I'm a very untidy tagger. I tag randomly and according to whim. Over the last year, thanks to my static tags plugin for pyblosxom, I have accumulated 150+ tags. Most of those are applied to hardly one or two entries and increasingly my tag cloud has been cluttered with such one-offs.
I spent an hour today checking out how to represent so much information into a single screen-ful. And I found a brilliant example in the penny packer extension.
So bye bye to the plaintext tags. Say guten tag to the Ishihara version.
--price tag on other side.
The road didn't know me, but the streetlights said hello. From the shadows they twinkled their silent message out to me. The mist hung over them like a curtain, parting for my passage. As the wheels crunched over the gravel and stopped, a light shone in the distance.
Someone. Awake. Waiting for me. I ran, ran up all the stairs. Burst open into the light and a voice, all but whispered "have you eaten?".
And I knew I was home.
--do not try this at home.
Next time you walk past a mirror, stop & reflect.
Look deep into those eyes for a glimmer of something real. Break through that facade that has taken several precious years to build. Through all the limits that the world has put on you. Take a good look at yourself.
The most interesting thing about you isn't the people you have surrounded yourself with. It's not the assortment of gadgets that adorn your fingertips, pockets or desk. Neither is it the long list of books you've read and several others you own, merely for others to comment upon. Nor is the rather eclectic taste in music that the pinball machine of life have bounced into you. The sips and dips you've taken, places you've gotten lost in or even whom you hooked up with & when.
It should've been you - just you. But you've lost yourself in incidentals. Thrown away yourself only to replace it with the byproducts of your existence. You became a showcase, instead of a person - with whatever you've got, perpetually on display. What you are suddenly was skin-deep and then it got ugly.
Maybe you were ashamed. Ashamed of who you were. It was fun to pretend you weren't anymore, but what truly changed? You or just a new mask? Wearing it, hoping that nobody ever comes into your life to whom you'd have to bare all? Keep it on forever?
Maybe you'll try. Maybe it was better than being nothing in the eyes of others. I said, maybe.
But just remember not lose all you've collected - at any cost. Because once you've lost yourself, that's all you got. That's all you got.
--What ever you can give up, that's all you have. The rest is what you are.