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Mel's hole


analog_warrior

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So a guy named Mel Waters found a strange hole with a lot of weird happenings surrounding it.

Short version;

http://bestuff.com/stuff/mels-hole

Longer version;

Mel asserts that, for years, locals had known about the "bottomless" nature of the hole, dumping garbage down the hole, including dead cattle, truckloads of old auto tires, and large appliances like refrigerators and TV tubes. When garbage was dumped in the hole, no sound of the object hitting the bottom was heard.

Mel claims he began a series of experiments with the hole on his property, including one where he lowered a roll of Life Savers into the hole, to detect if any water was at the bottom of the hole, at the end of progressively longer lengths of fishing line, up to the 80,000 foot (over fifteen miles) length of the last attempt.

At that point, in 1997, Mel sent a Fax to the Coast to Coast AM show describing the hole, and shortly thereafter appeared on the show.

Soon after the broadcasts, Mel claims that men he identified as government agents told him that there was a plane-crash nearby and that he could not approach the hole. He says that the government then offered to pay him a large monthly stipend to lease the land in perpetuity, which he used to move to Australia and fund a wombat-rescue operation. These alleged payments are said to have continued from March 1997 through the beginning of 2000.

In December 1999, Mel returned to the US. While on a bus to Olympia, Washington, Mel claims he witnessed an altercation between police officers and another passenger, after which he was taken off the bus to sign a police statement. According to Mel, the next thing he recalls is walking around San Francisco, twelve days later. He claims he had been physically beaten and his rear molars were extracted. An alleged IV scar on his arm convinced him that he had been drugged.

Mel claims that he later returned to the hole, at which time he was served with papers indicating that his ownership was now in question, due to modifications that had been made, presumably by the government tenants. Mel alleges that his assets were frozen for unstated reasons and that his wombat rescue facility in Australia was dismantled.

On his appearances on Coast to Coast, Mel Waters described the hole as being roughly nine feet across and at least 80,000 feet deep. He also claimed that it had numerous supernatural powers. According to Mel, a dead hunting dog thrown into the hole by a local was seen much later running through the woods, as if hunting with somebody else.

After his appearance on Coast to Coast in 2000, Mel claimed on a subsequent appearance that he had found a second hole. This second hole is alleged to be on public land in Nevada, under the management of the Federal Bureau of Land Management. According to Mel, the land nearby is used by Native Americans as well as "members of the Basque community" who were using the land for grazing sheep.

Mel described the second hole as being 9 feet in diameter, the same dimensions as the first hole. Unlike the first hole, however, Mel claims that the Nevada hole has a solid metal liner, or "collar" sticking out of the ground, 2 feet high, 2 feet deep, with several notches in it. Mel speculated on Coast to Coast that, "in my estimation... it could possibly be a locking collar... something could be lowered onto it and locked into place."

Mel claimed that the alleged second hole's collar was composed of a substance with the following unusual paranormal properties.

Mel claims that he dropped a box wrench on the metal collar, but that the impact did not make a noise. He says this implies that the collar absorbs the sound or energy.

According to Mel, the hole is "solidly lined" with this metal as far as one can see into the hole.

Mel claims that even in winter, the area around the metal collar is warm to the touch and will keep nearby tents warm. He says the collar is not hot to the touch, however.

According to Mel, local Basques say the hole has been there, in its current state, for their community's entire existence, dating back to the 19th century. He claims one man had personal recollection of the hole since he was young, over 70 years ago at the time of the interview (since around the 1930s). In addition to his claims regarding the Basque community and the second hole, Mel has also speculated about a Basque connection to the second hole: He claims he found a whale bone near the first hole, which he asserts could have Basque origins to a history of whaling in Basque culture.

Mel further claims that the hole occasionally emits a "black beam". He acknowledged that, "this is a contradiction, but a black beam of light, okay, comes from the hole. It lasts a very short time, but it just goes directly up to the sky... if you had a flashlight, and it was capable of throwing up a solid black..." However, Mel admits that he has "never personally witnessed the black beam."

Mel claims that he and assorted Basque locals performed an experiment with the Nevada hole, in which they lowered in a bucket of ice they bought from the grocery store. Allegedly, one bucket of ice was lowered 1500 feet into the hole, and the other bucket of ice was kept at the surface as a control. By the time half the ice on the surface bucket had melted, the bucket in the hole was to be retrieved.

According to Mel, the ice in the lowered bucket had not melted, and additionally, was no longer cold to the touch. He claims that the ice had been changed in an undefined way, and described it as having a texture like silica desiccant found in packaged food.

As a further experiment, Mel claims they placed the alleged bucket of unmelted ice on a cooking fire, and instead of melting, the ice allegedly began to "burn." Mel Waters described the fire as "not so much a flame, as kind of a... have you ever used a gas stove? it was like the barest turning of a gas stove on. It was like that last flicker before you turn it off."

According to Mel, additional trials of the same experiment have resulted in melted ice, unchanged ice, and occasionally (about one out of three times) more of this supposed "burning ice."

Mel goes on to claim that this new substance could be used as a source of heat, saying that "one guy took some stuff home, he put it in his wood stove... and the thing's been keeping his place warm" for over three months (September to January). Mel claims this man also reported that steam from a nearby kettle was absorbed by the burning ice, and that the area surrounding the burning ice was always very dry.

According to Mel, after a few months the stove with the burning ice crashed through the floor of the man's cabin for unknown reasons, and that the man returned weeks later to find the entire cabin collapsed into "wood dust." Mel attributed this alleged phenomenon to all of the moisture being sucked out of the wood by the burning ice. He claims that on a later visit, the stove with the burning ice had sunk 5 feet into the ground.

Mel claims that a team of unknown researchers, which he speculated as possibly being related to the government, appeared later at the site of the cabin and attempted to use construction equipment and metal chains to remove the stove. He alleges that upon pouring water into the hole created by the stove, the metal chains fused with the stove, after which it was successfully lifted by multiple construction cranes, loaded onto a large truck and driven away by the unknown researchers.

Another experiment Mel claims to have performed on the hole involved lowering a living sheep to a depth of 1500 feet, resulting in the death of the animal and the appearance of a mysterious "seal-like" entity.

Mel claims that the sheep was led to the hole, but became agitated when it approached the hole and had to be stunned and placed in a crate. According to him, the sheep awakened as it was being placed over the hole and began trashing around in its crate and making "screaming" noises.

The crate was allegedly lowered to about 700 feet, at which point Mel claims that the vibrations caused by the sheep's agitation could no longer be felt. He claims that when the cable had been lowered to its full length of 1500 feet, the metal collar around the hole began to vibrate. According to Mel, the sheep was left at this depth for thirty minutes before being winched back up the surface, where it was found to be dead.

Mel claims that from an external perspective the dead sheep appeared the same as when lowered, but that inside, "the sheep looked like it had been cooked." In addition, Mel claims that he then observed a jellied blob that filled the body cavity where the internal organs normally would be, which he described as looking like a "huge tumor."

According to Mel, the alleged "tumor" was removed, and the experimenters believed they saw some movement inside it. He claims that when the tumor was cut open, it released a "fetal seal," with human-looking eyes, connected to the tumor with an umbilical cord. Mel explains that the "seal" seemed to have a hold on those present, and that it and the human experimenters viewed each other for over two hours.

Mel claims that the seal seemed to him to be a being "filled with compassion," and that after nodding at the experimenters, it dove back into the hole. The tumor and sheep remains were allegedly bundled in a tarp and thrown back into the hole, thereby removing any evidence of the experiment.

Mel claims that he had been diagnosed with esophageal cancer prior to his experience with the seal, but that afterwards the cancer was entirely gone, with no evidence it had ever existed. Mel feels that he was healed by the seal-like entity from the sheep carcass.

In a later interview, Mel claimed the seal entity was now making regular visits to the Basque shepherds camping around the surface of the Nevada hole. He claimed that the seal was able to communicate with the shepherds through a portable radio. However, when recorded, Mel says that the result was only a series of unintelligible sounds, as one might hear in interference on a short-wave transmission.

Mel claims that a new species of bird has been spotted in the area of the second hole shortly after his alleged encounter with the seal. The bird was said to be bright red with a bluish beak and an estimated wing span of 14 inches. He claims that at least six individual birds have been seen in the airspace around the hole since the seal incident, but that no professional can name the species from a distance, and said bird has not been captured as of yet.

It developed into an urban legend, and gained the nickname SunBird. Mel claims that the so-called SunBird never lands, except near the rim of Mel's Hole. He speculates that the bird comes from deep within the hole and he claims that the locals believe that these birds are the cause of the sheep's death, and the tumor that produced the seal entity. Mel professes that he himself has shot at one of the birds, in an attempt to bring it down for possible analysis and perhaps dissection, but that after being hit directly twice, and tumbling twenty feet, the bird pulled out of the fall, and continued flying. According to Mel's story, no birds were seen until three days later. Mel reports finding two crushed bullets in his yard. He says it is inconclusive if they are the same two bullets shot at the bird.

Mel claims that a local Basque man volunteered to be lowered into the second hole, but that the man was convinced to reconsider by Mel and the other experimenters.

Mel expressed his wish to have his body thrown into the Nevada hole after his death.

The Handsome Family recorded a song inspired by Mel's hole called "The Bottomless Hole" on their 2003 CD Singing Bones.

The description of Mel's 2nd Hole in the Nevada desert bears a strong resemblence to the hole or bottomless pit believed in by The Manson Family and discussed in the various court proceedings. Manson preached that a bottomless pit with mystical powers existed in the Death Valley area. The Manson pit figured prominently in his end times predictions.

Mel Waters initially appeared on Coast to Coast on February 21st, 1997, and again on February 24, 1997. His next appearance was in April of 2000. There was then a hiatus for about two years, until January 29, 2002. Mel last appeared on Coast to Coast on December 20, 2002.

Strangeness much. but intruiging.

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they should drop a wireless on top of a robot down there so they could see wats down there that is if there is even a bottom

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ive read up on mels hole, and in an interview he said that he put in fishing line and it either reached 8,000 ft or thats as much as he put in it

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Wow now this is definatly interesting, I google'd for images but not much good came up. But mels hole has its own forum, however the thing about this hole is that its location was never confirmed by mel and research has ended so therefore it was always sremain a legend I guess.

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mels hole found??

says here that they have found a few holes in the location were they were rumoured to be and have filled in.

http://seattlepi.nwsource.com/local/76091_hole26.shtml

Well I dont know about that but on wikipedia, and the mels holes forum it says it hasnt and probably never will be found. The guy who claimed to have found and owned it (mel) never let anyone know where it is. Also it was never proven that "mel" existed.

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is mell still alive today if he exists or has he died?

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lol not being funny cuz i found this intrestin when i was like 7 or 8 but emmm

- Snip -

oh ma days have u even seen a picture of him!! just google loool

trust dont belive tht guy hes a nonce (wild clames but whn peeps say wheres the hole? he ses tht noone can see it????) - even many people that kno of it and camped around it?!? what and they feel the same way?

tht guy is a *****! end of

Edited by Saru
Removed crude language
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i personally believe the hole exists and the goverment got wind of it found it and have now denied all existence of it. they couldnt reveal it to the public anyway a whole that has no end and brings people back to life. normal people couldnt handle something like that.

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i personally believe the hole exists and the goverment got wind of it found it and have now denied all existence of it. they couldnt reveal it to the public anyway a whole that has no end and brings people back to life. normal people couldnt handle something like that.

so how in any way would this benefit the us goverment

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so how in any way would this benefit the us goverment

its not about the goverment benefitting from the whole its about them keeping it secret and not letting others know of its existence. that hole could lead to anything and the goverment likes to everything and give nothing out.

plus depending what was down the hole or what it lead to it could cause mass hysteria or panic. the goverment confiscate mels land and erase the supposed location of the whole of google earth. obvious or what?

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my user name here is a parody of Mel's hole and I've written extensively on this topic on UM (you can search for the thread)... the facts are that I grew up around Manastash Ridge, heard the ORIGINAL live radio program and laughed my butt off through it. Mel was a real person, he likely lived on or near the ridge, his name was NOT Mel.

The reality is that Mel's Hole does NOT exist in any way shape or form. The ubiquitous and great tale telling Mel made it up. It's based on some real facts though (which makes for good legend). One of the things Mel said on the show was that the locals in the area knew about the hole and would throw things into it. Ok, there IS a hole that locals used to throw stuff into... old washing machines, dead cows, garbage lots of stuff... but that hole is called "Chinaman's Hole" it's a roughly 700ft deep abandoned mine shaft (which is on private property now). I go up to Manastash Ridge all the time... there's no hole up there, there never was, Chinaman's hole isn't on the ridge, but it is close by.

My uncle and I beleive "Mel" really did live on the ridge at one time, he had too many details not to live up or near there. We believe we may even know who he was, and that he likely died a few years ago.

for what it's worth, Mel's story doesn't jibe at all... but what a FUN story! LOL

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MissMelsWell how do we know you're not just a government agent on here to discredit this supernatural hole?;)

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MissMelsWell how do we know you're not just a government agent on here to discredit this supernatural hole? ;)

Damnit... you caught me... **takes off black trench coat and sunglasses and stalks away**

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One of his claims is that he lowered 15 miles of rope into the hole.... If all you are doing is lowering rope into a hole, and you can't see the bottom, how do you know if it is still doing down farther or if it is simple coiling at the bottom?

How come he never took any pictures of it?

How come, when I fire up Google Earth and do a search for "Woodinville, WA" there are no blanked out areas in the surrounding pictures?

It seems that at least three basic parts of the story are somewhat suspect....

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You simply cannot have a fishing line, rope, cable or chain 15-plus miles along.

It would break under its own weight long before that depth was reached.

That's one of the reasons why a space elevator is not possible.

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One of his claims is that he lowered 15 miles of rope into the hole.... If all you are doing is lowering rope into a hole, and you can't see the bottom, how do you know if it is still doing down farther or if it is simple coiling at the bottom?

How come he never took any pictures of it?

How come, when I fire up Google Earth and do a search for "Woodinville, WA" there are no blanked out areas in the surrounding pictures?

It seems that at least three basic parts of the story are somewhat suspect....

Because the hole is suppose to be in Ellensburg (more or less, really it's suppose to be on Manastash Ridge near Ellensburg) not Woodinville. Although, oddly, a hole did turn up in Woodinville (which is on the west side of the mountains and nowhere near Ellensburg) but it turned out to also be an abandoned mine shaft about 800ft deep. It showed up right in teh middle of a neighborhood. LOL.

There was a bru-ha-ha about a part of Google Earth being blanked out on Manastash Ridge... supposedly where Mel's hole was suppose to be. No one has really explained that except that it was a coincidence that when the satelite was taking pictures it malfunctioned. But, also realize that Manastash Ridge is also very close to a Celestial Observatory, a WSU owned forestry research facility and the Yakima military firing range. The blank spot was only there for a little while until the next satelite photos were snapped. I've been on the ridge where that blank spot was ... there's nothing there...if there was, someone would have found it. There are ATV'ers and 4x4'ers all over that area all the time (the Seattle Paranormal Society has scoured the area as well). No hole. No covered up holes either.

Also consider that the stink about the satelite photos on the Web was about 8 or 9 years ago. The technology for feeding satelite photos to the Web was still pretty new and not at all flawless. There were blank spots on Google Earth a LOT of places.

Edited by MissMelsWell
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Interesting story, lots of holes. That simple. :D

Edit: Err, no pun intended, of course.

Edited by Blind Atrocity
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Well it was a very intresting story maybe theres something down there clarice but anyways good story just kinda sounds like a bad porno though

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  • 10 years later...

TLDR: I may have found it. Scroll to the bottom

 

I'm gonna have to revive this thread because I may have new info, or not. I decided to scan the area on google maps satellite mode and see if anything caught my eye just for swits and giggles.

I'm actually a skeptic of the proposed hole, as in I don't believe the hole is magical or even paranormal (and may not exist). but... there's still that wonder in my mind that makes me want to see if there's any solid proof or if it can be obtained. so that's why I went looking to kinda write-off my doubts or not.
 

So, being a skeptic I was under the impression that if there was a real hole and it was this magical then the real owner of the property MIGHT try to mislead people... so.. starting off every record he gave of it's general whereabouts was taken in my mind as a possible misdirection.... but I had to start somewhere, so.. I started searching based off of "what if the city name was correct but all the rest was false?" (the thought lingered in my mind "what if the city name was intentionally wrong? what if the city name wasn;t the closest city to the hole? what if the hole though closest to that city wasn't actually close to it?" needless to say if that was the case and I couldn't find anything in the ellensburgh area I was just gonna give up.)

 

So began by zooming in on ellensburgh then I saw circles. but they were way too big, it appears that the local farmers make their fields in circles with a central hole (maybe as some sort of tribute to the legend so as to attract tourists?) Then after realizing they couldn't all be Mel's hole and that the size of the actual holes was too small and likely just a well, I decided to broadly scan the area for any strange markers on the map (like, I was thinking someone may have gone physically searching and found something but for some reason didn't want to label it because maybe it really was the bad kinda arcane, kinda like "I found it and I think people should know, but it's awful you definitely shouldn't go there or mess with it") and I found a mysterious grey label to the east of ellensburgh, which no matter how much I zoomed in it didn't have any text associated to it till I put my mouse over it (So I was thinking, hmm, strange.) and after putting the mouse over it it showed a picture of a flaming circle of embers. then there was text and I tried to under stand the name and... why is it in korean? like, it doesn't even have romanization of the korean characters so people can't pronounce it.

 

so that was the most strange place I found to the east. using basic methods and scanning from the sky I determined there really was nothing of any value to the search to the north, south or east. So I checked where he said it should be, getting the next clue because "what if the direction from the town was also correct or at least generally so?" so the direction specified was the only interesting direction "West".

 

So I zoomed out and went west. and then zoomed in at one level, then two and scanned over the entire western area until in the north west BAM circle, but this was even bigger than the farm circles! it was a circle of trees, it looks natural? so I was like "maybe there's an outer circle that grows around the hole?" and I zoomed in and saw white lines and i remember prometheus "God doesn;t build in straight lines" I was like "What is this? is this like Nazca? so many etched white lines into the ground!!" STOP. Oxymoron moment; God does build in straight lines, they were fallen trees that had lost all their branches, closer inspection revealed that there were indeed tracks of multiple rolling vehicles through the area meaning this ring of trees was done by loggers. Still I decided to check the exact center for any dark spots or reflective spots, and though there were some unexplained shadows I wrote them off as "probably a shadow from a hill". there were some trees covering the exact center and that was a lingering thought that the hole may not be visible because it's covered by tree canopies, but at that time there was no way to see what was beneath them. so I decided to mentally label it "this is not it, it's no different than any other patch of trees".

 

So I zoomed out and looked at the area west of the city and realized it was really big and this was going to take a while and I was hungry. so.. for sake of speed lets just start assuming all the clues he gave were accurate. the next clue 'manastash ridge area', OK, lets find it and zoom in on it and look around the ridge... Bored., there's nothing of interest. so then I got the wild idea, "wait didn't he say it was a specific distance(at least roughly so) from the city? HOW far is manastash ridge and it's surrounding area from the city?" 30 miles..... but mel said his property and the hole were 9 miles from the city in the manastash ridge area... does not compute, is this a blatant contradiction? could this be the proof that it's a lie?" thoughts began racing through my head discrediting his tale and I was very hungry and about to give up.

 

But I decided to give it one last go, you know, because.. any one of the clues could have been meant to be misleading to keep people away from the property, I mean the manastash ridge area was obviously a lie even from google it was just too far away to meet the 9 mile clue.. so one last go right? what IS 9 miles DUE west of the city?...... wait, did he mean 9 miles west of the outermost edge of the rural area? 9 miles west of the outer edge of the city? or nine miles west of city center? this difference would be important!... but nobody ever asked mel...

 

 

TLDR2:

OK rough line time, measure 9 miles west of the edge of the farms; nothing in that region. ok how about zoomout a bit and go back east till the nine mile mark from city center hey... wait.. whats that? a very large building, and whats that! that's a circle! it's about 9 feet across, it has a stone surround and a metal cover................ and it's right next to an abnormally large house-like building and several other buildings. *stares*.... "hmmm but it could just be someone's trampoline......" but.. it's near a road. it meets the nine mile criteria and wait... whats this? Manastash Creek.... did Mel misattribute Manastash creek for Manastash ridge? or just mis-speak it?. I began focusing on the area "no it couldn't be that simple to find...." I started doubting it "it's just a trampoline". but I couldn't be sure, so... I started looking around the area for anything else that stood out.

When my vision spread out and stopped focusing on circles I noticed Triangles. what is this Hyrule? is a piece of the triforce here? give me a break! there were 3 mounds arranged in a triangle right next to my supposed hole(or trampoline) and the triangle point was aimed at it..... hmmm agian...

TLDR2 END

I started thinking about making an expedition to go see it.. but.. what if mel did end up selling the property and it did get under control of the military? what if that was why the building was so abnormally large, it wasn't a house at all it was a military installation made to look like a house.... no... that couldn't be it. but there were an awful lot of industrial style buildings there on the property.... so... no the hole is in line of sight in a clearing from the "house" meaning you'd be spotted.... trespassing is a crime. no thank you no criminal records for me. if I'm gonna go I'm gonna ensure I can check it out without walking right up the driveway in plain view of so many buildings.

 

Wait..........

 

What if that's the intention, to catch anybody coming to look for the hole!, then it would stand to reason that they would not make it so easily accessible even if they could watch people, because what if someone were to sneak up when they weren't paying attention then lower a go-pro down the hole, or even better a drone. or slip a wall crawler+go pro in there and walk away then record everything from their car?. that would be uploaded to the interbuts before they could notice. so.. no. they would not make it so easily accessible. So then this "hole" must be a decoy! which means the REAL hole is somewhere near by! at least in theory.. supposing that it's not just a trampoline near an abnormally large house with 2 - 3 garages and a strange coincidental triangle of mounds.


So I decided to zoo all the way in and look around the property for anything else that could stand out. anything that might hint to it, were there any other circles under the trees? no. what about in the larger field next to the property? I zoomed out and looked for circles or shadows or combinations there of scanning the field from north to south back to the property. That's when I noticed it, gee those tree's canopies are square. and they are a much lighter color than all the other trees... gee that looks like those fake tree coverings I've seen covering missile silos and entrances to government installations(I've seen these sorts of things up close they are actually a mesh tarp with plastic leaves all over it. it's somewhat seethrough so you can see if there's a tunnel etc. behind it if you're passing by on a road or by train, but not from the sky).

 

Then I started looking for other shapes and in the field just north of it at a close distance is another triangle! pointing at the tarps this triangle is a triangle of triangles! not just mounds! could it be they were afraid people would notice the triangles so they built a second set to distract from them near the decoy hole?

Truely Truely this was interesting. obvious military presence, right near a road. near manastash creek, nine miles west (or very close) to Ellensburgh WA, you can;t miss the large white house like building. but just in case you can:

MelsHole.png

 

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On 15/10/2018 at 8:05 PM, Robotic Jew said:

They need to rename this thing...

I'm glad I'm not the only one...

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