The Flatland Almanack

The Flatland Digital Artwork Gallery. 31 January 2007.

I've added the following clipart to my gallery.  Click on the category name to see the entire category and all updates;  click on the image name to see a particular image.  All are jpegs.  Enjoy!

ANTIQUE:   Nefertiti ;  The Green Man's Buckle;

ARTIFACTS, OBJECTS, AND CURIOSITIES:  The Return of the Saucer People

ARTSY:  Spinning Indigo (for Caroline);  Sky Dancers;  A Path Through the Air; The Box of Spring Flowers;  Seaflower 2;

CROSSES:  Jigsaw Cross (for Howard)

CUTE:  Bluebirds at the Fountain ;  Cute or Scary?  Little Ghosts

FABRIC:  The Vicar's Embroidered Slippers [Homage to E.F. Benson]

GLASS:  Flowers Under Glass; Prismatic Globe; Tiffany Effects (for Merle); The Reliquary;

INSPIRED BY THE HBO SERIES "ROME":  Atia 2; Octavian 2 [Augustus] ;

JEWELRY:  The Alchemist's Amulet;   

MANDALAS 2:  The Greening Hills;  The Peacock Throne;

MODERN 2:  Harlequin and Columbina.

MOONS, STARS, AND PLANETS:  Sol Invictus (The Unvanquished Sun); Butterfly Moon;  Dark Star Spin

ODD BLOSSOMINGS:  Tiffany Effects (for Merle);

RIBBONS:  The Greening Hills:  The Peacock Throne

SCARY:  Cute or Scary?  Little Ghosts

STRANGE GEMSTONES: Butterfly Moon ;  Atia 2 ;  Octavian 2 [Augustus];

STRANGE RAINBOWS:   Flowers Under Glass; Prismatic Globe; The Reliquary ; The Alchemist's Amulet;  Atia 2

The Flatland Chronicles for 30 January 2007. Gary Kamiya at Salon.com, "The Readers Strike Back." Humble Advice from a Reader to Writers Who Surf Too Much.

At Salon.com, there is a very interesting article by a writer and journalist on the effect on a writer of internet commentary by their readers.

I've been fascinated since I first discovered internet discussion forums by the group dynamics of these discussions.  I've been fascinated in particular by my own response as a participant.  In my opinions, many forums only purport to be about the issue named in the thread title.  They're often much more about the participants and their struggles for attention or dominance than about the topic. 

I think that a writer with a thick enough skin and confidence in his or her work could really benefit from dropping by forums where he or she is being discussed----even if the discussion is largely adverse---and could really build an audience, but there's an important caveat:  that the writer approach the comments with detachment and without defensiveness.  Most of them are only tangentially about you, guys.

Anyway, for a reader's suggestions to writers, JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES HERE.

The Flatland Chronicles for 29 January 2007. Quiddities and Oddities: Eyelash Buddies!

Man, the things you learn hanging around the internet. 

Courtesy of Digg.com, I learned yesterday of the existence of tiny mites that live in human eyelash follicles and facial pores.  Yes, you have them too.  Yes, you do.  You DO.  They're completely harmless creatures, doing considerably less damage to Planet You (yes, you) than we do, for example, to the earth. 

The website is brought to you courtesy of "The Worsley School."  I would have read it, grimaced, and moved on, but I was surprised when I looked at a photograph of one of the little dudes.  Despite certain disagreeably sluglike aspects (it's actually scaly rather than smooth-skinned)  It had a face.  I mean an actual face, sort of resembling a walrus's, and tiny flippers.  It even had two little white dots that appeared to be organs of sight. 
I showed it to Nick, and he agreed that if we---yes, you too; yes, you---have to have them, they're pretty cute little parasites.  If you read the article there's a link to a picture. 

What intrigued me, I guess, was that I had just read A.S. Byatt's  Little Black Book of  Stories.  My favorite was the first one.  It was the story of two young girls evacuated during WWII to the country.  At an overnight stop on their way to their destinations they go wandering in a breathtakingly beautiful wood and their confront the authentic "Loathly Worm," i.e., a dragon with none of the attractive characteristics of the ceramic one that my first husband gave me twenty years ago.  That had a face as well. 

This reminded me a bit of Byatt's dragon, only microscopic (and harmless).  A somewhat similar creature is described in one of my favorite Ursula LeGuin novels, The Beginning Place  (if you click that link, don't be put off between the unfortunate anime-inspired cover, evidently designed to appeal to teens; though it is not at all a book most teenagers would understand or care for).

I suppose the main thing about dragons and all beasts in stories of that kind is that they're just hungry, poor things.

So anyway, this is about a hungry---an d harmless--microscopic dragon that lives in your face.  Yes, yours too.

To read about him---I feel it's a him---JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES NOW. 

No?  Oh, be that way, then.

The Flatland Chronicles for 27 January 2007. Reality Bites: Stewart on Cheney; Cheney v. Blitzer; Arianna v. McCain.

For those who enjoy black comedy:  Jon Stewart on Dick Cheney, courtesy of Salon; Cheney on Wolf Blitzer, ditto; and Arianna vs. John McCain.   Stewart is always funny;  Cheney's funny when he's being baited; and Arianna Huffington is funny provided she's not trying to be (and her feigned or real surprise at McCain's response to her baiting has kept me chuckling incredulously all day).  I hope she chases him till the election's over, asking him complicated questions loaded with embedded premises like Russian dolls.

Oh, Arianna Huffington, how I love/hate thee.  You and The Huff Post are such a gift to slightly leftward tilting moderates who need something to keep them centered.  And the daily round up of news of interest to me (slightly leftward tilting moderate) is just  the luscious icing on the delicious cake.

TO READ MORE, JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

Just Eat the Damn Peach for 27 January 2007. Recap of NBC's "The Office"--The Return (Producer's Cut).

This was a really interesting episode.  I laughed my ass off and then discovered afterwards that I felt differently about the characters.   The show used the downfall of Andy (come on; you knew it was coming) to reveal a side of Jim (courtesy of the amazing John Krasinski) I didn't care much for and to show Michael---again---in the role of straight man.  One of my internet correspondents is sure this wasn't the intention of the writers.  But I wasn't so sure.  From listening to commentaries on the DVD's (nerdish, perhaps, but I always do), I gather that the writers really are interested in using their 22 minutes or whatever it is to develop complicated whorls for these personalities.  I loved the episode.

I recapped the Producer's Cut (including what turned out to be pretty important and telling deleted material).  I believe it's available for a limited time through I-Tunes, but I got my version via a "season pass" at I-Tunes.  It was a LONG episode and it's a long, long recap.  If you just want to know what happened, go to NBC.com or else click one of the links I thoughtfully provided on the left; some of them will take you to great sites that have succinct recaps. 

If you do read the recap, bear in mind that the whole purpose of this exercise for me is to have fun reflecting on the show.  It's not so much a recap as a running commentary/critique, sort of a mixture of stream-of-consciousness exposition and criticsm.  It's a work of love, for people who like the show enough to be interested in what other people think about it.  With that understood:

JUMP TO JUST EACH THE DAMN PEACH to read the (long, long) recap. 

The Flatland Chronicles for 26 January 2007. Blogcombing for Notable Tributes to Steve Irwin.

<<"The Unvanquished Sun," another humble clipart tribute.

As far as this blogger is concerned, there can never be too many tributes to Steve Irwin.  The airing of his final adventure, "Ocean's Deadliest," is a poignant reminder of what we have all lost.  I am not ready to see it yet, but I'm glad that Cousteau and Stainton finished it.

With this in mind, I put together a collection of some of the tributes by bloggers that most closely mirror my own feelings and that most eloquently answer some of Irwin's critics. 

FOR THE RESULTS OF MY BLOGCOMBING, JUMP NOW TO "THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES."

The Flatland Chronicles for 25 January 2007. A note on death & dying I didn't intend to write.

It started out to be a fairly pointless blog---because I PROMISED myself I would write EVERY SINGLE DAMN DAY---about nothing at all, then a reference to one thing Jeb Bush said while he was governor that I not only liked, but liked a lot, sent me off down a track I didn't mean to follow.

The Schiavo case still rankles with this marginal Christian, since I resented so much the implication ("Life is precious") that a person who thought that the government should stay the hell out of it must by definition view life as not so precious or perhaps not precious at all. 

That's really what a certain type of Christian---the ones who want to end abortion but keep the death penalty---believes:  that to believe a person who can't die thanks to technology and for whom no hope remains should be allowed to finish the process means you don't think life is precious.  It's infuriating and upsetting, since there's an opposite argument that continuing the technology past a certain point is an unwarrantable interference with the dignity of a person too ill to do anything on her own except to die.  Since I'm all for technology up to that point, I don't want to go there.

Anyway, for what it's worth, thinking about Jeb Bush got me thinking about the thing he did while governor that I liked least, so I ended up following that train of thought.  (But I still really like what he said about Florida).

JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

The Flatland Chronicles for 24 January 2007. Random Joys and Oddities.

Magnificent photographs from Deep Space, precious seahorses, a most unusual cat, and one weird-ass story from Malaysia (no photos though) about a girl who allegedly---I say allegedly---has toes that produce gemstones.  (The last is probably an urban legend, but the notion that someone would make up a story like that is even harder to swallow than the story itself).

I had a long groggy day thanks to the over-the-counter antihistamine I took to control an allergy.  I managed to put together a note for Versus/Reversus, so the fact that I wrote anything in my journal at all is pretty commendable.   Besides:  they are really cool links. 

JUMP HERE TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES/QUIDDITIES AND ODDITIES.

Versus/Reversus for 24 January 2007. Two More Years. A Wistful Glance at the British System.

It's the evening after the State of the Union address and the Senate Foreign Relations Committee has just (12-9 on mainly party lines, though Hagel voted with the Dems) dissed Bush's plan to send more troops to Iraq. 

In the meantime, there's bad news about global warming from the International Governmental Panel on Climate Change.

It's impossible not to feel a certain level of despair that people are still fighting stupid wars over nonsensical differences of opinion about unprovable issues when there are far greater issues at stake.  And it's impossible not to wish Bush out of office sooner rather than later.  The more he isn't gone, the more the two parties are going to find to bicker about. 

But there it is:  he's ours, we chose him, we enabled him (yes, even so, my fellow Dems) and we're stuck with him for two more long years.  Sadly, he seems unlikely to get up to any dalliances with White House interns.  No tit for tat for us Democrats.  And even if he gave us a totally spurious excuse, do any of us really want a reprise of the self-serving idiocy that was the Clinton impeachment?

At times like this, the thoughtful citizen's mind WILL turn to the British parliamentary system and their procedures for getting rid of Prime Ministers who outstay their welcome .  Walter Shapiro mentioned it in passing in an article at Salon and it's an alluring thought.  Completely out of the question, of course---a change of that sort to the Constitution would doubtless have a domino effect on every aspect of the American political system. 

But alluring. 

JUMP TO VERSUS/REVERSUS.

The Flatland Chronicles for 23 January 2007. The State of the President.

He said nothing tonight that would have surprised anyone who has been paying attention.  I didn't want to watch it after the first three minutes, so I just read the text after it was over. 

For links to that, to the Democrats' response and to some first reactions from progressives, JUMP TO THE FLATLAND CHRONICLES.

Because this blog feels both personal and political, I also linked to it at VERSUS/REVERSUS HERE.