EMPS: Too Rare to Even Photograph

Carly came up with an interesting combination of words for the Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot this week: Ellipsis Monday Photo Shoot #126:Rare Whte Scales. Not having ready access to albino rattlesnakes, I cogitated all week about this. Then I had a great idea! I would photograph our "butcher cover," a rare Beatles album cover.

But our Beatles records are inaccessible right now. I know: I tried, fighting my way past stacked boxes and furniture to the wall where the record crates are, pulling out LPs at random and examining them with the help of a flashlight. I didn't find the main Beatles crate. But I'm going to show you, courtesy of someone's eBay item, what I wanted to photograph for you:



This is a "pasteover" copy of Yesterday and Today, a US Capitol Records album that basically compiled songs the American distributor left off previous albums plus a few non-LP 45s. When they did the photo shoot for this album cover, the Beatles originally let the photographer do something surreal and Dali-esque...and, to American sensibilities, in grossly bad taste:



It wasn't long before this cover was pulled out of stores, probably a week at most. Rather than throw the print run away, Capitol hastily pasted over the butcher cover with the bland "trunk cover." But if you look very closely at these "pasteover" copies, you can just make out the V of Ringo's black shirt showing through the white album cover. And there you have it: it's rare, it's got a white background, and it involves (musical) scales.

But those aren't my photos, so let's move on. Check out these exhibits from the Museum of the Weird:



Here are some of Harlan Ellison's older, rarer books, all with mostly white covers. Especially rare is this one:




I got this for $2 at my very first science fiction convention. It was worth about $80 at the time, at least according to Harlan. That was 35 years ago. The book dealer was miffed that the guy helping out at his table let it go so cheap, but he honored the deal.

These books haven't much to do with scales, I admit. So let's introduce this guy:



This lizard was chowing down on a cactus at the Arizona Sonora Desert Museum last July. I don't know how rare either the lizard or the cactus was. The lizard was completely wild and unconfined, not part of an exhibit.

Okay, you want a rarer and whiter creature? Okay, but it's almost certainly John's photo:




Here's one of the Siegfried and Roy white tigers, photographed seven years ago. This was about six months after the incident that ended that show. This may or may not be the particular tiger that accidentally injured Roy Horn.

And that's the best I can do on the topic Rare - White - Scales! Hope you liked it!

Karen