat Herder's Lament











OFFICIOUS PUS RELEASE
FOR IMMEDIATE PUSTROBUTION

"Okay, so..." whenever you see anyone begin a question, post or, God forbid, instructional article online with "Okay, so..." you need to smack the offender upside the brainpan and tell them to get to the fucking point. Because I can't think of a single instance where the "Okay, so..." couldn't just be deleted and, oh, I don't know... start the fucking question or post without those two useless saggy tit verbal appendages that make your would-be readers want to throw up a little bit in their mouths.

For one thing, anyone who begins a post with "Okay, so..." sounds like either an immature girl, a petulant teenage emo boy itching for a warm, soft place to pout, or an NPR weekend host. I can almost hear the rising inflection in your goddam voice, ending every phrase as if you're asking a question when you're actually trying but failing to write a simple fucking declarative sentence.

Not only does it make you sound like you're whining and looking for an excuse to force readers to abuse you, it angers me that I have to waste 10 seconds trying to decide whether to ignore your stupid post or troll the fuck out of you by pretending to be your friend while giving you terrible advice that is sure to get you banned from the entire interbutt and ridiculed the first time you try to actually follow that advice.

And if you're a grown man starting a post with a sentence that even vaguely resembles this...

"OK so the FRN has been through some hard bumps in the past year..."

...you are evidently suffering from an absence of dangly bits, which can be the only explanation for why you cannot restrain yourself from the excessive use an effeminate word like "nasty", a word that should never be uttered or written by anyone other than your Aunt Gertrude when she's fretting at her 13 year old chihuahua for dry humping her leg again.

Furthermore, if you've repeated the same fucking whine over and over for a decade, with only minor modifications in names and places as necessary to indicate whomever and whatever has bunched up your lacy underthings this time, you need to get off the goddam interweb.

Don't make me troll you again, silly hareball. I remix your audio foar teh lulz. Your so-called pirates are whiny cannibal hamsters and eat each other's tiny dingleberries. Now go away or I shall troll you a second time.


moar Radio Paranoia audio anarchy 4 u

Speaking of remixing your audio...

I've been busy slicing and dicing the recent Radio Jamba International and WBNY programs to make Radio Jambalaya, and hadn't planned on writing a blog entry at all this week. It really goes against my nature to write such dreadfully lewd, rude and crude stuff. My sincerest apologies to any who were offended by the above exercise in slandercasting and ruining pirate radio. But my promoter said I needed to fan the flames for the sake of publicity. Supposedly it helps the pay-per-lulz figures. He also says I should demand the bunnyman and Kraquerette be tested for steroids, but I'm pretty sure he's joking. There's absolutely no evidence they're experiencing elevated testosterone levels. If they are juicing they should check to be sure it's not estrogen.


Beings of Sound
NSFW: Lewd, crude and obscene language, mostly by a neurotic cartoon chick.



The September 2011 RJI tribute to Poet of The Crystal Ship had some pretty good bits, especially the segments with Germaine from "Neurotically Yours" reading her awful anti-erotic poetry, and Saul Williams performing "Coded Language." The audio from that particular version of Coded Language seemed to have some st-st-stuttering, like a glitchy audio stream. But I dug it. So I sampled the stutters and Williams' many sharp intakes of breath, loaded them up in Winamp, hit the randomize button and recycled the various audio bits until it developed its own peculiar rhythm. Then I sampled some beats from another part of the RJI show, reversed and looped them and mashed the whole thing together. Other bits came from one of the WBNY feud shows (2006, I think), Boxxy (natch), Cosmikdebris from a December 2009 Lumpy Gravy Show, and some of my favorite inspirations for audio collages: Jon Nelson at Some Assembly Required; odds and ends from Radiolab. One of the variations ended up as the 6 min 12 second version of Beings of Sound, the title taken from a line in Coded Language.


The Cat Herder's Lament
Warning: This is made of 99.99% F-bombs! Not suitable for anyone!



Of all the shitty volunteer efforts on the vast, immane, interwoven, interacting systems of systems we know and despise as the interbutt, the worst may be the moderator's position at the Free Radio Network. Pity the unfortunates who can only stand by and observe the twin horrors of Murphy's boundless ego and bottomless sock drawer.

After one of my early and rather crude audio cut-ups escaped captivity in late 2009 and nearly capsized the Floating Rotten Nutsack, Cosmikdebris was kind enough and courageous (or foolhardy) enough to give exposure and airplay that 7 Minutes to Hell might never otherwise have enjoyed. What tickled me more than the drama queen antics of the Lagomurph's various socks when he blamed the hapless "Spore" for unearthing the fetid audio clip, was Cosmikdebris' weary tone of resignation when he commented on the bit of aural trollery. I knew that one day I must create a fitting tribute. And, from having listened to many Lumpy Gravy Shows and knowing his appreciation for musical eccentricity, I sincerely do hope he'll enjoy it.

And if not, well, hell... I still had a blast putting these together. The hybrid Jamaican Dub/Dubstep whumpa-whumpa actually came from sampling beats from the RJI show and bastardizing the hell out of the samples until they sounded phat, then reversing and looping them. Ideally I'd like to create weird hip-hop stuff made entirely from other pirate radio shows, something akin to the amazing Motown Meltdown remixes where everything was taken from the original source masters. If you dig audio anarchy you'll love Motown Meltdown vols 1 & 2. I was a little disappointed by Girl Talk after hearing all the hype back in 2009, but that's probably because the source material wasn't familiar to me. But the Motown Meltdown stuff comes from familiar sources, but totally re-imagined. It's like 'shrooms without the risk of barfing or getting busted.

Meanwhile, I'm still working on remixing the recent WBNY salute to Poet and yours truly, Guise Faux. Because as the Lagomurph is addicted to socks and swimming in De Nile, we at Radio Paranoia are addicted to all things meta. By the way, CB and Kracker - please don't bury your voice overs so deep under music beds and sound effects. Makes it hard as hell to dig out and remix. And watch those levels - I'm hearing some clipping in there.


If you dig the sound collage approach, check out Mashed in Plastic on YouTube, with some crazy good remixes of David Lynch movie bits and Lynch/Badalamenti music.

40 comments:

  1. Clipping? Must have been using Kracker's Commando instead of the compressor/limiter protected Grenade.

    I bet the folks in Worthington are none too happy about the RFI caused by overdriving that thing.

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  2. My god, I just won my bet! Pat's sockpuppet 'Winston' just responded to his 'OK time to get get a life!' post, LOL!!

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  3. I'm sure this is pretty obvious to most, but Pat's using the "Winston" sock puppet again. He's not even trying very hard anymore.

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  4. ...and now he's reacting to our observations of this by editing his Winston post denying it!

    Jeez Pat, everybody knows what a proxy server is, DUH!

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  5. Will Mosby and Jaques LaMilne bet the next to chime in?

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  6. Yep, there should be another sockpuppet posting on it's way to shore up defenses AND when this fails to convince others, an ejaculative run of WBNY spew blogs from Mongoloid Mike.

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  7. "Clipping? Must have been using Kracker's Commando instead of the compressor/limiter protected Grenade."

    I took the audio samples from the studio version of the RJI tribute to Poet, which Kracker scattergunned via e-mail last month. I never heard it on air and forgot to listen for it on WBCQ. But Kracker's mic levels sounded overdriven, although overall the levels were okay. I doubt it would even be noticeable on shortwave unless the signal was strong.

    Do the Corsair and Commando designs not include the compressor/limiter feature of the Grenade? That's one of the niftiest things about the Grenade. It'd be the perfect design for electronically-impaired technical nincompoops like me. I see several low power AM MW transmitters on the market, but I'll bet the Grenade would compete nicely if someone were to market them now.

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  8. These mashes are great. The narcissistic elements of the free radio "scene" (yes, all of us involved in this crap have such tendencies, some more than others) are ripe for sampling to humorous effect. "Beings of Sound" reminds me of the best of Idio-Audio's admirable work.

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  9. I have an idea for "improving the FRN":

    Take away Pat Murphy's admin tools, kick out his sock-puppets, and the battle is half-won!

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  10. This comment has been removed by the author.

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  11. I was hoping this post was going to be about anonymity and pirate radio*; i.e., why it's better not know who actually runs "The Voice of Jimmy the Weasel", because the drama gets to be a little too much.

    That said, the cut-ups were very good....at this point, I would assume that the rodent and Kracker will be using CW to keep Pirate War `11 going on; the "gay pirate radio sex" bit had to sting.



    ____________

    * I called it a "Kirk Trummel" rule, but really Andy Yoder brought it up first.

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  12. Okay, so...

    Glad you got a kick out of the remixes, Cosmikdebris.

    Audio collages, etc., aren't usually as risky now as it was when artists like Negativland were cracking the shell on notions of what was or wasn't permissible, from the perspective of either copyrights or good/poor taste. Reminds me, I've been planning a blog article about the topic, including some anecdotes from other remix artists.

    Thanks for the tip about Idio-Audio. I'm trying to find some of those recordings in a format other than Real Player. Might need to try a RAM plug-in for Winamp.

    Regarding narcissism... yeah... sometimes when I re-read some of the shit I've written, I can't remember whether I was trying to be funny or I'm just being an asshole. Probably both. If everyone agreed it was funny, I'm probably doing it wrong.

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  13. Okay, so...

    Strelnikov - I haven't forgotten about that follow up to the last blog piece from September. In fact, I wrote it that same week. But it's a ranty, tedious piece of crap. You could get your fill of that just from reading old FRN posts by Beans.

    It's not really about the issue of anonymity. We covered that in July with "The Irony of Anonymity
    ". It's generally agreed that we respect each other's preferences for online pseudonyms - which is not by any means the same thing as sockpuppetry.

    The core issue seems to be who is and isn't a public figure. Like it or not, that does influence the privacy issue online or in the traditional media.

    Annnddd... this reply is already rehashing some of the same thoughts I've written in that ranty, unpublished blog entry. I'll try to de-rantify it and post it soon.

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  14. Winston:

    "At least until one in particular started attacking anyone and everyone his mentally unbalanced mind found fault with.."

    Sounds like he's talking about Commander Bunny! (Must be trying to establish credibility by attacking one of his other socks)

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  15. The claimed Harpers Ferry locale is also false. That ironically is where the dxer Alex Vranes Jr. was from who had a run in with the bunny mafia a few years ago.

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  16. It might actually be correct--- for this weekend only--- with CB broadcasting on the road, and all. Stay at a hotel with internet access, or maybe visit a 'wifi cafe' and you're all set. You wouldn't even have to own any property in West Virginia... or western Virginia, for that matter.

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  17. Winston doth protest too much, methinks.

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  18. "The claimed Harpers Ferry locale..."

    I noticed that. What are the odds of two pirate radio DXers citing that tiny town as home? (Pop. around 500, in an equally low population county.)

    Here on sparsely populated Umbrage Island - with a summer crowd swelling the population to 2,000 (metric count - equivalent to approx 1,600 of your American tourists) - we are the only pirate radio DXer. And the only radio station is the LDE/Tellurian Propagation Research Facility.

    "Winston doth protest too much, methinks."

    It's a good thing! The more he writes, the more holes he wears through his socks.

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  19. Murphy did the online private investigator thing to dig up dirt on Vranes then posted on the FRN under various sockpuppets.

    He also tried to claim that Vranes was the op of "Radio Appalachia" via the sockpuppet route and emails.

    Pat needs to see a shrink before this thing goes beyond radio.

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  20. Commander deleted his
    WBNY ON THE AIR (cache) post. Is the roadtrip cancelled? Because nobody could hear him? (Better beef up yer Grenade, there, CB-- you're going to get washed out by all those REAL transmitters out there!)

    Or did he delete it because he finally realized he just finished telling us 'don't announce to the world on your blog that you're going to be on the air, stoopid monkeys', and then went and did that very thing? LMAO

    Perhaps both.

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  21. @Guise Faux

    Sorry, I totally forgot about the summer post and the big discussion of anonymity therein.

    I get that this is about "public figurehood"; that was a hard game to play for certain people back when I was "doing" FM piracy, especially over at the (better) pirate station in town, because some of their DJs had lives in the local arts scene, so it was an open secret any halfwit FCC man could have caught on to (they just threatened the landlords instead.)

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  22. I see that in the latest "closed to comments" WBNY rantblog that Commander Bunny states that Artie Bigley admits to having turned in Poet.


    When and where did Artie Bigley actually admit to this?

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  23. He never did. Pat's been making stuff up out of thin air for quite some time now.

    And, of course, it's already been established that it would have been impossible for him, or anyone else, to have written the Email CB presented as "proof" as dated, since it mentions a website that didn't exist yet on April 8 (freeradiocafe.com). He just keeps repeating the lie, hoping that if he says it enough times, people will start to believe it. (I think that comes from having been campaign manager for too many Republicans where the strategy worked.)

    Anybody can copy&paste a valid I.P. onto a FAKE email, and that is just what he did. Should have done better on the formatting, though...

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  24. "You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you can not fool all of the people all of the time." A.L.

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  25. I've been kicking what I'm about to write around in my head for a while, and it's still not completely formed. Apologies in advance a) for hijacking the comments here to use as my own soapbox, and b) if any of this comes across as stream-of-consciousness.

    Some background: I've been a UNID QRP pirate for a couple of years now; 10W on a homebuilt Grenade and a longwire. If time, money, and space permitted, more effort would be being put into this venture, but they're in short supply so this is what I currently have to work with. Tangental to that, I've also been watching the Pirate Radio War of 2011 unfold for the past few months. As a result, I have some observations and opinions to offer as someone who is a (small) part of pirate radio, but very much on its outer fringes.

    Poet's bust was bullshit, and it's very evident to me from the wording of the NOUO he received that he was ratted out. What is not completely clear to me, however, is who the actual culprit is. Granted, the evidence points strongly at the CB/Murphy camp - but short of an admission from Murphy or another responsible party that he was the one who dropped the proverbial dime (like that will ever happen) or an FOIA request prising that info out of the FCC, I doubt we'll ever know for certain.

    Don't take the above to mean that I consider CB/Murphy to be inculpable; I certainly don't, and my personal belief is that if he wasn't the guy who snitched then he likely knows who did. But I am looking at this from as close to an impartially-judicial standpoint as I can manage, and I just can't say with 100% certainty that he did it. 97%, perhaps, but that 3% is nagging at the back of my head.

    So what does this have to do with me?

    Well, like I said: I'm out on the fringe of a fringe group already, and things like this make me not want to be a greater part of it. Maybe I speak for myself in this regard; perhaps there are others who feel the same way. I don't know. But from as external of a perspective as I can muster, my question is this: why the hell would anyone (myself included) want to be more involved with a community where this sort of behavior takes place?

    I love what I do (when I'm actually able to do it), and don't give a damn if nobody hears me. The point is to get my signal out, enjoy what time I can spend on pirate radio enjoying pirate radio, and hope that if someone does catch my broadcast, they enjoy it too.

    This isn't a contest; it's a pursuit. Of course, you can let your ego get the better of you and treat it like a contest - which is fine, as long as your goal is to ultimately be the tallest midget. I may be going out on a limb here, but in the grand scheme of things, there probably aren't all that many people in this world who give a flying fuck about who the king-shit of the shortwave pirates is.

    Meanwhile, I'll plug along, still UNID, doing what I periodically do with the 'nade. It's not what I want, but having seen how at least one pirate has been turned in by (quite likely) another pirate, that's just not something I want to have to be involved with. There's a definite trust issue here, and if I can't trust those around me then the easiest way to deal with the problem is simply to not be actively involved with the circles where those problems happen.

    The best of luck to everyone with similar goals in the community to mine, but I just don't want to have to put up with this shit.

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  26. Thanks for your comments - very well said.

    "This isn't a contest; it's a pursuit."

    Absolutely agreed. As it should be with any artistic or creative endeavor.

    I've taken that approach with this blog as well. It's just a diversion to express myself in ways I might never do otherwise and, with luck, amuse a few readers and relieve some of the tension along the way.

    You can be assured listeners appreciate your efforts. Some of the most interesting pirate stations are also among the most enigmatic and low profile.

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  27. UNID QRP pirate


    yes very well said

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  28. Hey, speaking of Idio-Audio, I'm dusting off the cassettes and CDs of their run on WBCQ and posting them as soon as the rips are warm. Keep an eye on http://www.radionewyorkinternational.com/archives/index.php?path=idio-audio/ for the MP3s. The old real audio shows will be here as well, transcoded to mp3.

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  29. That will be excellent, cosmikdebris, looking forward to hearing those with relish... and perhaps a bit of mustard! I've checked several places online, including the old site for Idio-Audio, but the audio files were missing. I know it takes a lot of time to transfer from tape, so thanks in advance.

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  30. Nice post up by UNID QRP. It's telling that so few of the king midget's amigos have come to his defence. Of course I did hear Kracker a few weeks back on the Allan Wiener Worldwide phone-in making snide asides re: Poet -- Wiener, to his credit, ignored the asides.

    The only question remaining to my mind is what is the end-game for the parties to P.R.W.2k11 ("the contest")? Where do the parties hope to end up? The rabbit is thoroughly dis-credited and may never make the Pirate Hall-of-Fame (he makes more noise pounding his keyboard on the internet than with his Grenade); the Poet is already in the Hall but can no longer easily broadcast due to the NOUO; the Faux has a hot internet blog but a fading story, and only dabbles in audio and radio production. Kracker and Cosmik Debris will prevail over WBCQ but, due to the gang-like operation of their Bowling League sub-group, will struggle to reach out and attract programming to the 5110 program block. Will Andy Yoder even write about any of this in his Pirate Radio Annual 2012? Somehow I doubt it!

    Meanwhile the notables involved in "the pursuit" rather than "the contest" in 2011 include the likes of Captain Morgan, Radio Ronin, Wolverine etc., who transmit more and pound their keyboards hardly at all.

    Again what is the endgame for those involved in "the contest" rather than "the pursuit"?

    73s to all DXers.

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  31. "...the Faux has a hot internet blog but a fading story, and only dabbles in audio and radio production."

    You are so correct, sir. For the most part Tales of Radio Paranoia has been a one trick bunny.

    While this blog saw remarkable growth - 20,000 page views in the first six months - that was due primarily to the novelty and timing. It won't last. I expect long term traffic to settle down to 1,000 or so page views a month, nowhere near the summer peak of over 6,000 page views a month.

    "Kracker and Cosmik Debris will prevail over WBCQ..."

    I'm reluctant to venture many generalizations about participants in this game. Like Anonymous, pirate radio attracts fierce individualists, anarchists, eccentrics, iconoclasts, pranksters, misfits and mutts. We tend to do our own thing as we wish, even if it happens to differ from the actions and opinions of friends and colleagues.

    Besides, WBCQ is a business. If I weren't such a lazy sot, I'd consider buying a block of time for a weekly show on Area 51. I'll bet they'd welcome a paying customer, even if it happens to rub some the wrong way.

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  32. Where did I read that Kracker had offered Poet time on WBCQ (Area 51 block 5110 khz) to broadcast? Was this the olive branch in the Pirate Radio War 2011? Or was it yet another point of attack? Incidentally Poet refused as BCQ is not pirate radio.

    But at some point all of these guys have got to get back to "the pursuit" of free radio. The leaves are falling off trees, yes it was fun while it lasted, but it's time to put the feud away. If you're not broadcasting on HF, you are not the King of pirate radio or gonna be in any Hall of Fame. Feuds, keyboard pounding and self-promotion are just distraction.

    The only "end game" can be get back to the pursuit of free radio.

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  33. IMHO, Kracker's prime motivation for the WBCQ offer, should I have accepted it, was the chance to get hold of studio-quality audio from me so he could mash it up.

    He made the offer only hours after publishing yet another attack-post on me. There was no "olive branch" there--- only his "crocodile concern" that I had no message going out over the air.

    I said I had made other arrangements with "a network of stations"-- which he then went on to publish, and Commander Murphy then made veiled threats against any stations who would be presumptuous enough to run our programming, in a post he removed 24 hours later:
    Google cache

    The stations in question will be taking such precautions as they feel is necessary...

    Yes, the eventual "endgame" is pirate radio, for those lucky enough to be able to engage in it-- but that does not mean that the 'war' I'm in will end now. I have been the target of a lot of unanswered shots, and I intend to retaliate. When I do, the material will be much more interesting than to merely call him an 'asshole' or a 'crybaby', even though those descriptions may also be appropriate.

    Just because I have received a NOUO from the FCC does not negate any right I may have to privacy-- although CB seems to think it does, as he publishes my full, real name over and over (in detail which was NOT published by the FCC, one may note). So, just to be "fair", he cannot expect to "hide behind" the fact that he is still a pirate to escape the possibility that I will retaliate by publishing interesting facts about him. There is no moral reason for me to have to respect the privacy of someone who now fits the definition of a 'stalker', just because he also happens to be a radio pirate...

    P.S. I never sought to be 'the king of pirate radio'--- but I know of someone who did, indeed, still does.

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  34. I love Kracker's new truck decals. Nobody in Ohio will have a clue who Poet is, but they will all think Krackho likes a little "diaper lovin" ... with other men. Who's your Daddy Krackho?

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  35. That does seem like it could get him a little of the 'wrong kind of attention' doesn't it? Well, maybe he's into that now-- or he'll learn to like it, if they just buy him nice things.

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  36. Those decals do give the impression that the Lagomurph and Krackwhore are running a delivery service for diaper fetishists.

    And from an SUV, no less. Looks like he's handling muddy back road deliveries as well.

    According to this discussion, Thumper has been into diaper fetishism for awhile.

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  37. That's not back roading. That's clumsy loading.

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  38. Wow, I was Radio Appalachia? The things I learn from lunatics, LMFAO!!!

    A.V.

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    ReplyDelete
  40. Thanks for the nice blog. It was very useful for me. I'm happy I found this blog. Thank you for sharing with us,I too always learn something new from your post. Ringworm in Cats

    ReplyDelete

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