Vertmorpheus

Fucked. People are so... disconnected isn't even close...now. Anything to raise the humours passes for passing the time, somehow. Like the lady on the bridge, those stuck in traffic telling her to leap. People going nowhere, killing those merely lost for now. VM

Mmm, not quite. For clarity - damiana and cocoa have both been found by an "average" human being to be useful, within bounds of sensibility, to offset lethargy from corymbosa use (as well as contributing a fair amount of synergistic wonder). Probably worthy of a long hard think (if you're the chanceless type), combining something that (I think?) constricts vessels with something that dilates em, but then, in my fractured lil mirror of a mind it makes perfect sense. So much for not incriminating yourself, anyone wanting free hearing aid batteries, PM me. Eating weird plants is weird (well, was...) eating other weird plants with them is even weirder, Hell, you might weird right out and end up discovering the new... whatever. Life is not without death, no matter how carefully managed. Who knows? the same thing might kill the next labrat. especially if they take a lil info from here, a lil from there, and end up gobbing 400 seeds on an empty stomach, bar the lemonade, with tea made from a kilo of damiana. No helping dumb fucks. FTR, I find three teaspoons of GOOD damiana to a cup of off boiling water makes a good tea, never needed more than three cups of that in any context. Can't tell you about shady old stuff you see around, but it does look woeful. that, and being well rested, good lunch, nice company. It won't turn a crap night to fairy dust, but can make a nice night fantastic. Also FTR, IMFOAFEnO, fresh but hard seeds, masticate well but with frequent sips of water or milk, versus acidic, to be pretty reliable. VM

I hear that negligent, polydrug abusing types have turned to hardcore admixtures such as damiana tea mixed with apple juice, or cocoa, to aid throwing rational caution to the winds of insanity and potential destruction. You might die doing that, who knows. Caffeine based drinks must make them resonate too firmly with the pedestrian and work-a-day. VM

"green is probably the worst choice for most plants and I never understood why this is the default colour" - T haha, true that! I think there's a couple reasons people started using it, why it became the norm I have no clue. I think the first people using em especially domestically were right into things like broms, ferns, epiphytes, things that live under a dark green canopy anyway and so are after that reddish spectrum but lower lumens in general. People had a visit to those places, and nurseries especially made big use of it for a combination of spectrum and of course just looks... then people took that idea and look HOME, even if it was less than relevant. Seems to have travelled along the same routes as "aussie gardening chestnuts" (macadamias?) like "all aussie soil needs heap of dolomite" "cactus need full sun" and "pinching laterals promotes a more productive tomato plant"... case sensitive advice applied in a widespread way. Course, you have to get into density too, a 50 percent green cloth might just let in more useable light overall for your particular mixed crop (lumens and spectrum), than a piece of 90 percent brown cloth (no idea, I do have the charts here somewhere, being purely illustrative). Where I'm at, almost anything that just knocks half the strength out of the 10-2 peak heat n light period is good enough, there is simply too much light for most things and they just stress out for half the day....as long as it doesnt block too much light out either side of that... but then I have seen a lot of very nice sub/tropicals grown under heavy green cloth usually covered in leafdrop from sheltering eucas, too. Especially forest floor things, etc. Problem there, if you want to grow rainforest TREES under green, is that they will stretch to bullshit and never take advantage of the "full sun, short bushy tree" phenomena seen with a lot of rainforest species... but if you wanted nice established specimens maybe you could put em under green for a bit to get the height up, then under more of a red/brown spectrum to make it think it has "broken the canopy". Green leafies under dense green cover get the feeble stretchies, more so in overcast periods. best overall results (around here, anyway) are from black, 70 percent or so, palms n tropicals go nuts, clear plastic for plants that like it really muggy, with occasional (seasonal) applications of chalk wash so you get soft light in the bright part of the year, and lots of direct light with a frost protection air bubble in place for cold times. Depends how fiddly u want to get, or what scale you're talking. A blackhouse and a whitehouse seem to do a lot of people fine, start in the white and harden in the black typically. Some ppl have good results with things like lattice, vines, meshes etc, anything to break the light but not necessarily filter spectrum any. I don't know if there is one "best" colour, but I'd say build two areas, one with black and one with a light green/brown, then you can juggle around til things seem cheerful. You can see green things very clearly thru it, though. Depends how intrepid neighbourhood kids are I guess VM

" In which case I should just pre-emptively retract any bs I'm gonna spew on you all" Always worth a shot. "the air is cleared it's all good" so what are you on about? "Don't get all righteously indignant that we as a community have mods to do the dirty work" Odd, actions taken in the name of the community are not grounds for comment,but it's ok for one individual member to tell another individual what,how and when to feel? I think you have some dominance issues to resolve. I recommend getting a pet, but not a cat, they don't do what you tell them either. "... will this time be just fine. So don't worry be happy VM" Sorry, you still seem to be talking about it though? Kind of you though, to think so endearingly of my lil old feelings. No More Mr. Kleenex today, phew! "otherwise you emanate all the shit you hate smelling so much" I think I'll hafta call you lil miss sunshine from now on. Thanks for your time Dude, appreciate it. So out of character, too, wandering by long enough to add some of your own baggage to a bandwagon that has long since left Vert Central.... see, I do notice when you try NEXT... VM

oh, well, that's very big of all of you. If I was that big about things, I'd fall over. I'd need some kinda support crew to prop me up. People willing to hold me up so that later on they can benefit fromm something I may have to offer them... oh, wait. Somewhere, a hundred monasteries and ethical think tanks bemoan their loss to this place. Something mighta vented, but there's still an awful fucking smell around. I guess after a few years you don't notice it anymore though. VM

Of course it seems that way when it's aimed at you, doesn't it? I found it, and hold it to be, entirely necessary. If it's ok with you, I might just decide what I find necessary, thank you very much all the same. What, you call for public opinion on a member but are above it yourself? There's a name for that, yknow. As the wise man once said "shit splats back when thrown". As for names,how does Datura "---------m" sound? If stones make you feel like a bastard, try Nerf projectiles, same shit different stink. "seems to me that member mr griffin is a spammer...... i think our sites tolerance for spam is very low, what action should we take?" - PH If you say... owed cash to the tax office... would you prefer they just sent you a letter or a phone call, took it up with you, as an adult, on the basis of their own deductions (NPI ) or you ok with them sticking a sign up in front of your house saying "PH is a tax cheat,well ok he might not be, but he looks like he might be, lets blacken his name before taking him to task over it anyway.... so, what should we as a community do?". The community shouldn't be put in that position, not when there's any kind of "authority" that should be doing its job on it's own merits, unafraid to upset the apple cart. A good judgement is a good judgement, and if you make a bad one, ppl going to notice. Drawing long bows, making ourselves look a bit of a dick is never nice, we all do it sometimes, bummer of a thing. But it isn't anyone else's fault, and the descriptives any observer chooses to attach don't change the fundamentals of the original statement or it's impact. I call public stoning, and if it had've gotten into that side of things any more deeply, I can't see you saying "hey, steady on fellas, maybe its not as bad as it seems!". I don't think anyone else can either. We do so love a good old fashioned mob, as a species. Popularism is ok, I guess,certainly popular... but kinda makes authority based on it, redundant in any capacity other than the benefits it itself can continue to derive from being one in the first place. Now it's an ugly bag of shit with some poor geezers name on it, when it shoulda been a neutral but freshly scented private message. lovely. Let's not even get into what that may or may not be doing to his or her state of mind. Sure the plants get helped but yeah... yuck. take a shower kinda stuff. I don't come here for that. VM edity... grant ya that, zac, but I'll mail a dollar to anyone that can find anything even slightly vague or hard to pick about my post up there, in relation to this. Obviously I don't LITERALLY mean "lets throw big hard sharp rocks cos PH said to!", do I? I use it as a common figure of speech... It's pretty straightfoward. Humour, if you haven't noticed, is something I usually make at the expense of anyone BUT members or actual personalities. I may exaggerate numbers, use goofy fun words, hehe, like "scallywag" and "thingamejig" (how bohemian) but the POV is pretty clear.

Yeah she has bags of character, I like my people wooly too haha. Maybe ended up in politics by mistake, just waiting to get onto some quality in a carpark and got caught up in the fervour. Jonesy usually modulates ok after the first few moments, but yeah around my place that's when we jolt out of our comatose states and get all the things done we meant to do two hours before haha.... it sounds like ernie from sesame street having a mishap with a mulcher. Oh, and he interrupts hell out of people too, what a legend. I love that kinda thing from alleged adults. It's nearly as good as when someone (some deranged type or some school kid) poses a decent but very, very convoluted questions on that QnA show, and then the entire panel regardless of alignment trades knowing nods n smirks and sympathetic lil looks at the person in the crowd... its like watching a centrelink staffer dealing with an intellectually impaired person... leaves no doubt as to who the real backwards one is anyway. Self-aggrandising, monotonous and excessively controlling would seem to be prequesitite character traits for running a country, somehow (unions, religions and ecological impact groups are run by much the same types, IMobs.) the opposite extreme... "dont ask me, im a piece of worthless shit that fails at everything, althought i have some new ideas we might put into place purely for novelty value and some new opinions I have come up with just so I dont have to say the same thing every question time, and anyways it doesnt matter since I dont really care what any of you do"... doesnt sound like leadership material exactly, either. it's all a sick joke, and we get to be the punchlines. VM

Aw poor Kaptain Krudd, give him a break! he can speak mandarin! isn't that amazing? hell, only him and... millions of other people can do that! makes it easier for him to just Be In China a week ahead of any real drama, versus Going To Indonesia as you'd expect. He can also shuffle a seating plan around so that only his "better" looking underlings end up framing the background of whoever is speaking in parliament, that's clever too. Other cool things he can do include ... everything Johnny said he was going to do, minus the drive or confidence, he can also "apologise" (apparently for extra points, more than getting the ledger somewhere closer to zero) and his fugly mug fills the ABC everytime I turn it on, UNTIL it comes to some grievous legislative decision affecting millions of us and then we just hear about it AFTER THE FACT. he can also play being a leftie in the new sense.... uni grad, chardy, weekend place at byron... whilst putting the boot into leftie targets in the old sense... sociallly marginalised, working classes, indigenous people. I hate new lefties, but I love their quirky lil bifocals in the 600 dollar frames, their chronic abuse of hairstyling facilities, the way they put on a hat and some RMs gear to go "visit the bush"... and especially, I love their TIES. not the sombre charcoal and serge assemblies found around the necks of any given lizard monsterman, but these lovely purples and pinks and cheeky lil pins in em, hehe. They're so whacky, those new lefties. They're so liberalistic noone even comments on Gillards ducks-butt of a haircut. (id like to see Ultimate Hairdo Showdown, in the cage, between the bouffes of Gillard and Bishop...thatd be hardcore). If you aren't sure what I mean by the ties, watch "lateline" tonight... see tony jones? (not only that, you can enjoy the catfuck tones of his "tohngngngignht!" at the start of the show which every night, the sound boys try to downmix, and everynight, he shifts it again... classic.). Anyways, love the tie. Shows you're a rich judgemental arsehole bent on control and acquision, but probably enjoyed "the office" too. guffed muchly over "the hollowmen" though lets fess up, neither are a patch on Yes, Minister. he also knows a lot of cool words, like "digital education revolution", but doesn't MEAN any fucking thing but plays well... hits three buttons for the price of one... cool young cats get a buzz on the digital bit, parental types get off on "education" and hell revolution... anyone that has lived under the Reign of Sad King Johnny for as long as WE have just LOVES to hear a word like the R word. In additon, he and his minions can perpetually sink the boot into say multinational corps while not increasing small business accountability one drop... non government schools whilst doing absolutely nothing to improve or even really recognise the shortcomings in state run schools... and now is talking about "rewarding good teachers" who lets face it, will be those that are probably already doubling as HOD's and being 40 or 50 yoa, aren't on too bad an earner anyway. also means that teachers in schools who's students (for a variety of reasons) do consistently well, or badly, won't be up for it as there'll be no shift or improvement to measure or report. well done. Democratically elected dingbats, the lot of them. VM

Bit like when ppl crack up cos of drunk patrons in licensed premises, surely? Let's just hope the statistical analysis method isn't applied in a wholesale sense, as surely on any day of the week there's SOMEONE with the highest number of posts, and that someone might just be (probably is) having ar ough week. That's why they here, not off talking to their significant other, their garden, or their budgie. Noone cares if Devance posts 44 pages of essentially random pick from google per day, do they? (nothing gainst devance, i find him to be something of a flea market of new ideas, but you get what i mean). Long as we keep the member at hand,500 feet from Katie Holmes, we should be fine! Hope all works out mr griffonium, hard to be on the level in a world with so many lumps n wriggles. And maybe more helpful to can this whole thread... or take it up with him before making it a matter of public stoning? Don't get me wrong, I'm as up for public trials, ridicule and examination as the next puritan, just in this instance sounds like a bit of patience will go a lot further than a bit of number crunching. VM

playing cards, same shit, less artsy. And you can do readings in public without attracting Special Train Friends (you know the ones... "hey, you made eye contact despite how evidently deranged I am, it means I can talk your leg off all the way to the end of the line at the top of my lungs"). actually, I prefer runes (either futhark, slag em all you will, or PMH attwaters "goddess runes" which are actually a very intuitive and primal system)... once you have the set upstairs you don't even need stones, cards or sticks, just a keen eye, they will eventually start leaping out of the woodwork if required (no pun intended). course that's just for yuks, really. Answers can be found in anything really, provided you understood your question, just watch that you don't get too adept at picking em out from the background, it is a noisy old world after all. VM

>mostly jokes, if you like becks, go have another before reading on< i have noticed this before, having one of those very associative minds that tends to remember faces but not names... maybe something to do with the old blackfella geography too (google jewish geography) but I gotta ask... why the hell do so many of us look like rellos? why are appearances so correlative (seemingly) to pasttimes, persuasions, positions? why do certain sets of features gravitate towards certain fields? case in point, plantheads... granted there are many nature boys (n girls) that AREN'T about 6 foot, with darkly highlighted ringletty mops, pronounced brows and classic aussie hybrid coathanger chops... all these serious but sparkly brown eyes, eternal children that got old real fast... the details change but you could I rekcon get a thousand of us together and it'd look like some kinda freakish subspecies, and probably smell like one too. nag champa and sleep deprivation. readily baited with materials such as woodchips, big footpath rubbish and second hand books. is it a common ancestor? are all aussie plant weirdos (least those I'll call from now on "Homo sapiens subsp. nova-hollandae var. mudpuppet"), myself included, descended from some original settler that spent most of their time humping around the scrub of a new colony eating anything not covered in spikes and smoking anything fragrant? Staring intently at clouds and mountains and ant trails whilst cracking wise about the governer and his rum rationing, or somesuch. same applies to other fields... anyone in SEQ has had experience (generally between 14 and 19 only) with "homo sapiens subsp. legolandia var "mallrat" ... these finely built creatures, usually female, generally blonde, often spawning in pink new estates to the background music of the home n away theme song... typically end up breeding with homo sapiens subsp. tradesmanii var. boofhead , have 2.2 kids called "lawson" or "dylan", spend 12 hours a weekend driving to the coast and back when they're not out buying border collies to keep on 15sqm blocks. Often seen utilising transport known as "the SS" on the way to "the Club". easily (almost too easily) baited with agents such as "coles myer cards" and "flattery", both females and males of this variety can be prone to aggression in some circumstances, almost infernal ignorance in others. Both states can be remedied temporarily by administration of drugs such as "breezers" "bundy cans" and "disco biscuits". Highly allergic to marijuana, aromatic compounds in general. Derives medical benefits from petrol vapours but develops instant headache on exposure to essential oils. then there's homo sapiens subsp. menopausia var. jan ... the Jans of the world. 50 plus, devoid of any lingering threat of reproductive capacity, fearing great old age and lack of style they are usually found sporting a combo of short cropped auburn-burgundy hair, suitpants, and those reading glasses that are very long but not very tall... more prevalent in regional areas but you do find satellite population in more built up areas. bitter, cynical and lifelong smokers, they have had no help from anyone yet will usually help others, if only to have something to complain about, repetitively, later in the day. baits include "menthols", "arts and crafts" and "grandkids" also to be found is HS subsp. dinkus var. markettius... an especially strange variety, only recently stabilised, these organisms are almost always found in mating pairs,the offspring of which is typically canine in appearance, with occasional reprives for ritual occasions such as Trips To Bunnings, Going Fishing or Babyshowers. Often dressed almost identically, in polysynth utility pants, crocs or other adventure footwear (for adventuring around farmers markets and open houses) and a white t shirt, without microscopic analysis or careful questioning males n females can only be readily told apart by sunglass size, which is typically blue-black, ovoid, 30-50mm in diameter on males, up to 90-130mm, retro porno brown and shield shaped on females. Other macrotraits for gender ID include hair extensions, typically found only in the female, and the "scrapestep" gait found only in males. related to but not reliant upon the wearing of flipflops, this is a specialised energy saving stride used for ambulation to video shops, noodle box restaurants and open houses. Of some use in the field of an evening, as it has a distinct "flip-scrapslide-flick" sound that can be easily heard from the footpath even when you can't see it. This species is most readily baited using preferred foods such as "Becks" , "SSRI's", and in more recalcitrant cases any thoughts? any other varieties we can think of? we should be cataloguing em, no need to discriminate against people for taxonomic inclusion just cos we don't have any leaves, is there. have a good sunday all VM

random thoughts. post the example by any chance? found this kicking about http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/zouche_...l/thumbs_3.html but cant see anything entirely like you mention... other than this geezer http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/zouche_...img_page59.html at the bottom of the upperrighthandside red line, is that what you mean? also found these http://www.famsi.org/research/graz/zouche_...img_page54.html, clump of mushy looking things in the "2nd top left" panel, assuming 8 panels per page... looks to me like "fungus in the hollow of a hill" but then again, somewhere int hat thing looks like a guy using a lawnmower, so who knows. Certainly something lower on the same page that seems to be about flooding. In closeup, that page with the "flower fungus thing" looks more like a solar symbol, id go passionflower at a stretch, but those lil weird headed things I found look more like fungi than those, theyre just circles coming out of another circle, evenly spaced for the 8 significant points of the yearly cycle held by a lot of "original" cultures? if it is lillies n mushrooms, maybe suggesting a correlation of flowering time of lillies / findability of fungi? hard to tell online, someone mail me the original VM

" And the ape and the man exist in one body; and when the apge's desires are about to be fulfilled, he disappears and is succeeded by the man, who is disgusted with the ape's appetites." - someone. forget who. The damnation of mankind lies in what you write about, the salvation lies in what you make of it later, and the fact that you felt it worth writing down to start with. VM edit there ya go it was Henri Barbusse from L'Enfer but I never have read it, which makes me wonder where I did read it to start with... weird.

No it's not, it's a Boletus. I can tell, because Boletus are mushroom shaped too, sometimes staining blue which looks a bit like the dark shady but not staining bands on yours, and besides, no Pan subs in Australia! Poor man, either lost your mind, taken leave of your senses or are deliberately spreading drug misinformation, tsk tsk... naughty noodles! Here's to Finding Nemo! VM edity ^ thats a "joke". It is not a Boletus.

haha, you don't happen to be somewhere in the vicinity of South Pine Road, by any chance? Seems nothing ever changes in the land of no indicators. Farmers do all kinds of shit in their fields... antifungal products fed to cows wouldn't help, neither would farmboys wandering around with a knapsack fulla lime sulfur or copperox spraying any happy cow pats they can find. Some do this to cut back on the birdsnest so the manure is less dodgy to use on the rosebeds, some are just bastards. The SPR fields specifically have other issues, legacy of chemical dumping etc, that and I wouldn't eat anything from a northside flood plain given it's history of periodic flooding after 20 years of arseholes dumping chemicals in their backyards. Further out in 5 acre block land used to be good pickings but yeah drought, arseholes and overgrazing by cute but useless hobby critters seems to have taken care of that. Superphos and running high stock levels doesn't help, neither does shitty dry weather and 10mm of rain at times we woulda used to get 50 mm of rain... but it's cheering to hear the old legends still doing the rounds, haha. People still say the council sprays the brug at mitchy train station to make people "sick"? All the payphones round the northside still tapped? Ah, so many memories. VM

mine didn't seem to annual, got a lil threadbare after pods ripened but a couple weeks later was back to throwing out big runners etc. Maybe areas with shittier weather n soil plants would get exhausted and just drop off their perch, but no signs of it around here. I'll second the bee loving it, though! VM

6 kilometer long grasshoppers? guess we just solved our transport problem anyway. VM

I'm wondering if it is the right plant, just a pastel shade to the flowers from salts etc... white frangis can often throw pink n purple highlights from salt, and of course low temps that increase their deposits ala purple ganj in frosty climates. I'd say entirely IMOE, 30 for the very finely tuned that can pay attention and arent looking to go batshit, 50 for the middlies and 80ish for the more dedicated... starting points. obviously going to vary, bla bla, read the disclaimer you might eat one and DIE HORRIBLY, your soul left to wander for an eternity watching Scott Cam shows. I found strong cocoa (real cocoa, not the cocoa flavoured powder cadbury flogs these days) to be a nice touch, strongly acidic drinks if anything seemed to impair the proceedings and you never know in advance (well I never did) if it's going to be an upsy or a downsy ie up at 4am watching the sunrise, no mania just an abiding interest in awareness... or crawl into bed grinning like a tomcat at 10pm to take advantage of an amplified sensorium ;) I found this lil snippet at http://etd.fcla.edu/UF/UFE0000343/master-1.PDF re flowering and climate. " Turbina corymbosa, locally known as Xtabentun, is an annual vine very common throughout the Peninsula. It is considered to be one of the most important species for apiculture and sometimes provides a harvest of honey in some areas (Flores 1990). The abundant white flowers of this vine, growing in secondary vegetation and in recently disturbed areas, yield large loads of high quality nectar. At La Montaña, its flowering period lasts from December to January, although it was noted that in the Belha area (the southern-most part of the research area) flowering of Xtabentun also occurred during March in the year 2000. According to the people in Belha, Xtabentun may flower two times, but for people of the northern part of the region that was observed as a very strange event. It is important to note that weather conditions may vary much from north to south and in 2000 the Belha area experienced a rain event that people in the north did not" VM

best of luck with it HK. Probly watch the alkyhole, just what the addictive personality doesnt need at the best of times and in the longrun its usually worse for ppls sleep patterns than anything. GABA teas might help, some kava if you can find a caring sharing type, get a massage (or even give one), UG makes a VERY good point about knowing what youre doing before you get up... someone get that squirrel some nuts. Staying properly hydrated is very important with back issues, I can do all the right things but if my fluids get a lil down it will hurt like a motherfucker in an iron maiden factory. Sex... all you can get (well, within the realm of reason, old Mrs. Smith up the road might be grateful the first time but the 11th she might get a lil distracted). More controversially, tell someone. Not just us, loveable pack of rogues though we are, if Mrs. HK doesn't know, either the regime you were on or what youre trying to do now, might be in your best interests to fess up. a, women (especially the ones you actually want around for any length of time) know everything. If they don't, you're still much safer assuming they do, and lets face it the old mersyndol packet rattle is pretty distinctive to any woman capable of reproduction, even from the other end of the house. b, sounds like you have a good thing, and good things IME tend to be pretty understanding but moreso when kept in the loop... particularly with a lil person running around, it might be a lil too easy for someone to assume you seeming antsy or short is down to something they've done, rather than you're body and psyche being forced to deal with the grey lil shade that we call day to day reality. Bits of it aren't bad, I'd recommend checking out... well just about any of it, if you have a child along, they see things every minute that we'd need a handful of cubes to pay real attention to. Teaching others or just absorbing their reactions is very good to take you out of your own little bubble. If it helps any, I'd recommend finding a way, anyway, to remind yourself on a daily basis not to take life so personally... it's not like you came with a manual and even if you had have, most ppl you deal with and the world around you is unlikely to get around to reading ALL of it, probably just the quickstart section... so don't take bastards personally, don't take unreasonable social expectations, toxic economic conditions or a basically terminally ill social structure and world order, personally. having a higher than expected expectation of fun level, cant help you there, lifelong affliction here too... as the wise man once wrote, itsn ot like im using, just that my body has developed a massive drug deficiency... or maybe just an allergy to the more crass aspects of existing... either way its a fucker of a thing to have on board (some ppl, actually it seems many ppl are pretty happy just doing the Standardised Life thing, good on em I guess) but then it's the source of just about all decent art, culture and human experience too... the constant looking for... whatever. I wrote this for HK and all the other quitters, troopers, dopers and unravelled cassette tapes left on the nature strip of life. Camels Led By Scarecrows waking duskmares and in between places soulless brisk walkings, past disinterred faces wearching for what's lost, without any traces trying to be like the rest. dreaming of living and living to dream you cant just believe them, they don't know what you mean when so many bright truths turn out so obscene trying to seem like the rest. waiting for nothing and holding much less never what you're about, just about your address when part of your failing has built their success trying to live like the rest. drowning in drought and eaten by your own bones they cannot accept it, they won't hear your groans and would you believe it, they just called in their loans trying to eat like the rest. touching lost windows, the faint scent of dealings which may look like roses, but feel more like rough kneelings we all try to smile while they burn our old healings trying to feel like the rest. living in prisons mass assembled from flesh force fed dead leavings, charged double for fresh led silent each day along funnels and mesh trying to be free like the rest. stay strong ppls, please try not to beat yourselves up over daring to be born with a sense of ... absence. VM

"i think for some plants this could be the case, but i dont think so with these."... sorry, lost me there. what isn't the case? I am moderately aware that they grow fairly fast though. "some enclosed space and the sulfur is burned beneath it " - some sulfurish gribblies that end up in foods (and sulphites, while we're at it) HOWEVER the specific mechanics happen, how its applied, what phase the moon is in, etc, end up fucking with the lungs of some ppl... that was my point. SDO, regardless of source or social status, can trigger attacks in susceptible ppl even at very very low levels. More processors moving to use of metbi's isn't too great either... lets just skip all that business at the start and go STRAIGHT to triggering ppl...makes sense, not. Either way, so2 ends up stuck all over the contents of the bag, which then ends up inside ppl, which can fuck with them. Simple stuff. How it ends up there sounds a lil like..." i dont take stimulant party drugs, just eat half a g of mace once in a while" Similar thing happens in greenhouses using sulfur burners (not that its real common anymore), some staff have a nasty habit of getting viciously crook the next day even with proper airing out etc. Course in all practicality, there are (obviously?) differences between treating a dried peach and a few rivea seeds, and noone would be eating a hundred g of rivea in an arvo (go on, accept the Chewy Challenge!) or feeding em to their kids (well, hopefully not, but bogans n all), I just thought it worth including for safeties sake and "completeness". Granted, some places aren't treating at all, but that doesn't stop any given amateur from harvesting the mother lode, wanting to play it safe and just dumping the nearest big "S" to hand in there, or anyone from eating the results. Most "nasty trip reports" about these plants are well n truly inline with accepted ideas of how ergot alks can affect the body anyway, so no need to hunt up an extra bogeyman usually. That aside, I was reading something last night about culturing Botrytis in wine grapes, differences between nasty n noble rots, etc... could be worth looking into for the diehard fungal farmer! Any ideas as to the standard prohibition on chlorinated tap water for processing applies to watering too? Nothing but dam n tank water here, seemed to work pretty well... foliar feeds with dilute bleach in the burbs might not be its favourite snack, perhaps. Also, anyone have any idea about intergeneric hybridisation, possibility thereof? I have a heap of Ipomoea pleibia hanging around, very similar in a way but obviously a lot more compact, faster and with smaller flowers... only problem is flowering at just about opposite ends of the season, was thinking pollen saving... any idea on how well Ipomoea pollen keeps? And would it even be possible? Also keen to track down some of the pink rivea, scant refs to it and seems more likely as u get more equatorial... if nothing else crossing the pink wit hthe white has to take care of the recent line breeding issues (ie, ten thousand seeds is nice, but only so good for anyone else if its 10000 seeds growing into dud plants). I read there is some in townsville, anyone seen it?Meant to be some round JCU, maybe a local could take a peek for us? :D Ah, also have to report that rivea has to be one of the least pest prone plants I've seen, not even the spotted bugs would eat the stuff... amazing. VM

"Are you not confusing this with sulphites? I've never heard of sulfur causing asthma, but sulphites are well know to do so" No. "sulfur" doesn't cause asthma,if we want to split wabbits, dioxides responsible for much of its preservative effect can trigger an acute attack of symptoms though. Not sure if we even know what "causes" asthma, to be honest. lots of stuff on various asthma/allergy sites though re: sulfur additives. fur v fites sounds a bit chicken n egg, once you feel as if you're drowning on dry land. Now throw tripping on top of drowning no fun. I don't think the bigarse tubs of "food grade sulfur" are quite as rigourously tested as imagined, as plenty of fruits labelled as only using "food grade sulfur" have been found to knock asthmatic kids around quite a bit. http://www.fedupwithfoodadditives.info/fac...tdriedfruit.htm the usual story, make of it what you will. "old sulfur probably has some sulfur dioxide on it which may have the same effect, but as the oxides are highly water soluble these could easily be washed off" maybe...I can tell you that as a kid if anything like dried apricots weren't washed to bullshit and back, twice, I'd pack up nearly dead and end up huffing steroids in a hospital bed for the rest of the night. I wasn't one of those bubblewrapped dettol soaked kind of kids either, just a thing that we had to keep an eye out for. If vendors are bulk treating bigarse bags of beans and hten letting em sit n stew for a couple years while they sell em off, might just be the dioxide in some rare cases. Even if it's less than one in a thousand, there's a whole lot of ppl buying and eating these things, singly and as components in dodgy sounding party pills OS. Nevermind what kind of crap these seeds are being doused with to get em across international borders n quarantine, etc, or what they're fed with during original growth. More in a bag of seeds, than just seeds, was the real point. Long term asthmatics can often end up with a pretty hardcore histamine response to the things that DO bother them, the compensation mechanism can often end up more of a pain in the bum than the "attack" ever would have been, properly managed... heart racing woozy shock like symptoms arent entirely uncommon and have a lil in common with some of the more nasty physical effects of hawaiian I have read. Like your head is speeding but your body is drunk, or something...fucked. Figured it worth a mention, at the very least, especially if as ya said T, simply washing well can help out. One less cause of possible strife. For me, mechanical irritants like smoke, cigs, dust, etc, no worries,but odd lil things can and will set off a lot of constriction even though I havent had any real dramas with asthma for about 8 years now. I was nearly killed by a cheerio once, of all things, but love my chorizos. Macadamias, but no other nuts. Cheap red doesn't bother me much at all, go figure, but cheap white wine gets me breathing like a guppy in glue. Probably a very complicated answer behind all that. re: preharvest n harvest conditions... In efforts to provide the best lil fungal hangout for mine that I could, I probably was responsible for introducing a lil seed rot into some pods...very few, about 1 in 100, overall pretty happy with an approach based on constant but evenly diminishing moisture, silty but well draining vine country river flat soil, extra doses of p, k, mg, etc leading into budset and then occasional spoilings with molasses (not sure if it really does increase sugars present but just about all glossy dark leafed plants seem to love the stuff, if only for TE's). In hindsight, I'd probably provide increasing shade or breaking of light as seeds hardened off to prevent any possibly... dunno... cooking? Most are well n truly juicy inside despite being well hardened outside, when first taken, drying out a lot more in the next couple weeks. Seeds left in pods fared better than husked seeds left in similarly exposed positions, over time, makes sense. I don't know if it's really a need for the fridge as much as just a constant and pleasant temp. Dehusking seems best done on a pod by pod Rosary like approach (blessed is the fruit of thy womb) thumb n forefinger sqeezing dry capsules at the base (stalky end, technical term there) with a slight clitoral twist, beans neatly pop out without being ground against each other or dropped into a dish for winnowing a million times, etc. aim for something soft if you go for some funky airborne assault method... one well grown plant will drop so much in the lap that it's tempting to get rough I guess. Something best seen as a seasonal observance, I suspect. I guess you could plead cold treatment of seeds to explain why you have 300g of "ICBIK-Sid" taking up space in your frozen pea department. But even when they're not bearing, they're growing like mad and looking gorgeous,bees galore and smell divine, and the non bitter tips are used as a green veg in some cultures, they're pretty spinachy. Chooks look pretty wary around them though, maybe they know something we don't. Any word on the roots? Wondering what happens to all that stray mystery once the beans are hardened off and the plant starts to sulk for a couple weeks before regrouping and throwing new shoots... VM edity... not to malign dodgy OS party pills, never had one, I'z sure dey be well fit f'dah lads n that.

Ah, and lots of water... proper hydration seems to help out with the gentle non loading activity as well as helps ward off the slight scatters towards touchdown at the other end. Course, you might just look at one seed and your heart will explode, you'll lose your mind, turn into a commie and start making your own tempeh, you have been warned. Also illegal for anyhting other than lookin pretty in most parts, so beware. Sold at a lot of websites, and legal, are not the same thing. Ah, sulfur (good grade or no) can cause breathing difficulties and allergies in some, esp asthmatics... worth remembering. VM

I think there's a few things at play here... Genetics... IME the most prolific seeders of just about anything tend NOT to be the nicest of the bunch... not entirely shithouse by default but yeah, you get what I mean. Most ganj beans in common circulation are from hermie prone scum buds, for example. Secondly... conditions... a LOT of this stuff is being grown in some WHACKY places ie... france, under lights, or victoria etc... not quite the dominican republic or all that similar. many plants see mto be beaten senseless in "large" (ie, 300 mil ) pots for a year or two first, which sets em up for stresses later on when they should be getting set to make bulk brix for those fungal whatnots to live off. Expectation. Some site (spiritplants? one of those kinda limp ones anyway) had a lil poll and the options were " on rivea, did you get a> nothing b> almost nothing c> comparable to LSD"... I mean, really... it's NOT lsd, it's not MEANT to be "comparable to LSD" and I reckon if you tried to get to the same places, you'd just end up kind of uncomfortable. People eat a bunch of seeds expecting "visuals" (whatever they are ) and miss out on em, so they say rivea is shite, any observer in the room can see them being twice as animated, staring into reflections, being tiwce as involved in the plot of the shitty movie, half an hour spent outside staring at the stars... all the while pilot x is saying "these dont do anything" ;) Good beans (fresh, brown, stored well but not necess frig'd) give me a tingle at 20 or 30, flick the switch at 40 or 60 and about a hundred is lovely. Jamming all seeds into your cheek then chewing em one by one to pulp with the odd sip of milk or water seems to be the best balance (assuming you have teeth in ok shape, maybe not one for the meth set hey). never bothered with this "no tap water, mix with llama spit, leave in sacred footy boot under light of a full moon" stuff personally... most reports from ppls using those routes seem to lack a lil... anything haha. It is a substance with a seemingly low ceiling ie... its meant for laid back loved up introspection and communication with intimates, art, writing, you probably WONT find your walls glowing blue or the alien love bugs playing with your balls... but you might just reach a few quietly startling conclusions about yourself, your art, your science, your life and your loves. Loading up on acidic drinks (ala most net reports) seems to not help overly much, ganja detracts (usually), I like to eat something plain n hour or two beforehand otherwise the seeds cause hellish munchies (methinks just frees up enough dopa n sera for me to anticipate the joy of eating, haha) and eating after takeoff tends to bring u back down to earth. Proper attention has to be paid... it is one of the least intrusive or overbearing plants I know, if you find yourself distracted by the day to day then youll more or less stay there...very gentle agent, orientated to love between and within people. Also has to be brought into play that a lot of ppl eating these things are doing so after 10 or 20 (or more haha) years of popping this and chewing that, a lot of ppl are eating em thinking they're "just like acid but herbal, man" when if anything it's more like having half an old school "pure" e, a big cup of cocoa and quite a bit of high potency pure sativa... none of that "digital neurosis" familiar in the land of Alice, the nearest was half an hour spent reinventing semaphore In the same way that caapi and rue are said to be the female/lunar and male/solar flips of the same coin, I think of Sid as being the solar active male and rivea being the passive lunar female side of things... not the best metaphor but you get what I'm ranting about Very important too, to remember that the average humble villager in mexico probably has a few less distractions, high falutin aspirations and lets face it less options for stimulus than the typical westerner would... in addition to being about half the body weight, not backed up with three feet of their own shit and spit unused to breaking down raw plant materials. They also probably don't have ultrapotent synthetic party products for comparision either! I also suspect different climates and feeding regimes changes the balance or ratios of compounds in the seeds... certainly as they age from whole but green to dry n brown the taste changes quite dramatically, as does potency... shade-aged for a week nearly but not quite brown beans seemed to be the fastest ticket but also had the most apparent peripheral effects ie tinglies in hands, etc, but nothing like that found on hawaiians, and less than say sitting on your bum drinking beer and eating salt all night haha. Some ppl , esp those basically less dreamy to start with, don't notice the effects as much, and it also has a ganj like "sensitisation" aspect ie it does what it does, but you don't know what to look for yet...common enough trait that one. Anyone with a general shortage of seratonin esp will tend to get processing effects but not...qualitative effects... ie, things are a bit odd but it doesn't strike em as that remarkable or fun... otherwise, even quite amply supplied ppl don't tend to get much out of em if dosing more than say every couple weeks... any attempts to "double dip" or "extend" just up insomnia rather than effects. Try eating em too much and you can get quite bummed out for a bit, in that typical touchy tripper kind of way. my verdict... magic stuff, victim of (as per bloody usual) internet wankery and deceptive advertising, as well as plain unreasonable expectations from users (who lets face it are often best summed up as "too high, but never high enough"). An inoffensive, gentle useful teacher specially designed for life n love lessons, very lil wear n tear on the body or the mind and with an extremely limited potential for any kind of abuse. Also (probably more applicable to society) it is a beautiful plant, easily grown for shade etc but can produce BULLSHIT volumes of seed and has already been reported going weedy up north, so take care. You wont be able to get "Every seed, ill be careful" with anyhting but the most sickly or limited of vines. Also, not your key into being the local acid kingpin... just not gonna happen But a few mates might love you a lil bit more, and interestingly enough good things have been reported fairly consistently from ppl who are completely ignorant and unbiased ie open trusting guineas with no pre concieved notions of what to expect... most fall neatly within the bounds of "expected outcomes". I have some poetry that probably expressed the lessons more effectively than this first thing on a Sunday nonsense, might put it up later, some nice riveart too. chew em if you got em, VM

looks a lil bit fungal, maybe from being jammed into whatever it was mailed in , some ebayers have a nasty habit of packing your plants and then mailing them three days later for a weeks travel in a plastic bag. all my aloe vera n gasteria n hybrids take full sun, once they're established... they just need super stable root temps, a stone mulch is great, in ground I mean. my potted ones don't mind full sun once hardened off, they aren't into hot winds though, and pots are a lil fiddly in a way, more on that later. always wash any aloe leaves well before using the goop from em, burns n scrapes get infected very easily and whilst aloe IS a magic thing for healing, if you watered em with say compost tea the day before you might get a bit of shit in your wound before it gets sealed off with aloe. aloe in pots seems happiest when the POT is out of the sun but the plant is in full sun more or less... I find most succulents n cacti are happiest being warm at the top, cool n stable at the bottom, otherwise you get a flush of fine root hairs anytime you water or feed but then as the mix dries out quickly, they die off...the remains of these hairs are water repellent and take up pot space, they also make it harder for the root system to grow more roots at another time. the desert etc might be in full sun but the bits under the ground aren't... they're probably not swinging between 20 and 40 degrees every day n night like a small normal pot on say a concrete step in full sun. I like coco in my cac mixes for the insulative qualities, seems to help a lot. i have some aloe n aloe x gasterias in terracotta, they get grumpy pretty fast if they go into full sun or don't get sooked over every few weeks at least. the happiest plants I know are growing in compacted building waste and dark heavy clay, get no sun at all in a dank lik spot til lunchtime then baked to the shithouse in full sun all year round against a hot brick wall til sunset, every day... massive beaming plant, great goo from them. second best ar egrowing in cocopeat pockets in a boulder retaining wall, also getting almost every drop of sunlight every day. they just sulk in dicky little pots and tend to divide into new plantlets rather than truly fatten up to a useful size. VM edity the "creases n holes" seem to be either damage from being packed or stored or lugged about in company of other aloe plants or something similarly serrated... notice the patterning? if you got 3 or 4 in the order, might be one with the damage "upside down" from being bundled... you need one or two "top to tail" or the bundle wont wrap evenly and you cant use the bodgy 500 g mailing bag lop the leaves off, or leave m, they'll drop off anyway if it's going to be a problem for the plant. the last pic, I see that damage pattern in plants that have been stacked or dropped onto concrete especially unswept, or dirt in the bottom of a box etc... shitty hygiene but they'll live I'm sure.