:beer: Hermano!

And how about Captain Ambient, the Very Quiet and Relaxed Adventurer? ;)

:) For a moment I envisioned a hero-gone-evil episode in the far-off future where in my old age, I lose touch with reality; (it's a stretch but bear with me). I would become so obsessed with my desire for a very quiet world that I develop a substance called "nitrowhisperin" to rid the planet of noise forever.

Then I remembered - Get Smart did that already.

http://i.imgur.com/ftfVJfNl.jpg

Sometimes I wonder if I'm a bit strange.

Sometimes I worry I'm not.

The Final Countdown
 

I'm so very excited! In all of my musical lit travels, there has been one rare great white which has always evaded me. There haven't been any documented copies surfacing in the US in the 30-year history of the text, and copies worldwide seldom appear on the resale market at an affordable price.

It's a book that everyone simply assumes I own, given my fascination with milestones of music culture. I've been stalking the rare book market for about 6 months in preparation for this purchase and was going to wait until June for my birthday, but I didn't want to get stuck buying the $800+ copies if they were all that were left by the time I got around to it.

Tonight I set myself to the task, and quickly located a second (final) edition at a fair price but was dishearted to discover that the second edition was printed as a tiny pocket book while the first (and rarest) edition was famously a larger-than-life oversize text with anarchistic proclamations printed boldly across the cover.

It took a little hunting, but I was able to track down a first edition tonight. The entire sales entry was in German, which is likely the reason it hadn't been snatched up yet. I didn't hesitate for a second and bought it on the spot. 25-45 days for international shipping, but man, when it arrives I'm going to be one happy duck.

I'll omit the title to send the forum into a massive upset of anticipation because you have nothing better to do than watch me buy sh*t that no one remembers. :)

Gold-plated no-prize to anyone who can guess what I'm on about.

http://i.imgur.com/SO4kCuZl.gif

The Voynich manuscript?

Oh, an excellent guess! Not the current title, however. Interestingly, The Voynich Manuscript has been published in various forms and languages with and without annotation for years, and is readily available from most used book markets for about $12.

Interestingly, the NSA offers an e-book version of The Voynich Manuscript; An Elegant Enigma (1978) for $5.

This beast was a steal at just over $200, especially for the holy grail first edItion.

There IS a free ebook edition (as well as a web edition) of the mystery book I've procured, but seriously... do I look like an ebook guy to you? :)

I'd just like to say that annotations can be a double-edged sword. I have a heavily annotated version of Dracula and it takes me forever to read it because of the vast amounts of side notes that may or may not be interesting. I get off on reading all the random info, but I'd still like a regular version I can read without all of the information that doesn't make the actual story any better.

Well, I'm at a loss, but have you read "Bumping Into a Chair While Humming"? It's Cageian philosophy explained almost better than Cage did himself.

Roger on the annotations, Bat. I've had the same difficulty with a few titles, particularly with a John Hopkins University Press hardcover titled, Annotations to Finnegans Wake (just try to image how impenetrable that text is), and with a massively oversize single-volume edition first printing hardcover-in-slipcase copy of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes.

When there's more annotations then there is source text, I get a bit dizzy.

I hadn't heard of it - thank you very much! I've watched the author's Kickstarter promo video and download a PDF copy to try it out. If it's nearly as good as it sounds, I'll order a copy straight away.

I love the feedback I get in this forum - wonderful stuff.

That sounds like a ****in doozy. You could write a whole book exclusively about the first page.