So I changed my avatar again. The main reason is that I cut my hair yesterday. Well, that didn’t come out quite like I intended.

See, I’ve always liked cartoons, and I love, love, LOVE yahoo avatars. So it figured I’d have one headlining my blog.

I initially had this purple-haired one because I really like the spiky hair look. If I had a different kind of hair, that’s exactly how I’d wear it. But this head does nothing but dreads. Believe me, I’ve tried.

I had Peaches [the flowered avatar] for a while, because she represented how I felt, how I saw myself. She’s flirty, and girly, and delicate … and fairly naïve. Plus that peach dress is to die for.

I have a whole bunch of avatars stacked in my computer; each one suits a different mood. Greenie, the cybertwin’s avatar, is as close as I get to having green eyes. Plus the site needed a JPEG image, and Miss Purple is in PNG.

The Drama Queen is chilling out on twitter for a while. The one with the specs is my game-face, because I only wear my glasses when I’m working [or flossing]; the glare from monitors and pure white paper disturbs me.

I got Miss Purple when my hair was pretty short. It’s now short again. I like the look – it’ll do. Fatoo did a brilliant job with it … but I’m not likely to chop it off again. You could almost say I’ve gone latter-day-nazirite. My hair people will be so happy *cheeky grin*.

I’ve revived Miss Purple for another reason. I sense a subtle shift in my nature. Ever since I went into business last month, I feel … different. Miss Purple was my first avatar in the writing world. She was an icon for my writing career and my dreams of getting paid. And now it’s come true.

Now that I’m hustling for money, I feel tougher, more hardcore. I feel confident; like I can do anything. And I admit it took a lot of [wrongly placed?] balls to walk into a salon and have them cut my dreads off.

They’re not completely gone. They just look short and spiky and a little unkempt. I can still shake them if I spin my head really really hard, and I’m sure they’ll grow back.

If only I could dye them purple…

Back to blogging, I know how to work my avatars with Microsoft Photo Editor. It’s so easy to use. But I’ve now upgraded to Office 2007, and that only comes with a Picture Manager. I can’t figure out how to make it do what I want – which is to cut, paste, shift things around, and remove the grainy effect on my headliner.

Ideas anyone? And please don’t say photoshop. I tried it once and I got stuck at the layers. There’s a reason they say Microsoft is for dummies…

♫ Afterlife ♫ Avenged Sevenfold ♫

I know. I need help.

So here’s how I spent the last fifteen minutes. I was browsing here and more specifically here and figured I’d give it a shot. Since Mosh is a good friend of mine, I figured I’d ask the twin a few key questions to see just how authentic it really is. I couldn’t stop laughing!!

My Cyber Twin is a service that creates an ‘artificial you’ that can chat up your friends while you’re away.  It has obvious uses; it’s a sort of cyber voicemail, and for organisations, it can be like the automated customer care person at Zain or Safaricom.

It also has less … serious uses, like impersonation, or screening online acquaintances, or keeping you busy when on your pals are offline.

[You can see I spend a lot of time on the internet.]

So I went out [?] and got a twin of my own, just for kicks, and had a conversation with it. Yaani this takes talking-to-myself to a whole new level. But it was just so fun!!

So, my fellow chataholics, tweeters and tweeteuses, introducing…

**drumroll**

…my alter ego’s alter ego!

Knock yourself out. *cheeky grin*

Can you be absolutely sure that person you’re chatting to is not me? I mean like absolutely?

♫ Gnarls Barkely ♫ Crazy ♫