this war never ends she will never be defeated

I'm having some trouble with myself, there's a scream sitting in my ribs that I haven't let out but it shifts and stirs, I can feel it when I'm making a cup of tea at work, I can feel it watching the train pull into the station, I can feel it sitting here in the dark, imperceptibly it rises up my throat, and one day it will out, out, out.

To avoid this happening at an inopportune moment (ie, with an audience), I'm running dark. Email silence, blog silence, radio silence. Submarineasaurus invoked.

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• [insert griping about the cold here]
• [insert absurd amusing thing witnessed in the streets here]
• [insert navel-gazing here]
• [insert random picture here]
• [insert more moaning about the cold here]
• [insert writerly stuff here]
• [insert tirade of your choice here]

For those of you who may also be in a rut, down, got the blues, in a funk, weary, SAD, depressed, I leave you this gift.

Spider Sex Violent But Effective

Typically, spider males deliver their genetic package via sperm that is deposited into a small web and manually inserted using a pair of appendages on their undersides known as pedipalps.

The sperm are then held in a receptacle between the ovipore and ovary known as a spermatheca until an egg is released.

However, the spermatheca is a "last in, first out" structure, so that if any further males inseminate a female, the last mate's sperm is the first in line to fertilise an egg.

Milan Rezic, an entomologist at the Crop Research Institute in Prague, has spotted a spider circumventing this problem by delivering sperm directly to the ovaries via holes that the males bore directly in the females' abdomens.

There is even footage of this occurring, but, pffft, spiders, man. I have no idea what's going on in there. Legs everywhere.

Vagina? Who needs a vagina when you can just DRILL HOLES STRAIGHT DOWN TO THE OVARIES YEEEHAAAAAW.

Combined with the Spiked Demon Penis Of Doom that seed beetles use, I do believe that we all, the human race as a whole, have a lot to be thankful for.

And so these things help me keep perspective, as I swallow this scream yet again.