Vertmorpheus

Hey all... I bit the bullet n got on facebook like the other 5 billion members of the human race (well, the good looking ones anyway). Wanna add me, PM me Place needs some colour, haha. Offset all those supermodel insurance brokers and test pilots. maybe we could start a cult of some kind. guess anyone else that wants their ranks swollen (nothing like a nice swollen rank) might as well stand against the blood spattered wall here with me. thanks for allowing me to clutter up your day with commercialist references VM

haha, that smells really, really bad. Doesn't make a lot of sense, either, from a few angles. Delete away, or change mine to "launceston". VM

Unfortunately, your SE is an aimless piece of drek unless you word things pretty precisely, even then, somedays it simply doesn't play well with others. Maybe pin "20 most common shitfully repetitive questions" in site n forum matters, then just refuse to dignify relevant questions with a response. Rather than taking time to nark at someone for asking a simple question... bugger if 999 ppl ahve asked, sometimes you're gunna be the thousanth and just want to know. That's like snapping at someone cos a bunch of other someones have given you a shit of a day... not very fair, or nice. Someone having a shitty breakfast is not my fault at lunchtime. I'll give a dollar to whoever is the first to ask "what does UTSE mean?" VM

Evening all... morningish, for you Mexicans out there. I was after decent beans for the following... Salvia officinalis Salvia apiana Salvia nemerosa Damiana - quite a bit, if you have it handy. Calea z - esp. tried n trues Passiflora incarnata - fresh Henbane (viable, duh) Withania, Justicia Baniaudiopsis haati (cuts, beans, whichever suits) Can trade for freshish turbina, peganum, heimia, nicotiana, pachyrhizzus, caffea, basil seeds, wee pach pups, epiphyllum/seleni cuts, brug cuts, seeds for the spikest tree i ever did see, monstrose opuntia cuts, kalanchoe beharensis seeds, entertaining cyperus rotunda seeds, various odds n sods. Prefer lots of 30 seeds at least, pm me. VM

damiana plants did not arrive in this country until about 5 years ago. buh,possibly? Always nice to get a particular version of possible events.... any given individual can hunt up a bunch of wild seed on their SA adventure package tour and bring it back ahead of the Cosmically Approved Schedule though. I reckon it is probably possible to take an ethnobotanical dump somewhere in our own backyard without you knowing about it. Working out propagation protocol took a year. People can be a bit slow, can't be helped. Nothing in the info I can find as of now that wasn't available online in entries dated prior to that 5 year mark. No idea why prop or cult would differ from how it is done in its home grounds, unless you are trying to grow it in Tassie or something. Englishppl growing rivea in their basements, praying for flowers... the oldest plantation could be no more than 2 years old. assuming you are in possession of all the facts. I'd bet both balls someone, somewhere, got seed in before that date... 3 percent aint great, but you only need the right 3 in the hundred, hey. Stranger things have happened. We all got concieved, somehow, for starters if you've ever grown this plant then you'd know how unlikely this makes your proposition of a local harvest. I can only and have only ever reported what the vertometer tells me, and it hasn't failed yet. Scuse me if I don't place entire trust in ....well,some guy that isn't me. I reckon there is a reasonably high chance of some stray beans having made it back here n having an ok time of things, well before that magic 5 year number. However it happened, I can get it that fresh I can still smell SOIL (which, crazy me, smellls JUST like the local, deco and red worms and silt) when I open it up. Potency is easily three times the standard vendor (hype aside) shit, let alone the overcooked runny goo in lil bottles going around. That stuff is to damiana what international roast is to coffee, or bourneville to cocoa. I have never grown it........ That's why I'd like some seeeds for it. Unlikely by your own understanding does not (I suspect fortunately) work out to impossible by everyone else's. As for seeds from herb bags, the seed is indeed often viable, but does not germinate. Oh. Ok. Sorry, you said viable, didn't you? The literature cites a 3% germination rate from fresh seed. Even the mexicans decided to propagate via tissue culture because they could not get enough seed to germinate. See, you coulda told me that in the first place, then the world would be a nicer place. "the literature" unfortunately often seems to assume everyone is trying to prop this kinda stuff 20 years ago in a berkeley dorm.... "the literature" also says you can't germ pachs without almost scrotetearing levels of worry and fiddling, says that "rivea is hard to flower", says that "you need x mg of compound y to achieve state z", which is later found to be not entirely line with how it all really goes down in zee jungle... Which is nice, isnt it? Otherwise there'd be no scope for hope. Damiana plants/seeds are a mexican national treasure - unauthorised export of which is punishable by long jail sentences. National treasure of the apparently growing all over the joint wild and untended variety (going by "the literature, that is... this is al lgetting rather biblical in its convenience)... why can't I pinch some seeds and take em home? I am sure htey are every so slightly more geared towards keeping an eye on say big bags of cocaine or whatever. Maybe not. Maybe they hire a lil old lady with a big stick to stand guard over each and eveyr last wild plant whenever it seeds, and have done for the last 50 years, no Nanna has ever thought "my, how pretty, yoink". Nothing ever found its way here by THAT route,haha. Definitely not a fair few other sacred and guarded plants from the same region of the world. Mexico would vex me more, cept it's listed as hanging out also in central america and the west indies... maybe another possible route there. Maybe it might use the same route that all the other scabby looking semi arid mexican plants that my area is carpeted in for dispersal, who knows. But I think plants got around ok a long gtime before export brokers did. Mexico, jesus...you're telling me people that in some cases will sell their children would NIVVAH! sell a few beans for the right price? Nice priorities. Exporting parrots and snakes and fresh white kids in postpaks is kinda frowned upon here too, but you can bet your arse some cashed up OSer has a Koala Grow Cab up and running. You can't rule out tissue culture in the area I am thinking of either, I know it happens with other things, of far less practical value. Lot of smart ppl out there. Here. Wherever. Not even substantial bribes helped to source seeds or plants even though that's how you get everything else in mexico. Sorry, is this stuff growing wild anywhere there or has it been hunted out? Sounds like an issue of technique or timing? Seems you can get all the illegal international drugs you want, shipping containers of eastern european girls, black market cigs and big boxes of guns... but a few useful seeds is just COMPLETELY unlikely? To make a hollow laughing... Chasing this plant was an interesting time.... Still wondering how I ended up with half a dozen seeds of something that sounds as if I should get my balls lopped off just for thinking about it ... praise be to the gods of corruption and simple peasants, I reckon. I'm going to try incredibly gentle scarification and smoke treatment... see how we go anyway. Seems the right thing to do given some poor wetback is being flogged as we speak for letting some beans thru in my package :D that are viable, but wont sprout VM

actually, I'll ditch that and entirely on the basis of "paid to go to funerals, paid to send their kids to school, free cars, free houses,", I am awarding you Trollingest Pseudonym of L8 08 :D For anyone that actually cares.... I'd like to call this... Shitebusting I brushed up...a challenge where I can sit down and look at shiny things? I'm there! it's all a bit topsy turvy ATM, what with howard being a bastard and rudd being a sugarfree kinda bastard... basically, the immediate numbers on fortnightly payments look alright for ABSTUDY,til you realise it's means tested and assets tested the same as youth allowance, in many common circumstances. among other nasty catches, are "liquid assets"...which I'd like to call "instant de'feral" "Liquid Assets: Liquid assets are any readily available funds, including those of your partner, which you can access within 28 days of date you last worked. * What assets are counted as liquid assets? * What are not counted as liquid assets? * How do liquid assets affect my payment? * Can I be exempt from the liquid assets waiting period? What assets are counted as liquid assets? Liquid assets include: * cash on hand * shares and debentures * term deposits * other money available at short notice * some payments made or due to be made (within 28 days) by your last employer; * 10 year insurance bonds * amounts deposited or lent to banks or other financial institutions whether or not the amount can be withdrawn or repaid immediately * amounts borrowed from the bank for a specific purpose such as international travel that may not have been used for the said purpose * assets given to a son or daughter in some circumstances * loans to other people * unencumbered proceeds from sale of business * any money in trust funds, bank accounts including mortgage offset accounts, BUT NOT balances of mortgage redraw accounts * redundancies or eligible termination payments that are not rolled over or cannot be rolled over * compensation payments. " which sounds ok... til you dig into ABSTUDY and it turns out that once you have declared 2500 in ANY of the above, you may have your payments "deferred", guvspeak for "just go get a job or youll starve, and then you can't quit it just to study or we won't pay you anything at all, muwhawha". Whereas under standarfd issue race-irrelevant parenting payment (and entirely different payment, for entirely different reasons) you can call em up and mention picking up a grand or so, and they basically don't want to know unless it's from an ABN'd source. made 500 this week on ebay? they literally DON"T CARE, even if you declare it to them openly. try it The above list has exclusions listed on their site for superannuation, etc, but eh... its garbage, in comparison to the terms n conditions of their Newstart Package. Or the kickarse list of kind of confusing option if you go n get some kids from somwhere. Hint, having your own is tiring, but cheaper. which puts people in the silly position beloved of centrelink nowadays, which is Trying to Make Them Tell Porkies... seriously, even some relatively hard up people can PROBABLY scum up a couple gs to live off, between two sensible adults, sometime in the next MONTH.... but you can't tell them that,then they can breach you, cut you, order repayments (which they did this year, to just about anyone recieving anything, regardless of the care they take with conservative or generous calculations ;) ) ... but they can still say "well we set aside x amount of funds, ppl just aren't reliable, or instead of listing you as "barely self sustaining this week" they will list you as "success!"... then they pocket the difference. centrelink, unbeknownst to most, has an ABN. scary. to actually qualify for the dubious generosity of abstudy, which BTW at its average would pay (all listed figures on their site are allowable maximum payments, most ppl would get far less and whatever they got would be counted as total income, ie, it would knock them back in other regular free for all style payments and make them ineligible for things like Uncle Kevins recent xmas bonus for everyone and their dog) about as much as Disability (a mates mum recieves disability SOLELY because she is rooted from being an opiate addict, essentially, which is cool but if we can cough for that for at least halfway self inflicted conditons, why cant we pay the same or half of the same for accident of birth?) which is paid to some of the most professional bludging fuckers of all time. so yeah, on the face abstudy pays better than austudy, by a chunk and a half or so... but the amount of extra bullshit you would have to go thru, the amount of basically sucking at life you would have to prove on paper to get it at ALL, let alone reliably enough to be able to call it "social SECURity"... explains why almost all indig aussies I know that have studied, did it on Austudy. Or newstart, as broken up tafe courses with constant interruption to explain to centrelink that they knew what you were doing all along anyway, can you get back to class now. The cute thing is, the "Average Intended Consumer" of Abstudy would presumably be challenged enough to not be able to dig thru their crappy search engine for half an hour working out that its about as worth dealing with as Nigerian Life Insurance... so they'd sign up, with hopeful hands... only to be basically breached by default the minute they got any kind of useable, even emergency capital behind them that they were decent enough (or just avoidant of bullshit enough) to declare. Then youd be unable to claim any other payments for x amount of time... all very good on the surface, rotten as shit on the inside. Like an apple from Woolworths. At the "average kinda wholesome level" I chose at bloody random, say, 21, independent, partnered, no kids, you get about 20 bucks more than you would from newstart or parenting payment, but the conditions and obligations are almost laughably mean spirited, even by centrelink standards. The only other indigidodge going from those guys are centrelink cadetships, but once you read into em basically you can tell already itwould turn out as "we keep a heap of pet drones for cheap repetitive office duties, and pay back their HECS but only once they've passed a semester,(remember when they paid everyones HECS? I dont, I'm too fucking young, so no uni for verty vert) no failed subjects paid out on" and very, very few ppl indeed would be at Doctorate pay rates... I reckon it'd stall out at an ASP 2, and you'd have to be pretty or funny or something to swing it that high up the chain. The average or at least most common pay rate works out, weekly, to LESS than many single, essentially freewheeling people receive fortnightly for doing NOTHING other than rocking up with a completed form once a fortnight and taking in your entire life in paperform whenever the system decides to dump you in the snakepit... also, with a work component at a govt office, you cant just save cash on student style clothing (or living)... youd need somewhere probably outer areas, nice shiny clothes, good smell, at least medium maintenance... and if you couldnt swing that out of your own pocket, theyd shitcan you under the guise of "communication issues" or "overskilled for job role". The whole thing reads like a shitty mobile phone plan, or a no deposit home loan (havent looked into the low interest home loan, get back to you if i do). biscuits for mutts. So... if you're genuinely brokearse, or a pretty dedicated scammer, you can make about half of not quite enough to live on, provided you can consistently demonstrate your capacity to sucessfully but gradually fail sideways.... by ticking that box. And that's if you're any good at playing numbers, rather than simply wanting to ... eh.... study something for the betterment of yourself and your people. Otherwise, theyre not worth the trouble (and THEY know that any kind of house-trained sweet potato picker can work out them wordy things, yes maam) if you plan to get anywhere much but will need a lil help along the way (especially given how much they stand to make back off you in tax in the future, if it augers well) and they don't just breach your arse for a laugh in the meantime. The verdict on "do you get more money from centrelink for being black?"..... only if you really, really suck at it but can still get your head around some of the most convoluted and laborious obligations known to any bludger since the invention of unsliced mulletcuts, and even then only kind of at the start, you will be automatically disallowed from claiming all kinds of run of the mill things that people who couldn't tell you where centrelink IS are allowed to claim for no good reason at all. VM

yes, but the security is trained by Americans VM

Cheers guys, very handy! I did UTSE, but thanks for the pointer! Was wondering more about contemporary info, and maybe even a conversational element...I couldn't find a whole lot other than a few stop start threads that seem to be leftovers of actual conversations ppl have had in the flesh... though I did mange to work out that Leonitis resin is, to this day, "just like hash". LOLz all round. My "local" herbal purveyors are hard on for macrobiotics , everything wherever possible is local and they don't mind telling you openly if it isn't, we are well set for microclimes around here. I have NEVER seen commerical common aussie damiana sacks that contain ANYTHING like this quality, but feel mor tha nfree to send me a free sample for comparison! Prices do tend to reflect accordingly, my CO damiana is usually 110 a kilo vs the "nice" import gear which is more the 55 a kilo mark... then there's the Christ Knows What stuff which is dusty, almost odourless, sold in wee premeasured bags, it's not the dregs of the last order of the nice either, it was shit when they grew it. Soulless. The worst I ever tried was the old HERB gear, in the "sorry bud, the newsagent didnt have quart bags, but i got these..." size bags... like 12 bucks 15 years ago, for about 50g and it was SHIT. Didn't find any carpet fibres or cat hair but it wouldn't have surprised me. It was probably on par with the ebay average, when I last bothered. Flaky bald dry shit. Which is why I was interested to hear that most random vendor dami around is rank with seeds (though and "old thread" said that was almost unheard of here?), if kinda useless ones, the tastiest of mine has turned up less than half a dozen in maybe a whole kilo overall, lil (couple mil) bean shaped things, kinda shiny buff colour, quite hard coat for their size (not that I tried too hard to break one!) Someone producing locally would want to save all the seeds they could, versus bulk SA production where they'd leave the beans in as they'll be too old/irradiated/gassed/baked in shipping containers to worry about TOO many being much good. They even stock wildcrafted ranges of quite a few surprises, which usually have all the same lil gribblies living in it as what I have grown chem free up the road. Their topline chamomile smells BETTER than my own chem free gently dried perfectly pick stuff, even a month after I buy it... delicious quality. Not everyone is entirely out of luck, sharing in luck doesn't cut back your share any either If anyone here has one plant, someone else will have 10... the next, 20...well ok, 15, you gotta dip in with your teapot at some stage or what's the point... thanks again guys, might be chewing a few ears off in the very near future! VM

I never mentioned extra forms, on the same forms that everyone else fills out to apply for centrelink payments you will see a box asking if you are Aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander. I knew someone who used to laugh about the fact that he got more money for being "aboriginal" and last I heard the situation hadn't changed, a few weeks ago a friend was asked by someone at centrelink when they were reviewing his payments whether he was aboriginal or Torres Straight Islander, he asked why and asked whether that would mean he was entitled to more money, they refused to answer the question and said that he would have to talk to the aboriginal affairs officer who never got back to him. Are you sure there are no extra benefits for aboriginals these days? Last I heard aboriginals were getting more money in centrelink payments, paid to go to funerals, paid to send their kids to school, free cars, free houses, interest free loans, etc, is this all wrong too? Have I been mislead?? I look forward to doing some serious mythbusting here. Um, yes, there is a box. It is more a nosey holdover from the bad old times, more than anything. You don't get anything extra, I THINK (off the top of my head, never having claimed it myself) that ABSTUDY originally had an increased distance allowance component, basically a transport allowance as it was found at the time that whilst many regional indigenous youth were more than suited for tertiary education, their parents (by stats at the time) were in a much shittier position in general to pay for boarding fees, cover moving costs, etc. This has now levelled out, and the only "real" differences is that if you get cranky with centrelink, they MIGHT refer you to their pet blackfella, who is likely to be about as pasty as myself, and at least as resentful. But if they are found "favouring" the local colour, they get the arse, as I am sure you can understand. There are also specialised call centres that claim to be able to help out ppl who have english as a second language, but apparently they are more geared to european, asian,arabic and african dialects. I think they just pick the phone monekys for being able to withstand the occasionally highly descriptive remark, and a lil more patience. Never called it myself. As for early payments, that's pure BS. Everyone gets their centrelink or FAO payments fortnightly, clockwork, assuming you reported or whatever. Early, psht. How does that work? You just get paid twice as often as anyone else? I can see that being about as popular with pigfaced beancounters as carpet burn on your cock. Noone "gets a free car/house/anything" for being "black". You may, under localised or specialised development or cultural grants, be entitled to funding for a vehicle if one is required, but the same goes for the Arts Council that tours schools. You may be entitled to subsidised housing or community care, much like the Housing Commission anywhere. The odd case of corruption or whatever, someone sees and old black "friend" from school and can't help but notice he drives a massive v8 commo with govt plates, gets confused IE jealous, not understanding the details or the restrictions... it's really just the old case of people not looking with facts in their mind but envy/fear/loathing in their hearts. Trust me matie, if I could get a free car, house, hell even a cheap car or house, by any legal paperwork based means available to me right now solely on the basis of race, I would do so. Wouldn't you? But no such thing happens. Trust me on this ;) Onceuponatime, there was SOMETHING of a swing towards "free stuff for black ppl" but it certainly isn't the case anymore, at the time it was done in the shadow of a governing principle of "different ppl have different needs"... back when things were complicated enough at a community level but simple enough at a technocratic level that it was "easier" to pigeonhole in some ways... whereas now, everyone is funded or judged by their earnings, assets, situation... anything. We have the means to crunch the details on an individual or family basis... of late, ticking the Black Box just makes you more likely to have half your income "managed" ie simply taken off you. I know plenty of NW brissie ppl , white black and in between, that got big fat checks for jsut happening to get an awful lot of rain for a few days and losing power for a week... simply for rocking up. Click on the centrelink.gov.au website n look at the recent links. Is "regionalism" any more sincere or intelligent than "racialism"? Of course not, but they figure we can afford to probably pay the occasional perosn too much, versus noone getting any fucking thing. We ain't broke, here. 5000 for having a baby, noone is going to knock it back but well it's just discrimination on the basis of breeding preference, isnt it? As long as anyone is giving a free buck to anyone else, someone ELSE is going to get all sour about it. The bloke that works under you wherever you work, doesnt think YOU'RE worth the pay disparity, if there is one. And if ther eisn't, there should be, hey? Stands to reason Only fair. FTR, in total seriousness, common payments including family tax benefits A and B, newstart, parenting payment and the odd sprog related lump sum vote buyup strategy are all ENTIRELY income dependant, and the scales used to make those calculation are the same regardless of ticking that particular box... it's just a lot of sour rednecks out for every red cent themselves who noticed it back in the old barnsey days, "datamatched" it in their limited bitter way with the odd tale about subsidised course fees (for outlandish notions, such as chucking in a few bucks to make it easier for girls from communities to study nursing, yknow, dumb shit haha) and a LEGEND WAS BORN! the "abo" with the brand new free car, who is too drunk to walk apparently but can drive the free nice car, who drives it nowhere cos he doesnt work but got his job cos hes black... at the end of the day he knocks off work to knock around his family (when they're not being paid double to become doctors,despite being of course illiterate), then sets a nice fire made of furniture in a stove , because despite being sharp enough to manipulate one of the most notoriously paperbound tapechoked bureacracies in the western world they "didn't know how the stoved worked, hahahahah, coons". The nice, fresh styled up clothes he wears out for quiet drinks with some work friends are stolen, despite him getting paid more for being black, and they're worryingly clean given he beats em over a washing machine wedged in a riverbank in his community. Lil bits of truth add up to lots of bullshit... there were communities who had subsidised houses built, with ovens, but no electricity. They waited, requested, it never came thru. The high tension lines it relied on simply didn't exist, it was never possible and a monkey who could file alphabetically could've worked that out. So, some of em DID light fires in the ovens... because they'd been told by the generous scumbags who rocked up initially that "of course, youll be expected to keep the place clean, no rubbish or fires, and you wont need them anymore what with the nice new ovens!". Ditto with the washing machines... either sent to communities with water so alkaline it literally siezed them up, or simply sent clothes red... or to places with NO power and no plans for any... so the panels were pulled off, dished out a bit, and used as scrub boards in the cleanest flowing water the ladies could find. Good on them. The best ANY of us can do with an inferior govt, is the best we can. I'd do the same. As for domestic violence, it is of course an issue, but there is always the disparity between occurence and reporting, that's another thread entirely though and one that I really won't bother starting with, to give it too little time would be very disrespectful to ALL people involved. FTR also, any kind of prejudice is fucked. I don't like it when I see a Timid White Guy just about shit his dacks when some cool young brothers get on the train... anyone with a brain sees thru the FUBU and sees the recent shave, the good smell, the cheeky grins... all he can see is a GANG. And, some ppl play up on that. Likewise, there IS a lot of "dumb white guy" "comedy" around... it's not very good, most of it, and IME dumb ppl are dumb ppl, race is no barrier to ignorance. The fact that the bulk of more commercialised white guy material is written by, and for, other white guys shouldn't escape you either... but there is that double standard there. White man can jump, sometimes... but then if the biggest thing you have to worry about from your position of relative social security is a MOVIE title, instead of just being able to take it as a joke, then that's a bit pissweak. Isn't it? In the face of an entirely industriosocietal infrastructure, datasphere, mediasphere, essentially set up for the amusement of white (or at least well off enough to get into some serious debt, which is the New White... likewise, plenty of white boongs around these days ) educated judaeo-christian males aged 18 to 65. At the same time, there comes with that a lot of self loathing, which I gotta say, is pretty evident (and contagious). I mean really, when you see the box headed "serious man" in his big dark death dealing fourby with the mad keen stickers, his "i shoot and i vote" stickers, his token wife and three sports mad kids, raging hard at some poor girl in a hatchback cos he has to get to BWS or BCF by YESTERDAY... to pick something up to do with his Big Scary Ute or his Practically Equipped Shed...all deliverd in his carefully rehearsed-in-youth deeper than necessary tone of voice, legs astride, balls on the scratch... he does look like a wanker, who knows hes a wanker, just an overgrown spoilt child with something to prove, made more angry by the fact that he has NOTHING to be rightfully angry about at all other htan his own disconnection from anything approaching cultural or personal authenticity, a sense of self or communal function... we might all be "yeah fuckin aye" to his face, but behind it, we know he's just scared out of wits by something he can't put his finger on. All puffed with pride about having done nothing a squillion other ppl have done with almost machined precision of similarity. There are also black guys with low self esteem and poor coping skills who end up hurting ppl, acting like cunts, killing themselves, drinkign too much, having to lay into the wife or kids to be The Man to someone, even if he can't be it to HIMSELF... instead of looking for ways to divide, I think its more helpful (and less irritant to the gut!) to look for what you have in common with the ppl you might be prone to mistrusting. Eh, its a big issue, as I said bapho I can see how you'd hit the wrong buttons for a lot of ppl, I think you may have just swallowed the old suburban propaganda...yknow, like the one about us being mainly asian by 2020 or the ethnic gang that cut the lil boys dick off in the shopping centre toilets. see snopes.com, for all great urban myths, busted. No hard feelings bapho, and I am not offended by you or your words (it would be kinda pointless anyway, we're all just words here ;) ) I just don't dig regurgitation of mis- or dis-information. I'll club you a lizard sometime, you can get me a good deal on some WiFi or a southern cross tatt:P jk VM

I can't see big fleshy tropicals standing up to a freeze so well though, I think I'd stick with gentle harvest and drying, then stable cool storage... allow them some extra soak time/watering in time one day when you do end up planting them. Still, if you have the beans to run the tests, I am sure many of us would be grateful to hear the results! VM

A little faith goes a long way, too If you need them, they will come... even if you're a bitter grey haired muppet like me. Freezing of plant matter depends on speed, which dictates size of ice crystals formed internall... small enough, being fast enough, and the ice forms around and between cells... too slow, comes out chunky, ruptures cells which upon defrosting go mushy. Dryness would help with moisture content (low moisture and a fast freeze would give very low levels of very fine crystals internally, minimal damage) but some species, the closer you get to "shelf dry" the less viable they are, by nature... in which case fiddling around with freezing would just be another lil stress for them to overcome at some stage. I know tiny dry herb seeds react ok to freezing (basil, mint, thyme etc) but I have a suspicion the bigger the seeds got, the more drying right out would fuck up their chances... pumpkin seeds etc would be very hard to snap freeze by ice water and deep freeze methods, in comparison to some kind of sage, for example...surface area relative to interior, and all that. I find the best way to ensure tomorrow's seeds, is to plant today's. Or at least plant last year's before they go festy. VM edit... salt.... maybe if you plan to freeze fresh seed, make a point of keeping salinity and salt based ferts reduced before harvest... higher salt content would slow freezing, maybe only by a pinch, but if you're talking numbers games... further edit... I know that maiden wattles drop seed in areas where ground temps get below freezing, and other wattles with similar sized seeds sprout after winters as bad as -12 ground temps (in heavy clay areas, chilled to the bones of the earth) so they should be ok. Maybe.

Bloody hell, all starting to sound a bit complicated. Couldn't we just warn someone instead? Shove a goat out a tower, or something? VM

lol, true. the nets I refer too come prepacked in very slim tubes, I guess based on old pattern 40 mm projectiles, and get fired out of gun like things a few feet long... probably not a viable sidearm but then, english police only have a very technical looking stick most of the time and they deal with some pretty rough nuts. still, good mental pic... average aussie copper but dressed more like a gladiator, bringing a hand spun net to bear on some loony. Maybe throw in some Christians and rhinos for a laugh They always seem to find room for the dogs/extra evil bastards/sack of maccas/big chunky pistols/schoolgirls to show your big chunky pistol to, asking em to squeeze one more thing in there (especially if it goes BANG and makes someone else look silly) can't be that unreasonable. VM

"get more money from the government than non aboriginal" not true baph, newstart, parenting payment, bla de frickin bla, all the same.Literally, factually, seriously, no difference whatsoever solely based on whether you report being indigenous, or not. that question is on forms more as a tracking slash ongoing data collection regime.... "look we got 20 extra darkies into work this week". Some provisions for remote area allowance that are just as, often more, frequently claimed by non indigenous ppl ie useless rurals using out of date farming practices who expect the rest of the nation to prop up the remains of their white dreams built on black blood. your statement hasn't been true since the old DSS days, or so I am reliably informed by ppl that are actually paid pretty highly to know about these things. it certainly isn't true in any personal sense, that is, my family that recieves the standard range of Vote For Me Again Kevin Rudd Payments.... a handful of shrapnel, in essence once two people do a weeks work.... the fact that myself and my daugher are identified as Aboriginal doesn't change a thing. The only extra forms we get are the same as anyone else... "partners details"...... "update your estimates"... etc. So yeah, that's bullshit. Just not true. About as true as any leading crock of shit churned fresh daily by know it alls with beer guts and ironically pronounced brow ridges ;) the rest I agree with, give or take, in principle. The concept of Uncle Kevin saying "sorry" is laughable... for starters, Sorry in the indigenous context has, like many things, a lot to do with how the irish use the term... insert "oh, tis a sorry business fer sure!" here... it's not "you should say sorry, cos its your fault" its more like... rape victims sometimes just wanting someone, almsot anyone, to say "I belive you, and it shouldn't have happened". what happened to my granddad, or what my mum grew up with, let alone who was kept in which shed and flogged with a length of number 8 when not being put in the position of having to conceal your pregnancy from the Missus of the homestead in case SHE sacked your worthless black arse (but still good enough to fuck,to stick your most vital member in, says the living proof)... has very little to do with Mr and Mrs Broadband up the road. But somehow, if anytime they look out from their colourbond clad wire-skirted decking towards the stunned looking hills, they think "wow, NONE of this shit used to be here, imagine that!"... that's half the "problem" fixed. As for racism against non aboriginals (if you want to talk racism, I think you actually mean Aborigines, there), it does happen, of COURSE it does. Fuck, as a pasty kinda blackfella (but yknow, yeah I can see that now you mention it) I have had the rare joy of being hated in torres strait for being a blackfella, and white, and govt offspring... in mainland australia, for being a sun browned, white aborigine with an islander accent... and in a couple of Sydney Westfields for not being Lebanese... while still packing the serious eyebrows and bone structure that tends to trigger middle eastern tendencies. But it has been a while since I saw some whitebread walk into AboLink and get sneered at for wearing country road.... or Mrs. ThinksThatGianRooneyIsWonderful being pulled over in her credible old car by a couple of smartarse young murrray coppers... even though the same ancient gemini with THEM in it would be a "gang car" subject to specific legislation based on discrimination and racial profiling. Young White Bogan kiddies with kiddies can have nice kid gear, and people think "well theyre providing the best they can" but if you have mocha skin and a wooly head, then its assumed the 900 tactical assault stroller you have is off the back of some kinda payment, versus humping your guts out for award wage in the sun 40 hours a week. You're a smart man bapho, and you really do bother me none... but there's some stale, recycled nonsense coming out of you in this regard. Just, simply not true. There are 10 year olds that could articulate how, and why, you are wrong. Remember, government relies on fucking EVERYONE over and feeding em lies.... just they know they have to flavour them differently for different culturally embedded tastes ;) lands councils and various NGOs are notoriously corrupt and noone knows this more readily than indigenous aussies themselves, and the govt depts that work most closely with them... think the politics of Zimbabwe, but on a scale of a couple hundred clicks involving dual cabs rather than tanks. Same shit... educated men taking money from the hands and food from the mouths of innocent nobodies... it is not a cultural thing. Slush fund, anyone? Developer kickback to go, Sir? As a wise man once said, it is amazing that these damned minorities manage to be so intellectually bereft, yet so cunning and conniving all at the same time ;) Old african saying... the Boss casts a looooong shadow... and politics, as has been said, is politics. hasnt changed in a thousand years, and won't change anytime soon either. btw, bapho, you are essentially suggesting that entirely based on statistical data, YOU are more trustworthy around your child, than I am around mine... that's pretty sick, isn't it? Do you honestly think They should send a squad to my house, this evening, wake my daughter up in her room fulla Winnie the Pooh and handmade concoctions of pva glue and glitter, put the fear of god into her blue eyes and fair hair, and then INSPECT her? i think you come off as a bit of a cunt, sometimes, but if someone suggested that purely for being Anglo Saxon (or whatever) background, you should be presumed guilty until proven (at great trauma) otherwise, I'd still be in here ranting shit about how its wrong. How bout you grant me, us, the same basic respect? My daughter is a beautiful person, inside n out, because both her parents (even if one is related to Guy Fawkes, but dont get me started) have expected her to expect respect from the first day she entered the world... and the thought that I am presumed more likely to do something inappropriate with such a precious lil being by someone like yourself just makes me sick. Like, fuck. Really? The most neglectful thing we do to our child is expect her to chill and watch some Little Einstein or play with her lego or paint for 10 minutes while we prepare a healthy, organic where possible meal for her. I spent most of the last two days on my arse (which, genetically, is not very well padded, damn boong bum) making chrissy decorations in gold n blue metallic card and wiring frangipanis for fairy lights... if thats neglect, I would HATE to see abuse. I know it's the ultimate wanky internet thing to say, but I really would like to see you say that while standing face to face with me. Either you wouldn't, at least once you Inspected Our Residence and Approved It... or you would, and then you'd see me get mad as hell, and then, to be entirely honest, probably NOT hit you. You know why? Well...yknow how every class in every school has the Black Kid that Gets Into Fights? What people don't realise it, that for every vacant white pig he lands a punch on, is a hundred or more that he held back on, because he knew his every action was being evaluated and used at the yardstick to measure the performance and standards of every other lil broom monkey in town. Because even after 200 years and thorough crossing with some snooty eurotrash blood indeed, I STILL can't hold real eye contact with "authority", all it takes is some Cold Blue Eyes and a bit of paperwork and I'm putty, even though I know how the paperwork, works. Also a stunning lack of news stories into "international kiddy fiddling ring leads federal police to squat full of drunken homeless"... plenty about em leading into the chambers of QC's, the offices of teachers and police officers, and various other nice, trustworthy White People. VM

spoke too soon, just read the australia thread... VM

Did someone say "bega" or something? Musta missed that one... unless you mean baphomet? In his defence (somehow we end up via unspoken agreement leaving each other alone, isn't the world a whacky old place) i don't recall being offended (as an indigenous australian) by anything I have ever read of his material BUT I can see how it would hit buttons in empathetic types. Just because someone is a member of a particular ethnic or cultural grouping, doesn't mean they are a good person, or any good at being a person. There are blackfellas who drink themselves spastic, abuse and neglect their kids depending on mood, and are generally an embarassment to the species (much covered motivations and social reasoning aside, for a moment). I object when I hear someone say "hehe, I saw this coon the other night, fuck he was smashed" but actually purely because they specified race... the C word itself doesn't bother me, my best mate, almost brother uses is frequently as that is how HE was raised... he's from COWRA ffs....but I also know he wouldn't step over someone choking on their own spew, or turn someone down for a job by default... wheras plenty that use careful wording are actually very nasty people indeed. Course, when ppl start with blatantly made up "bloke down the pubisms" or "my dad told me" stuff...yknow, free cars (kidding me, right, have you talked to centrelink lately?).... fires in stoves (you say what you want matie, my mates mums cousins sister in law saw it with her own eyes!)... jumping on kiddies under bits of bark... then you just have to get that half smile and nod until they get bored. I certainly can't crack up at as many ppl as I'd LIKE to, on that note, otherwise I'd never get anything done. Personally, in the last couple months it has occured to me to inform the govt that I made a mistake, that I am actually half indian, before they get smart and take fifty percent of our middle class kaptain kevin style welfare, or send a crew of queensland health workers out to inspect my daughter... says something. Actually, as an educated, urbanised hybrid type with a family background in commonwealth ATSI affairs, indigenous rights campaigning and no personal issues of discrimination at play in recent memory ... it makes me kind of sick to even think about having to THINK like that. But I do. So who said Bega? VM

I do buy certifiedorganic damiana material sometimes, and have found barely half a dozen seeds... carefully wrapped n stored, I assure you! Was actually looking for a "practice run" seed before I tried germing those ones. Whats the deal with cultivation, do they wimp out at first real leaves mostly or do they just not sprout? This stuff is pungently fresh, gently air dried and perfectly picked if I'm any judge... perhaps a short viability... cheers for the heads up anyway PH. I love the stuff.... I first tried it as a wee thing, sold to me by some hairy, goatskin shirted HHH stallboy as "just the gear to get stoned on". Not true. though in hindsight, smoking vast amounts of the stuff as an already... fairly active... teenage male produced some truly startling results I find its good for (hippy bullshit warning) central axis issues, spinal connectivity and fatigue as well as general energy n lustferlife... esp taken in combination with a nicely balanced chamomile/lemonbalm/mint/green tea, tea... offsets the gaba fuzzies nicely. Also damiana, cocoa, mace and galangal.... *shivers in gleeful rememberence* I have no plans on undercutting mexicans, if they want to come around n discuss it mano e mano (hombre?) I'll knock em up something fiendishly good involving cilantro and beer, then let them stitch shirts or mow lawns for 90 dollars a week. Thought it worth a shot anyways... anyone with a rooted bit or something with a few nodes to spare, lettuce snow! If it's got meristem, you can grow it, even when you can't it just takes longer :D Maybe I should backtrack thru the herb place that stocks the good gear, work out who is growing it localish, it's too fresh and lovely to be from anywhere more than a hundred k's away.... then I can take over mexico. VM

I think a lot of bronzed, tattooed fuckwits that haunt our streets in commos and japanese utes covered in vaguely sickening nationalist stickers need to do some actual reading up on the Eureka Stockade, but anyways.... I do get tired of seeing the Southern Cross hijacked by weird angry people. They don't love Australia, they just hate anyone else, their idea of our own history is so skewed as to be almost cartoonish and wer it not for channel 9, they wouldn't know WHAT they thought they thought. Go to a gun show sometime, scariest bearded ppl on earth! On force and bullets etc, 7 does seem a bit steep, I have no idea how vic police shoot people (other than it being quite often, historically) but a trio of triple taps isn't, sad to say, "excessive" by conventional western paramilitary standards. Wrestling knife wielding maniacs looks good in movies, in practice (and without a stick vest, as issued to english police) it doesn't take much talent at all to open a big nasty septic hole in someone. What I wonder about , is why the options have to be either lethal, ie, "selective dehostilification" as it has been called, and sometimes lethal, such as tasers...esp in a climate where ppl tend to be sweaty, rained on, covered in liquid one way or another something about hooking ppl up to all that voltage sounds just too risky... a mate reliably informs me it would be entirely possible to set em up in such a way that it calculates surface resistance etc before zapping you, but eh, seriously...electrocuting people as a "Safe Option?". As for safe, I did read a "worrying" article about RCMP officers having tasered 4000 ppl since I think 2001, with 20 odd ppl killed... which, once again sad to say, isn't THAT high a rate of death for subduing at times extremely agitated ppl (barring semi vegetables in wheelchairs, of course)... my maths sucks but thats like half a percent, or something...though I brace myself for firm correction (maths is a thing that mainly happens to others). if it was left to the "old right hook" I reckon we'd see a LOT more people end up dead in, or on the way to custody. A taser issued as standard is the same weapon, regardless of the user (though how it acts under certain circumstances might vary)...whereas an arm lock (many of which are now banned by more enlightened police forces due to risk of permanent nerve injury, etc) from Constable Short Cheeky Ponytail is a different thing to an armlock from senior sgt. Too Old For This Shit. There are all kinds on non lethal devices, that don't involve electrocuting people or shooting them dead with something packing the equivalent kinetics of a small ute, or spraying em with nerve agents... subsonic gel guns "beanbags", various ultra sticky restraint sprays, big comical net launchers, all kinds of whacky ways to knock the wind out of someones sails... anytime you remove free movement from someone you run the risk of them cracking their head on the floor, or whatever, but something about ELECTROCUTING people just doesn't sit right... and i am not entirely anti-gun either, or allergic to weapons on principle. Just seems that even the road runner could make his arvo a bit safer by gluing coyote to his own arse, and he wasn't even that bright for a roadrunner. If it's going to be an insidious internal method of subduing people, why not come up with, dunno, maybe a transdermal form of Nox or perhaps MDMA in an aerosol form. Even a society with functional, perhaps even EFFICIENT pathways for the mentally unwell to get the recognition and help they need before it comes to hurting people... well, we can dream. VM

Just remember, on those joyous twisty mountain rides in my neck of the woods... The big black wriggly thing in front of you, is the road. Stay on it. Occasionally, things will be on the road, Some like euca oil deposits are very hard to see, but easy to predict. Stay off them. Others, such as quietly inoffensive family day trippers, are actually quite easy to see well in advance assuming you take time to look thru corners... please refrain from offensive gestures even if you are caught on the Wrong Side Of The Road and the ppl in the car are Laughin Their Arses Off at the look on your face whilst making the universal gesture for "you're a cocksucker". We can see it, shoei or no. Armscor barriers are designed to stop hatchbacks, not hunchbacks... please keep your brains in the inskull position. The big lumpy thing that weights over a tonne, with big glowing lights on the front of it, is called a "Car". It is full of hairless bipeds known as "people" If you decide you are some kind of superhero that centreline markings Do Not Apply To, you will end up under it. I will then Feel Bad, and your girlfriend will Feel Really Bad. Mine will just think you're a unit. The huge solid relatively immobile mass under you is called the "earth". If you make one of life's lil upfucks, such as forgetting to presteer in a switchback section, your skull might meet it at some speed. Avoid this. It is nice that you can decide when it is safe to overtake me on a mountainous scary arse road... however, it is even nicer when it is ACTUALLY safe to overtake me, that way I don't have to ditch a fully laden commodore into the floodway along Mt. Mee to help Mr. Weekend Action Man avoid being converted into 85 poorly toned kilos of street pizza as the fully laden fourby he failed to see nearly annhilates him. That thing you do, warming up the tires, looks really cool on racetracks, but when done three paces from the nearest lavazza equipped cafe does make you look like a tool. Likewise, wearing all black gear with a shiny helmet doesn't make you look scary. No kind of preapoctalyptic knight of the screaming dark horse is seen to visibly tighten their sphincter as i intentionally hunt them away from the centreline. I will probably end up at the lights next to you in 10 minutes time anyway, and you can;t pretend to fuck with the radio then. If you DO decide to leave bits of scalp veneered to the road surface in the wake of some miscalculation or other, don't mouth off. When the paramedic says "I need to cut your skins off" don't cry like a little girl, even if bits of you are sticking out of other bits of you, even if they did cost you three weeks wages and make you look like Death Incarnate. Also, try to fuck up somewhere willing helpers can actually get a helo dropped in within a couple clicks rather than having to haul your screaming, repentant and probably voided arses up a long stretch of hill. Nearly done... can all weekend death riders please remember that even a child can spot a bikie from a BIKER at a hundred meters... noone is bothered. We can always spot the bikies, they're riding Real Bikes at a leisurely pace with a slight smile and a nod, as if to say "lovely day for it!" instead of grimacing in remembered fear about the last corner you nearly come a gutsa on. Finally, please understand that physics applies equally, regardless of how much fun you're having... some ppl are sick of sprinkling sand on someone elses idea of an Exciting Weekend In The Country. ah, last one... yknow when you see heaps of crosses with helmets on the side of the road? with big red signs with pics of bikes on em saying "speeding has caused fatalities on this road"... that means SLOW THE FUCK DOWN. It means, you're nothing special, once physics decides you're basically a glad bag full of saline... I have literally seen FOUR dickheads go thru or under a fence within FIVE METERS of a TWENTY YEAR OLD CROSS with a helmet on it... I mean, really, get a brain. Then they stand there on the side of the road with that "someones son" look on their face wishing they had just stayed at home... bloody hell. the question is... how do you get plants and cactus cuttings onto a bike anyway? VM

Well, he may have thought, in some way, that he wanted to then, but then He may not have been Him at the time... etc... None of us will ever know for sure, but it's ripe for the picking by any one of a number of advocacy groups. Long as thru that messy, grabby process people remember that they, and we, are people then we might just stand to LEARN something from it all instead of it being some other sarcastic lil footnote. VM

edit... by your photos, it should be big enougb by now (assuming warming temps at your place) that if you run your hands up the stem it should give off a kinda low irritant menthol flyspray smell, if it is LN. Looks like it to me, and I have the stuff all over. unwanted weeds, I like that. I'm going to steal that PH Bottom of a hill would be a good idea for your own spread, but I do often see patches of this stuff up to 300 metres long (advanced plants, multigenerational, patch probably popped up from nannas planting 20 years before given settlement history of the area I am thinking of) around low lying waterways, etc. It is pretty good at taking over creek margins, where because of it's stinky terpene nature it (by my own quiet observation) seems to discourage mozzies etc which may or may not fuck with fishies getting a feed. It's also a bastard to get thru a patch of it (couple minutes of hiking thru 2 metre plants of this stuff and it doesn't seem quite so Effno anymore) but judging by the looks of your seedlings, you're not in that kickarse a spot for it anyway. It is very adaptable, you can cut it back to a stump or even below ground and it will resprout in warm weather... pretty pest resistant, I put up with it around tomato plants as it seems to have a similar action to basil esp if you mulch with fresh stuff slashed from lions tail plants...very hungry feeder. Roundupping can sometimes send it into the typical mongy-leafed reduced form, but it can still seed from that state. Small bits will strike on the ground, and seeds can travel eays 20 or 30 metres in a season with a nice plant. I get all I ever need and then some just from hacking back wild patches, never planted an intentional seed of it in my life. It is a good "practice" plant for certain other herbaceous crops, good for testing growth parameters and environments, grow cabs etc. growign it in your garden will, without careful management, cost your more useful plants a LOT of nutes and water esp when it comes into flower. I would be curious to know if anyone has any pointers on crossing the minty lion with the straight lion, hand pollination seems a bit iffy with those long tubes but any feedback would be great. I have never seen the standard lion go feral, even in spots where it would seem eager to? it does make a VERY nice extract, great in a lot of blends where you want an up, almost energetic high, but it won't get you "stoned", just high. For a bit. Nice midmorning supplement I read that in Puerto Rico it is used to treat malaria, but probably doesn't work and somewhere else uses it for an aids medicine. VM

Shooting for the leg is nice but pretty much impractical... for the reason (all very icky, isn't it) coppers and soldiers alike are trained to shoot at Centre of Visible Mass. If some poor bastard up the street had the top of his scone taken off by a glancing footpath shot thanks to Junior McConstable Annie Xanxious, we'd be hearing "oh, if only they had tasers". It's very, very easy to play CounterStrike, harder to be put in the position of No Good Outcome. Having been CS'd (half willingly), I would take a pretty stab in the dark at this kid being upped to bullshit on somethingorother, in any case mental enough to be a serious risk. The only way coppers and any other edge-phenomena workers keep the balls to keep going thru front doors and into lives every other day is because they rely on their comrades (ouch) to keep them relatively intact. If some cracked up idiot with fistfulls of knives was posing a threat to anyone I care about, and my only practical option was to shoot him (assuming I couldn't obtain a retroactive certification in some martial art or other, and had to make do with what a cash strapped and poorly managed system provided me with), I suspect I would. I wouldn't enjoy it much, I'd probably spend a long long time wishing things could have been different, but if it's that, or seeing someone I have some kindof bond with having a face like a letterbox or guts like a delicatessen rack, I imagine there's only one option I could choose. Probably, sadly enough,shoot him in the safest-for-the-average-bystander spot of about two inches below his heart. I don't know any wing chun, wankido, etc. Even if I did, something about the thought of as much room as possible between my organs and some schizoid's bad intentions would make me feel better. Good point though, I have heard that police in Japan are all borderline Aikido superstars which goes a long way with dealing with THEIR sporadic outbreaks of blade wielding psychopathy. Somtimes they shoot people for really nasty reasons, in really bad ways, we all know that. And sometimes, things happen at Just The Right Time. But sometimes, there's actually some poor bastard (yes, really, even if he would do you driving 10 over hte limit, unlicensed and unroadworthy, with an unsecured load in the back) who now has to look at every 15 year old he sees, differently. Every sunrise is going to have a bit of piss preloaded from now on. Mental illness is by nature a hard to handle field in some cases, but ultimately it's not time for therapy when you can see an able bodied young man legging it with knives. The VPU possibly using this incident as a footing to aim for tasers is no different, in some ways, to this death being hijacked to campaign AGAINST tasers. At the very,very least, it has to be seen and accepted as counterpropanda. Icky. If they had've tasered him and he went into CVx, we'd be hearing about that too. And hey, what are the odds that the area with the highest greek population in the southern hemisphere would get a hard on for this story? Call me jaded... interesting how "we" can dissect media in the most artful and objective of ways, truly chaser worthy, when it's something about "drugs are bad" or "freaks are weird" but we almost break our bong nursin knees to put the boot into some copper or other. Fairness is a fucker of a thing, and legshots only happen in Hollywood. VM

be the changes you want to see

I really wouldn't sweat it too much, I hadn't noticed, and I'm one of those PITA "I just noticed..." types . Noone sensible would hold a minor conviction for verballing some precious wanker on a footpath against an otherwise pleasant enough character, and I don't think it would be too much of a problem here. I've never been warned. What's it like? Is it dirty? Good dirty, bad dirty, take a shower or roll around and sniff it, dirty? This reminds me of those cute post count posts How bout those plants? VM

are you using firefox, or some other "remove all smut and drug links upon exit" proggy/settings? Methinks the monster eating your cookies just might be you. you should stay logged in if you keep comps on/browsers open etc... half the time I just shut this place down and it just pops me back in later on. about as secure as hatfull of jellybeans, but it's a nice folksy touch VM