Monday, March 31, 2008

One More Item

socash, from the "Nothing Is Real" discussion group spent this evening cracking a code that came with the zip file from the author of a blog - http://therightalbum.blogspot.com/

See the previous post for details.

He extracted two videos from the application and posted them on his YouTube page.

One remaining item was a password protected text file. When he finally cracked it, he posted this link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-2xWDKLelq4

You can see and hear for yourself--a very repetitive slide show with a soundtrack consisting of some scary sounds, backward voices and loops from Two Virgins, Revolution (a couple versions), and other sources. I am now doubting that this has any involvement from Iamaphoney. A rather anticlimactic end to an exciting day. But we should be greatly indebted to the excellent work that socash did to unravel this latest mystery.

For whatever it's worth - a parting shot from milesdeo http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mp2GDJgF5sM

9 comments:

Anonymous said...

See how they run!

Just thought I'd note...

QueenofCosmania has removed the "HA HA APRIL FOOLS" acronym tags from her video and deleted the first two or three comments from individuals pointing it out.

Here are the original tags posted for the video.

On the video page, 65if asks her where the "acronym" tags have gone and she responds:

...acronym? There was never an acronym.

Unless...


...and over on the "rightalbum" blog she is similarly defensive (in response to felipegcs):

What do you wish to be explained?
John Lennon is dead, and so is Paul.
There was going to be a Right Album, and I will stick to that statement no matter what people may think of the song Revolution Nein (such as that it is an April Fools joke).

Please don't think Iamaphoney made The Right Album up...it's real, and the tapes do exist.


I'm afraid QueenofCosmania clearly didn't think this thing all the way through; it firms the idea that the rotten apple series is just a sick running joke. I wonder how she will respond when people post the reversed audio that (allegedly) also says "April Fools"?

IAMSHE said...

Listen, I don't really care whether people believe that it was an April Fools joke or not. Actually, there is one piece to the puzzle that people still haven't figured out: if this was all an April Fools joke, then who am I? Are iamaphoney, milesdeo and aIIofthemwitches all practical jokers, or am I the odd (wo)man out?
Who am I really? :) Well, that's the joke, isn't it? And yes, I DID think this thing all the way through.

One person quoted from my blog where I said that I had taken this object from the Dakota, stating it would be impossible to steal a Windows game back in 1980. Au contraire, close-minded one: I was referring to the song, not the game.

What has been so frustrating is it seems that NO ONE besides socash even bothered to look at the program, and nearly everyone cowered in fear, thinking that it might be a virus. I never thought that things would have turned out that way. And I never thought that socash would CRACK the password instead of solving the rather simple anagram, an anagram that you, Tafultong, had no trouble at all figuring out. This made the entire week I spent building the game--which I intended to be a somewhat amusing means to receiving the password to the zip file--only to have one person play it, RIP the videos from it, post them online so no one has any need to actually play the game, and ultimately provide the link for everyone to see.

And now this:

"You can see and hear for yourself--a very repetitive slide show with a soundtrack consisting of some scary sounds, backward voices and loops from Two Virgins, Revolution (a couple versions), and other sources. I am now doubting that this has any involvement from Iamaphoney. A rather anticlimactic end to an exciting day. But we should be greatly indebted to the excellent work that socash did to unravel this latest mystery."

Very repetitive, uses backwards sound, and anticlimatic. Wow. And this is coming from someone who stood on the sidelines, not actually playing the game, not actually embarking on the journey that was meant to lead you there.

Socash, that foul-mouthed brat, was right: I failed. In every sense of the word, I failed at creating an elaborate and entertaining April Fools joke....what little I did make was twisted and contorted into an experience unlike any other, and completely unlike what I intended it to be. I guess it's just not as simple as giving people an installer and a readme file these days.

I'm nearing the end of my rant.
Tafultong, I've been an enormous fan of you and your blog for quite some time, but this is it: I've had it. This whole situation has left a sour taste in my mouth. I don't know what I'll do now, but I have to get way from PID because I really just can't get over how I spent a week working on all of April Fools BS...for this. For what is ultimately an anti-climatic experience.

Tafultong said...

To iamshe,

Don't get me wrong. If you read my posts, you'll see that I was quite involved in your game psychologically. I just wasn't going to risk my computer's hard drive when socash was working through it so quickly with much more expertise.

I'm still undecided about the validity of "The Right Album." I'll keep my mind open about that for now.

There were a couple things that caused me to come to the conclusion that it was an anti-climax.

I heard an awful lot of "Two Virgins" in your soundtrack along with the fake "Carnival of Light." If you could explain that, it would help me re-evaluate.

Secondly, you pretty much plagiarized May Pang's description of herself to describe yourself. I don't believe that you are May Pang, so I am struggling with that. Your post appeared on my site while I was reading her latest book, so I had her "spirit" fresh in my mind.

Thirdly, you never explained the smashed up automobile in your video. I am pretty sure that it was a car that did not exist in 1966. That was my biggest criticism and you didn't address that in your rant.

I am still planning to decipher the backwards stuff in the audio (I do have some expertise in that area) and if something comes out of that, I will report it on the blog.

Thanks for participating and I hope you will join us again.

Anonymous said...

Tard still says I cheated, eh?

Aprils Fools

IAMSHE said...

"I heard an awful lot of "Two Virgins" in your soundtrack along with the fake "Carnival of Light." If you could explain that, it would help me re-evaluate."

John Lennon used snippets of "Revolution" and "A Day in the Life" when he created "Revolution 9". Therefore, in making Devolution Nein, I pulled audio from many sources, some obscure, some well known. That's why it's called a sound collage. Two Virgins only appears twice in the song, and for brief intervals. "Carnival of Light", or rather, the fake one, is not in the song at all.

I did, however, use the fake Carnival of Light in one of the game's videos, which, believe it or not was meant to be viewed within the context of the game and not Youtube. I was not out to impress anyone, nor would anyone have been able to analyze the car upon first playing the game or see that the body in the car isn't Paul; these are all instances of dramatic effect which, no offense, seemed to have been lost on you because you didn't play the game but rather viewed it as a PID video on Youtube.

I honestly don't have to explain anything. What I want explained to me is how everything could go so wrong in such a short span of time.

Do you know how it feels to release something that put a lot of love into, only to see it get torn apart--literally ripped apart, it's contents hacked and uploaded and criticized while none of it is being viewed in it's proper context? Answer me this, please..

IAMSHE said...

anonymous / socash: Go to hell.
Enjoy all the praise you're receiving while it lasts; it probably won't be long before you wind up in juvenile detention.

Anonymous said...

i appreciate the work you've done, iamshe. it was exciting to witness, even if it didn't go as you had planned. i'd like to think our enthusiasm to get to the truth, if slightly excessive, was proportional to the claims you were making, and moreover could be taken as a compliment towards the creativity of your project.

unfortunately we live in a world where the innocent and naive are regularly exploited for a host of purposes, and a heightened atmosphere of questioning has emerged as a result. it's simply not the easiest environment for a spirited 'gag' such as yours to flourish (especially not online, in the middle of a group of obsessives aimed at deconstructing recordings made 40 some years ago!!).

i still have some concerns about the 'rotten apple' series as a whole, and this little flare-up illustrates a few of them (if only in miniature). thankfully, it appears that tempers and emotions have calmed down at this point -but if you do know IAAP or the people involved in RA, please advise them to be responsible in what they are putting out into the world.

(please keep in mind, too, that not all 'anonymous' posters are the same person, and not every 'impersonal' comment is to be taken personally...)

lastly, the day is not done. you may have designed this game for the PID forum loonies, but (if you haven't noticed) the internet is chock full of fools who would probably get a kick out of 'devolution nein'.

thank you for the splendid time

happy april fools &
peace be with you

IAMSHE said...

Thank you for your kind words, anonymous. I thought that I would also post about the game at The King is Naked! forums, but most people who go there read Nothing is Real, so no one would have really been "fooled".

Tafultong said...

iamshe,

I appreciate you coming back and expressing your opinions and motivations. I was up late last night because of you and might have had some faulty recollections of what was where soundwise.

The one thing I think you were most honest about was your lack of computer expertise. I say this because you don't seem to appreciate the level of risk involved in opening an executable file from someone who you know is misrepresenting his/her identity.

It's too bad that your joke didn't work the way you had hoped, but your creativity can still be appreciated. I plan on keeping your files and playing your game while imagining it's real. I hope you will get some pleasure from that.

And I'm sure you are not the kind of person that would intentionally send a virus out, but you must remember, I wasn't judging YOU. I have no idea who you are!

One final thing I want to tell you is that I had packed it in by the time things got so nasty and heated on NIR. That was really unfortunate and I can now better understand how upset you were. Look after yourself.