"haha i love the observations about gender in this post, eho. well said. perhaps the rule for gridcosm fights (since, for better or worse, they seem inevitable) should be that you MUST hand-draw (digitally or scanned from paper) your flame-volley. no pre-existing images, no photoshop filters. maybe this way they will at least be creative. (however, i could guess that they might just end up being hand-scrawled notes saying things like "

In defense of celebrating Photoshop filters... Do you expect every electric guitarist in every garage band on earth to go 'unplugged?' Shrieking feedback and doing a fuzztone on your wah-wah is FUN. My opinion is that Photoshop filters are just another artistic tool--no better or worse than any other.

You think that what I do on Gridcosm is ugly and uncreative, Jon? That's a shame. I wish you'd told me this four years ago.

I'm planning to spend all of 2005 hand-drawing with a digital pen on a WACOM tablet. No more filters. However, I won't be uploading images to Gridcosm or anywhere on SITO, sadly.

I'll be working on my own. My doodles are unblendy--and I intend to keep them that way. Gridcosm is the art of compromise. The give-and-take of collaboration will not be a part of my creative direction in 2005.

Jon, it would really be best IMHO if you changed my password and didn't tell me the new one. This would discourage crackers from spoofing TCA on Gridcosm next year. You could e-mail me the new password on January 1, 2006--after a year had passed.

I'm requesting that you kick me off SITO for an entire year. Weird, but it's a plan that's so crazy it just might work.