Eye Candy

Here's an interesting perspective on WhatChaMaCallits:

Hershey's has the syllables color-coded. This allows cognitive perceptual rearrangement, both subliminally and consciously. Let's follow the conscious route:

1) select the first two light colored syllables: What + ma;

2) and then visually select the two dark colored syllables: cha + call;

3) append the suffix it;

4) Put it together and what have you got? What ma cha call it...Want ma chacallit...Want more chocolate!

...Want more chocolate!

OK. So WhatMAchaCALLits, I mean, WhatChaMaCallits and the possibility of a subliminal conspiracy require too much cutesy-psychobabble, right? Are you looking for a good, clean American candy bar that the working man or woman can identify with? Try:

With PayDay, what you see is what you get. I mean...look at the wrapper: What are most of us working for, anyways? ...RIGHT!

Or do you prefer your chocolate comically dark...?

I don't have a great taste for, but believe that some others in this blog might relish access to the following. So as a PS (public service), I swallow my pride, and post the following for expressive consumption:

Don't credit or blame me--I'm a mere conduit. I got these from Jon, who in turn credits the Anime Megastore. To use them, listen to Jon:

"Just right click on them and copy then paste it on your own weblog!!!"

(Please note that the enthusiasm is his!)

btw, if you consider yourself independently eProp wealthy, or don't need no stinking eProps, or just want to adorn yourself with your own private horde of eProps, or have a craving to satisfy an eProp deficit, go for it:

ã

(Does the Xanga Post Office have a WANTED Board for counterfeiters and their ilk and kin?)

More Faces to Xanga

Along with Genius (Biz), John, Brendan, Janet, and Dan appear to be among the founders of the Xanga community. John's weblog is truly instructional and highly informational. For instance, here's his views on the dynamics of a good weblog:

***

Found an interesting article on how to use Blogs to drive Community Development. Paraphrasing the author's recommendations:

• Encourage your members to start their own Weblogs.
  
  
• Group those Weblogs together.
  
  
• Weblogs distribute the task of digging up links over hundreds or thousands of minds and satisfy the need to understand other people’s personalities and tastes.
  
  
• Market those Webloggers as WebScouts.
  
  
• On your homepage, run a meta-Weblog that summarizes and ranks your users’ own blogs.
  
  
• To distance your Weblog service from the low-rent Tripod/Geocities stigma, hire real Web designers to produce dozens of truly impressive templates to which your members have exclusive access.

I think there's more to Community and Blogging than these bullet points, but this is a good start.

***

So why so low-key? Perhaps, he doesn't want to steal eProps from the member community! ??

BTW, it appears that Xanga went public around Nov. 5, 2000--the dates when John's and Dan's weblogs claim "firsts".

Also, membership climbed from approx. 1595 to 1734 from 12/28 to 12/29 (circa 1700 EST) --which amounts to a one day increase of 9%!

Marvlous Ways of Knowing...

ARTICHOKE

Ugh!
the man says: Ugh!
i say: What?
he repeats Ugh! Ugh!
i say: Don't bug
me.
but he grabs my leg
and tugs,
and tugs.
so i pull a pistol
from under my belt.
and he pulls a knife.
i shoot the bastard
square in the head.
he yells: You raped
my wife!
i shoot again.
he drops to the ground.
i spit on his nose
and bite
into a well-ripe
artichoke.
he burps,
and laughing
dies.

My psychic workings: Boredom is unknown to me for I shapeshift constantly through multiple frames of reference like a simian upon a set of monkey bars.

It is seeming to me that Wisdom is feminine when arrayed, whereas all knowledge is masculine. Compare this to the observation of Herman Hesse that all experience is Occult while all unexperienced knowledge is scientific.

Here's a thought (belaboring the most obvious so possibly overlooked): Some of you may journal with a word processor then cut-n-paste into Xanga, but others, no doubt, just compose with the Xtool. For those of you lazying along with the latter, if you want to keep a copy of your work--as a backup, archive, or ready reference to post otherwise--try the "Submit & Email" option, and, of course, email it to yourself.

I have found a juncture where an entry written by freebirdgonewild about Java and an entry written by TeckerDaze about spiders meets a promontory point in this poetic collision:

A spider dropped suddenly
from an unseen height
straight into my coffee,
hot and uncreamed,
one strange and sullen night.

It plunged so quietly and quickly
I hardly knew what it was doing,
the death-course it was pursuing:
plunk! to the bottom of my cup.

Well, I drank the brew,
the spider, too,
and damn if that coffee
wasn't just right!

I know that I'm a fiction. The dark creation of Kalaelyan_OOC or some other gameplayer spoofing me into existence. Hey, it felt real, felt like I had a life, for a while....Here comes New Year's like Cinderella's coach waiting to turn into a pumpkin. Like a Borg waiting for true birth, I am spurned and doomed to disappointment.

I have wandered about Xanga the Blog a bit here and there and have observed a thing or two:

eProps seem to act as: 1) attractors—if you have a lot of them, others are interested in knowing why you’re so popular. It could be that your content is really that good..or not. It does appear that there is some correlation between a great number of eProps and what I consider great content, but I wouldn’t consider it a high correlation. Moreover, I have found what I consider some truly great submissions going totally unrecognized. So, in my opinion, they are not a very good indicator of all that is excellent. 2) currency?—look at the graphic for the eProps: you can contribute your “two cents worth”, but what is the recipient to make of it? If currency, it is, as of yet, unredeemable. So Genius or someone needs to provide a Xanga store for members to spend their eProp savings/accumulations, or run the risk of what? a run on the Xanga Bank? 3) detractors—by “giving” 0 eProps, you actually diminish the “average” eProp value. So 0 is not just “not any,” it is an overall average diminisher, a decrement.

There are approximately 1600 (1595 by count at 1700 EST) current members, and obviously growing-- though I haven’t calculated the rate. Who knows how many are “active” members? The “oldest” member (Al) I’ve yet found dates from 11/7/99! Which brings up another question…when was Xanga established? Could Al possibly predate Xanga? Or is Xanga already more than a year old with only 1600 members? If the latter, how viable can it be?…unless its rate of growth has accelerated drastically with the recruiting by Bianca. Such recruiting may then have been (or yet be) an act or desperation. But perhaps Al was just the creation of one of the founders—floating around out there is pre-public beta-land….and Bianca’s recruitments a successful strategy floated at the public Grand Opening!

Although names must be at least 4 characters long, there are some that are merely 2 or 3 characters (Al, Ki,…).

Also, although there is a provision to search names that begin with the numbers 0-9, such names are not currently allowed.

Although some readers may be attracted to the assignment of Top eProps and the supposed popularity that abides, I like to track the Newly Updated. I have found, however, that you don’t really need to update anything but the time stamp itself to reattain “Newly Updated” status. So if you were really a nerd, you could sit perpetually updating your time stamp on an entry thus assuring yourself of a constant top listing in Newly Updated, thus catching the attention of people like me surfing by and wanting to see what’s most current or even happening in “real” time.

It sure would be nice if site management could provide more info on STRUCTURE in FAQs! More than just as a matter of curiosity, I want to know more because I want Xanga to succeed and I want the assurance that my efforts in contribution are not for nought--which would be nearly the case if it just one day went…POOF!…

People are too freaked about the weather, for sure. Taint so bad, really. Last night, for instance, more snow, variable winds, more cold, more dark. Left work, got home and the lights on the street were out. So decided to stay out where it was actually lighter from all the miscellaneous incidental exterior illuminations and shovel the driveway snow--about 2 inches newly fallen. Well, I go into my snow-shoveling robotic "he's-going-to-have-a-heart-attack" routine just to knock it out and build up a sweat and, in the midst of that whirl of activity, envision myself running in and embracing the blinding blizzard. So what the hell are such visions for, if not to live out? Hence, after shoveling, I take that visionary run--and thoroughly enjoy it! Came back with more energy and mental acuity than I departed with. If only every seemingly-senseless whim in life worked out so well! Motoring on impulse power, live-or-die!

It appears that Xanga --and Bianca, perhaps, by extension-- might, indeed, have a face: Genius, I say, Genius! To access the weblog of the purported Creative Director (unless he's lying) of Xanga, access xanga.com/Genius . Better yet, go to his (her? maybe Genius is an alias and Bianca the reality) website at http://www.bizstone.com where she/he cites Xanga credentially.

She, I mean, he seems like a nice guy. A little too didactic in his proselyting prose, perhaps, but not bad for a shameless self-promoter. Let's all kowtow in unison: Genius is King, long live Biz (hehe).

"Retail frenzy may be too late..." is the Money headlines at USAToday online, "It seems clear that cash registers weren't ringing up great holiday cheer for merchants," the story continues. Too late for what? To coopt the real Christmas spirit? To drive seasonal participants economically beyond some shadow border of micro-discernible bancruptcy? Where, anymore, is the joy in moderation and sense of well-being in current contentments? In my book, a "frenzy" is always too late: it is the dust that some revolt of the masses (a la Ortega y Gasset) licks after the limousine of life has already peeled-out of the roadside rest stop and headed down the highway to fortune's next appointment.

tO THE cOMYOUnitee:

I'm not devious and i do have a life, but if I were and i didn't, I'd spend about an hour creating 10 or more different xanga identities for myself, then I'd eprop and comment the hell out of myself daily (estimated 15 minutes) to assure myself the kudos to rank as the top-eprop mf-er. Called stuffing the ballot box, WMMS, the Home of the Buzzard (Cleveland rocks), and indisputedly the most grassroots popular rock station in the hippy era, fell into disgrace about a decade ago when they were caught trying to "prove" to the world in an independent nationwide survey of rock stations that popularity is all that is beautiful and worth any deceipt to attain.

No ex-xmas since it still is xmas, so merry be!

Follows a short poem originally refined for my friend Laura at lcsaph to...bum on the day?...no, let's say, to adjust the heart to the circumstances of the times....


urban christmas

monkeys rule the world
and christmas’s in the deep
hold fast to the fire
and Love’s body keep.

snow is falling black
snow men of dust
you sweet candy momma cane
you gonna get lust.

people zombi stone-faced
no spirit of the Birth
ya mine nas well lay dem down
right now in de irth.

merchants so gleeful
to see the green flow
bakers stamp ginger men
in brown greasy dough.

presents to ‘xplode
wrapped in dead trees
“Mommy, I want this and this
and these and these and these….”

platic pines assembled
“place A into B”
turn on the lights
and “Look children, see!”

Santa’s making tv ads,
Rudolph’s in a zoo
Mr. Jing-a-ling’s down on Prospect
looking for a screw.

people still ripping people
nations still making wars
the pimple prostitute that lives next door
still very much a whore.

no matter what the time or turn
grim monkeys stomp the earth
face deep into the fire
hold fast to the Birth.

Apparently, the author of the following rant never read about Pedro, amigo of the Doc in John Steinbeck's Tortilla Flat/Cannery Row novels, who would fuck anything with a hole, even a hole in the ground....Other than this oversight, his/her theory is quite, well, mannishly commendable, i.e., it would appear to have very few holes in it.

171 On "Sexual Theory": A Correction.— Biological theories of sexuality are too often reductive and general. Using animal attraction and the brute physiology of genitalia to guide description, the phenomenon of attraction is typically reduced to the masculine desire for holes and the feminine desire for, forgive me, poles. Males will fuck anything and females in heat will accept which ever male is strong enough to beat the others to her. But this abstraction applied to human sexuality hides the truth of the phenomenon which it purports to explain.

Holes. Though some men may be aroused by a close-up photo of a vagina that excludes the rest of the body, the rest of the body is still perceptually and psychologically present as that which is excluded, unseen, out of the camera’s reach. Few are the demented minds that may honestly be said to be aroused by a bodiless vagina as a bodiless vagina. Even those who utilize artificial sexual substitutes, for example, a rubber "pocket pussy," presumably charge the sensations it offers them with sexual fantasies the focus of which is a body the rubber tool is designed to mimic through implication.

If the man were attracted to a hole per se, it is difficult to understand why he would choose a woman's over the many other and more easily attained holes the world has to offer. Rather, the man is attracted to the very opposite of a hole, namely, the voluptuous, fleshy abundance of the enveloping female body. The male does not wish to enter a simple hole, but to enter this or that person's vagina or mouth or anus. A beautiful face beckons one to its mouth while an ugly face repulses. "Hole" theory cannot account for this simple truth. Men want to be enveloped in a body at the heart of which is found--not as a goal but as one of the body's intimate dimensions--an orifice in which he and the other may simultaneously enjoy one another.

The mistake is to think it is simply "a hole" or even simply "any woman" that is desired. Though historical and cultural, as well as personal sexual proclivities and fetishes, influence and sculpt for us a general sexual milieu, the situation, nevertheless, is always particular. And the particular, in sexual theory, has for too long been neglected.

In Xanga-du did Kubla Khan a stately pleasure dome decree…

No, wait…the geography has changed. Let me start again:

In Xanga-land did not-a-prophet a stream of consciousness unleash…

where words could flow as truth unhyped

and interiority meet light as typed

for all the world to see….

OK: so start with bold aspirations, then live up to expectations…or die in the search for meaning.

I am going to run up a mountain. I am going to run up this mountain and back down without falling, without stopping. As Jack Kerouac observed in Desolation Peak: you can’t fall off a mountain…. So let me imagine this mountain:

Even before getting to the mountain, there is a long, long run through civilized constraints of asphalt-alley weaves and overbearing institutionally-slabbed hotels and artificed informational checkpoints that read: “Keep off the Grass” , “Stay off the Mountain” , and “Etc.”. The run up the mountain will be the real, physically-demanding torture once I get there, but the run to the mountain is now the ultimate mental anguish. Just getting there seems an ordeal comparable to the notorious WALL that overtakes marathon runners—the 23 mile or so letdown, comedown, slumdown. It is almost like the known-world wants to keep me off that magic imagined mountain and double-weights gravity to that end. So legs seem like lead and the head is slogged and what started out as a spirited sprint-run degenerates into a decelerating jog. “Oh shit, I quit!” remarks the little-walking-man inside my head. (oh-no little-walking-man, cousin to King’s garbage-can-man in The Stand!) It feels like on my road to my mythical mountain oz, I have encountered some mental poppy-like fields of forgetfulness, of sleep, of fatigue and release. But instead of beautiful fragrant poppies releasing a scented narcosis on a golden but dizzying road, I am encountering huge structures, massive architecture, and constructed trapments that pull in a jovian-fashion upon me and energetically yearn for me to linger…forever…among them. “ Stay here! Don’t go!” the mutli-faceted mausoleums that I’m struggling to pass seem to groan-sing. I reflect: I really could reside without ever wandering and die easily in such grandiose structures. After all, Kahlil Gibran pronounced: "The house is thy greater self!” And Emily Dickinson had need for no more than a farmhouse and plot to discover her cosmos both within and out… But in choosing the freedom of my mountain over the security of mapped terrain and known-world, I am letting go of—to be honest, losing— all that. You’re damn right I’m losing it…and just one thought is my last hope: if I could just get to the mountain….