Watermark

St. Patrick's Day

I am putting this little Irish critter dance beneath the cut, as it seems to slow loading on the front page.

Time

Perhaps time really is as simple as we used to think. The wise ones tell us that all we have is this moment; this moment is all there is.

Maybe time is a bubble. This moment (moment meaning: the smallest possible increment of time, so vastly small that our limited minds cannot encompass it) replaced the one before, and is replaced by the next. There is no extant past in which my grandmother still prunes her garden; our lost ones are truly lost.

I imagine a kettle on the boil, but there is just one bubble at a time. It bursts as the next rises to the surface. There is no past time to travel to. It's gone. All that is left is its consequences.

Each bubble creates infinite possible futures. The next bubble creates its own infinite possible futures; some are the same as the last, some are not. With each new bubble, an infinite number of possible futures vanishes, and others take their place. It might be, theoretically, possible to travel to the future, to some possible future, and even to arrive there.

But, unless our time traveler is very lucky, she may land in a possible future that then becomes impossible. It vanishes around her. It suddenly disappears (and she along with it) or perhaps it fades, slowly, in and out, as possibilities change with each new moment of time. Our imagined time traveler would have to be impossibly lucky to land in a future that endures.

This (this metaphysical nonsense) is what happens when one watches too much Doctor Who and Torchwood, which is -- don't you think? -- becoming very sexy, and very dark. Are these inextricably entwined?

No doubt a physicist or mathematician could easily disprove my amateur theory.

Still, I like it.

I am a Real Writer & I can prove it

 

Many thanks to Janni Lee Simner, via Erin Noteboom

But really important people have more than one certificate on their wall, and who is more important than the poet? So I worked this one up, too:

 

This idea was stolen from:

J. B. Handelsman, New Yorker, March 10, 1973

Via Ron Sipherd at The Well

Oh, you want one, too? Just in case, I made up a gender-inclusive blank one. Just add your name and the date, and there you are.*

*It has been brought to my attention that more detailed instructions might be useful. If you are not a member of flickr, you can't download photos, so first, join flickr -- it's free, and you can always unjoin if you want. Then click here; above the image you'll see ALL SIZES -- click that; then click and download the size you want.

You can then use any photo editing program to add your name and date -- now that you have a flickr account, you could upload it into your own account and use Picnik to do this; or print out a copy and do it by hand.

If all this is too much for you, just email me and I'll send you the image.

Narcissistic Playtime

I've been working on this post for several days, and this morning I found Lorelle's Blog Challenge: Intelligent Online Toys and Play Things, which inspired me to get back to it.

Some of you have noticed, and commented on, the new portrait on the sidebar. This is a Uvatar from BeFunky.com:

You upload a photo, and they have an artist do a sketch. I would say, based on this, that they make an attempt to flatter. When I signed up, it was free, but now it costs $5 to get one done.

You can play with it quite a bit, with different backgrounds and 'outfits'. You can even pose with celebrities and aliens. Here's a glamorous version:

You can also make one with one program, then mess with it in another. Here is a Uvatar that I spherized with GIFWorks:

What you can't be is fat, even if you are fat; or old, even if you are old. That seems to be the case with most of these.

The Perception Laboratory’s Face Transformer is another, that I've linked to before, that works from a photo you upload. Here I am, in the styles of Modigliani, Botticelli, and Mucha:

      

I rather like these, especially the Botticelli.

Here are a few others, some of which you've seen here before:

       

These are from SimpsonizeMe, Portrait Illustration Maker, and DoppelMe, respectively. I have a flickr photoset with the results of toys like these -- check it out, be amused.

My favorite, from  BuiLD YouR WiLD SeLF:

 

RELATED POSTS:

• mEgo
• My WiLD SeLF
• Time Wasting
• Time Wasting (2)
• Blog Tools, Toys, Tips
• More amusement in the Frivolity category

My Lonely Christmas Tree

UPDATED December 30, 2007: Look at all those presents! Such generosity of feeling -- and I don't even know who some of you are. Thank you so much for making this fun!

I'll be taking this off the top of Watermark later today, and replacing it with Almost time for the New Year Haiku. I hope you have fun with that, too.
 

Look at that: no [lots of] presents [!!!]. I'm going to leave this at the top of Watermark for a few days, hoping for visits from virtual Santas.

You can be [are] my virtual Santa[s]!

[But you must have flash.]

My Own Private Conspiracy Theory

What They Don't Want You to Know

In order to understand the A-List blogging phenomena you need to realize that everything is controlled by a hostile group of extraterrestial and local aliens made up of portly female geniuses with help from extremist web nerds of various genders.

The conspiracy first started during the degenerate sixties in San Francisco. They have been responsible for many events throughout history, including the death of Princess Diana.

Today, members of the conspiracy are everywhere. They can be identified by their habit of smoking colored cigarillos.

They want to vigorously humiliate The Moral Majority and imprison resisters in a deserted mine shaft using sabotaged elevators.

In order to prepare for this, we all must get married to someone of the opposite sex. Since the media is controlled by crazed radical feminists we should get all our information from Karl Rove and Ron Paul.

What? You don't believe me?

Well, then -- go Make Your Own Conspiracy Theory. While you're at it, check out the Blog Herald Article Series on Conspiracy Theories and Blogs. And then, before you get all dismissive about bloggers indulging themselves in such trivialities, go read Anil Dash on Serious LOL's.

Save An Alien!

 

Have you saved an alien today?

I saved one a couple of weeks ago. Of course, I haven't checked on or visited it since. Typical imperialist.

Here it is, safely quartered at Antarctica [click for larger image]:

 

Its name is Za. The website tells me I should give it a human name, but this seems arrogant to me. Isn't its real, alien name good enough?

I used to help a friend with her Dell computer by making all the calls to Dell support, where young men with musical Indian voices would tell me their name was Brad. Of course, maybe I wouldn't be able to pronounce their real names. Which is worse, to adopt a name suitable for another language, or to hear your own name garbled in the mouth of  . . .  an alien?

Za may not be pronounced at all like I think it is.

I'm sure it's no coincidence that this alien and its pet slightly resemble me and mine. Hell, let's just quit fretting about Terran- mammalian- centricity, and call it she.

[Wait. Maybe the pet-like thing IS Za, and what I thought was Za is the pet?]

She has relatives that still need saving. Sadly, I do believe you must belong to Facebook in order to save aliens. This is what those of us with nothing more significant to do join Facebook for.

Poets are Funny

This is the last week for Poetry Thursday, and I've no idea what will come next. Maybe these will cheer you up:

Copyright Robert T. Balder

Want the punchline? Click the image. Via Land Mammal.

poetryfoundation.org has a page of poet poems; these are my favorites [click the image to go to the cartoon]:

     

   

      

Finally, it occurred to me that I might find something at gapingvoid. Sure enough, a quick look unearthed this, somewhat more pointed, cartoon:

True for me.

For you?

Made for Watermark

  This week's prompt was: take a snapshot of poetry. I did my usual snapshot poem yesterday, but I also found this:

This is just what I pictured, when I named this blog: the ephemeral nature of poetry, of writing -- of everything, actually. We work, and write, and post -- and no matter how long it lasts, that lasting is brief. We catch a moment, and it's gone in a moment.

I didn't  check the dictionary defintions before choosing, but it works even better than I had imagined:

1. a mark which is made on some types of paper during its production which can only be seen if it is held against the light;
2. a mark showing the highest or lowest level that a river or the sea reaches

Of course, I've been thinking about writing a lot lately, with NaNoWriMo pushing me to my expository limits. Yesterday, facing a blank wall, I realized I could read the next chapter of the book:

If you still don't know what your characters are doing in your book, Week Two is the point when you should panic.

Hee hee.

Just kidding.

Having a shaky, hazy, or problematic plot heading into Week Two is absolutely fine, and is a predicament common to many month-long novelists. . .

So, I feel better. Still lost, but better.

[Tuesday:  1371 words. Yesterday: 781 words. So far: 22854 words.] I know you folks must be getting bored with this, but I kept losing track -- so this is for me, not you.

Wave via The Generator Blog.

Election Day

You Are 40% Democrat

You're a bit Democrat, and probably more liberal than you realize. If you're still voting Republican, maybe it's time that you stop.

How Democrat Are You?

   

You Are 12% Republican

If you have anything in common with the Republican party, it's by sheer chance. You're a staunch liberal, and nothing is going to change that!

How Republican Are You?
   

This must mean I'm 48% something else.

No surprise there.