or, excuse me, I meant to say blavatar. Anyway, in my history of avatars, the current one is only my second. For years, mine was Ms. Frizzle, and she was apt. I taught four academic subjects to at-risk middle and high school students. I have read hair and a somewhat wacky personality (I encouraged this perception, of course!) and did hands-on stuff when ever I could. I remember scrambling through the woods and bogs of Southampton, Massachusetts looking for remnants of the canal network. The girls I took were not like my girl scouts. Oh, no, not them (whiny-ass crybabies). So they got a few scratches and whatnot. I picked the ticks off them myself, didn’t I? Anyhoo, back to Ms. Frizzle. I had to say goodbye to her this year when I quit teaching this past spring. For one thing, any reminder of teaching made me anxious, and hard to avoid looking at your avatar, innit?  ‘It was no longer appropriate’ said Ms. Frizzle gently, and drove away in her magic school bus, her little lizard on her shoulder swivelling his saurian head around as they faded into the cybersphere.

It was at this time that the earthquake and tsunami hit Japan. Many of my friends changed their avatars to the Japanese flag (some even to the empirical Japanese flag, although I’m not sure they understood why they did-I didn’t ask, but I had my doubts). I changed mine to The Wave to bide me some time while I found another avatar.

Meanwhile, I kept noodling around in Photoshop, trying to create a cartoon of a picture of me. There’s a few hundred ways to do this, at least, and I kept noodling.

Plus, there’s so many other cool things to play with in photoshop, like the liquify tool and the self healing brush. Like the undo button, the self-healing brush is a tool I hope will one day be actual and not just virtual, but not likely to be available in my lifetime. So I was searching and noodling at the same time (could be a name for this blog, hey?)

And then I found her.

Vindicator, one of the all Canadian members of the new Alpha Flight. Isn’t she lovely? and a righteous babe, ta boot! http://www.newsarama.com/php/multimedia/album_view.php?gid=3335&page=2

The only thing I don’t feel quite honest about is, while there was a time I could have easily pulled that look off (and almost did! I still have my circa 1982 Diane Von Furtstenbug jumpsuit).  I don’t think I can pull it off as well as the whole Ms. Frizzle look.  For one thing, my hair is just jaw length now. It can’t shake and sway like a superhero’s (although there are parts of me that shake and sway just fine, thank you). I’m just issuing a caveat about my appearance in case you’re don’t recognize me without the crime-fighting costume if we met ftf. Just so’s we got that cleared up.