30 | December | 2000 | notforprophet

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...

I know this one girl who is of above-average but not stinking haughty intelligence who nevertheless performs like an idiot-savant with regard to her recall of numbers. Rattle off a list of numbers, phone numbers, serial numbers on dollar bills, whatever, and she can repeat the sequence flawlessly. She explains her adeptness thusly: When she was a very, very young girl, with every day constituting a newly-lived life on the horizon of discovery, she received a gift of a xylophone where the keys were different colors and they were consecutively numbered. So for instance, red was "1" and a certain key, say C, and green was "2" and another key, say D, etc. Somehow, in her mind, in the course of play, the assigned numbers became fused with the notes--inseparably. So now whenever she sees or hears a number, she also effortlessly "hears" the correlate tune within. It is the tune assigned to the number that constitutes her savant recall. Ask her to remember a phone number, she whistles the tune, then decodes it back into the appropriate digits. If this is commonplace, then I'm the idiot, because I think this is quite remarkable!
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.