lawfulcrime

[lawfulcrime]

So... I found this and now it keeps coming to mind. You hear about "life-changing writing advice" all the time and usually its really not—but honestly this is it man.

I'm going to try it.

[lawfulcrime]

andrew dresses up as kevin for halloween one year. brown wig, green contacts, jersey he's swimming in, and even draws the queen on his face with sharpie. and stays in character for the entire night. he will not respond to andrew, you may only address him as kevin, kevin day, or queen of exy. he will not spend the entire night draining the candy bowl like usual and is instead angrily altering between a protein shake and straight vodka on the couch and mindlessly staring at trojan games. he goes on a twenty minutes long tangent about jeremy knox's arms and the roman empire, then calls anyone who tries to stop him (kevin) brutus repeatedly whilst pretending he's been stabbed. and when people stop playing attention to him he chucks exy balls at their heads.

was it originally to prove a point to kevin on how annoying he is? yeah. did he get way too into the character? maybe.

but will he pretend it never happened the next morning? absolutely. he pins it on aaron and never mentions it again.

[lawfulcrime]

[lawfulcrime]

This gif is outrageous

[lawfulcrime]

FUN FACT: I own porn I can't watch.

So this is a copy of Adultery for Fun & Profit, a 1971 X-rated film. It won the Grand Prize at the Amsterdam Adult Film Festival, for the year 1970-1971!

BUT it's on Cartrivision.

Cartrivision was an early home videotape format announced in 1970, released in June 1972, and dead by July 1973.

It has some "fun" features, like not selling VCRs for it: you had to buy it build into a new console TV. Which were huge, because it was the 70s.

There's also issue of Red Tapes (of which this is one!)

See, early on the movie industry hated the idea of home movies. They made all their money on movie tickets, right? People watching movies at home, that's gonna seriously cut into their market. This is why they later sued Sony for the introduction of Beta, arguing that it could be used to pirate movies by recording them off TV. (They lost)

So when Cartridge Television started selling Cartrivision in 1972, none of the movie studios really wanted to start selling their films on home tapes, that idea sounded scary. What if someone had a copy of all their favorite films and could watch them forever at home, and never went to the theaters ever again? The movie studios would go out of business!

So along with releasing a bunch of older B&W movies (the only ones they could license), sporting events, and shows from PBS, Cartridge Television came up with a compromise that worked for the movie studios:

Red Tapes.

So, Cartrivision tapes came in two formats: Black Tapes and Red Tapes. Black tapes you'd buy at the store like any other product, but for Red Tapes (which were relatively recent movies), you instead would go to the store and place an order from a catalog. The store would have it delivered by mail, then you'd come back in and get the tape. You'd take it home, watch it, and then return it back to the store. So... Video rental (like Blockbuster!), except they didn't have any stock on hand, and only got the tapes on-demand by mail? Seems annoying.

BUT OH NO: it's far more annoying than that. See... Red Tapes aren't mechanically like Black Tapes.

You can't rewind them.

You can play them and pause or stop them just like any other tape, but the rewind feature on your Cartrivison TV doesn't work.

So once you start watching a film, you can only go forward from that point. You want to rewatch it? Too bad. Go back to the store and pay for it again.

Here's that tape again. Note that it's red: You can only watch this porn film once. Then you have to return it to the store... the stores that haven't been doing this since JULY OF 1973.

But there's another thing you can see on this picture (barely, because this is a blurry picture, thanks Past!Foone): The visible screws in the corners

So here's the thing: The tape labels for Cartrivision hide the screws. A regular tape will look like this:

BUT when Cartrivision failed in July 1973, a bunch of stores sold off their unsold inventory, including watch-once Red Tapes. And people still had some of the players. But what's the point of having a tape you can't rewind? You've basically destroyed the tape now, since it's stuck at the end and can't be rewound!

So people bought some of those Red Tapes (cheaply, I hope) and then took them home and opened them up with a screwdriver, damaging the labels. They figured out how the no-rewinding mechanism worked, and removed it. So basically every Red Tape you will find for sale on ebay has visible screws, because someone modded it in the past.

Anyway, the format has been dead so long that it's doubly-impossible to watch now. The players were only built into big heavy 1970s TVs, which were long ago thrown out. The tapes have gotten old and brittle. If you somehow DID have a player, and it somehow still worked after half a century, the tape will probably shatter as soon as you try to play it.

And the whole format only lasted 13 months, so there wasn't that much inventory sold in the first place, so there wasn't a huge number of these in existence anyway.

But a final fun fact: Someone HAS managed to get video off one of these tapes. And it was so hard that they made an award-winning documentary about it.

See, this was basically the first home video format for recording TV. The quality was terrible but it was better than nothing, and it turns out some fan with a Cartrivision recorded a copy of Game 5 of the 1973 NBA Finals game. ABC and both teams (LA Lakers & NY Knicks) had video copies of that game... and ALL THREE OF THEM LOST IT. But the fan copy survived, in a format no one could play, on a tape that would shatter if you tried to play it.

So DuArt Media Services got to work trying to rescue the tape. They had to dry it out, bake it, freeze it, soak it in alcohol, and rebuild a broken Cartrivision unit, then do a lot of manual fixups on the digital files they'd captured off the tape, but they finally managed to capture the recording of the game.

This was used for the MSG Network, who were doing a special on the 1973 championship, and had no footage of that pivotal game. With DuArt's work, they had something to show.

DuArt then made a documentary about this, called "Lost and Found: The ’73 Knicks Championship Tape". It won an Emmy.

The punchline? That documentary seems to be lost. I have been looking for years, and have not found a copy, other than a short excerpt on Vimeo.

So yeah. Cartrivision. I'm slightly obsessed with it, even though I've never actually been able to watch a single second of Cartrivison footage. Tapes occasionally show up on ebay, the odd technical manual or spare part, but players are rare, always broken, and probably would just shred the tapes even if they did somehow work. The tapes are just too old. '

Cartrivision is just... dead and gone. Not yet forgotten, but it took media restoration experts a long time and a lot of work to even get a few minutes of footage off one tape. My chances of ever being able to play my Adultery for Fun & Profit tape are basically negative zero.

[lawfulcrime]

Make the most of the next two months

Get all your vaccines

Travel while we have a functioning DOT

Read and buy books on feminism, anti-racism, pro-lgbt

Attend drag shows

Don't skip any of your classes

Read and buy history books

Find your out-of-state networks

Learn to carry cash

Get birth control solutions

Support the Biden/Harris administration

Postpone large purchases and save money

Be careful of what you say online, like un-ambiguous attacks against the incoming administration, especially in spaces that contain your full name or personal information

Feel free to add on.

[lawfulcrime]

Middle-aged magical girl.

She's been defending the Earth since the early 90s and she's very tired.

[lawfulcrime]

NEW ANDRIEL COMIC PAGE! ✨

I just read a incredible fanfic this days that makes me feel so cozy and warm omg I almost wished to die (jk haha) hope u enjoy

[lawfulcrime]

NEW ANDRIEL COMIC PAGE! ✨

I just read a incredible fanfic this days that makes me feel so cozy and warm omg I almost wished to die (jk haha) hope u enjoy

[lawfulcrime]

road tripppp

[lawfulcrime]

foxes power point night

dan: foxes interview moments ranked on a scale of "tetsuji moriyama should resign" to "did you know i've never been skiing"

kevin: USC trojans best plays ranked 30th to 1st

andrew: why kevin should be banned from powerpoint night (1 slide, picture of kevin's title slide captioned 'seriously'

matt: neil's top ten freshman year moments (#1: picture of him punching riko at the winter banquet. cue long suffering andrew 'you did what.')

aaron: why alkaline water is BULLSHIT and how to spot other health-related pyramid schemes, kevin

seth: best foxes fights and who won (he's tallying everybody's points)

allison: neil's most 'wtf is that' outfits and what i would put him in instead (neil: why me?)

nicky: action movie protagonists that are secretly gay

renee: best places to conceal a knife on your person (andrew is taking notes)

neil: various sports and why exy is better

wymack: how many years of my life expectancy i have lost to each of you (every time your name is mentioned you have to drink)

[lawfulcrime]

will never get over ford making a unit of measurement out of fiddlefords stimming. that's a love language to me

[lawfulcrime]

An embroidery of the Wikipedia page for embroidery.

[lawfulcrime]

*doom music starts to play* I actually kindof like scheduling these kinds of appointments now...

but seriously Fellas, don't forget to schedule a pap smear every couple of years just in case. If you still have a cervix you can still get cervical cancer. ilu

this has been a psa

[lawfulcrime]

individuality in the face of homesickness

the cat has no claws

this country is not my own

against our natures

- inspired by "sherlock" written by m.t vasudevan

[lawfulcrime]

jason todd is a good robin. and you can pry that away from my cold dead hands.

[lawfulcrime]

bruised knees and devotion

drops of dew fall of her hair,

returning to rest. she is cold and yet,

she walks. her bare feet cold on numbing rock.

she is alone today.

the air stinks of unrequited affections-

of blooming hyacinths and victorious laurels.

she kneels; bruised knees on sandpaper, incense in her hair and a blade in her palm. a sacrificial lamb to the slaughter.

what is truth. she wonders.

what is fate. she asks.

what does it mean that she who provides, that she who submits wear the crown of he who wields obsession and petty vengeance.

what does it say that she who lives the curse of unwanted advance kneels for he, who turned rejection into playthings of fate and forever.

a sacrificial lamb for the slaughter. a scapegoat for the masses.

the omens are especially putrid today.

blood spills through her fingers, returning to the earth. the blade cold where it rests across her thighs.

she is trembling. and yet,

she kneels, the taste of sacrifice on her tongue. of smoke and figs. of meat and wine. of devotion and fear.

what does it speak about her that she who is chaste and faithful kneel for one whose affection is fleeting and cursed.

what does it show that she who follows and serves, whose thoughts are not her own; hear the omniscient music of bargained strings and chosen comradery.

she who has breathed the air of kings, of warriors and of demigods. she who breathes smoke and dust and tastes the tears of her sisters, of her brethren.

she who will never taste the fortune of those who kneel before her. she who is a placeholder. she whose tears are sweat in the eyes of her superiors.

she who prays in the warmth of the sun and asks in the light of Phoebe.

she who is cursed and blessed. she who is listened but never heard.

she who sees all and sees none.

she who lingers, kneeling, blood spilling through her fingertips, her entrails an omen only she reads.

her body a prophecy only she can decipher.

she who lingers, fingers brushing the thousand unread fates and destinies, of kings, of gods, of kingdoms falling, and of love dying, of a rage unleashing.

she who lingers, breathing ash and sweat and fear; mouth sewn shut in defense of a kingdom that praised her piety and never her. mouth spilling iron for a kingdom that shall fall.

she lingers and kneels in the ruins of her temple; bleeding prophecies untold. bruised knees kissing rough stone. calloused feet and torn rock.

and smiles. broken body and opened mind.

the veil blurs and she falls, bitter and blind and bleeding as her god graces the ruins of her temple. enlightens she who will roam the edges of the Styx, forever lost and weeping, leaving no person in her wake.

warmth spills onto the broken shell of her human disguise and she whispers to Thanatos, to the birds and the spirits. She screams to her god, the patron of a falling kingdom, of truth and perfection. of poetry and deceit. of amoral whims and brutal fancy.

Oh! Lord Apollo! What shall you speak today.

the blade is warm where it rests. the silence loud.

she falls, ever the faithful priest of a god that will never catch her.

she falls, to protect herself from the brutality of enemies foreseen and unknown.

she falls, still, reverent in her hate and faithful in her love.

she is cold.