Thirteenth Step

Thirteenth Step is the second studio album by American rock band A Perfect Circle, released on September 16, 2003. The album sold well, charting at the number 2 position on the Billboard 200 in its premiere week, selling over 231,000 copies and staying on the charts for 78 weeks. The album went on to be certified as gold on November 4, 2003 and as platinum on March 24, 2006 by the RIAA. Three singles were released from the album, "Weak and Powerless", which topped both the Mainstream Rock Tracks and Modern Rock Tracks, followed by "The Outsider" and "Blue", which also charted on the respective charts.

Background

Writing and recording

The band's writing process was very different from the band's first album, Mer de Noms. With the first album, a majority of the album had been already written and recorded over a long period of time by guitarist Billy Howerdel, before a band had even been assembled. He had recorded it with a female vocalist in mind, but upon Tool vocalist Maynard James Keenan hearing it and offering to sing for the material, the content was then quickly finalized upon adding Keenan's vocals and re-recording the drums with band member Josh Freese. With beginning the second album, the band found themselves starting fresh, without any material to start with, with the exception of the track "Vanishing", which originally was intended to be on the band's first album, but Howerdel could not find the song file in the studio, having accidentally named it "test". Upon finally recovering the track in 2001, it was only slightly altered for its final release, to better match the eventual sound of Thirteenth Step.

7-PET

7-PET was discovered by K.W. Bentley and is a potent opioid analgesic drug, 300 times the potency of morphine by weight. It is related to the more well-known oripavine derivative opioid etorphine, which is used as a very potent veterinary painkiller and anesthetic medication, used primarily for the sedation of large animals such as elephants, giraffes and rhinos. 7-PET itself has a 3-O-methyl ether which reduces potency, but the 3-OH derivative is around 2200x morphine, almost the same potency as etorphine as a μ agonist, and unexpectedly the 3-desoxy compound is also around the same potency of 2000x morphine.

Unlike etorphine however, 7-PET is not an illegal drug, and is not controlled under the UN drug conventions, but it might still be considered to be a controlled substance analogue of etorphine on the grounds of its related chemical structure in some jurisdictions such as the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand.

See also

Commodore PET

The Commodore PET (Personal Electronic Transactor) is a line of home/personal computers produced starting in 1977 by Commodore International. A top-seller in the Canadian and United States educational markets, it was Commodore's first full-featured computer, and formed the basis for their entire 8-bit product line, including the Commodore 64.

History

Origins and the early models

In the 1970s Commodore was one of many electronics companies selling calculators designed around Dallas-based Texas Instruments (TI) chips. However, in 1975 TI increased the price of these components to the point where the chip set cost more than an entire TI calculator, and the industry that had built up around it was frozen out of the market.

Billy Cranston

William "Billy" Cranston is a fictional character in the Power Rangers universe. He is the Blue Ranger in the series Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, and was portrayed by actor David Yost. Billy is the only original Power Ranger to remain for the entire MMPR series, and is the second longest-serving Ranger overall behind Tommy Oliver. Until his departure, he was considered the brains of the Power Rangers team, creating many gadgets with which to solve problems that not even Zordon foresaw, and he even invented the first team's wrist-worn communication devices.

In 2013, it was revealed that Billy's last name came from actor Bryan Cranston, known for his roles on Malcolm In The Middle and Breaking Bad, who had voiced several monsters on the show earlier in his career.

Character history

Mighty Morphin Power Rangers

Billy was one of the five "teenagers with attitude" selected by Zordon to become the original Power Rangers, along with Jason Lee Scott, Zack Taylor, Trini Kwan and Kimberly Hart. Billy became the Blue Power Ranger and was given both the Triceratops Power Coin and the Triceratops Dinozord.

Black Christmas (1974 film)

Black Christmas (former titles include Silent Night, Evil Night and Stranger in the House) is a 1974 Canadian independent psychological slasher film directed by Bob Clark and written by A. Roy Moore. It stars Olivia Hussey, Keir Dullea, Margot Kidder, Andrea Martin, Marian Waldman and John Saxon. The story follows a group of sorority sisters who are receiving threatening phone calls, while being stalked and murdered during the holiday season by a deranged murderer hiding in the attic of their sorority house.

Black Christmas was filmed on an estimated budget of $620,000 and was released by Warner Bros. in the United States and Canada. When originally released, the film grossed over $4 million at the box office and initially received mixed reviews. The film was inspired by a series of murders that took place in the Westmount section of Montreal, in the province Quebec, Canada, and the urban legend "The Babysitter and the Man Upstairs".

In the years that followed, Black Christmas has received positive reviews, with many praising its atmosphere and soundtrack, and is credited for originating the unsolved ambiguous identity for the killer. The film is generally considered to be one of the earliest slasher films, and has since developed a cult following. A remake of the same name, produced by Clark, was released in December 2006.

Billy (Samiam album)

Billy is the third album from the American band, Samiam, released in 1992 on New Red Archives.

Track listing

Personnel

References