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sman Regular user 109 Posts |
Since 10 is seems to be the magic number I will respond to Slim King about pick pockets. Well you know awareness is half the battle. One of the things I was taught in my stint in the Marines was how to protect the meager earnings I did get. Put your money in a thin wallet and keep it in your sock and not your back pocket. Be aware of who is around you and what they are doing. This is all aside from escape, evasion, and zeroing your rifle. Kind of magical actually. First card magician I ever saw live was in a tent in Viet Nam and the guy was from Australia. Great show. Now I have 10 posts.
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Slim King Eternal Order Orlando 18012 Posts |
My father was in the Navy and taught me to keep my wallet in my front pocket ( Or as you mentioned, my sock). It's always worked for me. Sometimes if I had a lot of cash I would keep it in my inner jacket pocket, right beside my pistol. That works too.
THE MAN THE SKEPTICS REFUSE TO TEST FOR ONE MILLION DOLLARS.. The Worlds Foremost Authority on Houdini's Life after Death.....
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T Duncan Smith New user 13 Posts |
This is my first post on the Café. I've lurked for quite a while, and have read thousands of posts. I'm replying to this thread because it has touched on a lot of things that I've been thinking about lately. Because I am replying to a month's worth of posts, and because I do not write well enough to be succinct, I am afraid that it will be a bit rambling, and discursive- mostly I fear it will be overlong. My apologies, in advance- if you can't stand the overlong, or the self-indulgent, you might do well to skip the rest of this post. Or you could flame me- I won't take it amiss .
I should also point out that I am closer to layman than professional- much closer, actually. It may be that this is a valuable perspective for some (but maybe not, I can't really say). Given that I am broadcasting my uninformed opinions to a group of people who are experts in this field, I should qualify each statement I make heavily- "I think that ..., but what do I know", etc. I'm not going to do that though, as it would be very cumbersome. Please read the above around every "..." that I write, and please correct me when you believe I am wrong. The first thing I'm interested in responding to is exposure. I'm not in favor of it, and I hope that's not controversial. I will say that I don't think that the Penn and Teller clear cups routine is really exposure (at least the one I saw, in some outdoor venue for something like "The View"). I think that the amount of work necessary to deconstruct that routine is about the amount of work it would take to figure out a routine with solid cups. I've known the basics of cups and balls since I was about 9 years old, and I still have to watch them very carefully to see what is happening. I think they are very good at using the "partner" scheme to misdirect. The only thing there that I would count as exposure is explaining the load- and I certainly wish they had not done that, as it is a crucial part of so many tricks. An obvious part, but still not something you want the audience to automatically think of. As for Angel- I have not seen his exposure of the shell game, so I want to be careful about what I say, but... it sounds as if he explained the basic mechanics of it, and that is wrong, IMHO. Again, I've understood the basic mechanics of the shell game since I was quite young, and I would have guessed that most people did, but I guess I am conveniently forgetting that I was quite interested in magic and cons as a lad, and read a lot about it (3 card monte is similar). I also learned to do a pretty decent French drop when I was 5 or so, and I can always spot it- I tend to consider it so exposed as to be unusable, but... I'll agree that there is no reason to expose things to prevent people from being conned, and I will say a bit more about my opinions on this subject later. Still, it is hard for me to believe that the shell game is dead because of one exposure- I worry more about the cumulative effect. What do I mean by that? I worry that people, having seen so much exposure, will start to become "armchair experts". I would much rather work cards for people who are receptive than for people who are looking for the few sleights that they know. Even if my method is well beyond their ken, the atmosphere is different. I don't think that is an insurmountable problem. I know about most of the common sleights with cards (though I can only do a few well). I've gotten a couple of DVDs recently where I was able to deconstruct the tricks in real time, before viewing the explanation. But I also recently got a DVD by Ortiz that completely baffled me, on every trick- even when I saw the explanations I was amazed by his ability with sleights and misdirection. So I don't think exposure can kill the Ortiz's (in fact I think that it might make his effects even stronger), but... not everyone is Darwin Ortiz, not everyone can do a perfect F**o in the hands, and even he must have started somewhere. Anyway, as far as Criss goes, I am amazed that he would expose anything. His entire persona is built around the pretense that what he does is "real"- the pretense is largely an agreement with the audience, and an entertaining one, but it is fragile, and easily strangled by heavy handedness. I talked about him to a woman I know, recently, and she asked the inevitable- "Can you levitate like Criss"? I said, "No, I'm not on TV". She said, "Yeah, well what you do is tricks- what he does is more than that." That was, of course, the end of that beautiful thing (as I'm sure you know, familiarity breeds contempt). But- I think it is notable that this otherwise successful and intelligent woman really believed that Criss had some sort of supernatural power. I can't explain it- I am still baffled. But that seems to have been the case, and I have heard too many people say the same thing about Criss and Blaine to dismiss it as an anomaly. So why would he expose even a single trick? Doesn't that destroy his persona? Exposure is not dangerous because it reveals particular methods- it is dangerous because it breeds contempt. This brings us to another point- the "impossible" effect. I'd like to preface this by saying that I have immense respect for Derren Brown. I think he's a great entertainer. That said, I think some of his effects go too far, in much the same way that Angel's do. By that I mean that they stretch plausibility to the point that I can only assume that a confederate was used. I might be displaying my ignorance and inexperience here, but I am surely less ignorant than the average viewer, so even if I am terribly wrong, I think my perception is valid. I was not sold on the effect. In my youth I was involved with various hypnotists, and studied certain NLP techniques (mainly in the context of teaching foreign languages, but that is another story). I accept, and appreciate, that Brown often offers a psychological explanation for a normal magician's effect- indeed, that is part of his charm, and I think what he is doing is great. But I am very skeptical of some his effects. To pick out an example... the cabbie forgetting where the Wheel is in London, in fact being unable to see it when it is right over his shoulder. I suppose it makes for good television, and I will not commit to explaining it in a particular way, but... I am entirely unwilling to buy his explanation for this, and very little is done to head me off from the idea of a confederate. Even if he _were_ able to so hypnotize a cabbie (which I am entirely unwilling to accept), it would still be problematic for me as a viewer- he doesn't offer a real convincer. On the other hand, I think his effect with the fingers in pockets is very strong- I believe in that one . Whatever his method, I like the kids involved, and I am _unwilling_ to call them out as confederates. I know he is using some method, but I am not familiar with it (unless it is actually muscle reading, but... color me skeptical), so I can sit back and enjoy. Now, the ethics of what is claimed... I grew up around a lot of new age stuff- a lot of the people I knew growing up were astrologers or Tarot readers, and many of them were pros. I won't speculate as to who was closed eyes and who was open (and I certainly won't speculate as to who was supernaturally inspired ). I was able to draw up a full chart using an ephemeris before I turned 10, and I could also interpret it. Basically, I was raised by the North American equivalent of gypsies . I was always interested in the idea of "real" magic. There is a show that recently became popular in Japan, the title of which is, in translation, "The Melancholy of Suzumiya Haruhi". At the beginning of the first episode the main character says something like: "when I was younger I really wanted to believe in magic, and time travellers, and aliens". Well, I did as well, and so did everyone in your audience- we all wanted to believe, and we all still want to, secretly- show me the strongest skeptic, and I will show you a man that ached for magic as a child. When I was about 14 someone gave me a Tarot deck, and I started doing readings. I can't say how (maybe osmosis, and having been around a lot of astrologers and Tarot readers), but I figured out the rudiments of cold reading pretty quickly, without really trying- I was just reading the cards, and embellishing here and there, but after a while the embellishments took over, and they were uncannily accurate, or at least perceived as such. Not hard to figure out in the end- I'd say something, and then look at people to see if it hit home. If not I would try another tack- I have recently bought a few books on cold reading to hear what other people have to say about it, but that's basically all you need isn't it? I started to get disturbed when people started crying when I read for them. The thing is that I am, at heart, a terrible skeptic (of course I am also a true believer) - I could never have become an eyes closed reader. I knew I was doing _something_ with the cards, but I was unwilling to credit the cards with it. Eventually people started to offer me large (from my point of view at the time) sums of money to read for them, and I put the cards away- I might not have known the words "cold reading" but... I knew there was nothing special going on. It's obviously wrong to claim an understanding that you don't really have, but I'd like to point out that the last leukotomy performed in the US seems to have been carried out in 1986. I had stopped reading Tarot by then . |
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Memory-Jah Inner circle Germany 1438 Posts |
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On 2006-08-03 00:24, Tony Iacoviello wrote: That was great Tony!
"Dropping your pants while you set off flash paper may allow your pass to go undetected, but it's still not invisible." - Count Elmsley
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Tony Iacoviello Eternal Order 13151 Posts |
Sorry, I misread the title of this thread. I thought it said "Crack."
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Slim King Eternal Order Orlando 18012 Posts |
I guess I've lost it too. I didn't bother this week. Anything cool happen or did he expose again?
THE MAN THE SKEPTICS REFUSE TO TEST FOR ONE MILLION DOLLARS.. The Worlds Foremost Authority on Houdini's Life after Death.....
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chichi711 Inner circle 5810 Posts |
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I talked about him to a woman I know, recently, and she asked the inevitable- "Can you levitate like Criss"? One quick comment right here. I would never say to someone "no Im not on TV". Even though it might sting alittle I always talk Criss up to Layman. I don't blame anything he does on TV effects etc. I have even been known to use the word Incredible and Criss in the same sentence. When somebody asks me to levitate. I simply say I can not, but I am sure I can do things that Criss can not. I then show them something. If you have something STRONG to show them they will end up liking it more because it is in their face and NOT on TV. It is away of side stepping the issue without demoting yourself. |
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T Duncan Smith New user 13 Posts |
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On 2006-08-25 11:00, chichi711 wrote: I hear you here. I should mention that I knew this person pretty intimately, and the actual conversation was a lot longer and weirder than what I wrote. I was really surprised to discover that she was willing to believe that someone could actually levitate- I know her pretty well and she's not stupid, but she is perhaps a bit credulous. What I said was basically a final bemused throwing up of hands. I certainly don't want to knock Angel to the general public, and this isn't the sort of thing I would normally say to people. I get asked all the time how various things are performed, and if I can do them. Even in cases where I know how to perform the effect I won't generally do it for people. By the time I had this conversation, she had seen all of my best stuff, some of it repeatedly. When she first saw it, she was pretty blown away. I don't know if she thought it was real, exactly, but it definitely freaked her out. I don't know that it was really STRONG- as I said, I am closer to layman than profesional- but it was definitely stronger than anything she had seen up close before. She only busted me badly once- a good lesson in how prepared one ought to be before actually performing an effect- but she had come to understand, through seeing things repeatedly, that I could, for instance, control cards to the top or bottom of the deck, and force cards, and a number of other things, just with the card magic. Even if she didn't know how I did it, she knew I could, and so what started off flabbergasting her eventually became pretty humdrum- even entirely new effects, using entirely new techniques- this is what I meant when I said that "familiarity breeds contempt". This is sort of one of the things I was getting at- sorry if I was less than clear. I'd think that Criss Angel ought to be quite pleased that this woman thinks he can actually levitate- and I can assure you that my offhand comment did not change her belief about this. Whether you think his exposure is damaging to the trade or not, it's hard to see how it could fail to damage his image. So I don't really understand his motivation here. This also bears on the ethics of disclaimers for mentalists, I think, but I guess I'll leave it at that. |
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Scott Xavier Inner circle 3672 Posts |
As I have stated before. ONCE a trick is exposed of that of just a dexterous sleight. The most we can ever hope to elevate to is that of a clever tricketer...
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DrNorth Veteran user North Starr Entertainment, Harrisburg PA 364 Posts |
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On 2006-08-25 05:54, T Duncan Smith wrote: This is exactly what I have been saying about the stuff Angel and Blaine do, and how they present it. I agree that one need not put down another performer, even if we don't care for them. Not very professional. ( I guess since you knew the woman, not quite so bad, I had a similar experience with a close friend. But she knew he was a magician and nothing more.). But, I like the idea of saying that I can do things he can't and show something as strong as possible. I am also surprised Criss stooped as low as to expose magic. But, I have not bothered to watch him since he presented a box vanish of a woman allegedly picked from the audience. Of course, with one or two good stooges, I guess one could perform miracles with no training in magic principle what so ever. Hmm, there may be a thread there. I'll look into this and report back. If it hasn't been touched on as a single line of discussion.... Duncan, I am sad that you chose to stop readings, I have had much fun and made good money on readings. "For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which it that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell" ~Galadriel "A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes." |
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ScottLeavitt Special user 730 Posts |
Guys
Just keep in mind that many well know stage magicians -- respected by all of us -- have also "pulled people out of the audience" who were in fact on their payroll. I was also up on stage at a recent Copperfield show as an observer, and he tightly controls angles (as Criss does with the cameras on his show) Some interesting comments regarding his levitation and coin-through-soda can DVDs on a recent Penn Radio episode....but that's for another day. Sounds like he's coming out with a Vegas stage show in the forseeable future...I loved his Mind Freak show in NYC, and can't wait to see what he does with a big budget. I much greater issues with what Penn and Teller do than the fact that Criss sells some of his effects to the public, or admits that what he does is tricks. Personally, I'm a big Criss Angel fan, and wish him nothing but the best. I have no doubt that he will be remembered for many many many years to come. S |
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T Duncan Smith New user 13 Posts |
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On 2006-09-02 20:58, DrNorth wrote: Well, as I said, I am closer to layman than professional, so I appreciate any guidance you can give me when it comes to being more professional. Thanks to you and chichi for taking the time to point this out to me- I will remember it, and guard my tongue more closely in the future, even when exasperated. In mitigation, I will say that what I quoted was a very simplified paraphrase of what was actually said, and that in context it was not quite as egregious, and much more ambiguous. At the end of the quote, she is still asserting that Angel is a miracle worker- if I had tried to convince her that he wasn't, she would have been convinced. I don't want to take anything away from him- I think it's great that he is developing a following, and I hope it will increase the prestige of magic in general. This is also my point about his exposures (and exposure in general)- my offhand comment did not damage her view of him. It might actually have helped cement it. But I think if she saw him offering to sell secrets to some of his tricks, even the simpler ones, it would definitely taint her view of the rest of them. I don't think that, before she met me, she had ever really seen decent close up magic in real life (though I may be giving myself too much credit there ). I did a little routine for her shortly after I first met her. It's one that I'm actually kind of proud of- it's the first effective (IMHO) routine that I ever came up with and, again IMHO, it really milks the most out of a very simple effect, entirely through the presentation (though in this case I'd prefer to call it the interaction, as it involves a bit of cold reading, and rapport building, and as much charm as a basically uncharming fellow like myself can muster). The basic idea is to bring the conversation around to recent difficulties in someone's life (I am abbreviating a lot here), do a bit of cold reading to elicit them properly (and frame yourself as both sympathetic and insightful), and then use a DL to knock the "shamrocks" (symbol of luck, etc.), one at a time, off a 10 of clubs into their cupped palm, revealing the Ace of clubs at the end ("I have to keep a bit of luck for myself so the rest can grow back- it's like sourdough bread, you need a starter..."). I've found that, as dumb as this sounds, if you handle this well it can actually be pretty powerful, and women, in particular, seem to love it if you hit the right points in the build-up (which is generally a lot longer than the actual effect, is basically just a conversation that she wants to have anyway, and occurs before a deck of cards has even been mentioned, much less seen)- her life, her relationships with family, friends, co-workers, a lot of very emotional content... by the time you drag out the cards you are about as far away from "Hey, let me show you a card trick." as you can get, and very few people will experience it as a puzzle to be solved- they will instead see it as a social interaction, and a highly enjoyable one at that. When I do this I usually put the cards away immediately. Doing another card trick right then would destroy the frame I was working to develop. Anyway, I know that that's a long excursion that seems not to relate to the thread at all (but maybe someone will use my presentation- if you do you can send me a check for five dollars- no need to give my address, as this is a forum for mentalists) but I promise that I do have a point. I got to know this woman (let's call her M, as it is a common initial) pretty well. By doing this (admittedly extraordinarily simple) trick that so impressed her, I had established myself, in her eyes, as something of a conjurer. I eventually showed M all of my other "magician" material (I am still working on getting confident enough to do real mentalism for people), even stuff that I probably wasn't adequately prepared to show, and it went over really well, even on those occasions when I muffed it a bit. To M, at least, I was a master magician (of course nothing could be further from the truth than that). Then, for a while, I spent a lot of time with M, much of it in social situations. I'm aware that it is bad form to show the same trick to the same person, over and over, but in this case it could not be helped, if I was to perform tricks for the new people I was meeting, and I was trying to that as much as I could- magic is ultimately a sterile pastime if it is not eventually performed. I certainly wasn't married, but I think those of you that are married may understand what I mean here. My repertoire is limited (and I have actually made it smaller recently, as I have become more aware of how well you should rehearse and routine an effect before performing it). In the end, M could not fail to come understand certain things about what I was doing. I don't think she could have actually completely reconstructed any of the effects, but she knew enough to understand certain key bits. She started reaching for the cards, flipping them over at innoportune times, demanding to examine or shuffle the deck, etc. Then she caught me redhanded once . What had once captivated her was now not only blah, but actually a minor irritation. This was true even when I offered completely new material, based on completely new sleights that she did not understand at all- the frame had changed, and that change was fatal to her appreciation. I soon stopped doing any card effects if she was around. In my admittedly short "career" in magic this is what I have learned the most from. I know that all the professionals here are going ho-hum, why bother explaining this- after all, it is a lesson that they must already have internalized. But there are a lot of arguments here about exposure, an I find that as I have actually started performing magic for people, even in a non-professional capacity, my views on a lot of things have changed. I don't object to exposure because it ruins one trick- I object to it because it ruins the entire experience. And I think that that invalidates the argument that the only effects exposed are old and useless, and the argument that the audience forgets... they might forget the details, but they don't forget that the effect was trivial- this is particularly a concern in mentalism, where there are really only a few principles in play. Again, I do not understand why Angell would hurt himself in this fashion, given how successful he has become without doing so. Quote:
But, I like the idea of saying that I can do things he can't and show something as strong as possible. I will remember this (thanks chichi)- my point really wasn't self-aggrandization, though I see how it came across that way, but it is useful advice for other situations. Quote:
I am also surprised Criss stooped as low as to expose magic. But, I have not bothered to watch him since he presented a box vanish of a woman allegedly picked from the audience. Of course, with one or two good stooges, I guess one could perform miracles with no training in magic principle what so ever. Hmm, there may be a thread there. I'll look into this and report back. If it hasn't been touched on as a single line of discussion.... Well, I've thought about this a lot lately. Maybe it is worthy of a thread. I'm not arguing that stooges shouldn't be used, and I'm not going to argue that pure apparatus shouldn't be used at all on stage but, I'd like to offer a perspective on this. First, read Fred Beckers column here: http://www.stevensmagic.com/gemini/Fred%......ique.htm . At the end he notes that the lead role is taken over by an actor. I can actually understand that decision on Disney's part (and I'll say a bit more about that in a bit), but I am as uncomfortable with it as Mr Becker is. The Disney show sounds great, I mean really great, like the sort of thing that stage magic needs to survive, but in the end I don't like the fact that it _can_ be performed by an actor with no background in magic. And I think that in the long run the public will feel the same way- after all, the special effects in movies are better, and Sandy Duncan, as Peter Pan, "levitated" on stage a long time ago. I'm going to be immodest for a moment, and I apologize in advance for that, but I am so only in the interest of illustrating a point. My looks are rather striking. I am basically Western European, but I have a bit of DNA from the horsemen of the steppes. If you are interested in history you will recall that at one point Europe was seriously threatened by these horsemen. It turns out that it was at precisely this time that the modern image of the devil was established, through many works of art. That image is in fact that of a European who sports a few of the characteristics of the steppe people who threatened Constantinople at the time (in fact, the word horde is derived from the Mongol word for tent, I think). In other words, I look a lot like the stereotypical "debonair" image of the devil. I remember that someone once told me, after I had attended a party given right after a Dead show, that one of the attendees had had a slight meltdown (she had apparently taken some strong hallucinogens) because she thought I really was the devil. This is something that has happened more than once. I can be easily picked out of a crowd . I have a bit of theatrical training, and a lot of performance experience as a musician. I also have some pretty strong connections in the media world, mostly accidentally- I believe that I could get an interview with the head of any large media conglomerate I wanted, if I could convince people close to me to lobby for one. The above happens to be true, but if you doubt it, just imagine someone else with those characteristics- there certainly must be a number of people who have all of the above characteristics, I think you'll agree. I admit that I am a rank amateur at both mentalism and traditional magic (though I am working hard to become more than that). But with enough consultants and enough takes and enough stooges and enough camera tricks... could I not parlay the fact that I really look the part of a mentalist, and that I have some stage training, and that I have some connections into a lucrative career? Well, I happen to think that there is value in being connected to the past, and that there is value in having perfected the parts of the art that you perform, at the very least. I wouldn't personally consider that sort of fraud- being a magician should be left to real magicians, and being a mentalist should be left to real mentalists. I don't mean that Criss isn't a real magician or mentalist- of course he is, and I respect him greatly. But I think he risks opening a door that should not be opened. Quote:
Duncan, I am sad that you chose to stop readings, I have had much fun and made good money on readings. Well, I have started reading again, but not professionally. I am just much more careful about where and when I do it. In fact, this is the one thing that M never soured on, partially because I doled it out very carefully. My biggest interest in mentalism is those parts that are "real", and I include reading in that- when I read it is partially cold, but parts are more like no contact muscle reading. I stopped reading a long time ago because I was very young, and people started telling me things that revealed certain traumas I didn't want to know about. If you read a lot you'll know that there is no trick to discovering people's darkest secrets- they want to tell them to someone, and as a reader you fit the bill- a hint is enough. That they later ascribe these revelations to you is lagniappe. My problem at that age was philosophical- I loved reading Tarot, but I was very uncomfortable when people revealed terrible traumas to me. It was instructive- I learned that actually you don't need much skill to read a willing participant- but it was also disturbing. I am still working the ethics of this out for myself. |
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DrNorth Veteran user North Starr Entertainment, Harrisburg PA 364 Posts |
Quote:
On 2006-09-02 21:34, ScottLeavitt wrote: I am not opposed to use of stooges, it is a gray area Scott. But the expectations of a stage magician vs a street magician are different. Lay people may not understand this overtly, but at a certain level, people expect that a stage performer has more to work with and wouldn't expect a street performer to vanish a jet or fly or saw a woman in half. Even within street work some ( and I suppose most) do close up and parlor effects, suitable for street work. Blaine and Angel take stage effects and present them as street work. Most street performers work alone, at most with a bottler to collect tips. They don't employ a crew to work props, set up effects, break them down, carry illusions and act as plants. THAT is a crucial difference. And by blurring that line they takes away from the miracles that street workers can perform, because we can't walk up walls, fly across buildings, set up a sliding window with a hole in it to put a lifted watch into a closed jewelry store, or make a audience member vanish in a telephone booth box that we carry in our pockets satchel or trunk. They misrepresent the craft. "For it shows things that were, and things that are, and things that yet may be. But which it that he sees, even the wisest cannot always tell" ~Galadriel "A heretic is a man who sees with his own eyes." |
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