You could always take a break and go smoke a cool refreshing Chesterfield!

Well, shellac is 100% nontoxic, you probably eat a lot of it (if you've ever eaten a candy with a glossy surface there's a good chance you've eaten shellac).

The stuff you get premixed in the paint store is toxic because of the additives they put in it to increase the shelf life, but if you're doing fine finishes you mix it yourself and you could drink that if you wanted to, it's just shellac flakes and grain alcohol. It'd probably be pretty unpleasant but it wouldn't do you lasting harm. The flakes don't even have a flavor, I've eaten them from time to time just to prove to people that you can.

and that's only about 1/3 of what goes in them.

Well yeah.

I sometimes worry that I'm going to just turn into one giant tumor at 50 because of all the 80s and 90s rack synths in my bedroom, there's got to be all sorts of noxious vapors coming out of those things still.

If I could afford a place to give the synths their own room I couldn't afford the synths. Catch 22.

They saved the Victor "Nipper" building, the one with the four circular stained glass windows. I guess it is apartments now.

I always assumed they were a mother that was made out of some kind of gold-colored alloy.