Rain

It's storming now, enough to cover the patio in water.  We don't need the water right now, but I still enjoy watching and listening to the rain.

Cockatoos Opening Trash Bins

Cockatoos in Sidney, Australia are teaching each other how to open trash bins. The techniques are spreading through social learning as the birds develop different cultures in different areas.

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Pool Update

The pool consisted of fuzzyred, ng_moonmoth, bairnsidhe, erulisse, and edorfaus. They have sponsored the following poems:

"Getting to the Next Part of Yourself"
"The Spotlight Can Change Everything"
"A Vibrant Symbol of the American Dream"
"The People Who Give You Their Food"
"Before the Nature Wants"
"Without Stable Shelter"
"Come Together to Learn and Create"

This helps enormously with our current cash-flow challenges. (It rained last night. The basement flooded again. Sigh.) Thank you all so much for your generous support of poetry and poet! *bow of appreciation*

As the air conditioner is still out, there will be heat-based delays on posting. Sorry about that, but it is 84F in my office right now. :P I will do my best to keep up.

If you are still shopping, there are 3 poems left in the sale:
"Why People Hold onto Memories" ($113.50)
"Essential to Well-Ordered Living" ($142)
"Like a Shook-up Bottle of Soda" ($142.50)

Birdfeeding

Today is hot and muggy.  It rained a lot last night, so there's water everywhere today.  

I fed the birds.  I've seen house finches and a squirrel.

While we were out driving, I checked a puddle in a ditch, but I didn't see diving beetles like we had here.  Sadly our ditch is almost empty already.  I wonder if the quality of yard made for more beetles here, even though that part of the ditch is by the field just past the yard.

Poem: "Getting to the Next Part of Yourself"

This poem is spillover from the June 6, 2021 Poetry Fishbowl. It was inspired by prompts from chanter1944, heartsinger, and zianuray. It also fills the "Naked / Vulnerable" square in my 6-1-21 card for the Cottoncandy Bingo fest. This poem has been sponsored by a pool with fuzzyred, ng_moonmoth, bairnsidhe, erulisse, and edorfaus. It belongs to the China's Mistake arc and the Kraken thread of the Polychrome Heroics series.

Warning: This poem contains intense and controversial topics. Highlight to read the warnings, some of which are spoilers. It includes emotional distress, the aftermath of extreme sexual abuse of underage sexbots, paralyzing physical damage, intimate conversations, anxiety, synthetic genital reconstruction, reference to disturbing requests for genital modifications, boundary issues, robotic-medical details, poorly constructed modesty programming with subsequent lack of contextual modesty, and other challenges. If these are sensitive issues for you, please consider your tastes and headspace before reading onward.

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Notes for "Getting to the Next Part of Yourself"

These are the notes for "Getting to the Next Part of Yourself."

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