Wee techy moan - plus

I've been trying to put my photo in my profile. It's on my flickr photostream, which I use happily to blog other photos elsewhere on this blog. But when I try to give the relevant photo URL - quite a long one - Blogger tells me the photo has not got an "acceptable extension" - like "jpg", for example. Now this long URL I put in the box does in fact end ...jpg, it's just that it vanishes out of the end of the box. But it's there, all right. What am I doing wrong? Help, one of you savants out there!

Meanwhile, I'll write briefly about what I *am* competent with : words. It strikes me that there are times when facility with language, whether it be poetic or devastatingly direct, can land you in a problematic place. I know I can come out with lines which actually affect people - that's the poetry; I can also demolish with a brisk sentence or two. In both cases, I stand back from the creation and think "Good stuff!" Then I either wonder if I'm a charletan - manipulating emotions - or feel guilty because I've thumped someone, metaphorically speaking.

Ah well. An English teacher in my youth, now no longer with us, once snarled at me that I was "so sharp I'd fall and cut myself". Maybe she was right - but goodness, how I disliked her!