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Oh man.... this is NOT the thread I needed to see right now.  I'm fixing to head home on a short trip from Austin, and now I'm trying to decide whether to make an unscheduled detour to Houston on my way back. drat my love for puzzles and treasure hunts! Also kinda pissed that the aquamarine had to be one of the two casks already found. THAT'S MY BIRTHSTONE, dammit! 
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Jun 6, 2013 20:32
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HoustoneinTier posted:Houston I... might ask you to look some things up between tomorrow and this weekend. Because I am a shameful gently caress and I think I might actually do this thing now.  einTier posted:I can't help but think that red stone has some kind of significance. With the train track down below it, maybe that's a hint to where it was buried? Do we know the old train layout? This thread is already huge, so forgive me if this has been pointed out already, but...  The star at the top-left corner, I'm pretty sure, represents the North Star, indicating that the painting is facing north. So that would mean the column shadows are pointing east, which means that the sun is setting, to the west. I didn't see this mentioned in the first few posts, so it might give a sense of directional orientation to everything else in the picture. Somebody already pointed out the '95' in the tree branches, but the '30' is just barely visible to me, to the point that I dismissed it as not being there until I saw it indicated in red in one of the quotes. EDIT: Holy poo poo, just found the number '96' in the tree branches. Toward the bottom of the branches, along the right-hand side of the painting (the '6' is even cut off just slightly by the border of the painting). 
I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 22:18 on Jun 6, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 20:55
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Houston einTier, are you even still reading this thread? einTier posted:Houston This might have something to do with the orientation of the sun when it's setting, in December, and how it affects the orientation of the shadows. Remember in my above post, when I said the sun was setting in the painting? einTier posted:
Confirmation that a train is involved somehow. That'd be my guess.
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Jun 6, 2013 21:56
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HoustoneinTier posted:Sure am. Trying to tie your clues in as well. I'm hoping it doesn't mean that the prize can only be found in December, when the shadows are right. I think that was genius the way you tied in the map orientation to the star and the shadows. Makes perfect sense. Okay good, thanks. I wasn't sure if the stuff I mentioned had been pointed out yet or not. As far as the December thing goes, it's June now, which I guess is like the opposite of December. All that means is that the sun is in the Northern Hemisphere along the Tropic of Cancer right now, instead of being in Southern Hemisphere along the Tropic of Capricorn like it would be in December. So all we have to do is factor that into the angles and orientations of the shadows, and we should be good to go.  einTier posted:I'm also finding the red stone super curious. It stands out so much, it should mean something. However, I think the clues pretty well point to the area of the park near Pioneer Monument, north of where SP982 used to sit. There's too much in common with all of it. Remember, every painting has a stone, representing the gemstone corresponding to it. This one looks like it marks the location of the cask relative to all of the objects in the painting.
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Jun 6, 2013 22:29
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Houston I have officially decided to make a detour to Houston either late Friday or early Saturday. GaryLeeLoveBuckets, think you can help a brotha out with a permit?  GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:It looks like while the monument was there in 1981, the fountains that surround it were not. They were added in a renovation around 2004 according to the guy at the zoo. The real key to cracking this is going to be figuring out what the four things are. Could it maybe be a reference to the four sides of this nice, lush little patch of grass right here? 
I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 23:13 on Jun 6, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 22:55
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What are those four little things around the center of the Sam Houston Memorial in this image? The little dark things? EDIT: Maybe the "Small, split,\ Three-winged, and slight" is a reference to the triangular pattern made by the roads around the circle where the Sam Houston Memorial is, at the top. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 6, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 23:17
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einTier posted:The more I look at the Djinn's shadow, I think that's SP982. Look, there's a cow catcher, a round body, and then the smoke stack .... which forms the Djinn. This is what I was originally thinking, that the Genie represented steam coming out of a train whistle. Didn't notice the train details in the shadow though... good eye.  EDIT: Also the front of the train-shadow (with the cow-catcher) is facing east, and the train-tracks at the bottom of the painting line up with both the steam-spout and the Genie coming out of it, so maybe this is where the tracks go east? Or the location where the train starts/stops? I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jun 6, 2013 |
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Jun 6, 2013 23:28
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einTier posted:Something else very interesting. Meaning that if we change the orientation of the painting so that that shape is facing the same direction... We get this.  Hey, the shadow of that sphere column kinda looks like the reflecting pool! 
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Jun 6, 2013 23:51
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^^^ So what does all of this mean, exactly? Also real quick RE: Charleston, SC Take a closer look at the lion's mane. You can make out the numbers '50' and what I assume is either '36' or a '32' with the 2 rotated around in the hairs of the lion's mane toward the right side.   It looks like there might be some other stuff hidden in there too. Like that little cross shape on the lower left hand corner of the lion's mane hair, just above the tree branch (left side of the painting, right near the left border, almost at the vertical center). Also I'm pretty sure that the tree branch with the pear-looking thing is symbolic somehow. But also too... Leo is the fifth sign of the zodiac. So maybe the verse for Cask 2 is Verse 5. Or not, I don't really know.
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Jun 7, 2013 01:29
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Houston A couple quick things I think we might be overlooking: 1.) This is still possible: GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:Houston  2.) Remember how the column with the camel on it doesn't cast a shadow? Well uhh, between that, the Genie being situated between the camel column and the rhino column (maybe the rhino column represents the Children's Zoo?), the Genie facing west (i.e. toward the camel column), and the fact that the ruby is situated almost directly underneath the camel column, I'm kinda thinkin' maybe the camel is symbolic of a HILL. And what's that Atropos Key statue situated on top of there? A hill!? I think it's a hill!!  Raccoon Leaf posted:There's a statue called "Atropos Key" on the top of the hill there that I wanted to investigate. So maybe Cask 8 is buried underneath a hill! Maybe even THIS hill! I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 02:07 on Jun 7, 2013 |
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Jun 7, 2013 02:05
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Mad Mafioso posted:I think you guys need to stop thinking you're right and start thinking you're wrong. You can't look for a christmas tree in a statue because you're going to see a christmas tree. You can't line up maps of a tiny location and compare it to a rock. It doesn't work. If you lined up a map and it was exact, perfect then it could be a clue. Stop looking for it and look at it. It's guaranteed to be simpler than you guys are making it. Try to prove yourself wrong, not right. If you do it the other way it's just a whole bunch of confirmation bias. But then how do we get digging permits? We gotta prove to a panel of people that something is buried somewhere before we can go digging for anything, and that means we gotta have enough CLUES to convince the PANEL that something IS buried somewhere. They only give out digging permits when you prove where something IS buried, not when you prove where something ISN'T buried.
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Jun 7, 2013 03:40
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Ummm, allta, I have a quick question.allta posted:
How come Salt Lake City, UT is the only city on this map that you didn't mention as being a possible cask location? 
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Jun 7, 2013 04:25
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PunkNickel posted:The PiX, we saw as runes, which ended up with the letters of W, T, as in "world of tomorrow", which deals with the 67 expo. That was my first thought upon seeing those characters too. Germanic runes. Although they do look like they could be numbers too. An upside-down '6', a '7', and an 'X' sitting between them (maybe a Roman numeral for 10? So it means "(6 * 10) + 7 = 67"?). Or maybe the 'X' is supposed to be the "Gebo" runic symbol, I dunno. v  vEDIT: I should probably just go ahead and leave for my trip home now. I won't have my laptop, but I'll have my iPhone with me, so maybe I can check back in here sometime tomorrow on that. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 06:35 on Jun 7, 2013 |
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Jun 7, 2013 06:31
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einTier posted:Some also think this small fountain in front of the Houston Garden Center resembles the smoke of the Djinn. I can't say there isn't some resemblance. It was there in 1980. Were the COLUMNS BEHIND IT also there in 1980? Because that would sure as poo poo jive with the 4 topless (heheh I said "topless"  ) columns in the background of the painting.
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Jun 7, 2013 06:42
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Welp, no Houston detour for Dr. Money this week. That trip home ended up being exhausting as all hell once I actually got there. I didn't even manage to start the return trip in the amount of time I had originally planned. Maybe next weekend I can make a quick trip over to Houston and go scout around (or tomorrow if I'm feeling up to it). I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 02:58 on Jun 9, 2013 |
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Jun 9, 2013 02:55
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ohnorobot posted:I talked to someone who knows land surveying, he said a good, non invasive way to find something underground without digging or dragging in some kind of sonar, you build a probe: just a long thin "T" shaped length of metal that you shove into the ground till you hit something solid. This is pretty much exactly what I was already planning to do. The question is where do you get the metal?
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Jun 9, 2013 04:12
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Montreal (???)Typh posted:Montreal This is gonna sound really stupid, but... is anyone else getting really strong Liberty Bell vibes from this outline? That dark outer collar plus the shadow line running down the old lady's neck are SCREAMING "Liberty Bell + crack in Liberty Bell" at me, and have been for several days now. ---------------- Charleston TotalHell posted:Charleston folks, I know there is a monument to the HMS Seraph near the Citadel. This was part of the Seraph, is it part of the monument itself? I think you're definitely onto something here. That thing looks almost exactly like the mask in the picture, and those bolts do look like the eyes in the Fort Sumter Face. Speaking of Fort Sumter, the last two lines in Verse 5... Verse 5 posted:Get permission However, this does also raise the question "How would Preiss have been able to bury a cask at FORT loving SUMTER in the first place?". Without being arrested, that is.  ---------------- Houston GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:Houston Maybe the '96' in "1964" corresponds with the '96' in the picture? One other thing I think we're forgetting: Cultural themes found in Picture 4 were used to help find the location of Cask 4 -- in the case of Cask 4, those cultural themes were primarily Greek (centaur, Greek columns, Greek fountains, etc.). Now, for Cask 8, we have a desert, lots of sand and sand dunes, some stone bricks on the ground, stone columns, and a Genie/Jinn/Djinn/whatever you want to call it. What culture in particular do all of these items point to? Furthermore... Verse 1 posted:In December night These lines lead me to think that once you find the spot where the cask is buried, you should be able to turn around 180 degrees and see (the 1982 location of) the SP982, or something else that would've had a spout and a whistle in 1982. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 00:37 on Jun 10, 2013 |
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Jun 10, 2013 00:33
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Guys, I think I finally figured out what that wierd tree-branch shape on the left side of the Cask 8 painting is supposed to be... It's a turned-around number '2'.
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Jun 10, 2013 01:59
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God I am just ITCHING to drive over to Houston right now to do some scouting/recon, but I have Summer classes starting tomorrow morning and the earliest I'd be able to go out there would be Thursday or Friday. Nobody better find that cask before I get there and do some actual digging myself, savvy? 
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Jun 10, 2013 02:41
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einTier posted:Unfortunately, that's the most "interesting" area for the hunt. Also these two lines: Through the wood No lion fears I feel as though we're missing something with these lines. Like a historical/literary reference or something.
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Jun 11, 2013 00:13
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I'll probably be going out to Houston on a day trip to do some quick recon work sometime this week. I won't be there very long, and I doubt I'll find anything particularly useful, but if I do find anything worthwhile I'll try to post pics. In the meantime, does anyone who lived in the Houston area in the early 80's recall there being anything Arabic/Persian/Muslim-themed anywhere around the Hermann Park area?
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Jun 11, 2013 03:11
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Douginc posted:I like this line of logic - in the picture, perhaps the cross with circle in the upper left hand corner is highlighting the moon, referencing its influence on this puzzle? But I'd have no idea what the camel, rhino, or ball atop the pillars would be in connection with. Maybe the star just represents the Apollo 11 mission? The camel could symbolize travel, given camels are used to carry people and things across long distances in the desert. The rhino could symbolize travel at great speed/force. I also had another thought awhile back that I didn't bring up: Perhaps the column with the sphere on top is supposed to represent a flagpole. I'm interested in exploring this new line of thinking with regard to which park Cask 8 is buried in, but I think we need to sync up more parts of Verse 1 with the areas around these other parks before we get too attracted to any theories.
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Jun 11, 2013 23:37
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Houston Just did a quick Google search for "houston 982" and after filtering out all the train and real estate links, I found this article from the University of Houston. http://www.uh.edu/engines/epi982.htm UH's mascot is a Cougar, which might help in explaining the line "No lion fears". I also found this in the above link:  Sphere column much?
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Jun 12, 2013 00:02
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:Houston Yeah, I think knowing how the verses were originally matched with the pictures would help out immensely.
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Jun 12, 2013 00:37
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Awesomazing posted:I checked and I am sorry if this was posted but I found this forum cached in google they had some pretty good pictures of the park in Houston where they thought it was and the photobucket account is still active and all of the pictures are uploaded there that the guy took from the park. Holy loving poo poo this bastard posted a lot of photos. For those of you who are lazy (like me), here is where the Houston pictures begin (... or maybe they begin here; he kinda mixed them up with a few photos from St. Augustine). These photos were all taken in 2012. A couple of things that are of particular note, one that kinda looks like the sphere column, and another that looks like it matches up with the slanted stone at the base of the camel column.      (apparently these things are all surrounding the base of Miller Outdoor Theater) I would HIGHLY recommend giving all of these photos a look. Be warned, though, there are a LOT of them.
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Jun 12, 2013 04:30
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I'm kinda having a hard time buying into the Tranquility Park theory. Partly because I'm having trouble figuring out how...quote:To the number Unless... maybe the year 1982 is important somehow? 
I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 05:03 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 05:00
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New York(???)OMG BYZANTIUM posted:This is probably totally wrong, but does anyone think the "New York" image does not show New York? Ever since I saw the water at the bottom, I immediately thought of Buffalo and Niagara Falls. Is it just me or do the collective outlines of the windows around the bird kinda resemble the outline of a state? The blue spotted window sorta looks like Minnesota or Wisconsin to me. And the combined crimson and off-white windows look like Idaho.
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Jun 12, 2013 19:34
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Aciid c0d3r posted:I'm also down to go. EinTier, we could carpool if you like. Count me out of any "Goon Meet"-type stuff unless somebody has a really good idea of where the cask is buried (as in, like good enough that we actually find it there) and I get to take some of the credit for finding and uncovering it. Also I would like the option to take the cask and its contents myself (assuming that it is in good enough condition) so that I can try to sell them to my university and maybe have my name included in a story on the school webpage. I've been in undergrad for too drat long and I WANT SOMETHING TO SHOW FOR IT DAMMIT!
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Jun 12, 2013 19:44
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GaryLeeLoveBuckets posted:So you don't want to do any of the footwork that could lead to the treasure, you just want to be there when it's dug up and then keep it? No, just the opposite. I'm saying I want to do most (if not all) of the footwork. Otherwise there would be nothing for me to take credit for. No pain no gain and all that. EDIT: I might make a stop by Home Depot this afternoon to pick up a few things. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 20:11 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 20:05
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Houston This was first posted at least 10 pages back and nobody seemed to pay attention to it then, so here goes.  Verse 1 posted:Friendship south The boulder pictured above was placed there in 2010, dedicating an event that took place in 1990. Does anyone have any ideas regarding other possible meanings for the line "Friendship south"?
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Jun 12, 2013 22:55
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New York(???)Dr. Gitmo Moneyson posted:New York(???) The more I look at this painting, the more I think that the bird, the crimson window, the off-white window, or some combination thereof are meant to resemble the shape of a state. Exactly WHICH state, I'm not sure. Could be a notheastern state, or it could be Montana or Idaho. Both Montana and Idaho are at about the same latitude as New York, so for all I know either one could work. Or maybe the shape is that of New York, and I just can't tell. I don't have Photoshop anymore, so I can't really take a transparent picture of a state and overlay it onto another picture as easily as I used to be able to. v v
I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 23:23 on Jun 12, 2013 |
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Jun 12, 2013 23:18
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Boston(???) This has been bugging me for a little while, and it may have already been answered, but uh... Fistgrrl posted:The one associated with Boston was associated with Salt Lake City because this shape looks like Utah. How come that shape kinda look like a reverse Nebraska?  I mean one of the borders is going in the wrong direction but, you get the idea. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 04:25 on Jun 13, 2013 |
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Jun 13, 2013 04:22
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Fistgrrl posted:Anybody else catch themselves making mental notes of architectural details in their surroundings despite the fact that there is no treasure where you live? The Chicago one was found first yet I still catalog lamp posts and such as I walk to work. Yes, actually, although I'm in Austin so it might be a little easier for me. That plus my brain normally does that kind of stuff already anyway, so.... yeah.
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Jun 13, 2013 04:43
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Houston I may have just stumbled on something huge. Has it occurred to anyone yet that Rice University is like right across the street from Hermann Park on the west side?
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Jun 13, 2013 18:01
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Very Nice Eraser posted:Eh, screw it, here is my complete solution. I'd appreciate it if any Florida goons give me first shot at digging it up! Meanwhile, I think I might have found a possible solution to the Houston cask, but I feel like I need to do a bit more research and see if it holds water before I go giving away any more details than that. Otherwise there may be risk of a goonrush, and we don't want that. I'll post a bit more as I gather further information. I might post pics too, assuming there are any.
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Jun 13, 2013 21:03
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HoustonDr. Gitmo Moneyson posted:Meanwhile, I think I might have found a possible solution to the Houston cask, but I feel like I need to do a bit more research and see if it holds water before I go giving away any more details than that. Otherwise there may be risk of a goonrush, and we don't want that. Er... make that two or three possible solutions. Does anybody know when the Mecom Fountain was built? There's nothing about it on Wikipedia, and Google is turning up surprisingly little info related to it. EDIT: einTier posted:HOUSTON Couldn't he have meant "I" as in the Roman numeral 'I' for 1, referring to Verse 1 and its association with Houston? I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 03:05 on Jun 14, 2013 |
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Jun 14, 2013 02:56
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tacodaemon posted:Larry McMurtry describes the Mecom Fountain as "new" in the novel "Terms of Endearment", which was published in 1975, so it is at least old enough to have made it into "The Secret". In that case, I have three possible solutions. Wonderful.
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Jun 14, 2013 03:08
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Strongylocentrotus posted:Any news on Roanoke? That feels like the one we're closest to finding, just need to get some brave soul on the ground to start rooting around for it. If I had the time or the money I'd be on my way to Roanoke right now. That seems like one of the easier casks to me, and the picture is pretty rad too. 
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Jun 14, 2013 03:11
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BJG posted:I guess you read this... Are we sure that's an aquamarine? Because that does not look like an aquamarine. Like, at all. That blue is WAAAAY too dark to be an aquamarine. Cru Jones posted:Just checking in, has anyone actually left their computer and moved some dirt? I was actually planning on going somewhere to do that today, but I started looking for stuff on Wikipedia and Google Maps, and eventually it got to be too late in the afternoon for me to go. I. M. Gei fucked around with this message at 03:23 on Jun 14, 2013 |
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Jun 14, 2013 03:16
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allta posted:Byron gave him the wrong gem and it was dark so he got the sapphire instead on accident. I'm now finally at that point where I can't tell if you're joking or not.
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Jun 14, 2013 03:34
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