If you are using our Picture Mixer tool to create pictures, animations, or webcam effects, but would like to change the result in some way we haven’t thought of, you can just download the design from our site and tweak it yourself in Blender, a free and open 3D graphics program. For those who haven’t used Blender before, we’ve prepared a list of tips and tutorials for getting started. It is definitely a skill worth acquiring, even if just for the fun of it!

What are you going to write in that card?  Mrs. Bell has just posted a list of tips for writing sweet messages.  My favorite tip: make joyful reference to the future (”You. Me. Snuggles. Tonight.”)  Wahey!

If your message is electronic, don’t forget to check out our list of snazzy online gizmos that can help you spice it up.  And if it is for a loved one, you might want to read our checklist for love letters to make sure you’re on the right track.

There’s a lot of dodgy information on romance on the web (not the least of which is on our own site), but there’s a truly excellent description on how to be romantic on rinkworks.com.  I particularly appreciate the following rule of thumb:

There is a basic rule of thumb to follow: if it’s cool, it’s not romantic. For example, high powered rifles are not romantic. Science fiction is not romantic.

If only I’d learned that earlier in life.  The author has many observations of this nature, which combine to predict the most romantic object possible:

 It is, simply, a small red candle made out of chocolate and shaped like a teddy bear holding a heart with scribbles all over it that plays a tune when you wind it up.

This corresponds with my own experience that things-shaped-like-other-things are intrinsically cute.

My one beef is that the author asserts that having food on one’s head is not romantic.  I think it depends on the food.  Who could say no to a crown of cream with a cheeky cherry on top?

Thinking of getting your honey something nice? Good idea! You’ll want to avoid getting them any of the following:

1. A box of milk chocolate if they like dark, or vice versa. If you don’t know what kind of chocolate your sweetie likes, then you had better start paying attention. Chocolate is serious.
2. Any kind of diet book. I shouldn’t have to say this.
3. A bonsai potato kit. Don’t ask.
4. A book you want to read. Even if they want to read it too, they will question your motives. As do I.
5. A book you don’t want to read. Why would you get anyone a book not even you like?
6. Even worse: a subscription to a magazine you’ve never seen them read. You want them to get a weekly reminder in the mail of how poorly you understand them?
7. A domain name. Domain names don’t count as gifts, apparently. They are not real enough. Not even if they come with a nice card and a ribbon. Sigh.
8. Road flares, reflective vests or a good pair of shoe insoles. Seriously.

We came across some confirmation of this list on Amazon’s bad gift ideas for Valentine’s day.  Number one recommendation: a diet book.  Then a smattering of other books and magazines with titles like “why you’re so dumb and broke”, “taxidermy today”, and so on.  There are a few items we hadn’t thought of telling you to avoid, such as:

• Stainless Steel ANSI Flat Washer #1/4 Narrow .281″ ID x .500″ OD x .063″ Thick (Pack of 100)
• Human Heart Model (4x actual size)

… but hopefully you could figure that much out yourselves.

Dear Plonkr, my boyfriend is always coming up with harebrained money-making schemes.  How can I make him stop, or at least direct his energies into more productive channels?  Yours, Wits-ended.

Wits, here is what I suggest.  You start a website devoted to making life a little sweeter, maybe call it “makesweeter.org” or something.  Get your boyfriend involved, perhaps as a guest writer.  Then, earn some money from the site (I’m a little vague on this part of the plan, your Earth economy confuses me).  Then use the money to get your boyfriend enrolled in an economics course, where he’ll learn why his ideas will never work.

If all that fails, I suggest you convince him to borrow short and loan long.  That’s a harebrained scheme too, but at least he’ll be in good company.

Dear Plonkr, my wife wants to have a child, but I don’t think I’m ready - the thought of diapers makes me quail. What should I do? Yours, Dithering.

Dithering, I was not familiar with the term “diapers” so I consulted one of your Human dictionaries. Frankly, they seem a perfectly reasonable arrangement, one of the more sensible devices I’ve come across on this planet (along with potato-peelers). Thank you for drawing my attention to them.

May I suggest that part of your problem is in your use of thought, specifically in your “thought of diapers.” I suspect that diapers are one of the many artifacts that work better if you interact with them via doing rather than thinking.

So you’re not ready for a child? What kind of sad excuse for a species… no, wait. Actually, that’s fine by me. In fact, I’d like to encourage all you humans out there not to have children. It really is a terribly bothersome process. Think of all those diapers! And the restrictions on your personal liberty! Tsk tsk. Far better to have freedom than a future.  Don’t you think?

I ask you.  Miserable bloody planet.

Dear Plonkr, I’m struggling to be good, but I so want to be bad. Is the afterlife really going to be worth all this sacrifice? Yours, A Struggler.

Struggler, you represent everything I despise about Humans. Every single Human afterlife I’ve heard of is a philosophical nightmare. The truth is a lot more interesting, but it took my people a long time to figure out, so I’ll be damned before I just hand it to you lot on a platter. Just accept that your religion, whatever merits it may have otherwise, has gotten the afterlife completely, but completely, wrong. Not even in the useful sense of being the opposite of the truth, but in the sense of being totally wrong-headed; like trying to build a house with a potato peeler (most interesting artifact I’ve found on your planet yet, by the way), or fly to space on a grammar book.

So you know nothing, but nothing, about the afterlife. Now decide what you want to do with this life.

Miserable bloody planet.

I now initiate the duties required of me during my mandatory cultural exchange, a punishment for my … crime. Apparently I am expected to serve as an Advice Columnist for this benighted MakeSweet establishment, a strategy that the Council hopes will give me some experience of emotions beyond despair and loathing. So far, it is not working.

This communication was forwarded to me from one amongst you:

Dear MakeSweet, I’ve met this guy, he is so cool, but I’m way too shy to ask him out. What should I do? Yours, Shy-shy McShyshypants.

Ugh. This is so like a Human. Listen to me. You live in a universe containing objects and processes your little jelly brain is only beginning to understand. You lie on an unbroken chain of ancestors tracing back to before ancestors existed. You have the radical freedom to choose actions that will spill outwards from you to the end of human history and beyond. You have the capacity to experience and provoke. Those around you do too. All these things are not often so. Do I have to spell it out for you?

You people make me sick.

Greetings Humans. I am Plonkr. I have joined this “makesweet” entity as part of a mandatory cultural exchange, forced on me by the Council of my home-world as penance for my … crime. They feel that I may learn the value of soft, weak things here. So far, I am sickened to my very soul. Sweetness? Light? This place makes me feel claustrophobic in its cloying pinkness. There is no honor here!

I’m told my duties will be responding to the communications of Humans with troubled hearts, to give a different perspective on their problems. I have suggested a faster, more honorable procedure for dealing with a troubled heart, but apparently that is not an option.

Pity.

If you’re blank, you can blank! Did you know that? Gosh headlines are fun!