starling

Hello everyone. I have some spares this year from my collection of edible (non-psychotropic) fruits and nuts. Prices are as follows, but I will trade certain species for microsorum thailandicum (blue sheen fern, blue oil fern) if anyone is carrying this. Please do your own research on the varieties listed below. have only included images of kadsura coccinea, paradise nut, and sacha inca. Sacha inca (only have two for sale) 45$ each. Dwarf self pollinating mamoncillo ( melicoccus oliviformis) 45$ Mexican Hill Grape (Undescribed, first generation in Australia) 50$ Kadsura coccinea: Incredibly rare fruit from China. Red form 50$, Yellow form 65$. Pitangatuba (star cherry; incredibly delicious) 45$ paradise nut (monkey pot nut, incredible thing) 65$. Elite Dragonfruit cuttings: Any one for 45$ Dark star florida red sweet condor (wins most taste tests in US) makisupa cosmic charlie physical graffiti sin espinas Forgive-the-dashes-my-spacebar-just-died. Elite-opuntia-varieties I-went-through-quie-a-phase-collecting-the-best-fruiting-opuntia-I-could-find.Here's-what-I-have-in-way-of-pads-to-sell. Torrance#1--red/orange-fleshed.Mexican.Consdered-the-best-tuna-by-many-enthusiasts. O.Engelmanii/cow's-tongue:Purple-fleshed-fruits.Bizarre,tongue-like-form.Great-landscaping-variety. O.Robusta--red-fleshed-fruit,very-large-and-huge-pads. O.Robusta-x-something:Huge-pads-which-are-greyish-blue.Purple-red-fruit. Luther-burbank:-This-rare-gem-is-the-only-variety-luther-ever-bred-for-fruit-quality-and-not-as-cattle-fodder.It-was-purchased-at-a-burbanks-estate-auction-by-an-aussie-collector-who-has-a-better-variety-of-cacti-than -you-or-I-will-ever-have,and-was-imported-at-considerable-expense-and-no-doubt-trouble-into-Australia.As-far-as-I-can -tell, it-is-some-kind-of-robusta-x-or-selection.Fruit's-are-enormous-and-deep-reddish-purple,as-they-mature-they-bleed-vibrant-juice. All-pads-45$-except-the-burbanks.This-is-100$.If-that-sounds-like-a-lot,consider-the-provenance-and-that-this-is-probably-the-best-fruiting-opuntia-in-existence. Happy-to-answer-most-questions-by-PM.

Well, I really don't know what to make of this. So basically, because I offered some advice on writing poetry, based off what I've found to be true, and then payed you a compliment (and woodwoman) I get called a twat? This is indeed a very bizarre place. And for the record Wert, I was asked to give my reasoning on why I don't go in for psychotropic drug usage and the culture that goes along with it. I said I'd rather not, because the post would simply be deleted--which kind of did happen, it got moved to degenerated and I got a week long ban, despite the fact that I made no personal attacks and got called a trolling wanker who has probably shoved too much DMT up his ass--by the very people who sought clarification on the issue, no less. So basically, I got a ban for giving my reasoning on a subject I was asked to give. Honestly, this site is totally fucked. The supposed open-mindedness that is espoused is pure bullshit, because being open minded and censorship cannot, and do not, coexist. And I was censored for giving an opinion. And now you call me a twat for paying you a compliment and trying to help you out with poetic forms. Well, fuck this place. You are all useless degenerate drug addicts who have fucked yourselves up so much that you have not only lost the ability to think, or create anything interesting, but can no longer participate in standard intellectual discussions or even basic social conventions based on mutual exchange in any way. You are, quite simply people, the walking fucking dead. And such people are not worthy of my time. Good luck with it all Wert.

About 'Dragonfruit' The term 'dragonfruit' refers to any number and variety of selenicereus and hylcoereus members of the cactacea family. These plants naturally occur in the Americas--particularly in the North. and central regions, especially but not limited to rainforest type settings. Elevation does not seem be a decisive factor in natural distribution as they occur in coastal and mountainous regions. Hyle is the greek root for 'forest'--which is a clue to the types of locations dragonfruit traditionally grow in. They are essentially a forest, or jungle cactus, with requirements virtually completely opposite to their arid-loving cousins. A dragonfruit given the kinds of conditions preferenced by an Opuntia, for example, will die--and vice versa. Although the selincereus and Hylocereus generi are diverse,there are really only a small number of variants of dragonfruit which are commercially produced; hylocereus Undatus, H.Polyrhizus, H. Costaricensis, H. Guatamalensis, and Selenicereus megalanthus. Crossing and hybridization however is extremely diversified, and given that dragonfruit will readily hybridize with just about anything from the cereus genus as well as with epiphyllums, it's almost impossible to know where the boundaries end with particular cultivars ( a friend of mine just succesfully crossed a dragon with a peruvianus, for example). Dragonfruit flowers are not naturally especially colourful and vibrant, being mostly bone white, yet many of the American Cultivars display extravagant and brightly colored blooms very similar to those of fancy epiphyllums. It is almost certainly the case that these types have picked up epi genes, or those from columnar cereus cacti, somewhere along the way. Soil Dragonfruit require very free draining soil with a PH from between 4-5.5 that does not cloy, become gluggy or dry out. It should be rich in organic matter, low on nitrogen. high in calcium and potassium. For a failproof soil mix, you can use high quality premium potting mix, cow manure, sand, and a little coco coir at the following ratios: 4 parts potting mix 2 parts washed river sand 2parts composted cow manure 2 parts coco coir If you want to get fancy, save your eggshells and blend these in with your mixe, crushed--this will give you great drainage, and your plant will love the calcium. Planting Very few people can get away with planting dragonfruit directly into unamended substrates and get good yields. If you think your soil isn't good enough, it probably isn't so don't bother trying because you will more than likely end up with a gigantic vine that doesn't fruit. Having over forty something different CV;s, I do not have a single variety in situ. The good news is thus; dragonfruit are perfect for container growth, as they have very shallow, fibrous root systems. Any pot 65L and up is large enough to grow out a plant to full fruiting maturity. Generally, what I do it buy a large faux terracota yates pot, cut the bottom out, and fill to about 2 inches from the top with my mix. The main cause of premature death in planting dragons is collar rot. It is extremely important to plant your dragonfruit cutting at quite a shallow depth--I recommend 1.5-2 inches maximum. Just enough so that the plant is able to remain stable, vertically. They do also, I have found, respond very well to seaweed root boosting treatments as well as mycorhizae treatments. Edit: I do not know why this is, but a cutting taken from a rooted plant will grow faster than the rooted plant it was taken from, every time. The difference will be quite dramatic. Go figure. When selecting a planting position, you want to give the plant as much sun as you can possibly give it--at least six hours and up. Dragonfruit are aggressive negative phototropes--that is, they grow towards the shade. This is because in their natural settings, the grow up the trunks of trees before bursting through the canopies to receive pure, hard light--this is their que to fruit. If you don't give your dragonfruit full sun, it will either fruit very sparsely or never at all. Don't plant your dragonfruit close to a shaded area, because it will try (forever) to grow into the shade. and you will get a seriously lopsided plant by the end. Every single dragonfruit farm in existence has rows of plants staked out in full, baking sun. Here's an undatus hybrid I planted too close to an undercover area (bottom left)--notice the lopsided growth as the plant reaches for the shade. Fertilization In the off season ( temperate months) you will need to use a nitrogen-free cactus fertlizer that is high in calcium and potassium. Do not use nitrogen based fertilizers at all out of season. As you approach the season, start a regime every couple of weeks of weak nitrogen based fertilizer and TE's. Powerfeed at half strength is good for the task, or a couple of handfulls of rooster booster. A lot of growers opt for the chicken poop citing its similarity to bird guano, which the plants would receive in large doses during fruiting season in the wild. This makes sense to me. Watering You must never either let your soil become sodden, or dry out. Taper of watering when buds are forming--an inundation at time of flowering will cause your flowers to abort. I don't know why this is, it is just what I have observed. You want moist--not wet, fertile soil. Pollination Hand pollination will increase both yields and fruit size, and not only dragons are self-pollinating. You should never plant out a single unique variety for this reason--plant two different types on any one trellis. About Aerial Roots Dragonfruit, although displaying epiphytic behavior, are not true epiphytes. The role that aerial roots play in the overall nutrition of the plant is thought to be minimal for this reason. Although the do derive some nutrition from bark etc naturally, the consensus seems to be that aerial roots primarily function as a survival mechanism in the instance that the plant is somehow severed at the soil level. I have personally observed this--have seen a gigantic gum tree being absolutely smothered by a feral dragon in a local park. The council cut it away at the base of the stems in several places, but it just sent new growth back down from 20 plus feet up the tree which re-rooted in the soil. The aerial roots on this monster would have been as thick as my arm. Do not ever plant a dragonfruit against a tree. It will go completely rampant. Because the plant itself is so heavy, it will also snap off enormous limbs, especially during storms. Also, the fruit will be too high for you to reach and will become bat and possum food. Edit: You do not need to wrap your trellis post in burlap--this is both unnecessary and will achieve nothing at all. The aerial roots will cling to anything--even poly pipe. How do I know when to pick? Your dragonfruit are ready to harvest when they are fully and vibrantly coloured, the flower hanging out the end is completely dead, dry, and brittle, and the fruit yield slightly to your touch. Picking too early is better than picking too late; over ripe dragonfruit develop a strange, turpy-bitter taste that is, quite simply, as nasty as shit. They will not ripen well once picked in the way that tomatoes will ripen on a windowsill in sunlight. Trellising No matter which way you slice it, you are going to need to build yourself a good, sturdy trellis upon which to grow your dragonfruit. Designs are abundant and often as kooky as they are varied. There are a few essential requirements your trellis will need to meet in order to function well: A) It must be able to bear a load of at least 200kg. What this means, effectively, is that for a standard 8FT post, you are going to want to have your trellis concreted into the ground at a depth of three feet, with 5 feet of your post proud of the surface. You must select a full sun position--that is, a spot that will give your plant at least 6 hours of direct light per day C) If using wood, you will need to use a treated kind. Pine is actually longer lasting than hardwood, because all the nasty shit used to treat it penetrates into further into the grain. D) must have a crossbeam, crown, or some other type structure at the top over which the plant can grow over and cascade downwards from. A fence will work--but your neighbors will get most of your fruit. It's also difficult to make the plant grow up a flat vertical surface in a way that you're happy with. They are not really like, say, a passionfruit--the shoots are heavy, and will often snap if not supported, putting you back months or even years. My trellis design is a tension based system cobbled together from cheap materials that is pretty easy to build. It has since been copied and improved upon. It contains no parts that can rust, break, warp or decay. Here's how I make one, and a picture of the finished product. Materials and tools: 1x hand swager 1xbag of swaging grommets. You will need 16 in total--I'm doubling the actual required number of eight, because you will get it wrong a few times, probably. 1x length of 8ft stormwater downpipe--as large or small diameter as you prefer 1x7/12ft length of rebar--note, you can throw any steel down there, really. But rebar if you have it, it's the best. 1x bag of cement 1xbag of rapid set cocncrete 1xbag of washed river sand 1x aluminum or carbon fiber bicycle Tyre rim 1x roll of 3mm stainless steel wire--you can buy this for ten bucks a pop from ebay. 1x closed eye loop screw--galvanised or stainless. 1x65L pot and up--there's no too large. 1x pair of wire cutters (if hand swager doesn't have them built in) Directions Dig a hole three feet deep, and place in your length of rebar--you can screw it into the soil a little bit to keep it steady, that's fine. Mix a 1/4 of your bag of rapid set, and pour this around your rebar. Allow to set two hours. Make sure rebar is sitting straight, not on an angle. When that's set. take your length of stormwater downpipe, and slip this over the rebar. Take the rest of your rapid set, mix it up, and fill in the hole around the base of your stormwater drainpipe. Allow to set two hours. Next, you will need to take your cement and sand, and mix your fill for the post. I generally mix three parts sand to one part cement, but feel free to tweak this. The main thing is to get a consistency that's easy enough to pour down the pipe, but still as muddy as you can get it. Just slowly add more water until you get there. This next step takes a little bit of timing. What you're going to do is take your closed eye loop bolt, and gently insert this into the top of your stormwater pipe, sinking it up to the loop. Now, as I say--this takes a bit of timing. You want to do it before the concrete has set, but not so soon that the bolt just sinks straight to the bottom of the pipe. An easy trick is to keep a grip on the bolt, and to test the viscosity of the concrete by gently driving down the bolt--if you get some resistance, you're good to go. If it wants to just sink, you need more time. It's a little bit finicky, but it's really not that bad--you'll be able to gauge when its ready when you're doing this, I promise. Once you've got the bolt in, and the concrete everywhere is set, you are ready to slip over your pot. To do this, you will need to cut out the bottom. Scissors will do the job if you do not have a grinder or reciprocating saw. Start a cutting point with a drill by just drilling into the bottom of the pot and moving the bit while drilling from side to side slightly. Do this towards the outer edge of the pot so as to create as large a hole as possible--but not too close to the wall of the pot--you don't want to crack the sides! As stated previously, I use the yates faux terracotta pots. but I also use the crappy, cheapo rubbery feeling storage tub thingies that bunnings sells also. The downside of this is that they are not UV treated and will decay in a few years, and will need to be cut away. I don't recommend these for this reason--I only use them because I intend to build a raised bed around all my elite dragons when the tubs need to be replaced, which are all planted in a line. Don't skimp on the pot. Buy a good one. Once you have cut the bottom from your pot, simply slip it over the top of your pipe. Look around you--there will be soil from the hole you've dug. Get this, and spread it around under the base of your pot, and tamp it down so that you pot has a level surface to sit on. Next, it's time to build the crown, and allow me to note: Don't forget to put down the pot before you put in the crown, otherwise the whole exercise will be a waste of time. You will NEVER--I REPEAT--NEVER get the pot over the crown once the crown is attached. put down the put first put down the pot first put down the pot first Moving on. What you need to do here is take lengths of your stainless wire,feed this through the loop of your bolt at the top of the post, and swage these loops off with your grommets. You will need to do four in total, and the lengths will need to be long enough so that you can do another loop at the other end of the same size. You might have to have a few goes at this--but don't fret. Ten metres of stainless wire is ten bucks. You can afford to get it wrong a few times. When you have four lengths secured to your central bolt, it's time to start feeding the non-looped ends through the spoke holes on your bicycle rim. There will be some that are larger than the others--use those. Make new loops at the these ends, swage off with grommets, and you now have an indestructible dragonfruit trellis that has several advantages over wooden types: A) it's impervious to weather it will allow more of your shoots to receive more sunlight, which will mean more fruit. C)it will increase air flow reducing fungal infections D) it has mobility so that in high winds, less force will be applied to the post itself--this will be taken up as tension by the wire. F) Your plant will achieve a beautiful, cascading growth pattern on maturity G)It will space out growth allowing easier access fat harvesting time. H) You will not get copper, arsenic and whatever else is used to treat pine accumulating in your soil. If you want, add some electrical conduit, or just common garden hose, over the wire as I have done. This does stop the wire digging into the flesh of the plants. As you can see, I also mulch with stones. This is just my preference, as I find woody mulches tend to mess with my soil structure too much over time, stones hold in moisture more effectively and allow liquid treatments and ferts to pass through more easily. This is my latest grove, and contains some of the more mature plants I have left after the 2011 floods wiped my advanced collection virtually out of existence, and I began re-collecting a couple of years back. Thanks for reading! s

after white power comments made at dimebash,

The first poem is metrical--mostly constructed of iambs. If you didn't intend this, you almost certainly have a natural aptitude for writing in meter, which is quite a natural ability to have. I will do a scansion later.

There's a lot I like about this wert. I think with some revision you could have something really great here. And I commend you for being a caring father--I never had one of those. s

You mean a bulk discount? Yeah, I'll do that. I may no longer have all the listed types on offer, though. PM me, I'll check and see what I have.

A) Sickle cell anaemia does give some--not a total-advantage over Malaria, and considering that pretty much everybody develops a natural immunity to the virus if they survive repeated exposure anyway (yes, they do: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2620631/) and the systemic health tax that comes with Hbs, the whole shenanigan is, quite simply, a very stupid way of dealing with Malaria. Here's a brief rundown of what sickle cell anemia causes. vaso-occlusive crisis extremely high risk of infections, greatly reduced chance of surviving infections, both common and life threatening--especially influenza Acute chest syndrome Massively increased chance of blood clots, strokes, internal hemorrhages etc fatigue, tiredness, lethargy anemic crisis Now, considering that the countries with the highest rate of of HBs are third world developing nations such as Sub-Saharan Africa, the trade off for having a slightly more favorable rate of resistance against malaria is...well, quite shit really. In fact, a child born with with Hbs in Africa will probably die before the age of 5. Bravo, evolution! You really fucking knocked it out of the park on this one! And not only that, sickle cell anaemia allows occurs at a reduced rate in Europe, where there malaria doesn't even exist--so people carrying Hbs in those regions get absolutely no kickback as a result of having this life-threatening disorder at all. Wouldn't it be better to say, I don't know--pop a few quinine Tablets? Yes. Yes, it would. Not only is there no legitimate survival advantage to carrying Hbs in the conditions of the present--which again, contains quinine--but the symptoms of Sickle cell anemia would have greatly reduced the probability of survival in the past. All it would have meant is that while carriers would have been less likely to die from malaria. they would have been at much greater risk of winding up dead from an injury which caused an infection, or a cold. And in those conditions, there were no modern medicines to help stave off the symptoms of Sickle anaemia. Malaria is a tropical disease, btw--guess where quinine trees grow. It's understood that the benefits of quinine were understood by tribes very intimately--it was they who introduced it to us, actually. I'm sorry, your grasp of evolution by natural selection is not sound. It comes perilously close to what would be considered intelligent design. Allow me to be clear--nature has no plan. It doesn't know you or I exist, and while I'm not disputing that organisms do indeed adapt to the conditions of environments, it is still random probability--that is, luck, that drives those adaptions. For every successful adaptation that exists, there are hundreds of thousands of failures. It is about as cruel, inefficient, and barbarous a method for designing organisms imaginable. It literally consists of throwing out random mutations hand over fist until something works--not perfectly, mind you--just enough to accrue any survival advantage at all, or a disdvantage that results in either the immediate death of the affected organism or the effacement of an entire species over time.Some mutations might not accrue any survival advantage all, but since they also don't result in a disadvantage, these effectively useless, pointless traits are passed on throughout the span of time, forward into a time where they might either result in a survival advantage or disadvantage. It is a system driven by, and characterized entirely by, nonsense, endless death and suffering. And the whole thing might be worthwhile if the Earth itself stayed static, but it doesn't--it's a transitive flux, ever-changing. What is successful one generation might be completely outdated and unviable in another. Consider if you will, thePermian extinction, which caused about 87% of all genera to be wiped from existence. Our species only exists because of that event, incidentally. We exist through sheer dumb luck--as do 90% of all modern animals. Our own biology is atrociously designed fr4om an enginerring perspective. We stuff food into the same orifice we breathe from. Our entire life system is dependent on a pump that is prone to clogging, rupturing, and failing--a pump which I might add never stops: http://scienceblogs.com/denialism/2007/11/01/ask-a-scienceblogger-which-par/ And finally, we are a part of nature.We didn't evolve as extra-terrestrials. And therein lies the ultimate truth;we are a part of evolution--everything we do is a part of evolution. I do not think we are capable of greater atrocities or abominations than nature itself--but I do think we are capable of ethics--something of which natural selection is, in case you haven't noticed, completely devoid.

Evolution by natural selection isn't as simple as 'survival of the fittest'. There are all kinds of modicums of selection, and actually some organisms are here today through what can only be described as sheer, dumb luck. Nature doesn't design intelligently, that's the problem. Really all we'd be doing through manipulating the human genome would be cleaving out a lot of bad codes which result in nothing good for anyone. As it stands, space simply cannot be transgressed by our physical bodies. My personal bet is that at some point in the future we will figure out how to separate our consciousness somehow, and send this out forward into space as signals, the way digital files are now. Of course there would need to be something to receive these.

It's pretty much inevitable that designer babies will become a thing. We already kind of already practice eugenics when you look at some instances of Abortion (many women opt to have abortions if it is established the baby will be profoundly disabled, for example). Not even sure I disagree with GM humans, honestly. Look at the kinds of atrocities perpetrated on human kind by the lottery of natural genetics.

last call for drinks this year. Please refer to my other post for a list of CV's.

Thanks king. I'll have a few more for you to ID soon, a lot of different types have come up after the rain.

Doesn't come out in the picture, but when freshly emerged they were a very pale yellow.

Hi wert, it looks like bluedog may have folded. Poetry is an increasingly niche form of writing, and participation in it as a market gets slimmer every year. As such, journals going bust is pretty much par for the course. Meanjin probably won't as it's kind of a cultural institution. I did find this journal, which seems to legitimate, and is an Australian publication: http://apj.australianpoetry.org/issues/apj-5-2/ Other advice: A) Don't have your poems rhyme unless they are metered, or syllabic. Avoid modifiers--words that modify nouns. Studiously avoid adjectives altogether. C) Avoid latinate type words--words with latin or greek roots, especially those that contain a lot of vowels. This is a big tip. because almost all contemporary poetry written in the last 25 years is constructed from saxonic words with have clean sonics (sonics being the sound of sound)--which are plain, or perhaps common, but used in interesting ways. To get a sense of how this works, I recommend reading some of the work of Anne sexton. Her Kind is a good example. She can show you how to use simple words in extraordinary ways. D) Avoid Abstractions, and remember that just because you understand something, this does not imply that the reader will. E) Avoid cliche'. Basically, a cliche is a common thought, scene or idea. Developing a sense of what is cliche is something that takes time. F) Avoid beat poetry --it was really only relevant for a short time and has been completely passe' since then. It's not published anywhere anymore. E) Avoid purple prose: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purple_prose F) Limit your use of similes. And when you do use one, make it a direct hit. Ditto metaphor. A poor metaphor or simile in a poem is impossible to come back from. Try not to make direct comparisons between objects and things. For example, in Mrs Dalloway, Virginia Woolf used the following metaphor to describe the expression of Anxiety/panic in the countenance of the character septimus, who has PTSD: 'The world has raised its whip--were will it descend'? This is succinct, accurate, and frankly very brilliant. Now, we're not all virginia woolfs. So don't expect to knock it out of the park like that. But it's a good standard to strive for. G)Condense, condense,condense. Poetry is not prose. You must reduce and refine your poem as much as possible--trim the fat. Compress. Whittle down your ideas--boil them down to their essential essences. H) Avoid polemic sentences I) Avoid vulgarity--this isn't to say never throw in the odd fuck, but make them count, be relevant, and use them sparingly. Use vulgarity in either a direct quote, to either personify a type of character, characters or protagonist, or to convey the severity of an emotion. Below are two poems by les murray which employ vulgarity these ways: Pigs Us all on sore cement was we. Not warmed then with glares. Not glutting mush under that pole the lightning's tied to. No farrow-shit in milk to make us randy. Us back in cool god-shit. We ate crisp. We nosed up good rank in the tunnelled bush. Us all fuckers then. And Big, huh? Tusked the balls-biting dog and gutsed him wet. Us shoved down the soft cement of rivers. Us snored the earth hollow, filled farrow, grunted. Never stopped growing. We sloughed, we soughed and balked no weird till the high ridgebacks was us with weight-buried hooves. Or bristly, with milk. Us never knowed like slitting nor hose-biff then. Nor the terrible sheet-cutting screams up ahead. The burnt water kicking. This gone-already feeling here in no place with our heads on upside down. The last hellos http://www.poetryarchive.org/poem/last-hellos Hope this helps. s

I thought I'd share some of my favorite Magical Realist paintings. For those unfamiliar with Magical Realism, it's essentially a delicately walked line between Realism and Surrealism. Typically, Magically Real scenes are at once both mundane, but strange--but you can't really say why, exactly. You've probably felt this effect before--maybe something about the light, and the perspective of what you're looking has given you a sense of subtle surreality, but there's no particular event, phenomena or action you can point to in particular to qualify the experience. Featured Artists are Wyeth, Rob Evans and Otto Dix.

Hi Wert, please be careful when submitting poetry to various journals, as a lot are sketchy and will publish anything for a certain fee--even ingredients copied from the back of soup cans. There's a lot of scams out there which present as legitimate journals but are really just ponzi schemes designed to haul in entry fees. There are only two reputable Australian Poetry Journals, and they are Meanjin and blue dog. OS journals such as The Paris Review and Shit Creek are generally considered the premier publishers of contemporary poems--at least they were, last time I checked. As a younger man I was fairly dedicated to writing poetry and had some limited success-- had one poem featured in an online journal alongside a poem written by Australian Author Anthony Lawrence, for example. It took me a few years to accept that I wasn't a real poet--I was simply very very good at representing interesting images and scenes. But poetry is about more than that; it's also about poetic thought. This is something I simply never did, and never will possess. Writing high end, polished poetry is extraordinarily difficult, and the vast majority of people who attempt to do this will never manage it. It requires an enormous amount of dedication, but more importantly, the ability to accept and learn from critique--critique which may be very harsh and demoralizing. It's about leaving your ego at the door. I'm happy to give you my thoughts on your poem. I have read thousands of poems ranging mostly from the modernists to contemporary stuff and have participated in numerous writing workshops over the years. I can perform scansions and have a decent grasp of metrical poetry in general. s

http://www.willyweather.com.au/news/4476/forecast+for+cooler%2c+wetter+weather+in+south--eastern+australia+as+el+nino+declines.html

oh please--give me an excuse. Care to elaborate?

Not to start a shit fight, but that's a very badly designed trial at the methodological level not only does the span of a year not a longitudinal study make, but it doesn't qualify as a true multivariate analysis by my definition and the sampling frame is atrocious. It's actually amazing how very badly orientated studies like this find their way to publication as PR sources. 'By the age of 15, 24% reported having tried cannabis at least once' So basically, to qualify as marker a participant had to smoke pot once. Once. Academic achievement scores were collated somehow, at said time of having smoked (this would be an approximation, obviously) and the averages or median scores of said scores were compared after a period of on year to the achievement scores of one year. Despite the studies' insistence that it accounted for confounds, it has not. Not even close. In case anyone who reads this doesn't know what a confound is, allow me to explain: A confound is is some kind of phenomena which affects the outcome of a variable (subject or topic), and therein the statistical representation of that subject, which is not accounted for by the study. That is, it's something that the researchers hadn't considered--it didn't occur to them when drawing up the study. and therefore no measures were taken to stop it distorting the data. It is actually quite impossible to eliminate confounds outside of material clinical trials--especially in a case such as this, which is a glorified social science paper. I have absolutely no idea how this turd of a paper made it's way into a pubmed que, but anyway, let's move on: A) There are all kinds of social forces which might influence the outcome of a student's academic performance which are totally unrelated to critical phenomena such as alcohol and behavioral problems--so many in fact, that it's not even worth trying to exclude them all as confounds. B)Although they may appear to be statistical in nature, Academic scores are actually themselves abstract concepts (unless we're talking about math scores). The study does not denote what subjects the scores were derived from. Were Art class scores counted? How about home Economics? History? Physical Ed? English? As such, we have no idea what kind of reasoning these scores are associated with--and even if we did, we would not expect to see a major decline in achievement after a period of one year of usage--especially if a participant smoked only fucking once! C) A linear regression is completely meaningless unless we are allowed to see the way that scores are tallied.It's also completely overkill for a bullshit social survey such as this--which doesn't even tell us the method and how participants responded to the survey. D) The sample population is enormous, which means an increase in error just as a consequence of pure arithmatec and was not randomized. There is absolutely no brief on how error was calculated. Maybe they just used standard error (0.02%) as is the case in psychology, which is a psuedoscience, the findings of which are, like this paper, almost entirely philosophical. What legitimates a real science is the ability to make accurate predictions about observable phenomena--which psychology cannot do. Ever. E) Nobody starts a wake and baker. It's ridiculous to assume, and unnecessary to ask if, that someone who smokes pot once in the period of one year will report the same kind of intellectual decline as someone who has been smoking for more than one year...it's such a stupid fucking question, I can't even believe the researchers here have bothered to ask it. How about we see a longitudinal study over three of five years which denotes the rate of consumption among other factors. In any case, don't read too much into this thing, people. It's a first-year grade lab report probably drawn up by entitled Gen Y'ers. Abysmal. s

All alcohol will give you some kind of hangover. If drinking spirits, train yourself to use soda water instead of sugary pop.

And thanks for everything you gave us. Your music enriched my life, will continue to enrich my life.

Ok, so the more I listen to this album, the more I think bowie might have planned his own death--as in, his passing may have was probably an assisted suicide, or at least planned. He was terminally ill after all and there's some really suggestive lyrics throughout. it's within the realm of possibility. Where the fuck did monday go indeed? He passed on sunday his time. The lyrics for the first verse are an interchanging of polari and nadsat (fictional language from a clockwork orange) and seem to be suggestive of a situation where an authority is payed off ( popo blind to the polly in the hole)and an authority figure is cajoled by a beautiful woman (cheena so sound titti up to this malachek say) and this woman who loves him. His model wife perhaps? I'm cold to this pig and pug show--treatments, maybe? Or just the state of the world? Chestnut tree is probably the chestnut cafe from Orwell's 1984--maybe he's saying what is anyone going to do, this is the last moment before my death? I dunno. Maybe I need a new tinfoil hat. After Winston is released from the Ministry of Love we find him sitting in the Chestnut Tree Cafe. Earlier in the book Winston mentions how the Cafe was where thought criminals like Rutherford spent a great deal of their time. It is ironic that in the end he should end up in the same place. The Chestnut Tree Cafe is by all accounts a quite depressing place. It is the place one goes after they have been tortured, but before they have been killed. The ironic thing is that Winston is happy there, probably happier than he has ever been. He no longer has any worries, he can simply trust in Big Brother and everything will be fine. He is in many ways more free than other party members, he does not have to worry about being seen speaking to others, as he would have been before he entered the Ministry of Love. The Chestnut Tree Cafe is the place Winston first sees Julia after thatdisastrous day in the room above Mr. Charrington's shop. At that point there is nothing left between them. They no longer love each other, they don't really have any true emotions left to them. Winston is in the Cafe when he hears a song coming from the telescreen. Cheena so sound so titti up this malchek say Party up moodge, nanti vellocet round on Tuesday Real bad dizzy snatch makin' all the omeys mad – Thursday Popo blind to the polly in the holy by – Friday Where the fuck did Monday go? I’m cold to this pig and pug show I’m sitting in the chestnut tree Who the fuck’s gonna mess with me?