Long scope chain fails

I have a number of scopes set up in my Picture model. To wit:

scope :live, :conditions => { :is_live => true } scope :featured, :conditions => { :featured => true } scope :random, :order => 'RAND()' scope :but_not, lambda { | picture_id | where( 'id != ?', picture_id ) }

When I use these as so:

pictures.but_not( picture_id ).live.random.limit( 9 ).all'

I receive an error, such as:

undefined method 'all' for #<Picture:0x1067a0a60>'

Now this varies depending on the order of the items in the chain, which suggests either there needs to be a specific order by which these chains must be built, or something isn't returning an ActiveRecord. Is this a bug, or is it a problem with the order, or both. Either way, some clarification would be marvellous.