Watermark

Friday Cat Blogging

OK, folks -- I know you've seen this before, but the new comment really tickled me, and I'm off to the Montana Festival of the Book to meet and listen to Mary, so I needed a quick cat-post:

	Lollie Dot Com says: This cat hates you in four different ways 1. you make him think about coughing up a hairball in your bed again 2. you stink. 3. you lose the staring contest EVERY TIME. 4. you must talk to the butt. ^^ This Cat Hates You ^^

Lollie Dot Com's website: TOOLS for a Happier Life - 100s of Free Original Wallpapers and Rants

And here's today's critter roundup:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging

An Experimental Animated Visual Poem

   This week's prompt: Write with sense-combinations you can imagine a synaesthete experiencing. Like tasting a sound, hearing colors, touching a flavor, the texture of a song, the smell of a word or movement.

Cool Slideshows

Clicking an image will bring it up, larger. You will need flash to see this.

This prompt inspired yesterday's poem, too.

Snapshot Poem 27 September 02006

this morning smells of cinnamon,
of nutmeg and nostalgia, the red
sting of striped wasps and afternoon
falling from the sky like maple

like oak, a yellow day, tasting
of lemons and the sharp songs
of sparrows, a round day, an oval
day, an egg day, the day takes shape

around me but i am an absence today
i am not here, i am not there, the day
passes brightly around this vacancy
an egg-shaped emptiness, yolkless

heartless, a finality here where there
is nothing but dreams, floods, refugees
thousands of lost children, pets, these
two wasps mating on the fountain

thinking not of drowning, no discussion
no political debate, no faceted visions
no fear of the future, only this essential
desperate and glorious gesture

Men

Men and the Lack-of-Communication Theory

Very entertaining piece at NewWest|Missoula.

One of my ex's was a member of a sensitive-new-age-mens' group. After he had been going to meetings for several months, I asked (it had slipped my mind) what SNAMan 1's wife's name was.

Ex didn't know.

I asked if he knew the names of any of the other women.

He didn't.

DayPix ~ Equinox 2006

I realize that Watermark has been a bit heavy on photography lately, and light on words -- and now there are even more pictures.

Brainstorms, an online community I visit now and then, does an occasional project called DayPix, in which interested snapshotters are invited to record three days photographically. I did this over the new year holiday (here is that photoset) and participated again this past weekend, autumn equinox.

Now, this is not a photography challenge; the idea is not to showcase your best pictures, but to simply record the ordinary activities of our lives over the specified three days. Self-portraiture is encouraged, which is what you see, above.

Since I've been playing with some photo tools, I took the opportunity to use some of them, too. It has become clear to me that I'm committed to flickr; if a service isn't integrated with flickr, I'm unlikely to use it -- no matter how cool. But if the service will simply pull my photos from my flickr account, without requiring separate uploads, I'm apt to at least try it out.

So -- keeping in mind the caveat that these are not particularly the best of my photos -- if you'd like to see them, you can see the flickr photoset here; or you can see it jazzed up with flash at photofront (this may take some time to load.)

Or you can see them made into somewhat busy posters at tabblo (click the thumbnails):

           

The self-portait was made with Photoshop Elements and fd's flickr toys.

I'm exhausted.

Mirror

Friday Cat Blogging

The dogs got their tabblos earlier this week; now it's the cats' turn:

See my Tabblo>

See my Tabblo>

Silly critters. Spike and Boo belong to Catster; and Lucy and Henry belong to Dogster. About.com (to which I link only reluctantly: POPUPS!) recently listed a few other elite social clubs for our upscale pets -- one of which I will not link here because of even more obnoxious ads. But the others are:

• Backwash Pets: For general pet owners and lovers: from the creepy crawlies to the fuzzy wuzzies.
• petster: for all kinds of pets and pet owners.
• Hamsterster: For hamsters and hamster owners. [Now, that's specialization. They do seem to accept gerbils, though.]
• Pawspot: A general pets social networking site.

I haven't played with any of these; let me know if you do. And if you want even more pet networking options, try:

Friday Ark
I and the Bird
Carnival of the Cats
Carnival of the Dogs
Circus of the Spineless
Weekend Cat Blogging

Happy Equinox!

Photo Friday

  This week's theme is Girl, which gives me yet another opportunity to repost one of my favorites:

Poetry Thursday

   This week's prompt: Give your authentic self a voice.

Yesterday's Snapshot Poem is in the voice of one of my authentic selves. Here's another:

at the reading

emaciated women
writers and artists
in size 4 flowing dresses

lavishly embellished with
lush flowers women
who look like hungry boys bones

honed sharp with intentional
deprivation grown
women gathered together

to celebrate womanhood
it would take any
three of them to make one me

my breasts alone would break their
backs my hips could wrap
around two looking at me

they see their large fear over-
flowing too much breasts
belly hips curdled thighs thick

flesh old bones cushioned with meat
milk and grandmother's
sweetest autumn rhubarb pie

emaciated women
writers and artists
in size 4 flowing dresses

lavishly embellished with
lush flowers women
who look like hungry boys bones

honed sharp with intentional
deprivation grown
women gathered together

to celebrate womanhood
it would take any
three of them to make one me

my breasts alone would break their
backs my hips could wrap
around two looking at me

they see their large fear over-
flowing too much breasts
belly hips curdled thighs thick

flesh old bones cushioned with meat
milk and grandmother's
sweetest autumn rhubarb pie

Welcome, Aussies!

A thank you to SAMELA HARRIS for her mention of Watermark in her Net Adventures column!