And Waser's 'Experimental Competition Which May Or May Not Have Prizes But Definitely Has Little Explanation' is alive! Go! 
Ends in 4 hours (started at 11am NST), see if you can figure out what to do for yourselves and PM me your answers if/when you find them. 
(And I know it's not in the competition section before anybody says...). Your final answer will be a number and you should round down to the nearest whole number each step (remember to present your working!). 
Ok, competition is over and we had two winners @Bone and @Trichomes who won $15 and $10 respectively plus a signed, limited edition work from my 30 second animals and food series, seen below. I'll be keeping the remaining $5 in prize money since nobody else completed it and I plan to buy the cheapest bottle of whisky I can find!
I bet the rest of you wish you'd worked a bit harder now... 
Solutions:
Images: Juniper, Cardinal, Catwoman, Parliament, Sweden, Ukulele, Wombles, Berninger, Jack Daniel's
You then had to search for those keywords on the forum and find the hidden puzzle pieces in various posts, put the puzzle together and solve it.
Final solution stolen from Trichomes:
v = 10,750,000
w = 85
x = (6^3) = 216
y = (17 + 23) = 40
z = (4,235,990 / 1296) = 3268
((216 + 3268) * 85) - (10,750,000 / 40)
Final Answer = 27,390
