I was searching for a song with a half-remembered lyric to post in a comment on somebody's journal (as it turned out, the half that I didn't remember right was the part which made the lyrics germane to the discussion, and so I spent a lot of "Google time" in vain), and stumbled over the datum that one of my fave acts from "back in the day", Snakefinger, had died.
Now, Snakefinger had been one of those freaky Ralph Records (BUY OR DIE!) guys back in the '70s and '80s, hung out and recorded with The Residents and made some very memorable albums. I got to see him in some "intimate club dates" way back when, as well as on tour with the eyeball crew.
What really shocked me about the fact that he'd died was that he'd died in 1987 ... which means that this fact and my brain were running around in the infosphere for fifteen years without colliding with each other. That's what I call "being out of the loop".
In defense of myself being vastly old and boring, there is the reality that Ralph Records sort of went bye-bye, transforming into something else, and then somebody else becoming Ralph Records, and The Residents coming and going and actually performing without the headgear ... i.e., there was much chaos in that end of the universe, leading to no continuity, and very little data flow between them and me over the past decade and a half.
Still ... it was a SHOCK to hear that Snakefinger has been dead that long. Very sad.