Canid

The kitchen smells reached my tongue. My stained white robe stayed on the hook, And though I was not very young, I was a truly awful cook. Soufflés would quickly perish: Sink fast enough to hiss. Rabbits arrived, barely alive, My knife would somehow miss. My saving grace from this disgrace, Was starchy yellow-white. The glorious potato rolled, To me, so cook I might. I learned to make them scalloped, How to mash, I learned to bake, To dice, shred, fry, to spice them up, Each meal did my potatoes make. Then, one night, in the kitchen, While setting up to bake, A miraculous creation, (honey sweet potato cake) I turned and there before me, Lined up beneath the knives, On my work-worn kitchen counter, Russets staring with potato eyes. I said, "those need to be cut out, If these, I am to cook," And from the drawer behind me, The eyeing tool I took. I dropped it as I turned around, For on my counter there, Lay fifteen more potatoes, And my sharpest kitchenware!" I said then, "what is going on?" And gathered up the knives, But where the knives were s'posed to go, Found more potato lives. And onto each potato there, Was carved a darkened face, Looking dubiously upon me, Ev'ry line with hatred traced. Then, on ev'ry cup and surface, Of my kitchen, saw I more. Ev'ry species of potato sitting, Where I could not ignore. And their little cold brown bodies, Filled me with a kind of fear. Though I knew that they could make no move, I sensed my end was near. Thus fleeing from the kitchen, Did I run to meet my fate: I leapt, blinded by panic, Into a giant French-fry Mate©. And so I met my gruesome end, And I think, to this day, That they celebrate their victory, In some cruel potato way. [Editing credit to my Grandfather.]

I'll temper my behaviour on this night: Cause them fright. And to everyone's delight the little Pokemons will run. Goodie-goodie Harry Potters doing good - disgusting! All Hallows Even come, Little fairies have no place Among the ghouls who would disgrace The name of child one night a year: Running wild and causing fear. Come thee near my sugared friends; Dance with the webbed figure of the Queen of Hallow-e'en.

Silly Young Dan Silly young Dan continually ran from his nice mummy when they were out. If she turned around for a second, she found that with haste he'd be nowhere about. Thus, one day at the zoo, while his mum tied her shoe, little Dan silently stole away. That evening, happy the lions seemed to be - though Dan's never been seen since that day. Small Little Tim woke up one day vastly lacking height, and while his mum gave worried looks, he said it was "alright," for, "even though I may be small, it's not my size that flatters - what's in my head's my worth, it's said. As nothing's there, it hardly matters!"

Canid sat on top of the rocky little hill feeling extremely agitated. She had a good view of the distant Pen. About fifty armies had spread themselves out in an uneven circle around the literary fortress. The fastest of them would reach it in a day - if she moved at full pace, she could make it there a few hours after the first attack. The armies seemed ants in the heiarchy of her worries though. Whatever The Pen was forming, she did not like it. It hung above their keep in a silver-blue cloud, flickering yellow like some infant fire. Waves of magical disruption came from it. They washed sickeningly through her, dampening her connection to the soil - blinding her senses. A sense of urgency threw itself upon her. Canid began leaping awkwardly down the rocks, Prospero close at her heels.

Oh meep to thee and meep to all! With singsong trilling glee, I shouteth from the rooftops With the shrieking of the free. Oh meep to all the glory come from sitting in the bath. Meep to every nation, that causes me to laugh. Meep! Oh happy people, that with me dare to sing, Cry "meep" to every bell and set it tintinabulating! Yes; I meant it. This piece is absolutely meaningless. I had a sudden urge to write it though....

*Canid coughs and begs audience with the repliers.* I am an insider on all this, being opesopacus' friend, so I thouht I'd set your minds at ease a bit. opes' Mother tends to be rather unreasonable and nag non-stop. Such an ongoing strain within family causes her a lot of stress and frustration, which she let out for a while in this form - she likes to use strong wording... She is a balanced individual with confidence in her abillities(and a very bright future). Just thought you'd like to know.

Every falsehood stems from a truth. There would be no reason for a lie if there were not something to cover up. A rumour would not start if nothing started it. It followed that something existed at The Pen that had started the rumour of a superweapon. Prospero began to eat the spine in the way a herron swallows a fish. She would have been inclined to chew the remains of the rodent, herself. An electric crackle sped through the air, changing the sky from red, to dingy purple. Canid strained her eyes to identify the delicate change in colour amid her black and white world. She had visited the peace-loving guild of writers on several occasions. They were individually intelligent and powerfull, but as a pack, dissorganized and lazy. It was blatantly obvious that their sudden collaborative effort was related to the freakish feel to her world. She was a day out from Legman's ground. She had called on him in hopes of an explanation. Legman was gone. She was in the dark. Canid did not like being in the dark. If the Pen was doing something; they knew what was happening.

Stuffing should not have nuts in it. When I cook a thanksgiving dinner some day... I will not put nuts in the stuffing. .... and isn't the rubber chicken close enough to a turkey? Oh... and a belated happy thanksgiving to all who celebrated it yesterday. We had pheasant... ...it tasted like bird. Yummy, yummy bird.

I remembered the example I had wanted to use for my fabricated memories blurb (did anyone understand it by the way?). In our last house, we would occasionally find a bat in the basement. I have a memory of us putting out rice for a bat we found (we might have done that) and then finding that the rice had turned green and orange (like those coloured noodles). It is a solid memory - my brain tells me it happened. But it didn't.... and it certainly isn't a memory of a dream. I think it happened. I know it didn't. Hence a fabricated memory, made up from a partial memory and something else... for some odd reason... in an attempt to have a 'probable' whole memory. Anyone follow?

I think that very unlikely as in these situations there are thousands of miles in between people and while humans are made up of atoms and electrons, so is everything else. May I propose another theory? I think it likely that to a degree, the brain will fabricate memories - these precognitions being a likely candidate. I have a memory from when I was small of a certain set of rooms. My brain is convinced of its reality but I a 98% certain that I was never in such a place. In the same way that you can complete the second half of a sentance that someone has stopped in the middle of, I think the mind will often take an incomplete thought, find the most logical completion and say, "this is what happened". The brain is a complex organ... it is easily concievable that it will sometimes mix reality with fantasy. Say a person has a bad dream sometime in the night. When they wake up, they have no concious memory of the dream - it is recorded in your short term memory as an incomplete, subconcious thought. You hear shortly after getting up that someone you knew well has died. There is an incomplete thought in your memory that matches tone with the current situation. Your brain assumes they must be connected and tells you that you thought this would happen during the night. This is now a solid memory that feels completely real - you have no way to distinguish it from an actual memory because your brain has recorded it as such. I'll use déja vu as an example of this - you have a vague memory of a situation similar to your current one, thus your brain draws connections. However in this case the similarity is not strong enough, you are too awake, and most importantly, you entered into the situation concious of the fact that you had not done it before, which prevents the tie from being completed. Thus you feel you have done this before... but you know you haven't. I hope you were able to follow that. Psychology is an interesting field...

My, I didn't realize I'd be the only one with no belief in it what-so-ever, but hey - I'm used to being different. Just as a note to Gwaihir's topic changing point - out of the blue is rarely out of the blue. There are millions of vague connections our brains place between completely different things and when changing topics, conciously or not it is those connections that guide the switches. I propose that your friend and yourself are wired up in similar ways - even if you are in other ways different people. Just my own little theorizing... To the original questions of the thread: “What are your thoughts on fortune tellers?” They choose the most probable predictions. “Do you believe in them?” No. “If not do you still believe in the gift of psychic abilities?” No. “Do you believe in them, yet have moral feelings that steer you away from them?” No. “Do you believe in them and allow them to influence you in any way?” No. “Do you view them as cheap entertainment?” Yes. “To take the question a step further. If a "seer" gave you a reading would it influence you in any way?” ...and, surprise, surprise..... no!

*mutters something about MUCH preffering pencils* Very good - I always enjoy a silly poem.

Canid emerges from behind a tapestry, (Legman floats through it) her ears twitching slightly in the aftereffects of the birthday echo and wishes Peredhill a birthday full of politeness... ...and happiness too, come to think of it!

A purple fuzzy thing throws pieces of fruit at Pen members until it thinks the yelling mob large enough to be considered an audience. It takes a large drink of fermented cactus juice, squeaks for silence, then recites: I once bit a man named Sulu, He was part of the Enterprise crew. He said, "I hate things, Black and Yellow with wings." Which proves that he hadn't a clue. The audience stares at the mouse sized poet in confusion - taking this as a sign of awe and admiration, it 'treats' them to another. A man did once say to a hen, "There's no way you could count up to ten!" But to ten the hen fought - The man was so bestraught That he never did say things again. A couple of people clap uncertainly - the fuzzy rejoices! To be thought of as rather obscure, You should a large muffin procure. When mixed up with pear, And worn in your hair, To attract strange reactions you're sure. One sad person makes the mistake of laughing politely. The purple fuzzy thing rears up in great offence and charges hissing towards the suddenly very, very scared individual...

In the end - probably not. Although I have no moral or other objections to public nutity - and were I to strip, know I would feel right at home and very comfy despite a more-plump-than-is-healthy physique... there is one deterant. I think a nudist beach would possibly attract a slightly higher percentage of perverts than normal.... maybe not but I can see it happening and there is no real way to tell. My own policy regaurding perverts is stay as far away as possible.... thus I am afraid my car would turn around. Wouldn't it be nice if one didn't have to worry about such things? Such is life.

I hope that wasn't a true story.... good none the less. "I looked at momma eyes all full And glared at evil witch" - I think that those two lines - at least the latter - need rewording. Maybe using a semi-colen at the end of the first and changing the second line to "Glared at the evil witch"? I assumed at first you meant the nurse was the evil witch but reaching the end wasn't sure... At any rate, I enjoyed reading that and apart from that one line I found it a smooth read (unbroken by confusion). I actually looked at it in the first place because I happen to hold an uncommon opinion of the value of vaccinations; for the most part I think them a bad idea. - Their effect on your immunity level is not as permanent as getting said disease. - They are not always effective. - Some types of vaccine occasionally cause the disease being imunized against. - The diseases against which people are vaccinated are often rare or not serious (the flu vaccinations for example) - Vaccines contain various toxins - some at hazardous levels (such as mercury) and have been known to cause serious side effects in a large number of cases. - Studies commonly quoted by pro-vaccine material regaurding the effects of past vaccination programs in foriegn contries have been compared to contries that had no vaccination program and the same epidemic with the conclusion that in both vaccinated and unvaccinated countries, the disease rates dropped at the same pace. - Vaccinations are a multi-billion dollar industry... just something to keep in mind. I hope I have given you something to think about... and I liked your poem!

I would want to be able to change, at will into any species. I have always wondered how birds, bats, dogs, snakes and all maner of creatures think and see and sense the world - it is not enough just to guess what ultraviolet looks like...

Canid emerges from sleep to find the lights working again. "Safe and sound... it is nice to bring out the candles every now and then."

Canid cheers and summon birds which make a glorious racket but render the party food unappetizing...

Of all the quallities that are nessesary in a good mate... I'd have to say the most inportant for me would be kindness. There are a lot of people who will go out of their way to make one person happy, but it is somewhat more rare to find someone who genuinely cares about those around them (care stretching to 'animals' as well as humans) - who's daily gestures of respect are out of care rather than for appearance's sake.

Grass is dying in its bed, can’t survive without being fed on, biodiversity in your yard. It’s a, far stretch from the natural guard! Too many cars; I can hardly breathe. Bitter tasting fruit comes from mutated trees. When business only looks out for itself, may I remind of the Tasmanian wolf? Tiger striped marsupial in doglike clothes. 1805(eighteen oh five) was the date that it chose to, make itself known to the human-kind. The most tragic mistake knowing what it would find! 1830s marked the start of the hunt, bounties, public display, furs and farmers in front. Six years later the last one died, never had a chance to survive! Sore sky. A lie. All is known and too few try. Fast pace. Rigged race. I don’t think humans know their place! A tiny world with a smaller crowd, taking more than we are allowed. Too fiercely sought is the plague of wealth. May I remind of the Tasmanian wolf?

It's not my fault! Certainly I can resist buying them - or I would be broke in the time is takes a purple fuzzy thing to break (very litterally) into a safe - but there is no doubt that when someday I have a family of my own, our home theatre system will be well stocked. As I said though... this movie collecting desire is not my fault. It is a learned behaviour! We (my parents, siblings and myself) have over 300 VHS and DVDs currently in our collection - and I have been on hand for the purchase of many of them. Learned behaviour! At any given time I will have my eye on at least two distinct DVDs.... chosing things to purchase in future is, after all, a form of entertainment in itself.

Before Canid even had her head in the door, a large, furry gray spider with a nose had rushed in, breathing noisily in admiration of the beautifull butterflies. Canid pranced in, in time to see her pet spider race up Gyrfalcon's arm and give his new butterfly a four-legged hug. Canid had a plant pot made of living vines dangling from her jaws. In it was a very ordinary looking plant with the exception of the fact that its leaves were blue. "I think you'll find that usefull." she said happily, placing it at Gyrfalcon's feet. "Happy birthday!"

...and happened, quite by accident of course, to step on a purple fuzzy thing that had heard word of free food from the "hoarder of geld", as they knew Wyvern. Fuzzies don't like being stepped on; it is a well known fact. Racouol was mystified at his opponent's abillities... the sheep seemed to be swinging in the air in the manner of a circular saw. He grinned when he spotted the bit of purple fuzz latched onto one of the sheep's feet. His task would be completed for him. He could even shear the animal when it had been dealt wi- Racouol's thought was cut off by the impact of a sheep flying out of it's swing at something nearing 200mph...

Urm... nope. It's just there for the rhyming scheme and classic hero off to save his love story...