Since Sunday tours of James Talbot’s home, Casa Neverlandia in Austin, Texas, are currently not available b/c of the Pandemic, we can take a virtual tour.
James is an artist who built this home, himself. I’ve heard. It’s still a work in progress. This is the living room looking toward the front of the home.
Simply, the Red Room.
James taking tourists through. The house is also on the Weird Homes Tour in Texas, but you can’t just show up, b/c it’s his private residence.
Kitchen & breakfast nook. He uses a gray water system and people are surprised when they hear that it has no air conditioning.
The Record Room.
The Photo Editing Room.
2nd story area.
The Master Bedroom.
The bathroom has a toilet, but James has been using a compost toilet in the back for years. This is a picture of it in progress.
thinking about how an anonymous group (WHO DOESN’T SEEM TO BE AFFILIATED W/ SESAME STREET!!!)found out where jon armond lived and made him swear he wouldn’t show anyonecracks before they gave it to him
oh i am SO glad you asked. gimme a sec
Ok SO. This guy (Jon Armond) claimed to have seen a Sesame Street short as a kid where the cracks in a girl’s wall come to life. One of these cracks is referred to as the “Crack Monster”, which was apparently so unsettling that it “scarred him for life”.
After all was said and done, Jon would end up spending about THIRTY FUCKING YEARS looking for the short. THIRTY. He considered it his life’s work.
Listen. I can appreciate that level of dedication to recovering a lost piece of animation history, but uh. damn.
Anyway, he posted about it online, where many other people reported seeing it as well. The fact that there were multiple accounts of its existence, but little to no information on it anywhere, was what made it start garnering attention on the internet. Now a bunch of people are looking for it.
No one knew for sure what the title was yet, so most referred to it as the “Crack Monster Cartoon”, or something similar. The lack of a known title (or music, or voice actors, or writers, or literally anything) made it extremely difficult to research, but there were too many reports to write it off as a hoax.
So people kept looking.
I’m gonna leave out some details in the middle here, since I don’t wanna make this thread too long. But it’s super interesting, I’d recommend checking it out for yourself. Let’s just skip to the weird part.
After years of searching, Armond received a fax to his workplace with an untraceable number. It read:
“WE HAVE THE COPY”
Additionally, they said they would send him said copy of the short, on one condition: he was to never show it publicly, or post it online in any way.
Whoever it was that contacted him, they did NOT want it to be viewed by the general public.
So six months pass. Armond gets a letter, which says
“WE TRUST THIS COMPLETES YOUR SEARCH”
Also enclosed in the envelope is a DVD.
To clarify, he received it on a SUNDAY. These people, whoever they are, found out where he WORKED, and then went to the effort of delivering it PERSONALLY on a day where there was NO MAIL, just to send the message THAT THEY KNEW WHERE HE LIVED AS WELL.
FOR THAT SESAME STREET CARTOON.
So now he has it. And he tells people he has it, but that no one else can see it. Which is, of course, INCREDIBLY unsatisfying to the people online who have also been searching for it, right?
Enter Dycaite, the founder of the Lost Media Wiki.
So Dycaite started looking into it as well. Like I said, I’m skipping a bunch of details in this thread, but long story short he eventually received an anonymous email.
The email contained CRACKS.
There were no instructions telling him not to share it. Dycaite didn’t hesitate, which is how we got the version of CRACKS that I linked.
With the newfound context provided by the video, it actually makes complete sense that it was only aired a few times. This short was made right before the word “Crack” became widely known as a euphemism for drugs, which is how you get characters like “The Crack Monkey”.
Sesame Street doesn’t want to be associated with that, so they stop airing it right? Eventually it’s forgotten about, the only record of its existence being Sesame Street’s digital archives.
(It’s believed that the person who emailed Dycaite had access to these archives, due to the timestamp and title at the start of their version of the clip.)
So… that’s it right? It SEEMS like it should just be a classic story of formerly lost media, cartoon stops airing, gets lost, people online find it again. We even know WHY it was lost, not because it was “too scary” or whatever, just because it didn’t age well.
But there’s still SO MUCH mystery surrounding CRACKS.
The version of CRACKS that Jon Armond received was different from the version Dycaite received. Armond says his version appears to be an actual recording, as it starts with a brief appearance of Bert and Ernie, before transitioning to the short. As mentioned earlier, Dycaite’s version seems to come from some kind of archive.
So it can be reasonably assumed that the people who contacted Armond are not affiliated with the person who emailed Dycaite. The person who contacted Dycaite also didn’t seem to care if the short was released to the public. Armond still hasn’t released his version of the recording to the public, though has apparently shown it to a few people privately.
So why all the secrecy? And why was Jon Armond given a copy? Did they simply feel bad for him, or was there something they didn’t want him to discover in his search? Was the version Armond received (and therefore the version that was aired) somehow different from the version Dycaite got????
i don’t fucking know babey!!! and neither does anyone else apparently!!!!
oh AND the group who didn’t want CRACKS to ever be viewed doesn’t actually seem to be affiliated with Sesame Street, since they presumably don’t have access to the archives. (otherwise, why not remove the info from the beginning and send that version?)
so there’s an unofficial Sesame Street Forbidden Knowledge Guild out there i fuckin guess!!!!!!!!
anyways that’s cracks for you
(this isn’t comprehensive btw, and i may have gotten some stuff wrong. if you wanna know more here’s a good video on it)
this is the version of this post w/ the right links btw
what the fuck
People are just so fantastically weird, and the more we are capable of communicating the weirder we all become.
Quaking Aspens (Populus tremuloides) are known for developing markings that resemble eyes. Aspen eyes are actually dark markings on the main trunk where side branches used to be, Photography
every week there’s another news item that immediately tops the list of real life events that sound like an overwrought politics SNL sketch and every week all i can do is laugh because otherwise i’d be resorting to arson
this year is a cosmic joke and i am absolutely terrified of the punchline
i’m sorry i’m not done they have spent MONTHS now gassing up their ~incredible world beating test & trace system~ that they spent 12 BILLION POUNDS ON!!!! and it apparently consists entirely of a single fucking microsoft excel spreadsheet i can’t fucking take this anymore i want off mr. johnson’s wild ride
Wait THAT’S why those numbers were missed? Because of an EXCEL FILE?
YOU’RE TELLING ME THAT OUR ENTIRE PLAN FOR THE NEXT SIX MONTHS HINGES ON A FILE THAT I COULD HAVE BUILT?
Bloody hell, I thought it was something to do with server access and security, not a bloody excel file.
I’m sorry, they tried to use EXCEL? I’m so embarrassed for them
Oh, it gets dumber. Because there’s actually nothing wrong with entering the date into an excel sheet (it can feed info into various programs that analyze it, and is easy to use for newly hired admin staff who need minimal training to input the data into a usable format fast). BUT the thing is, the version of Excel they were using is 13 years out of date. Because the garbage firm the government hired – who has been selling pandemic management contracts to their buddies’ firms instead of to companies with any fucking competency whatsoever – hasn’t bothered to update their Microsoft Office software for over a whole ass decade. A WHOLE DECADE. Once again, we get fucked over because the people running the government are using their positions to fucking LEGALLY funnel money into private companies for their personal benefit.
oh but it’s worse than that!!! they were RECEIVING the data as csv files (good, sensible) and then COLLATING them INTO an Excel file (garbage, for this purpose!)!!!!!!!
my wife woke me up at 5.30am to tell me about this and I didn’t even yell at her I was so busy being outraged
I spent a portion of yesterday just screaming in allcaps about how you add new records as mfing ROWS not COLUMNS. I mean we’re not even going to discuss the part where they need a database manager and a SQL database. I’m just saying don’t use Excel if you don’t know how to use Excel.
This entire story just keeps getting more amazing. Like, first it was just that they were using Excel, then it’s that they were using out of date Excel, THEN it was that they were getting GOOD data and then DELIBERATELY CONVERTING IT INTO BAD DATA. And ALL because of NEPOTISM.
Like, you guys remember my story about my boss who wanted to be able to push a button and convert 500,000 database records into an excel spreadsheet? This is exactly that level of “does not understand how data OR data management works”.
romanticize your life. i cannot stress this enough. use scented shower gel and shampoo, so you look forward to showers. go on walks and see how pretty the sky looks. notice the wildflowers on the roadside as you drive. light a candle when you get home to make your room smell good. notice & appreciate the little things in life. it won’t cure your mental illness, but it’ll make it easier to exist in this world.
“it won’t cure your mental illness, but it’ll make it easier to exist in this world.” i needed this. thank you.
